A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF HASTINGS

263 in England, was scarcely available to him; but because his war expenses exceeded the scale of his peace estab- lishment, he was accused of lavish dissipation of the public income. Hastings was thus inevitably driven to the financial transactions at Benares and Lucknow that were now UMBRELLA TREE AND GRANITE BOULDER AT BELLARY IN THE MADRAS PRESIDENCY. so bitterly stigmatized as crimes by men who made no allowance for a perilous situation in a distant land, or for the weight of enormous national interests committed to the charge of the one man capable of sustaining them. When the storm had blown over in India, and he had piloted his vessel into calm water, he was sacrificed with little or no hesitation to party exigencies in Eng- land; the Ministry would have recalled him; they con- sented to his impeachment; they left him to be baited by the Opposition and to be ruined by the law's delay, by the incredible procrastination, and the obsolete for-