a statesman, but he was a man of a fierce and unbending temper,
prompt to quarrel, hotly arrogant in argument, unrelenting in his
hatred of those who crossed his purposes.

These were not the kind of men with whom Hastings was likely to get on,
and from the moment of their landing in India, where they complained
that they were not received with sufficient ceremony, they and Hastings
were furiously hostile. The meetings of the Governor-General and his
Council became so many pitched battles, in which Hastings, aided only
by Barwell, fought with tenacity and patience against men whose
determination appeared to be in every possible instance to undo what he
had done, and to oppose what he proposed to do. They treated him as if
he were little better than a clerk in the Company's service; they acted
as if their one purpose was to drive him out of public life.

[Sidenote: 1775--Charges against Hastings]

As soon as it was plain that the new men of the new Council were
hostile to Hastings, Hastings's enemies were eager enough to come
forward and help in the work. One of Hastings's oldest and bitterest
enemies was the Brahmin Nand Kumar. Nand Kumar had always been hostile
to Hastings. Now, when Hastings was in danger, was {261} threatened
with defeat and with disgrace, Nand Kumar came forward with a whole
string of accusations against him, accusations to which Francis,
Clavering, and Monson listened eagerly. Nand Kumar accused Hastings of
many acts of shameless bribery, declared that he himself had bribed him
in large sums, and produced a letter from a native princess in which
she avowed that she had bribed Hastings in large sums. The three
councillors appear to have accepted every word uttered by Nand Kumar as
gospel truth. Hastings, on his side, refused to be arraigned at his
own Council-board by a man whom he alleged to be of notoriously
infamous character, though he and Barwell were perfectly willing that
the whole matter should be referred to the Supreme Court. At last
Hastings withdrew from the Council, followed by Barwell. The others
immediately voted Clavering into the chair, summoned Nand Kumar before
them, listened to all that he had to say, and on that evidence, in the
absence of the accused man, the self-constituted tribunal found
Hastings guilty of taking bribes from the princess, and ordered him to
repay the sum of thirty-five thousand pounds to the public treasury.

For the moment it seemed as if Fran