He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, when he became a Member of Council, and was consequently forced to reside at Calcutta.  This was during the interval between Clive’s first and second administration, an interval which has left on the fame of the East India Company a stain not wholly effaced by many years of just and humane government.  Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, was at the head of a new and anomalous empire.  On one side was a band of English functionaries, daring, intelligent, eager to be rich.  On the other side was a great native population, helpless, timid, accustomed to crouch under oppression.  To keep the stronger race from preying on the weaker, was an undertaking which tasked to the utmost the talents and energy of Clive.  Vansittart, with fair intentions, was a feeble and inefficient ruler.  The master caste, as was natural, broke loose from all restraint; and then was seen what we believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles, the strength of civilisation without its mercy.  To all other despotism there is a check, imperfect indeed, and liable to gross abuse, but still sufficient to preserve society from the last extreme of misery.  A time comes when the evils of submission are obviously greater than those of resistance, when fear itself begets a sort of courage, when a convulsive burst of popular rage and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on the patience of mankind.  But against misgovernment such as then afflicted Bengal it was impossible to struggle.  The superior intelligence and energy of the dominant class made their power irresistible.  A war of Bengalees against Englishmen was like a war of sheep against wolves, of men against daemons.  The only protection which the conquered could find was in the moderation, the clemency, the enlarged policy of the conquerors.  That protection, at a later period, they found.  But at first English power came among them unaccompanied by English morality.  There was an interval between the time at which they became our subjects, and the time at which we began to reflect that we were bound to discharge towards them the duties of rulers.  During that interval the business of a servant of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible, that he might return home before his constitution had suffered from the heat, to marry a peer’s daughter, to buy rotten boroughs in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James’s Square.  Of the conduct of Hastings at this time little is known; but the little that is known, and the circumstance that little is known, must be considered as honourable to him.  He could not protect the natives:  all that he could do was to abstain from plundering and oppressing them; and this he appears to have done.  It is certain that at this time he continued poor; and it is equally certain that by cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become rich.  It is certain that he was never