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166 1776 Hastings had drawn up a scheme, heartily endorsed by his friend Impey, for removing the friction between those rival and co-equal powers. He proposed to invest the Supreme Court with 'an unlimited but not exclusive authority' over all the Company's Courts, reserving to the latter their separate jurisdiction in revenue matters and other cases which specially concerned the Government itself. But his scheme was shelved by the British Ministry; and the violence of his own colleagues thwarted his best efforts to adjust the new machinery sent out from home to the facts and conditions of our rule in India. 'It seems' — he wrote — 'to have been a maxim of the Board to force the Court into extremities for the purpose of finding fault with them.'

Violence begat violence. The authority of the Crown Judges was defied at every turn, on any pretext, however hollow. Impey and his colleagues could not always forbear from asserting their lawful powers on behalf of those who claimed their protection. Hastings himself had borne witness to many 'glaring acts of oppression' committed by the Company's servants and their underlings, in the process of collecting the Company's revenue. Impey in his letters home complained bitterly of 'the vultures of Bengal,' who plundered and insulted the people under cover of decrees hastily issued by the Provincial Courts, and loudly resented all interference with their high-handed doings. The Chief Justice, seconded by Chambers and sometimes by Lemaistre, succeeded for