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262 powerful rival, it might have been supposed that she should remain in comparatively peaceful occupation. But so soon as foreign competition ceased, internal troubles began in both hemispheres; the colonists struck for independence in the West; the native powers combined to dispute English predominance in the East; and France, evicted and disappointed, naturally encouraged and aided both movements. In America, the insurgents, after an arduous struggle, tore down the British flag; in India, the end of a long and exhausting contest found the English flag not only flying still, but planted more firmly than ever; nor had either the vindictive hostility of Mysore, or the indefatigable activity of the Marathas, succeeded in wresting an acre of British territory from the grasp of Warren Hastings.

Hastings had no aristocratic connections or parliamentary influence at a time when the great families and the House of Commons held immense power; he was surrounded by enemies in his own Council; and his immediate masters, the East India Company, gave him very fluctuating support. Fiercely opposed by his own colleagues, and very ill-obeyed by the subordinate Presidencies, he had to maintain the Company's commercial investments, and at the same time to find money for carrying on distant and impolitic wars in which he had been involved by blunders at Madras or Bombay. These funds he had been expected to provide out of current revenues, after buying and despatching the merchandise on which the Company's home dividends depended; for the resource of raising public loans, so freely used