treasons, and his forgeries, were well known to the India House Board. But though his character was as bad as possible, his influence with his own countrymen and his power to help or harm the Company's interests were supposed to be very great. His known abilities might be turned to account in the prosecution of his hated rival, Raza Khán. The Directors had bidden Hastings make what use he could of the traitor's services in this connexion; and Hastings complied with the spirit of their injunctions by bestowing office on the son. Some of his colleagues at first opposed this measure as tantamount to appointing Nanda-Kumár himself. But the stress laid by their President on the Rájá's special usefulness for the work in hand turned their reluctance into assent[1].
In his measures for repressing corrupt and oppressive practices among the Company's servants, Hastings again obeyed the Court's injunctions in the spirit rather than the letter. The powers entrusted to him for this end could only serve, he wrote, 'to destroy every other that I am possessed of, by arming my hand against every man, and every man's against me.' Most of those who had conspired to set up monopolies of salt, tobacco, betel-nut, rice and other grains were found to be friends or relations to East India Directors. Hastings suppressed the traffic with
- ↑ See Forrest's Selections from the Letters, Despatches, and other State-papers of the Government of India, 3 vols, folio. Calcutta, 1890. A work of the greatest value for the whole term of Hastings' rule.
