cis and his party had carried the
day. Hastings had his back to the wall, he seemed to be well-nigh
friendless. The triumvirate declared that there was no form of
peculation from which Hastings had thought it reasonable to abstain,
and they formally charged him with having acquired by peculation a
fortune of no less than forty lakhs of rupees in two years and a half.
Suddenly, when the position of Hastings appeared to be at its worst, it
changed. Nand Kumar and two Englishmen named Fowke, who had been very
zealous against Hastings, were charged before the Supreme Court with
conspiracy, in having compelled a native revenue farmer to bear false
witness against Hastings. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was
Elijah Impey, Hastings's old and attached friend, a circumstance of
which much has been made. While Nand Kumar was bound over for trial on
the charge of conspiracy, another and more serious charge was brought
against him by a native attorney, who {262} accused him of forging and
publishing a bond. On this charge Nand Kumar was arrested, and after a
lengthy hearing of the case committed to the common jail.

There is nothing very surprising in this charge of forgery. Forgery
was not a very serious crime in the eyes of such men as either Nand
Kumar or his accuser. It was made plain that, whether he had forged
the bond or no, he had forged the letter from the princess upon which
the charge against Hastings was based, for the princess herself
declared it to be a forgery. It had aroused some suspicion even before
the disclaimer, on account of the signature, which did not resemble her
signature in undoubted and authentic communications. On the question
of the forged bond Nand Kumar was duly and apparently fairly tried. It
was not very much of a charge. The business was very old. The native
attorney had been seeking for some time to bring Nand Kumar to trial,
and had only substituted a criminal for a civil suit when the
establishment of the Supreme Court enabled him to do so.

[Sidenote: 1775--The execution of Nand Kumar]

Nand Kumar's trial ended in conviction, and conviction for forgery
brought with it by the English law sentence of death. Whatever may be
thought of the crime of forgery in England, it certainly was not looked
upon in India by Indians as a criminal offence of a kind that called
for the severest penalty of the law. But Nand Kumar had been tried by
English law. His judges, in order to sho