had stripped him even of his patronage. Beyond the management of the revenues and such other business as none of his colleagues ventured to take in hand, he was little better than a clerk in his masters' service. His countrymen in Calcutta saw with wondering sympathy the political effacement of their nominal head. Many of the natives, with their usual readiness to desert the weak, had begun to play into the hands of the Francis faction, who were bent, as Hastings said, on raking up 'out of the dirt of Calcutta' any bits of scandal which might serve to blacken his good name. Every one who sought to curry favour with the triumvirate, or to pay off a grudge against the Governor-General, found in the new Council greedy listeners to his tale. No story was too absurd, no informer too vile, no means too crooked, for the ends they wrought at under the guise of zeal for the public welfare.
An Indian Government, says Macaulay, 'has only to let it be understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined, and in twenty-four hours it will be furnished with grave charges, supported by depositions so full and circumstantial that any person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if some treasonable paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his house.'
There is no need to accuse Francis and his colleagues of suborning false witness against their chief. It is
