_of permanency is a necessary adjunct_, and which
may be more properly compared to a splendid bubble, which the slightest
breath of opposition may dissipate with every trace of its existence."
By which construction the said Hastings did endeavor to persuade the
Court of Directors that they meant to confine their prohibition of
sinister intrigues to those powers only who could not be easily hurt by
them, and whose strength was such that their resentment of such
clandestine interference was to be dreaded; but that, where the powers
were weak and fragile, such intrigues might be allowed.

XIII. That the said Hastings, further to persuade the Court of Directors
to involve themselves in the affairs of the Mogul, and to reconcile this
measure with his former conduct and declared opinions, did write to them
to the following effect: That "at that former period to which the
ancient policy with regard to the Mogul applied, the king's authority
was sufficiently respected" (which he knew not to be true,--having
himself declared, in his minute of the 25th of October, 1774, "that he
remained at Delhi, the ancient capital of the empire, _a mere cipher_ in
the administration of it") to maintain itself against common
vicissitudes; that he would not have advised interference, if the king
himself retained the exercise of it, _however feeble_, in his own hands;
that, if it [the Mogul's authority] is suffered to receive its final
extinction, it is impossible to foresee _what power may arise out of its
ruins_, or what events may be linked in the same chain of revolution
with it: but your interests _may_ suffer by it, your reputation
_certainly will_, as his right to our assistance _has been constantly
acknowledged_, and by a train of consequences to which our government
has not intentionally given birth, but most especially by the movements
which _its influence, by too near an approach_, has excited, it has
unfortunately become the efficient instrument of a great portion of the
king's present distresses and dangers,--intimating (as well as the
studied obscurity of his expressions will permit anything to be
discerned) that his own late intrigues had been among the causes of the
distresses and dangers, which by new intrigues he did pretend to remove:
and he did conclude this part of his letter with some loose general
expressions of his caution not to affect the Company's interests or
revenues by any measures he might at that time take.

XIV.