of satisfaction in this huge and overflowing cup of bitterness,—of misery to trusting, friendly, and innocent people; and of consequent infamy on the British name.
We must, out of the multitudes of such cases, confine ourselves to one more. The atrocities just recited had put Benares into the entire power of the English, but it had only tended to increase the pecuniary difficulties. The soldiery had got the plunder—the expenses of the war were added to the expenses of other wars;—some other kingdom must be plundered, for booty must be had: so Mr. Hastings continued his journey, and paid a visit to the Nabob of Oude. It is not necessary to trace the complete progress of this Nabob's friendship with the English. It was exactly like that of the other princes just spoken of. A treaty was made with him; and then, from time to time, the usual exactions of money and the maintenance of troops for his own subjection were heaped upon him. As with the Nabob of Arcot, so with him, they were ready to sanction and assist him in his most criminal views on his neighbours, to which his need of money drove him. He proposed to Mr. Hastings, in 1773, to assist him in exterminating the Rohillas, a people bordering on his kingdom; "a people," says Mills, "whose territory was, by far, the best governed part of India: the people protected, their industry encouraged, and the country flourishing beyond all parallel." It was by a careful neutrality, and by these acts, that the Rohillas sought to maintain their independence; and it was of such a people that Hastings, sitting at table with his tool, the Nabob of Oude, coolly heard him offer him a bribe of forty lacs of rupees (400,000l.) and the payment of the troops furnished, to as-
