new Councillors came out the judges of the Supreme
Court. The chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old
acquaintance of Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-General,
if he had searched through all the inns of court, could not have found
an equally serviceable tool. But the members of Council were by no means
in an obsequious mood. Hastings greatly disliked the new form of
government, and had no very high opinion of his coadjutors. They had
heard of this, and were disposed to be suspicious and punctilious. When
men are in such a frame of mind, any trifle is sufficient to give
occasion for dispute. The members of Council expected a salute of
twenty-one guns from the batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed
them only seventeen. They landed in ill-humor. The first civilities were
exchanged with cold reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel
which, after distracting British India, was renewed in England, and in
which all the most eminent statesmen and orators of the age took active
part on one or the other side.

Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had not always been friends. But
the arrival of the new members of Council from England naturally had the
effect of uniting the old servants of the Company. Clavering, Monson,
and Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government
out of the hands of Hastings; condemned, certainly not without justice,
his late dealings with the Nabob Vizier; recalled the English agent from
Oude, and sent thither a creature of their own; ordered the brigade
which had conquered the unhappy Rohillas to return to the Company's
territories; and instituted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the
war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General's remonstrances, they
proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet manner, their new
authority over the subordinate presidencies; threw all the affairs of
Bombay into confusion; and interfered, with an incredible union of
rashness and feebleness, in the intestine disputes of the Mahratta
government. At the same time, they fell on the internal administration
of Bengal, and attacked the whole fiscal and judicial system, a system
which was undoubtedly defective, but which it was very improbable that
gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to amend. The effect of
their reforms was that all protection to life and property was
withdrawn, and that gangs of robbers plundered and slaughtered with
impunity in the very s