next proprietor will derive his rights of possession from the same natural charter[1].
This was the plain English of our position in India. It may have suited the views of Clive and the Directors to obtain from a titular King of Delhi a formal grant of provinces already won by the valour of their troops. The same show of respect for legal sanctions marked the Company's later policy down to the catastrophe of 1857. But the fact remains that even at this moment our rule in India rests ultimately, as it did at first, upon the sword; and Hastings' plain speaking blew aside the legal cobwebs which had begun to overlie the fact. Dealing with the case before him as a statesman bound to do the best he could for his employers, he saw the advantage of strengthening his one sure ally by an arrangement which would replenish the Company's coffers while it reared a new bulwark against Maráthá aggression. He held that Rohilkhand was to Oudh, both geographically and politically, what Scotland had been to England before the days of Elizabeth. The Rohillá lords he regarded as a weak but troublesome race of adventurers, who had no special right to continue governing a country which they had proved so powerless to defend. It seemed to him, therefore, a thing of course that the task of guarding the line of the Upper Ganges should be entrusted to more capable hands.
One leading clue to Hastings' policy may be found in that want of money which continued to vex the
- ↑ Auber.
