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198 Hastings' temperament, who, conscious of no fault, found himself thus assailed in a way that touched him to the quick.

An angry correspondence ensued, and in 1825, after a stormy debate in the Court of Proprietors, the communications from the Board of Directors to the Bengal Government on this subject were approved by a large majority. The proceedings were painful, and displayed a latent spirit of ungenerous antipathy to one whose career was spotless and who was smarting under the mortification of having been himself deceived. But they were useful, for they entirely vindicated Lord Hastings' integrity, in a manner which — in view of the imputation suggested — was necessary, and which nothing else could have done so amply and conclusively.

The Directors, while making captious and irrelevant criticisms, adopted too often, in this unfortunate episode, a tone of suspicion and resentment towards an exalted official and conspicuously successful statesman, for which it is difficult to account. But on the other hand, it is indisputable that, with greater experience than the Governor-General of the corrupting influences which India too often exercised over some Europeans in the early days of British occupation there, they exercised a wise discretion in putting an end to the financial transactions, even before they found out the impropriety which had been practised; and by the zeal they displayed to purge their public administration of abuses, they discharged a duty of