Page:Warren Hastings (Trotter).djvu/94

88 But the tale of horror which Macaulay, following Burke, has stamped deep into the popular mind, differs widely from recorded facts. Some villages may have been plundered and burned, some blood shed in pure wantonness, some tracts of country laid waste. Shujá-ud-daulá was neither worse nor better than the average of Eastern rulers; nor was there much to choose between his soldiers and Háfiz Ráhmat's. It is folly to suppose that the new master of Rohilkhand would turn a rich province into a desert, or exterminate the very people to whose industry he would look for increased revenues. At one elbow he had Colonel Champion, at the other Hastings' own agent, Middleton; both empowered to remonstrate freely, and the latter even to use threats, on behalf of humanity and fair-play. Champion was a good officer, whose feelings often blinded his judgment; and his jealousy of Middleton sharpened his readiness to believe all stories told against the Wazír. The complaints he forwarded to Calcutta were often at variance with the reports which Hastings received from Middleton. Hastings could only remind the Colonel that he had various means of inclining the Wazír to the side of mercy, if he chose to employ them.

The honour of the British name, as Hastings afterwards pleaded, was left in Champion's keeping, and if that honour was tarnished, Champion alone could be held to blame. In his letters to Middleton, the