ind of agreement
with Francis, enabled Hastings to allow Barwell to return to England
and still to leave the Governor-General in authority at the Board. But
Hastings found that reconciliation or agreement with Francis was
practically impossible. Rightly or wrongly, Francis renewed his old
policy of attacking every proposal and interfering with every project
that Hastings entertained. At last the long quarrel came to a violent
head. Hastings replied to one of Francis's minutes in some severe
words, in which he declared himself unable to rely upon Francis's word,
as he had found Francis to be a man devoid of truth and honor.

[Sidenote: 1780--Hastings and Francis fight a duel]

Such a charge made in those days was generally to be met with in only
one way. In that way Francis met it. Francis challenged Hastings to a
duel. Hastings accepted the challenge. The antagonists met, exchanged
shots, and Francis fell severely wounded before the pistol of Hastings.
Hastings sent friendly messages to Francis and offered to visit him,
but Francis rejected his overtures absolutely, and on his return to
health renewed his attacks upon Hastings until the close of the year,
when he sailed for England to carry on more successfully his plans
against his enemy.

Well as the Supreme Court had served Hastings in the case of Nuncomar
and in the quarrel with Clavering, the time came when Hastings found
himself placed in a position of temporary hostility to that Court and
to his old friend Impey. The bad machinery of the Act of 1773 left
room for almost every possibility of friction between the Supreme Court
on the one hand and the Council on the other, instead of framing, as it
should have framed, its {268} measure so as to allow the two powers to
work harmoniously together, each in its own sphere, for the welfare of
British India. The friction grew more intense as time went on.
Sometimes one party to the quarrel was in the right, sometimes the
other. Whichever was the case, the spectacle of the quarrel was in
itself sufficiently humiliating and sufficiently dangerous. Hastings
devised a scheme for the better regulation of the powers and privileges
of the two conflicting bodies, but his scheme was put on one side by
the British Government, and the Court and the Council remained as
irreconcilable as before. At last it reached such a pitch that the
Court issued a summons against the Government. The Government ignored
the summons;