among its members; required them to do all in their power to
preserve peace in India; committed to Hastings the charge of carrying on
all correspondence with the native powers, the council at the same time
being privileged to peruse all letters; recommended a careful revision
of all the company's affairs, alliances, connexions, &c, with the Indian
states in the neighbourhood of the three presidencies; and exhorted them
to be careful and cautious in the extreme in committing themselves
by any alliances or compacts with either the Indians or the European
settlers. This council was composed of such discordant materials that
the injunction to preserve unanimity and concord had no weight on its
members. From the first, indeed, Francis, Clavering, and Monson seem
to have been resolved to gain all power in India for themselves. Their
design was soon made manifest. In his political negociations, Hastings
had assumed a high and almost single authority; and in conformity with
this plan, at the close of the Rohilla war, he had appointed his friend
Middleton to be resident and agent at the court of the Nabob of Oude,
giving him instructions to confer with him alone on all matters of
importance. This gave offence to Francis, Clavering, and Monson, who
demanded that the correspondence of Middleton, from first to last,
should be laid before the council. Hastings objected to this, on the
ground that much of it related to merely private matters and opinions;
upon which they hinted that his war with the Rohillas arose from sordid
motives, and that his whole connexion with the Nabob of Oude had been
a series of bad actions, fraud, and selfishness. This language was as
unjustifiable as the Rohilla war, for Hastings had not profited in the
least by his connexion with the nabob, and was at the time, in fact, a
poorer man than when he quitted his inferior employment at Madras: he
had sought money, it is true, but it was for the company, and not for
himself. This charge was followed by action, equally unjust. As Francis,
Clavering, and Monson constituted the majority in the council, they
voted the immediate recall of Middleton; regardless of the remonstrance
of Hastings, who declared that such a measure would be attended with
pernicious consequences, inasmuch as the natives would be taught by such
an act that the English authorities were disunited in sentiment, and
that the government of Calcutta was falling into a state of revolution.
The power