Page:The Economic History of India under Early British Rule.djvu/36

6 the Karnatic, and appeared within a few miles of Madras. The Council was struck with panic, and made peace with the terrible invader in 1769.

The British Parliament passed a measure called the Regulating Act of 1773 to improve the state of affairs in India. This Act gave a parliamentary title to the Company's administration in India, and created the post of a Governor -General for all the Company's possessions in that country. Warren Hastings, who was then Governor of Bengal, became the first Governor-General in 1774.

There was no abler Englishman in India at that time than Warren Hastings, and none who knew the country and its people more intimately. He had come out to India, almost as a boy, in 1750; he had pro-tested against the abuse of power by his own country-men both in Bengal and in Madras ; and he was animated by a sincere desire, as he was now invested with the power, to improve the administration. But his financial difficulties, the opposition in his own Council led by Philip Francis, his frequent wars, and his own despotic instincts, led him to arbitrary acts which formed the subjects of his subsequent impeachment in the British Parliament.

Hastings stopped the stipulated tribute to the Emperor of Delhi; he took away the Emperor's possessions at Kora and Allahabad, and sold them to the Nawab of Oudh for 5 00,000; and he lent an English brigade to the same Nawab to crush the Rohillas for another sum of ;^40o,ooo.

The Bombay Government had got themselves involved in difficulties with the Mahrattas, then the greatest power in India. There were two claimants to the post of Peshwa or the head of the Mahratta confederacy ; the Bombay Government entered into a treaty to help one of them, and thus began the first Mahratta war. The British troops distinguished them-