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CHAMPION'S SLANDERS
89

Governor enjoins him to use all his influence on behalf of Ráhmat's family, to remonstrate with the Wazír against every act of cruelty or wanton violence to his new subjects, to impress him with the English abhorrence of 'every species of inhumanity and oppression,' and, in the last resort, to work upon his fears of losing the countenance of his English allies[1].

In spreading slanders against the Wazír, Champion seemed to forget the part which he himself had played in the campaign of 1764, when, by his own showing, he helped to destroy 'upwards of 1000 villages' in Shujá's territory. But for the June rains, he wrote complacently to Vansittart, 'we should have done very considerable more damage.' Champion in fact was enraged with Hastings, who had refused not only to grant him unlimited control over the Government of Oudh, but even to let his soldiers share in the plunder of Rohilkhand. His own evidence, as recorded a year later, recanted or toned down many of his former imputations. The evidence of other officers and a careful study of the contemporary records now fully published for the first time in Mr. Forrest's three valuable Folios, leave no ground for rational belief in the legend elaborated by Burke and Macaulay out of the reckless slanders which Champion fathered, and which Francis spread abroad[2].

Few men of equal mark have suffered so cruelly as Warren Hastings from the malice of personal ene-

  1. Gleig, Forrest.
  2. Forrest.