inquiry into Indian affairs, and pronounced the most severe censures on both the Indian Presidencies and the Court of Directors. He accused the Presidencies, and that most justly, of plunging the nation into wars for the sake of conquest, of contemning and violating treaties, and plundering and oppressing the people of India. The Directors he charged with blaming the misconduct of their servants only when it was unattended with profit, and exercising a very constant forbearance as often as it was productive of gain or territory. Of the effects of his own military and financial changes Mr. Hastings had a good specimen in his journey through the province of Benares in 1784. This was only three years after he had committed the atrocities in this province, related in a former chapter, and driven the Rajah from his throne; and these are his own words, in a letter to the Council, dated Lucknow, April, 1784:—“From the confines of Buxar to Benares, I was followed and fatigued by the clamours of the discontented inhabitants. The distresses which were produced by the long-continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent: yet I have reason to fear that the cause principally existed in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration. From Buxar to the opposite boundary I have seen nothing but traces of complete devastation in every village.” And what had occasioned those devastations? The wars and the determined resolve introduced by Mr. Hastings himself, to have the very uttermost amount that could be wrung from the people.