INSURRECTION AT BENARES. 
153 
to the fatal consummation of his rebellion. Without 
stating any grievance,, he places himself in the posi- 
tion of an aggrieved person,, and, at the very time 
that he avows the most submissive acquiescence to 
the supreme authority under which he ruled, he in- 
sidiously impugns that authority by the most covert 
and sinister implications. The letter just alluded to, 
though worded with the affected humbleness of one 
who was pleading the cause of guilt, was in fact less 
a vindication of himself than a recrimination on the 
Governor ; no charge was made, but the grossest in- 
justice on the part of the latter was implied, and this 
evidently with a prospective view to the issue which 
the Rajah meditated, when he no doubt calculated that 
he should be able to interpret the sinister ambiguity 
of his written communications into a vindication of 
those measures which he was at that very moment 
projecting. The letter was anything but satisfactory 
to Mr. Hastings; it expressed no concern for past 
derelictions, nor any desire to atone for them ; neither 
did it hold out the slightest intention to pursue for the 
future a different course. In short, it fully satisfied 
the Governor-General that the intentions of the Rajah, 
though disguised under the garb of ostensible humility, 
were in fact positively hostile ; so that he justly con- 
ceived the most prompt and vigorous measures to be 
necessary, as well for his own personal security as for 
that of the government over which he presided. He 
accordingly adopted what he considered the most 
efficient plan for crushing the threatened mischief in 
limine , and thereby preserving the Company’s rights 
and interests in that rich and populous province. 
