HASTINGS' BENGAL TRANSACTIONS. 459
£160,000 a year. In support of this act, it may be statedthat the titular Nawab, being then a minor, had ceased torender even any nominal service for his enormous pension.
Clive had himself reduced the original £600,000 to £450,000on the accession of a new Nawab in 1766, and the grant wasagain cut down to ,£350,000 on a fresh succession in 1769. 1The allowance had practically been of a fluctuating andpersonal character. 2 Its further reduction in the case ofthe new child-Nawab had, moreover, been expressly orderedby the Court of Directors six months before Hastings tookoffice.
Hastings’ next financial stroke was the sale of Allahdbad Sellsand Kora Provinces to the Wazir of Oudh. These Provinceshad been assigned by Clive, in his partition of the Gangetic 1773.valley, to the Emperor Shah Alain, together with a tribute ofabout £"300,000 (26 lakhs of rupees), in return for the grantof Bengal to the Company. But the Emperor had now beenseized by the Marathas. Hastings held that His Majesty was nolonger independent, and that it would be a fatal policy for theBritish to pay money to him, i.e. to the Marathas in Northern Withholds
India, when it was evident that we would -soon have to fight the E , m '
. . peror s
them m the South. He therefore withheld the tribute of the tribute.
£'300,000 from the puppet Emperor, or rather from hisMardtha custodians.
Clive, at the partition of the Gangetic valley in 1765,assigned the Provinces of Allahabad and Kora to theEmperor. The Emperor, now in the hands of the Marathas,had made them over to his new masters. Warren Hastings held that by so doing His Majesty had forfeited his title tothese Provinces. Hastings accordingly resold them to theWazir of Oudh. By this measure he freed the Company froma military charge of nearly half a million sterling (40 lakhs ofrupees), and obtained a price of over half a million (50 lakhs )for the Company.
The terms of sale included the loan of British troops to The Ro-subdue the Rohilla Afghans, who had seized and for sometime had kept hold of a tract on the north-western frontier
1 The detailed history of these transactions, and a sketch of each of the14 Nawabs of Bengal from 1704 to 1884, will be found under District Murshidabad , vol. ix. pp. 172-195 of Hunter’s Statistical Account ofBengal.
2 See separate agreements with the successive Nawabs of 30th September1 765, 19th May 1766, and 21st March 1770, in each of which the grant isto the Nawab, without mention of heirs or successors.—Aitchison’s Treatiesand Engagements vol. i. pp. 56-59 (ed. 1876).