11. Hastings, indeed, had laid himself open to attack in his schemes for raising money to pay his troops. The means he adopted for this purpose has left a stain on his name, and an uncomfortable feeling upon the minds of his countrymen that our empire in India has not always been built on honourable lines. On Hastings' return to England he was brought to trial for the wrongs he had committed in the course of his government. The fact was clearly brought out at his trial that, whatever his measures for obtaining money, he had taken them with the object, not of enriching self, but of promoting the interests of his country. After the trial had drawn its weary length over a period of seven years, the accused was acquitted. The nation had by this time forgotten his faults and remembered only his great services, whereby he had preserved Britain from loss in the East whilst her fortunes underwent eclipse in the West. (2) A GREAT LOSS TO THE EMPIRE. 1. The triumphs in the Seven Years' War had not been won without great cost. A long score had been run up by the nation, and to pay the interest on the National Debt heavy taxes had to be borne. If the money spent in the last war was not to be thrown away, it was necessary to spend still more in order to defend what British arms had won. The American colonies, also, were constantly exposed to Indian raids, and the savage use of the scalping-knife. It was, accordingly resolved by the British Government to keep a standing army in America of ten thousand men. And for the maintenance of such an army it was only just that the colonists should contribute. 2. A dispute now arose between the colonists and the Home Government, not about the amount which the former should pay, but upon the way in which the demand for payment was made. The British Parliament asserted its right to tax the colonists and insisted on levying a tax on tea. The colonists urged that they should be left free to tax themselves in their own colonial parliaments. "We will not allow," said they, "the British Parliament to thrust their hands into our pockets." The dispute ended in war. The thirteen American colonies banded together, and declared themselves free and independent states (1776). 3. In the war that followed the colonists gained the day. They owed their success, in no small measure, to George Washington, their Commander-in-chief. It was only as the weary fight went on that his countrymen learnt, little by little, the greatness of their leader--his silence under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience with which he waited for an opportunity, the quickness and vigour with which he struck home when it came.