continually outvoted by colleagues who showed small regard for any interests except their own.
In the first years of his rule Mír Kásim had done his best to deserve the goodwill of his English patrons. He had dismissed Mír Jafar's favourites, and made them disgorge the bulk of their ill-gotten wealth. Large arrears of pay had been disbursed not only to his mutinous soldiery, but to the Company's troops as well. With the money which he sent down to Calcutta our countrymen at Madras were enabled to complete the overthrow of the French. Noteworthy reforms were ordered in every branch of the Nawáb's government. Seldom indeed had justice been administered so firmly, or the revenues applied to ends so praiseworthy, as in the first two years of Kásim's rule in Bengal.
But this fair prospect was soon overclouded. The Hindu Governor of Patná had already been abandoned by his English friends to the power of a sovereign who charged him with retaining in his own coffers large sums of money due to the State. Hastings' place at the head of the Patná Factory had been filled by Ellis, the very worst man whom the Calcutta Council could have selected for such a post. Headstrong, violent, unscrupulous, he seemed to delight in sowing dissension between the Nawáb's officers and the Company's servants. Mír Kásim learned ere long to distrust his English allies, whose insolence equalled their rapacity. The privileges and immunities claimed by English traders and their
