162 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
security a note in the Company’s name for its repay- 
ment at a stipulated period. 
About a week after the insurrection, Cheit Singh 
wrote a letter to Mr. Hastings, in which the deep 
cunning of his character was again strongly depicted, 
expressing some slight contrition for what had hap- 
pened, and professing, though in terms extremely 
measured and equivocal, fidelity to the British 
government. He also sent an agent to make over- 
tures for an accommodation, instructing his messenger 
to represent his sorrow at what had occurred, and to 
exonerate him from any concurrence in the fatal 
catastrophe at the Shewallah Gaut, but charging the 
whole to the insolence of one of the resident’s servants, 
and to the excited state of his own troops, who were 
apprehensive for their Zemeendar’s safety. He finally, 
through the same agent, made professions of the most 
absolute obedience and submission to the government 
which Mr. Hastings represented ; but these were 
naturally received by the latter with suspicion. This 
embassy was evidently an after-thought of the wily 
Zemeendar’s ; it was clearly an artifice to throw the 
Governor-General off his guard, and gain time to 
establish his own security, and thus enable him to 
take the most effectual measures for shaking off the 
Company’s yoke altogether, since his professions very 
ill accorded with the violence and tergiversation al- 
ready so openly displayed by him. 
Though Mr. Hastings had removed to Chunar, 
which was tolerably well fortified, still, from its proxi- 
mity to Benares and from many other circumstances, 
it was by no means a position of security. Its dis- 
