it is true, never enjoined or applauded any crime.  Far from it.  Whoever examines their letters written at that time, will find there many just and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an admirable code of political ethics.  But every exhortation is modified or nullified by a demand for money.  “Govern leniently, and send more money; practise strict justice and moderation towards neighbouring powers, and send more money”—­this is, in truth, the sum of almost all the instructions that Hastings ever received from home.  Now these instructions, being interpreted, mean simply, “Be the father and the oppressor of the people; be just and unjust, moderate and rapacious.”  The Directors dealt with India, as the Church, in the good old times, dealt with a heretic.  They delivered the victim over to the executioners, with an earnest request that all possible tenderness might be shown.  We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these despatches of hypocrisy.  It is probable that, writing fifteen thousand miles from the place where their orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross inconsistency of which they were guilty.  But the inconsistency was at once manifest to their vicegerent at Calcutta, who, with an empty treasury, with an unpaid army, with his own salary often in arrear, with deficient crops, with government tenants daily running away, was called upon to remit home another half million without fail.  Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary requisitions of his employers.  Being forced to disobey them in something, he had to consider what kind of disobedience they would most readily pardon; and he correctly judged that the safest course would be to neglect the sermons and to find the rupees.

A mind so fertile as his, and so little restrained by conscientious scruples, speedily discovered several modes of relieving the financial embarrassments of the Government.  The allowance of the Nabob of Bengal was reduced at a stroke from three hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year to half that sum.  The Company had bound itself to pay near three hundred thousand pounds a year to the Great Mogul, as a mark of homage for the provinces which he had intrusted to their care; and they had ceded to him the districts of Corah and Allahabad.  On the plea that the Mogul was not really independent, but merely a tool in the hands of others, Hastings determined to retract these concessions.  He accordingly declared that the English would pay no more tribute, and sent troops to occupy Allahabad and Corah.  The situation of these places was such, that there would be little advantage and great expense in retaining them.  Hastings, who wanted money and not territory, determined to sell them.  A purchaser was not wanting.  The rich province of Oude had, in the general dissolution of the Mogul Empire, fallen to the share of the great Mussulman house by which it is still governed.