ssment
the Crown and the Company could dream of no other device than the
futile one of sending to India three commissioners, who, under the
name of Supervisors, should have full power over all the other
servants of the Company. They nominated accordingly Mr. Vansittart,
who, from having been the warmest friend of Clive, had become his
bitterest opponent; and who, but for the successful opposition of
Clive and his friends, would have been appointed Governor in
succession to Mr. Verelst. With him they associated Mr. Scrafton, an
old and valued servant of the Company; and Colonel Forde, the
conqueror of the Northern Sirkars and of Biderra--both intimate
friends and adherents of Clive. These gentlemen sailed in the
_Aurora_ frigate in the autumn of 1769. The _Aurora_ reached the Cape
in safety, but was never heard of after she had quitted Simon's Bay.
It was supposed that she foundered at sea.

Some considerable time elapsed before it had been realized in England
that the Supervisors had failed them, and that it would be necessary
to take other measures to remedy existing evils. Meanwhile events had
happened which increased the necessity for immediate and effective
action. In 1770 the three provinces were visited by a famine
exceeding in intensity all the famines of preceding ages. There had
been, in years gone by, no beneficent strangers from the West to
make, as in later years, provision for the {200}occurrence of so
great a calamity. The rains had failed; the water in the tanks had
dried up; the rice-fields had become parched and dry. There were but
few stores handy to enable the foreigner to disburse the necessary
grain. It was the first famine-experience of the English, and they
too had made no provision for it. The misery was terrible. The large
centres of industry, the only places where there was a chance of
obtaining food, became thronged with the dying and the dead. The
rivers floating corpses to the sea became so tainted that the very
fish ceased to be wholesome food. In summing up, two years later, the
effects of the famine on the population, the Governor-General in
Council declared that in some places one-half, and, on the whole,
one-third of the inhabitants had been destroyed. It need scarcely be
added that this terrible calamity affected the Proprietors of East
India Stock in a manner, to them the most vital:--it destroyed their
prospects of large dividends.

To remedy this evil the brains of the Court of D