Page:The Trial of Maharaja Nanda Kumar, a Narrative of a Judicial Murder.djvu/19

 Introduction. 3 oppress two helpless widows. To me it seems that his Lord- ship, as one fond of the classics, remembered and observed, while in the East, the Horatiau maxim " servetur ad iinum qualis ab incoepto processerit et sibi constet," but the career is too sordid to attract the historian and all Impey's subse- quent doings pale in interest and criminality before the mur- der of Nanda Kumar. I must, however, not omit to mention that his most recent biographer has unkindly cut the branch on which Impey's admirers had hung up some shreds of his reputation, after painfully fishing them out of the mire. There they had swayed for a time in an uncertain manner, but they have now fallen again into Malebolge. I refer to Sir James Stephen's proof (II, 232) under Impey's own hand, that he was paid for his services as Judge of the Company's Court, and that he drew at least Rs. 5,000 sikka a month in that capacity. Alas ! how much rhetoric has been dissipated by the four words, " This I have received."* Sir Elijah's son was by reckoning the sikka rupi as worth 2*. 2d., thus making the annual salary c 1.5 > i. The sikka rupi was worth 16 p. c. more than the current rupi, aud the latter was reckoned as worth 2-?. 3rf. (Verelst. Appendix. 117 note.) For purposes of conversion, however, the sikka appears to have been worth only 2*. &d., which would make it 11 p. c. only better than the current rupi (in Impey's day a mere figure of account and not an actual coin). This might be because the sikka fell in value 5 p. c. in two years, and was reckoned in the third as only 1 1 p. c. better than the current rupi. It was then called a sanwat. Bolts and Verelst both, in their glossaries, give 2.?. 6d. as the exchange value of a sikka rupi. Possibly Sir James has been misled by Wilson's giving 2.1. 2d. as the value of the sikka. and has not observed that this is the value for 1855, and that, in the body of the article " Rnpya." he states that 100 sikka rupis were reckoned as equivalent to 116 current rupis. In Irapey's Memoirs (224) an account of the deposits of the Civil Courts in 1732 is given, in which the sikka is estimated at 16 p. c. better than the current rupi. In the same work (259) there is a quotation which appears to be taken from'a minute of the Court of Directors defending the appointment of Impey. and in this paper the amount of salary is stated to be 3, OX). The value of the sikka, as verified above, shows that Impey's monthly salary was 5.000 half-crowns, or 025. If to this be added the 600 half-crowns paid to him for the rent of an office, we have a monthly total of 700 and an annual salary of 8,400. His pay as Chief Justice
 * Sir James considerably underestimates the amount of Impey's salary