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36
WARREN HASTINGS

hurrying forward in chase of a broken and disheartened foe. But before Adams could reach the Karamnása Mír Kásim and the butcher Sumru had found shelter beyond that stream with Shujá-ud-daulá, the Nawáb Wazír of Oudh. Worn out with toil and exposure, Adams threw up his command, and reached Calcutta only to die.

Meanwhile Mír Jafar, now old, leprous, and weak-witted, found himself reinstated as Nawáb in his former capital, on conditions which left him a mere tool in his patrons' hands. He promised to reimpose all the old transit duties against his own subjects, to restore to the Company's servants all their former immunities, and to pay large sums into the Company's treasury as compensation for public and private losses. In these arrangements neither Vansittart nor Hastings seems to have borne an active part. Both of them foresaw the brewing of new commotions with the reappearance of the old incentives. Vansittart, writing to the Court of Directors, declared his conviction that 'our connexions in this country are at present on a point where they cannot stand; they are either too great or too little[1].' Nor did Hastings stoop to soil his fingers with any of the money which his colleagues pocketed on account of losses incurred in the prosecution of an illegal trade.

In spite of Adams' victories, the fighting was not yet over. Mír Kásim found a willing champion in the Nawáb Wazír of Oudh. Early in 1764 Shujá-ud-daulá,

  1. Auber's British Power in India, Vol. i.