By the same treaty the Guickwar was to come again, with no better security, under the dominion of the Mahratta state.  As to the Rana of Gohud, a long negotiation depended for giving him up.  At first this was refused by Mr. Hastings with great indignation; at another stage it was admitted as proper, because he had shown himself a most perfidious person.  But at length a method of reconciling these extremes was found out, by contriving one of the usual articles in his favor.  What I believe will appear beyond all belief, Mr. Anderson exchanged the final ratifications of that treaty by which the Rana was nominally secured in his possessions, in the camp of the Mahratta chief, Scindia, whilst he was (really, and not nominally) battering the castle of Gwalior, which we had given, agreeably to treaty, to this deluded ally.  Scindia had already reduced the town, and was at the very time, by various detachments, reducing, one after another, the fortresses of our protected ally, as well as in the act of chastising all the rajahs who had assisted Colonel Camac in his invasion.  I have seen in a letter from Calcutta, that the Rana of Gohud’s agent would have represented these hostilities (which went hand in hand with the protecting treaty) to Mr. Hastings, but he was not admitted to his presence.

In this manner the Company has acted with their allies in the Mahratta war.  But they did not rest here.  The Mahrattas were fearful lest the persons delivered to them by that treaty should attempt to escape into the British territories, and thus might elude the punishment intended for them, and, by reclaiming the treaty, might stir up new disturbances.  To prevent this, they desired an article to be inserted in the supplemental treaty, to which they had the ready consent of Mr. Hastings, and the rest of the Company’s representatives in Bengal.  It was this:  “That the English and Mahratta governments mutually agree not to afford refuge to any chiefs, merchants, or other persons, flying for protection to the territories of the other.”  This was readily assented to, and assented to without any exception whatever in favor of our surrendered allies.  On their part a reciprocity was stipulated which was not unnatural for a government like the Company’s to ask,—­a government conscious that many subjects had been, and would in future be, driven to fly from its jurisdiction.

To complete the system of pacific intention and public faith which predominate in those treaties, Mr. Hastings fairly resolved to put all peace, except on the terms of absolute conquest, wholly out of his own power.  For, by an article in this second treaty with Scindia, he binds the Company not to make any peace with Tippoo Sahib without the consent of the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, and binds Scindia to him by a reciprocal engagement.  The treaty between France and England obliges us mutually to withdraw our forces, if our allies in India do not accede to the peace within four months; Mr. Hastings’s treaty obliges us to continue the war as long as the Peishwa thinks fit.  We are now in that happy situation, that the breach of the treaty with France, or the violation of that with the Mahrattas, is inevitable; and we have only to take our choice.