150 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
were in a state of much more comfortable prosperity 
than that class of people generally are. His tenants 
were encouraged to treat British subjects with inci- 
vility, and he secretly kept up a correspondence with 
the Mahrattas and other powers hostile to the British 
supremacy. Above all, he had made every necessary 
provision for an open revolt, and was evidently only 
waiting for a favourable opportunity to declare it. 
All this was not the mere assumption of an equivocal 
suspicion on the part of the Governor-General, but 
matter of ascertained fact, and therefore demanded an 
immediate employment of the most energetic measures 
to counteract. 
In consequence of the frequent acts of duplicity — 
nay, of treachery — of this crafty Hindoo, Mr. Hastings 
at length resolved to punish his numerous delinquen- 
cies by exacting from him the heaviest penalty that 
he was able to bear without reducing him to absolute 
distress, as it would tend greatly to relieve the exi- 
gencies of the government at the same time that it 
abridged those powers which the Rajah’s wealth put at 
his disposal for endangering the security of the Com- 
pany’s dominion in India. This was one of the acts 
of oppression, as they were termed, which raised Mr. 
Hastings such a host of enemies at home, through the 
hostile representations of Mr. Francis.* The latter in 
India had been his constant and unyielding opponent, 
and drew down upon him the ferocious declamation of 
Burke, who for three whole days laboured, with all 
the vindictive energy of a savage to compass the ruin 
* Afterwards Sir Philip Francis, and suspected by some to be 
the author of those letters which became so celebrated under the 
signature' of Junius. 
