The women being thus disposed of, that is, completely despoiled, and pathetically lamented, Mr. Hastings at length recollected the great object of his enterprise, which, during his zeal lest the officers and soldiers should lose any part of their reward, he seems to have forgot,—­that is to say, “to draw from the Rajah’s guilt the means of relief to the Company’s distresses.”  This was to be the stronghold of his defence.  This compassion to the Company, he knew by experience, would sanctify a great deal of rigor towards the natives.  But the military had distresses of their own, which they considered first.  Neither Mr. Hastings’s authority, nor his supplications, could prevail on them to assign a shilling to the claim he made on the part of the Company.  They divided the booty amongst themselves.  Driven from his claim, he was reduced to petition for the spoil as a loan.  But the soldiers were too wise to venture as a loan what the borrower claimed as a right.  In defiance of all authority, they shared among themselves about two hundred thousand pounds sterling, besides what had been taken from the women.

In all this there is nothing wonderful.  We may rest assured, that, when the maxims of any government establish among its resources extraordinary means, and those exerted with a strong hand, that strong hand will provide those extraordinary means for itself.  Whether the soldiers had reason or not, (perhaps much might be said for them,) certain it is, the military discipline of India was ruined from that moment; and the same rage for plunder, the same contempt of subordination, which blasted all the hopes of extraordinary means from your strong hand at Benares, have very lately lost you an army in Mysore.  This is visible enough from the accounts in the last gazette.

There is no doubt but that the country and city of Benares, now brought into the same order, will very soon exhibit, if it does not already display, the same appearance with those countries and cities which are under better subjection.  A great master, Mr. Hastings, has himself been at the pains of drawing a picture of one of these countries:  I mean the province and city of Furruckabad.  There is no reason to question his knowledge of the facts; and his authority (on this point at least) is above all exception, as well for the state of the country as for the cause.  In his minute of consultation, Mr. Hastings describes forcibly the consequences which arise from the degradation into which we have sunk the native government.  “The total want (says he) of all order, regularity, or authority, in his (the Nabob of Furruckabad’s) government, and to which, among other obvious causes, it may no doubt be owing that the country of Furruckabad is become almost an entire waste, without cultivation or inhabitants,—­that the capital, which but a very short time ago was distinguished as one of the most populous and opulent commercial cities in Hindostan, at present exhibits nothing but scenes of the most wretched poverty, desolation, and misery,—­and that the Nabob himself, though in the possession of a tract of country which, with only common care, is notoriously capable of yielding an annual revenue of between thirty and forty lacs, (three or four hundred thousand pounds,) with no military establishment to maintain, scarcely commands the means of a bare subsistence.”