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32 Mír Kásim retorted by issuing in March, 1763, an edict which abolished all transit duties in Bengal.

This obvious remedy for the glaring injustice of a trade system which encouraged every form of fraud, plunder, and violence, robbing the Nawáb's treasury and impoverishing his people for the benefit of a band of greedy foreigners, evoked yet louder clamours than before against a prince who thus strove to place his own countrymen on an equal footing with their privileged rivals. In vain did Hastings and Vansittart plead for the right of a whole nation to trade in their own country on the terms arrogated by a few strangers from Western seas. The majority in Council resolved to let Kásim Alí Khán know the full measure of his wrongdoing towards the virtual arbiters of his fate. While two of their number hastened up country to demand the prompt withdrawal of the obnoxious edict, orders were sent to all the factories and garrisons to prepare in effect for war. Ellis at Patná found himself free to take his own way towards results which were soon to cost him and his comrades very dear.

The Nawáb saw his danger, but refused compliance with the demands of the English envoys. Despairing of further help from Calcutta, he began to seek it from the ruler of Oudh, with whom the still homeless Emperor, Sháh Alam, had found shelter. In spite of fresh provocations from Ellis, he still wavered on the brink of an armed struggle with his former friends.

'In what way have I deceived or betrayed you?' — he wrote in June to Vansittart. 'I never devoured