the Coalition Ministry of Lord North and Fox, in which room was made for Francis' tool and mouthpiece, Edmund Burke.
Such a conjunction boded ill both for Hastings and the Court of Directors. But King George himself was alive to the folly of recalling a Governor whose work in India was still to complete; and his intense dislike to the great Whig leader and all his party helped to ensure the failure of Fox's India Bill, which aimed at transferring the whole government of India from the Company to seven Directors appointed by the Ministry, and removable only upon an address from Parliament. In spite of Burke's eloquence and a majority in the House of Commons, the bill was thrown out by the Lords in December, and the year 1784 opened on a new Ministry, headed by William Pitt[1].
In November, 1783, the Court of Proprietors had carried, all but unanimously, a vote of thanks to Hastings for his many and invaluable services. To him and his friends the outgoing Ministry gave nearly all the credit for their defeat. Among the new Ministers he had several warm friends, and hardly one enemy, except Dundas. Even Dundas, who had steadily denounced his foreign policy, seemed for the moment dazzled by the latest proofs of Hastings' success in the fields of war and diplomacy. 'I once thought' — were his words to Major Scott — 'that he could not make peace with the Maráthás; but I have been mistaken. His relief and support of the Karnatic,
- ↑ Gleig, Auber, Sir G. C. Lewis's Administrations of Great Britain.
