lonization, allusion was made to Indian affairs
until the close of the administration of Lord Clive. Warren Hastings
continued the encroachments and conquests which Clive had so
successfully begun. He went to India in 1750, at the age of seventeen,
as a clerk in the service of the company. It was then merely a
commercial corporation. His talents and sagacity insured his
prosperity. He gradually was promoted, and, in 1772, was appointed
head of the government in Bengal. But the governor was not then, as he
now is, nearly absolute, and he had only one vote in the council which
represented the company at Calcutta. He was therefore frequently
overruled, and his power was crippled. But he contrived to make
important changes, and abolished the office of the minister to whom
was delegated the collection of the revenue and the general regulation
of internal affairs--an office which had been always held by a native.
Hastings transferred the internal administration to the servants of
the company, and in various other ways improved the finances of the
company, the members of which were indifferent, comparatively, to the
condition of the people of India, provided that they themselves were
enriched. To enrich the company and extend its possessions, even at
the expense of justice and humanity, became the object of the
governor-general. He succeeded; but success brought upon him the
imprecations of the natives and the indignant rebukes of his own
countrymen. In less than two years after he had assumed the
government, he added four hundred thousand pounds to the annual income
of the company, besides nearly a million in ready money. But the
administration of Hastings cannot be detailed. We can only notice that
part of it which led to his trial in England.

[Sidenote: War with Hyder Ali.]

The great event which marked his government was the war with Hyder
Ali, the Mohammedan sovereign of Mysore. The province of Bengal and
the Carnatic had been, for some time, under the protection of the
English. Adjoining the Carnatic, in the centre of the peninsula, were
the dominions of Hyder Ali. Had Hastings been governor of Madras, he
would have conciliated him, or vigorously encountered him as an enemy.
But the authorities at Madras had done neither. They provoked him to
hostilities, and, with an army of ninety thousand men, he invaded the
Carnatic. British India was on the verge of ruin. Hyder Ali was every
where triumphant, and only a few forti