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Rh the Court of Directors six months before Hastings took office as Governor of Bengal.

Hastings stops the Tribute to Delhi, 1773.—Hastings' next financial stroke was to stop payment of the tribute of £300,000 to the Delhi emperor, which Clive had agreed to, in return for the grant of Bengal to the Company. But the emperor had now been seized by the Maráthás. Hastings held that His Majesty was no longer independent, and that to pay money to the emperor would practically be paying it to the Maráthás, who were our most formidable enemies, and whom he clearly saw that we should have to crush, unless we were willing to be crushed by them. Hastings therefore withheld the tribute of £300,000 from the puppet emperor, or rather from his Maráthá custodians.

Hastings sells Allahábád and Kora, 1773-1774.—On the partition of the Gangetic valley in 1765, Clive had also allotted the Provinces of Allahábád and Kora to the emperor Sháh Alam. The emperor, now in the hands of the Maráthás, made them over to his new masters. Warren Hastings held that by so doing His Majesty had forfeited his title to these Provinces. Hastings accordingly resold them to the Wazír of Oudh. By this measure he freed the Company from a military charge of nearly half a million sterling, and obtained a price of over half a million for the Company. The terms of sale included the loan of British troops to subdue the Rohillá Afgháns, who had seized and for some time kept hold of a tract on the north-western frontier of Oudh. The Rohillas were Muhammadans and foreigners; they had cruelly lorded it over the Hindu peasantry; and they were now intriguing with the Maráthás, our most dangerous foes. The Wazír of Oudh, supported by the British troops lent to him by Hastings, completely defeated the Rohillas. He compelled most of their fighting men to seek new homes on the other side of the Ganges river, in a neighbouring and equally fertile district, but one in which they could no longer open the northern frontier of Oudh to the Maráthás. By the foregoing series of measures, Hastings ceased to furnish the Maráthá custodians of the Delhi emperor with the Bengal tribute; he also strengthened our ally the Wazír of Oudh, and