Without hesitation or scruple Mr. Hastings sold a set of innocent officers,—­sold his fellow-servants of the Company, entitled by every duty to his protection,—­sold English subjects, recommended by every tie of national sympathy,—­sold the honor of the British government itself,—­without charge, without complaint, without allegation of crime in conduct, or of insufficiency in talents:  he sold them to the most known and abandoned character which the rank servitude of that clime produces.  For him he entirely broke and quashed the Council of Moorshedabad, which had been the settled government for twelve years, (a long period in the changeful history of India,)—­at a time, too, when it had acquired a great degree of consistency, an official experience, a knowledge and habit of business, and was making full amends for early errors.

For now Mr. Hastings, having buried Colonel Monson and General Clavering, and having shaken off Mr. Francis, who retired half dead from office, began at length to respire; he found elbow-room once more to display his genuine nature and disposition, and to make amends in a riot and debauch of peculation for the forced abstinence to which he was reduced during the usurped dominion of honor and integrity.

It was not enough that the English were thus sacrificed to the revenge of Debi Sing.  It was necessary to deliver over the natives to his avarice.  By the intervention of bribe-brokerage he united the two great rivals in iniquity, who before, from an emulation of crimes, were enemies to each other,—­Gunga Govind Sing and Debi Sing.  He negotiated the bribe and the farm of the latter through the former; and Debi Sing was invested in farm for two years with the three provinces of Dinagepore, Edrackpore, and Rungpore,—­territories making together a tract of land superior in dimensions to the northern counties of England, Yorkshire included.

To prevent anything which might prove an obstacle on the full swing of his genius, he removed all the restraints which had been framed to give an ostensible credit, to give some show of official order, to the plans of revenue administration framed from time to time in Bengal.  An officer, called a dewan, had been established in the provinces, expressly as a check on the person who should act as farmer-general.  This office he conferred along with that of farmer-general on Debi Sing, in order that Debi might become an effectual check upon Sing; and thus these provinces, without inspection, without control, without law, and without magistrates, were delivered over by Mr. Hastings, bound hand and foot, to the discretion of the man whom he had before recorded as the destroyer of Purneah, and capable of every the most atrocious wickedness that could be imputed to man.