ONE:During this periodfrom 1769 to 1772Warren Hastings had been second in the Council[322] at Madras; but in the latter year he was promoted to the head of the Council in Bengal. During this period, too, the British had been brought into hostilities with the Rajah of Tanjore. The history of these proceedings is amongst the very blackest of the innumerable black proceedings of the East India Company. The Rajah of Tanjore was in alliance with the Company. In 1762 they had guaranteed to him the security of his throne; but now their great ally, Mohammed Ali, the Nabob of the Carnatic, called to the English for help against the Rajah. The conduct of honourable men would have been to offer themselves as mediators, and so settle the business; but not by such means was the whole of India to be won from the native princes. The Rajah of the Carnatic offered to purchase the territory of Tanjore from the British for a large sum. The latter, however, had guaranteed the defence of these territories to the Rajah of Tanjore by express treaty. No matter, they closed the bargain with the Rajah of the Carnatic; they agreed to seize Tanjore, and make it over to Mohammed Ali. An army assembled at Trichinopoly on the 12th of September, 1771, invaded Tanjore, seized the Rajah and his family, and invested the whole of Tanjore in the name of the Nabob of the Carnatic.
ONE:Fox, on this occasion, also introduced the subject of the Prince of Wales's allowance, who, he contended, had far less than had been granted to a Prince of Wales since the accession of the House of Hanover, that allowance being one hundred thousand pounds a-year; and the present parsimony towards the prince being grossly aggravated by the royal Civil List having been raised, in this reign, from six hundred thousand pounds to nine hundred thousand pounds, and the Privy Purse from six thousand pounds to sixty thousand pounds. Fox's remarks were rendered all the more telling because, when the House went into committee on the finances, Pitt had made a most flourishing statement of the condition of the Exchequer. He took off the taxes which pressed most on the poorer portion of the populationnamely, on servants, the late augmentations on malt, on waggons, on inhabited houses, etc.,to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds and appropriated four hundred thousand pounds towards the reduction of the National Debt. Still blind to the storm rising across the strait of Dover, he declared that these were mere trifles compared with what he should be able to do shortly, for never was there a time when a more durable peace might be expected!
ONE:Amongst those who hailed enthusiastically the French Revolution, and gave credit to its promises of benefit to humanity, were a considerable number of the Dissenting body, and especially of the Unitarian class. Amongst these, Drs. Price, Priestley, Kippis, and Towers were most prominent. Dr. Pricewho furnished Pitt with the theory of the Sinking Fund, and with other propositions of reform,on the breaking out of the French Revolution was one of the first to respond to it with acclamation. He was a member of the Revolution Society, and in 1789 he preached before it a sermon on "The Love of our Country," and in this drew so beautiful a picture of the coming happiness of man from the French Revolution, that he declared that he was ready to exclaim with Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." At the dinner on the same occasion he moved that a congratulatory address be sent to the National Assembly on that glorious event, which was seconded by Lord Stanhope the chairman, and which was sent, and received with great acclamation by the National Assembly. Burke, in his "Reflections on the French Revolution," was very severe on Price, as well as on his coadjutors; and as Price died this year it was said that the "Reflections" had killed him, which, were it true, could not be said[384] to have done it very prematurely, for the doctor was in his seventieth year.Scarcely had Lord Cornwallis commenced his march into the interior of North Carolina, and scarcely had he dispatched Major Ferguson with a corps of American Royalists, to advance through the country towards the frontiers of Virginia, when this corps received another proof of the wisdom of keeping out of the woods and hills. Major Ferguson was attacked near the pass of King's Mountain by swarms of riflemen, many of them mounted, from Virginia, Kentucky, and the Alleghanies who shot down and exterminated his followers almost to a man, the major falling amongst the rest. The victors gave a prompt proof of their apt adoption of Lord Cornwallis's teaching, by hanging ten of the prisoners. Lord Cornwallis was harassed by similar hordes of flying and creeping skirmishers. Hearing the news of the slaughter of Ferguson's force, he returned to Charlotte, retracing his march through most rainy weather, terrible roads, and almost totally destitute of provisions. Cornwallis fell ill on the road, and Lord Rawdon had to assume the command. It was not till the 29th of October that the army resumed its original position near Camden; and General Leslie, who had been also dispatched to co-operate with Cornwallis in Virginia, was recalled, but was obliged to return by sea.
