The attempt of Mr. Beveridge to prove Hastings' complicity with the alleged murderers of Nanda-Kumár has failed to weaken the conclusions drawn by Sir J. Stephen. Hastings' friend, Alexander Elliot, seems to have been the fittest man available as interpreter during the trial. The Governor-General's alleged interviews with Mohan Prasád rest only on the tainted evidence of Nanda-Kumár himself. It is only an assumption that Hastings instigated his secretary, Belli, to frustrate Farrer's efforts at obtaining a reprieve for his client. And there is still less ground for asserting that Hastings has himself expressly referred to the support which Impey gave him by hanging Nanda-Kumár. In a letter written some years afterwards, the Governor-General spoke of Impey as a man 'to whose support he was at one time indebted for the safety of his fortune, honour, and reputation.' These words evidently refer, as Sir J. Stephen holds, to the issue of Clavering's struggle with Hastings for the Governor-Generalship; but even if they referred to the previous trial of Nanda-Kumár, it would be wholly unfair to take them as a virtual confession of Hastings' success in using Impey as his tool. They tend rather to prove his innocence of any plot for the Rájá's destruction; for he would never have cared to speak so publicly of a transaction in which both men had borne so criminal a part[1]. Mr. Beveridge, in short, has utterly failed to prove, either that Hastings was
- ↑ See an article of my own which appeared in the Athenæum for June 4, 1887.
