uburbs of Calcutta. Hastings continued to live in
the Government House, and to draw the salary of Governor-General. He
continued even to take the lead at the council board in the transaction
of ordinary business; for his opponents could not but feel that he knew
much of which they were ignorant, and that he decided, both surely and
speedily, many questions which to them would have been hopelessly
puzzling. But the higher powers of government and the most valuable
patronage had been taken from him.

The natives soon found this out. They considered him as a fallen man;
and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may have seen, in
India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death, no bad type of
what happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has
been great and dreaded. In an instant, all the sycophants who had lately
been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to
poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of his victorious enemies
by accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be understood
that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in twenty-four hours
it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so
full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic
mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of
the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal
compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a
hiding-place in his house. Hastings was now regarded as helpless. The
power to make or mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had passed, as
it seemed, into the hands of the new Councillors. Immediately charges
against the Governor-General began to pour in. They were eagerly
welcomed by the majority, who, to do them justice, were men of too much
honor knowingly to countenance false accusations, but who were not
sufficiently acquainted with the East to be aware that, in that part of
the world, a very little encouragement from power will call forth, in a
week, more Oateses, and Bedloes, and Dangerfields, than Westminster Hall
sees in a century.

It would have been strange indeed if, at such a juncture, Nuncomar had
remained quiet. That bad man was stimulated at once by malignity, by
avarice, and by ambition. Now was the time to be avenged on his old
enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years, to establish himself in the
favor of the majority of the Council, to become the gre