148 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
forfeit their pledge, and weakened the strength of their 
army by inducing desertion among their troops. 
This year a further demand had been made upon 
Cheit Singh, based upon the tenure of his Zemeendary, 
to supply fifteen hundred contingent troops to meet 
the exigencies of the war. Upon his pleading, as 
usual, his inability to comply with this requisition, the 
demand was reduced to a thousand ; he offered two 
hundred and fifty, but supplied none. His subter- 
fuges and tergiversation were disgusting ; aware as he 
was of the extreme distress of the government to whose 
protection he was indebted both for his personal and 
political security, and to which he therefore owed not 
only his personal fealty, but every assistance which 
the resources of his Zemeendary enabled him to 
appropriate, his mean shifts and evasions to comply 
with its just requisitions were in the highest degree 
politically criminal. It very soon became evident to 
Mr. Hastings that he was deliberately planning the 
overthrow of the Company’s authority in India, and 
the establishment of his own upon its ruins. Mr. 
Hastings has been greatly censured for what his ene- 
mies have called driving the Rajah to extremities ; but 
surely it could not have been wise policy to forego a 
claim for assistance upon a rich and powerful prince, 
who was pledged to afford it when the govern- 
ment stood in need of that assistance, and when 
to forego it was only arming the party from whom 
it was due with additional means of doing mischief; 
since the greater resources he was left in possession 
of, the greater his chances of being able to accom- 
plish the main object of his ambition, which was, 
