carefully, and impartially, than any other writer, past or present, into all the documents bearing on the trial of Nanda-Kumár, and has recorded judgment in favour alike of Impey and the Governor-General. The Rájá, he thinks, was fairly tried and justly condemned from the judges' point of view, while Impey in particular treated him on the whole with marked leniency. As for Hastings' share in the business. Sir J. Stephen finds that it amounted to none at all. There is no evidence whatever to show that he had any hand in the prosecution, or that he did anything to ensure the prisoner's fate[1].
We have seen how Clavering and his colleagues became in fact consenting parties to what Elliot, twelve years afterwards under Francis prompting, called the judicial murder of Nanda-Kumár. When Francis was twitted in the House of Commons with his own share in the alleged crime, he replied with characteristic impudence that he had acted mainly through his fears for Clavering's safety, seeing 'that the judges had gone all lengths, that they had dipped their hands in blood for a political purpose, and that they might again proceed on the same principle,' backed as they were by the whole force of popular feeling in Calcutta[2]. It is strange to think that Francis' able biographer should have believed in the good faith of a defence so glaringly absurd[3].
