the Company's service at Calcutta.
Mr. Scott, in consequence of this conversation, was authorized to make
overtures to Mr. Francis through Mr. Ducarrel: to declare Mr. Hastings
tired of controversy; expressing his wish to have the Mahratta war
entirely left to him; that there were certain points _he could not give
up_; that he could _not_ (for reasons he then assigned) _submit_ to the
restoration of Mr. Fowke, Mahomed Reza Khan, and Mr. Bristow; that _he
had not the smallest personal objection to them_, and would willingly
provide for them in any other line. Mr. Francis in this treaty insisted
on those very points which Mr. Hastings declared he could never give up,
and that his conditions were the Company's orders,--that is, the
restoration of the persons whom they had directed to be restored. The
event of this negotiation was, that Mr. Hastings at length submitted to
Mr. Francis, and that Mr. Fowke and Mahomed Reza Khan were reinstated in
their situations.

Your Committee observe on this part of the transaction of Mr. Hastings,
that as long as the question stood upon his obedience to his lawful
superiors, so long he considered the restoration of these persons as a
gross indignity, the submitting to which would destroy all his credit
and influence in the country; but when it was to accommodate his own
occasions in a treaty with a fellow-servant, all these difficulties
instantly vanish, and he finds it perfectly consistent with his dignity,
credit, and influence, to do for Mr. Francis what he had refused to the
strict and reiterated injunctions of the Court of Directors.
Tranquillity was, however, for a time restored by this measure, though
it did not continue long. In about three months an occasion occurred in
which Mr. Francis gave some opposition to a measure proposed by Mr.
Hastings, which brought on a duel, upon the mischievous effects of which
your Committee have already made their observations.

The departure of Mr. Francis soon after for Europe opened a new scene,
and gave rise to a third revolution. Lest the arrangement with the
servants of the Company should have the least appearance of being
mistaken for obedience to their superiors, Mr. Francis was little more
than a month gone, when Mr. Fowke was again recalled from Benares, _and
Mr. Bristow soon after from Oude_. In these measures Mr. Hastings has
combined the principles of disobedience which he had used in all the
cases hitherto stated. In his Minute of