denhall and India had hitherto been equally ruinous, and would ultimately prove fatal. What they could not do here was generally effected on the fpot. The Directors were ciphers the moment they differed from his Majesty's ministers, and their orders, without the approbation of Government, only proved in India words without meaning.The Company had no longer any authority over its own fervants. Seperate interests were formed and factions established, in all its fettlements and dependencies, and its former influence and refpectability with the powers of the empire were no more. There was not a principle urged in behalf of this recal which might not warrant the recal of all the governors and councils, with every other defcription of men with whom the civil or criminal administration was lodged, in our fettlements or colonies in every part of the world. The pretence of faction would always be at hand to justify every outrage. It was by the operations of this powerful and dangerous engine, a popular credulity, that tyranny became gigantic, monftrous, and deteftable! The Nabob could not wifh for a method better calculated to gratify the moft fanguine inclination of his nature. It had no other tendency than to establish that independence, which he sa anxiously defired. Whenever any of his defigns were controverted, he could be at no lofs how to procure a majority of the council. His treafures would operate on all future emergencies as it had done on this, and the Company would find it difficult to prevent the recal of any fervant, however worthy,

worthy, popular or able, when hardy enough to undertake their orders with upright intentions.

The question being at last put, at one o'clock in the morning, [May 22, 1777,] the motion of Governor Johnstone was rejected, by a majority of twenty-three. All the exertions of his friends, however, had they been crowned with fuccefs, were now too late. For, after being in confinement for a period of near nine months, harraffed by the difficulties of a moft critical fituation, agitated by the workings of various paffions excited by the extraordinary circumftances in which he was involved, and labouring under the preffure which he felt from the gloomy afpect which the Company's affairs every where exhibited, he died on the 18th of May, 1777, probably of a broken heart. His brother, Admiral Pigot, moved and carried next year, some time in April*, in the Houfe of Commons, for an addrefs, " praying his Majefty, "that he would be gracioufly pleased to give di"rections to his Attorney-General to profecute

George Stratton, Henry Brooke, Charles Floyer, and George Mackay, Efquires, for ordering their Governor and Commander in chief, George Lord Pigot, to be arrested and confined "under a military force, they being returned to «England, and now within the jurisdiction of his Majefty's courts of Weftminster-Hall.”

It came out in evidence, before the bar of the House, on this occafion, that George Dawson,

* Debret's Parliamentary Regifter of this date.

Efq;

Efq; who was a member of council during the heat of the content, was pofitively offered by the Nabob's fon no lefs a fum than forty thousand pounds, only for ftaying away one particular day, on which a queftion of confequence, relative to Tanjore, was to be agitated. It was certainly not unnatural for the friends, at least, of Lord Pigot, to prefume. from a fact thus fpecific, flagrant and authentic, that thofe applications could hardly be confined folely to Mr. Dawson.

In ftating an impartial eftimate of this important transaction, however, certain allowances ought no doubt to be made, for the joint influence of fituation and emergency; the fympathy which it is fo natural to feel for the weakeft, who in every ferious ftruggle must always be the fuffering party; the general operation of his Lordship's high character in his favour, the obvious prepoffeffions under which he was invested with the government of the prefidency, the prior obloquy, whether juft or not, which refted on the conduct of the Company's fervants, and that unavoidable crimination with which we instinctively connect the violence of the exertion with the intereft and magnitude of the object.

Whatever may be faid of his Lordfhip's abilities, great reverence and admiration are certainly due to the memory of his virtues. His former government in India was at leaft refpectable. It exhibited both fagacity and vigour of enterprize. The fituation in which he died gives the lie to all the furmiles of a Benfield and others, who fought, for

their profligate oppofition to his government, an excuse in his want of integrity. For he withstood a temptation of fix hundred thousand pounds, to forbear only for a fhort given time carrying the orders of his constituents into effect. And it is no contemptible proof how far he was fuperior to that general and fashionable corruption which then predominated, that his houfes and effects in India. were all fold to discharge the debts he had there contracted. Various opinions, it is probable, may long be entertained, concerning the mode which he ought to have preferred in managing a refractory majority of council; but his error can never justify the outrage to which his person and government were fubjected, by thofe who depofed and imprisoned him. And it will be remembered, when all the fophiftry by which the truth has been fo much obfcured and difguifed is forgotten, that his oppreffors were folemnly pronounced guilty by a jury of their countrymen.

СНАР

CHAPTER

VII.

The Regulating Act-Inflitution of the Supreme Council-Character of its Members-Pofture of Affairs on the Continent of India-Government of the Majority-They cenfure the Syflem of the former Admi niftration-Condemn the Rohilla war, which Mr. Haflings defends, and withholds his Correspondence with the Refident-The Troops recalled from that Expedition Treatment of the Great Mogul-Operations of the Army-The Governor-General charged with corrupt Practices before the Board-Death of Sujah ul Dowlah-The Story of Nuncomar—Effects of thefe Alterations in England.

THE

HE politics of the East-India Company are fo extenfive and complicated in their operations, and fo generally deftructive in their effects, that Indoftan perhaps is the only country in the world where they could have commanded the leaft profperity. Independent of enormous charges habitually incurred by an endless series of expenfive and important establishments in every department of state, the refources of this great and opulent empire are loaded with that vaft and permanent commercial fuftem, which is the ultimate and oftensible object of the whole arrangement. The fafety, the happiness, and the profperity of the subject, which ought to be the principal and invariable concern

of