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 CHAPTER X

The Council and the Supreme Court

1779-1781

The treaties of Salbái and Mangalore mark the turning of a new page in the history of British India. Thenceforth the English become the dominant factor in the politics of the whole Indian continent. Hastings' foreign policy, pursued through all checks and hindrances, had cleared the road for his successors, and traced out the lines along which Lord Wellesley and Lord Hastings were afterwards to work with larger means and far wider official powers. Thanks mainly to Warren Hastings' resourceful energy and all-daring strength of will, the long storm of war which had beaten from every quarter against the weak unfinished fabric of British rule in India, revealed only its latent strength for resistance under the worst shocks of adverse fortune. The Maráthá leaders knew that any further attempt to found a great Hindu empire on the ruins of old Muhammadan dynasties, would only involve them in a long and