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178 necessary, and those exerted with a strong hand, to preserve the Company's interests from sinking under the accumulated weight that oppressed them.' He saw a political necessity for curbing the Rájá's 'overgrown power,' and 'making it contribute to the relief of their pressing exigencies.' At that moment he was at the end of his resources, even from loans. Every mail brought letters from Madras and Bombay pressing him for money and supplies. The pay of the troops was almost everywhere in arrear, and Hastings knew not whence to obtain so much as the eight or ten lakhs which he had pledged himself to forward to Sir Eyre Coote.

During his absence Wheler took charge of the Government in Calcutta. Mrs. Hastings accompanied her husband as far as Monghyr, where she remained to recruit her health, while Hastings travelled on towards Benares with a small escort and no parade. At Baxár he met the recusant Rájá, attended by a large retinue. Chait Singh laid his turban as a mark of submission upon Hastings' knees. But his prayer for a private interview was haughtily rejected. On the 15th August, the day after his arrival at Benares, Hastings sent the Rájá a formal statement of the charges against him, with a demand for a full and categorical reply. Chait Singh's answer appeared 'so offensive in style and unsatisfactory in substance,' was full in fact of such transparent, or, as Lord Thurlow afterwards called