His letters, including some written to his friend Samuel Johnson, reveal a deep affection for India and Indians quite absent from the openly racist letters of Clive: ‘Our Indian subjects,’ wrote Hastings, ‘are as exempt from the worst propensities of human nature as any people upon the face of the earth, ourselves not exempted. They are gentle, benevolent, more susceptible to gratitude for kindness shewn them than prompt to vengeance for wrongs sustained, abhorrent of bloodshed, faithful and affectionate in service and submissive in legal authority.’
