He knew that his methods would be censured by his masters and made unscrupulous use of by his enemies, and he said so in so many words, and, careless of criticism and undeterred by the most virulent and treasonable opposition, he succeeded so far that he was able to say with truth that he had rescued one province from infamy, and two from total ruin. It is simply amazing to the dispassionate reader of the present day to watch the needless struggles which were imposed upon this man, already confronted by a titanic task, by the very men who ought to have been the first, for their own sakes and their country’s, to have made his way as smooth and his burdens as light as possible. The man who may be fairly described as the evil genius of Warren Hastings’ career was that Sir Philip Francis who is generally looked upon as the author of the far-famed Letters of Junius. He and Sir John Clavering, both personal enemies of the Governor-General--as he was now--were sent out as members of the Council, and to the days of their death they never ceased to thwart and embarrass him by every means in their power. One reason for their enmity was undoubtedly the sordid motive of getting him turned out of the Governor-Generalship in order that one of them might succeed to his office, and that both might share in the fruits of the extortions which, in him, they condemned. This was not only unjust to Hastings, but it was also a crime against their country, committed at a moment when she had all too much need of such men as he was. To my mind, at least, there is a very strong resemblance between the savage invective of Junius and the consistent and unscrupulous malevolence with which Sir Philip Francis tried to wreck the life-work of a man at whose table he was not worthy to sit. Those were days in which political rivalry and personal enmity entailed personal consequences if they were pushed too far. Hastings seemed to have come at length to the conclusion that India was not large enough to hold himself and Francis. He had submitted to insult after insult, and he would have been something more than human if his enemy’s unceasing efforts to make his life a misery and his work a failure had not left some bitterness in his soul, and so one fine day he sat down and embodied his opinion of him in a Minute to the Council, and in this he purposely put words which meant inevitable bloodshed: