Chapter 4

That the said Warren Hastings has on sundry occasions declared his deliberate opinion generally against all innovations, and particularly in the collection and management of the revenues of Bengal: that "he was well aware of the expense and inconvenience _which ever attends innovations of all kinds_, on, their first institution;[9]--that innovations are _always_ attended with difficulties and inconveniences, and innovations in the revenue with a suspension of the collections;[10]--that the continual variations in the mode of collecting the revenue, and the continual usurpation on the rights of the people, have fixed in the minds of the ryots a rooted distrust of the ordinances of government."[11] That the Court of Directors have repeatedly declared their apprehensions "that a sudden transition from one mode to another, in the investigation and collection of their revenue, might have alarmed the inhabitants, lessened their confidence in the Company's proceedings, and been attended with other evils."[12]

That the said Warren Hastings, immediately after his appointment to the government of Fort William, in April, 1772, did abolish the office of _Naib Dewan_, or native collector of the revenues, then existing; that he did at the same time appoint a committee of the board to go on a circuit through the provinces, and to form a settlement of the revenues for five years; that he did then appoint sundry of the Company's servants to have the management of the collections, viz., one in each district, under the title of _Collector_; that he did then abolish the General Board of Revenue or Council at Moorshedabad, for the following reasons: "That, while the controlling and executive part of the revenue and the correspondence with the collectors was carried on by a council at Moorshedabad, the members of the administration at Calcutta had no opportunity of acquiring that thorough and comprehensive knowledge which could only result from _practical experience_; that the orders of the Court of Directors, which established a new system, which enjoined many new regulations and inquiries, could not properly be delegated to a subordinate council, and it became absolutely necessary that the business of the revenue should be conducted _under the immediate observation and direction of the board_."[13]--That in November, 1773, the said Warren Hastings abolished the office of Collector, and transferred the collection and management of the revenues to several councils of revenue, commonly called _Provincial Councils_. That on the 24th of October, 1774, the said Warren Hastings _earnestly offered his advice_ (to the Governor-General and Council, then newly appointed by act of Parliament) _for the continuation of the said system of Provincial Councils in all its parts_. That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 22d of April, 1775, transmit to the Directors a formal plan for the future settlement of the revenues, and did therein declare, that, "with respect to the mode of managing the collection of the revenue and the administration of justice, none occurred to him so good as the system which was already established of Provincial Councils." That on the 18th of January, 1776, the said Warren Hastings did transmit to the Court of Directors a plan for the better administration of justice, that in this plan the establishment of the said Provincial Councils was specially provided for and confirmed, and that Warren Hastings did recommend it to the Directors _to obtain the sanction of Parliament for a confirmation of the said plan_. That on the 30th of April, 1776, the said Warren Hastings did transmit to the Court of Directors the draft or scheme of an act of Parliament for the better administration of justice in the provinces, in which the said establishment of Provincial Councils is again specially included, and special jurisdiction assigned to the said Councils. That the Court of Directors, in a letter dated 5th of February, 1777, did give the following instruction to the Governor-General and Council, a majority of whom, viz., Sir John Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, had disapproved of the plan of Provincial Councils: "If you are fully convinced that the establishment of Provincial Councils has not answered nor is not capable of answering the purposes intended by such institutions, we hereby direct you to form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit the same to _us for our consideration_."--That the said Warren Hastings, in contradiction to his own sentiments repeatedly declared, and to his own advice repeatedly and deliberately given, and in defiance of the orders of the Directors, to whom he transmitted no previous communication whatever of his intention to abolish the said Provincial Councils, did, in the beginning of the year 1781, again change the whole system of the collections of the public revenue of Bengal, as also the administration of civil and criminal justice throughout the provinces. That the said Warren Hastings, in a letter dated 5th of May, 1781, advising the Court of Directors of the said changes, has falsely affirmed, "that the plan of superintending and collecting the public revenue of the provinces through the agency of Provincial Councils had been instituted for the temporary and declared purpose of introducing another more permanent mode _by an easy and gradual change_"; that, on the contrary, the said Warren Hastings, from the year 1773 to the year 1781, has constantly and uniformly insisted on the wisdom of that institution, and on the necessity of never departing from it; that he has in that time repeatedly advised that the said institution should be confirmed _in perpetuity_ by an act of Parliament; that the said total dissolution of the Provincial Councils was not introduced by any easy and gradual change, nor by any gradations whatever, but was sudden and unprepared, and instantly accomplished by a single act of power; and that the said Warren Hastings, in the place of the said Councils, has substituted a Committee of Revenue, consisting of four covenanted servants, on principles opposite to those which he had himself professed, and with exclusive powers, tending to deprive the members of the Supreme Council of a due knowledge of and inspection into the management of the territorial revenues, specially and unalienably vested by the legislature in the Governor-General and Council, and to vest the same solely and entirely in the said Warren Hastings. That the reasons assigned by the said Warren Hastings for constituting the said Committee of Revenue are incompatible with those which he professed when he abolished the subordinate Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad: that he has invested the said Committee _in the fullest manner with all the powers and authority of the Governor-General and Council_; that he has thereby contracted the whole power and office of the Provincial Councils into a small compass, and vested the same in four persons appointed by himself; that he has thereby taken the general transaction and cognizance of revenue business out of the Supreme Council; that the said Committee are empowered to conduct the current business of the revenue department without reference to the Supreme Council, and only _report to the board such extraordinary occurrences, claims, and proposals as may require the special orders of the board_; that even the instruction to report to the board in extraordinary cases is nugatory and fallacious, being accompanied with limitations which make it impossible for the said board to decide on any questions whatsoever: since it is expressly provided by the said Warren Hastings, _that, if the members of the Committee differ in opinion, it is not expected that every dissentient opinion should be recorded_; consequently the Supreme Council, on any reference to their board, can see nothing but the resolutions or reasons of the majority of the Committee, without the arguments on which the dissentient opinions might be founded: and since it is also expressly provided by the said Warren Hastings, that _the determination of the majority of the Committee should not therefore be stayed, unless it should be so agreed by the majority_,--that is, that, notwithstanding the reference to the Supreme Council, the measure shall be executed without waiting for their decision.

That the said Warren Hastings has delivered his opinion, with many arguments to support the same, in favor of long leases of the lands, in preference to _annual_ settlements: that he has particularly declared, "that the farmer who holds his farm for one year only, having no interest in the next, takes what he can with the hand of rigor, which, even in the execution of legal claims, is often equivalent to violence; he is under the necessity of being rigid, and _even cruel_,--for what is left in arrear after the expiration of his power is at best a doubtful debt, if ever recoverable; he will be tempted to exceed the bounds of right, and to augment his income by irregular exactions, and by racking the tenants, for which pretences will not be wanting, where the farms pass _annually_ from one hand to another; that the discouragements which the tenants feel from being transferred every year to new landlords are a great objection to such short leases; that they contribute to injure the cultivation and dispeople the lands; that, on the contrary, from long farms the farmer acquires a permanent interest in his lands; he will, for his own sake, lay out money in assisting his tenants in improving lands already cultivated, and in clearing and cultivating waste lands."[14] That, nevertheless, the said Warren Hastings, having left it to the discretion of the Committee of Revenue, appointed by him in 1781, to fix the time for which the ensuing settlement should be made, and the said Committee having declared, that, _with respect to the period of the lease, in general, it appeared to the Committee that to limit them to one year would be the best period_, he, the said Warren Hastings, approved of that limitation, in manifest contradiction to all his own arguments, professions, and declarations concerning the fatal consequences of _annual_ leases of the lands; that in so doing the said Warren Hastings did not hold himself bound or restrained by the orders of the Court of Directors, but acted upon his own discretion; and that he has, for partial and interested purposes, exercised that discretion in particular instances against his own general settlement for one year, by granting perpetual leases of farms and zemindaries to persons specially favored by him, and particularly by granting a perpetual lease of the zemindary of Baharbund to his servant Cantoo Baboo on very low terms.

That in all the preceding transactions the said Warren Hastings did act contrary to his duty as Governor of Fort William, contrary to the orders of his employers, and contrary to his own declared sense of expediency, consistency, and justice, and thereby did harass and afflict the inhabitants of the provinces with perpetual changes in the system and execution of the government placed over them, and with continued innovations and exactions, against the rights of the said inhabitants,--thereby destroying all security to private property, and all confidence in the good faith, principles, and justice of the British government. And that the said Warren Hastings, having substituted his own instruments to be the managers and collectors of the public revenue, in the manner hereinbefore mentioned, did act in manifest breach and defiance of an act of the 13th of his present Majesty, by which _the ordering and management and government of all the territorial revenues in the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa_ were vested in the Governor-General and Council, without any power of delegating the said trust and duty to any other persons; and that, by such unlawful delegation of the powers of the Council to a subordinate board appointed by himself, he, the said Warren Hastings, did in effect unite and vest in his own person the ordering, government, and management of all the said territorial revenues; and that for the said illegal act he, the said Warren Hastings, is solely answerable, the same having been proposed and resolved in Council when the Governor-General and Council consisted but of two persons present,--namely, the said Warren Hastings, and the late Edward Wheler, Esquire, and when consequently the Governor-General, by virtue of the casting voice, possessed the whole power of the government. That, in all the changes and innovations hereinbefore described, the pretence used by the said Warren Hastings to recommend and justify the same to the Court of Directors has been, that such changes and innovations would be attended with increase of revenue or diminution of expense to the East India Company; that such pretence, if true, would not have been a justification of such acts; but that such pretence is false and groundless: that during the administration of the said Warren Hastings the territorial revenues have declined; that the charges of collecting the same have greatly increased; and that the said Warren Hastings, by his neglect, mismanagement, and by a direct and intended waste of the Company's property, is chargeable with and answerable for all the said decline of revenue, and all the said increase of expense.

XVI.--MISDEMEANORS IN OUDE.

I. That the province of Oude and its dependencies were, before their connection with and subordination to the Company, in a flourishing condition with regard to culture, commerce, and population, and their rulers and principal nobility maintained themselves in a state of affluence and splendor; but very shortly after the period aforesaid, the prosperity both of the country and its chiefs began sensibly and rapidly to decline, insomuch that the revenue of the said province, which, on the lowest estimation, had been found, in the commencement of the British influence, at upwards of three millions sterling annually, (and that ample revenue raised without detriment to the country,) did not in the year 1779 exceed the sum of 1,500,000_l._, and in the subsequent years did fall much short of that sum, although the rents were generally advanced, and the country grievously oppressed in order to raise it.

II. That in the aforesaid year, 1779, the demands of the East India Company on the Nabob of Oude are stated by Mr. Purling, their Resident at the court of Oude, to amount to the sum of 1,360,000_l._ sterling and upwards, leaving (upon the supposition that the whole revenue should amount to the sum of 1,500,000_l._ sterling, to which it did not amount) no more than 140,000_l._ sterling for the support of the dignity of the household and family of the Nabob, and for the maintenance of his government, as well as for the payment of the public debts due within the province.

III. That by the treaty of Fyzabad a regular brigade of the Company's troops, to be stationed in the dominions of the Nabob of Oude, was kept up at the expense of the said Nabob; in addition to which a temporary brigade of the same troops was added to his establishment, together with several detached corps in the Company's service, and a great part of his own native Troops were put under the command of British officers.

IV. That the expense of the Company's temporary brigade increased in the same year (the year of 1779) upwards of 80,000_l._ sterling above the estimate, and the expense of the country troops under British officers in the same period increased upwards of 40,000_l._ sterling; and in addition to the aforesaid ruinous expenses, a large civil establishment was gradually, secretly, and without any authority from the Court of Directors, or record in the books of the Council-General concerning the same, formed for the Resident, and another under Mr. Wombwell, an agent for the Company; as also several pensions and allowances, in the same secret and clandestine manner, were charged on the revenues of the said Nabob for the benefit of British subjects, besides large occasional gifts to persons in the Company's service.

V. That in the month of November, 1779, the said Nabob did represent to Mr. Purling, the Company's Resident aforesaid, the distressed state of his revenues in the following terms. "During three years past, the expense occasioned by the troops in brigade, and others commanded by European officers, has much distressed the support of my household, insomuch that the allowances made to the seraglio and children of the deceased Nabob have been reduced to _one fourth_ of what it had been, upon which they have subsisted in a very distressed manner for two years past. The attendants, writers, and servants, &c., of my court, have received no pay for two years past; and there is at present no part of the country that can be allotted to the payment of my father's private creditors, whose applications are daily pressing upon me. All these difficulties I have for these three years past struggled through, and found this consolation therein, that it was complying with the pleasure of the Honorable Company, and in the hope that the Supreme Council would make inquiry from impartial persons into my distressed situation; but I am now forced to a representation. From the _great increase of expense_, the revenues were necessarily farmed out _at a high rate;_ and deficiencies followed yearly. The country and cultivation is abandoned; and this year in particular, from the excessive drought, deductions of many lacs" (stated by the Resident, in his letter to the board of the 13th of the month following, to amount to twenty-five lac, or 250,000_l._ sterling) "have been allowed the farmers, who were still left unsatisfied. I have received but just sufficient to support my absolute necessities, the revenues being deficient to the amount of fifteen lac [150,000_l._ sterling], and for this reason many of the old chieftains with their troops, and the useful attendants of the court, were forced to leave it, and there is now only a few foot and horse for the collection of my revenues; and should the zemindars be refractory, there is not left a sufficient number to reduce them to obedience." And the said Nabob did therefore pray that the assignments for the new brigade, the corps of horse, and the other detached bodies of the Company's troops might not be required from him: alleging, "that the former was not only quite useless to his government, but, moreover, the cause of much loss, both in the revenues and customs; and that the detached bodies of troops under their European officers brought nothing but confusion into the affairs of his government, and were entirely their own masters."

VI. That it appears that the said Nabob was not bound by any treaty to the maintenance, without his consent, _even of the old brigade_,--the Court of Directors having, in their letter of the 15th December, 1775, approved of keeping the same in his service, "_provided it was done with the free consent of the Subah, and by no means without it_." And the _new brigade_ and temporary corps were raised on the express condition, that the expense thereof should be charged on the Nabob only "_for so long a time as he should require the corps for his service_." And the Court of Directors express to the Governor-General and Council their sense of the said agreement in the following terms: "But if you intend to exert your influence first to induce the Vizier to acquiesce in your proposal, and afterwards _to compel him to keep the troops in his pay during your pleasure, your intents are unjust; and a correspondent conduct would reflect great dishonor on the Company_."

VII. That, in answer to the decent and humble representation aforesaid of the Nabob of Oude, the allegations of which, so far as they relate to the distressed state of the Nabob's finances, and his total inability to discharge the demands made on him, were confirmed by the testimony of the English Resident at Oude, and which the said Hastings did not deny in the whole or in any part thereof, he, the said Warren Hastings, did, on pretence of certain political dangers, declare the relief desired to be "without hesitation _totally_ inadmissible," and did falsely and maliciously insinuate, "that the _tone_ in which the demands of the Nabob were asserted, and the season in which they were made, did give cause for _the most alarming suspicions_." And the said Warren Hastings did, in a letter to the Nabob aforesaid, written in haughty and insolent language, and without taking any notice of the distresses of the said Nabob, alleged and verified as before recited, "require and insist upon your [the Nabob's] granting _tuncaws_ [assignments] for the full amount of their [the Company's] demands upon you for the current year, and on your reserving funds sufficient to answer them, _even should the deficiencies of your revenues compel you to leave your own troops unprovided for, or to disband a part of them to enable you to effect it_."

VIII. That, in a letter written at the same time to the Resident, Purling, and intended for his directions in enforcing on the Nabob the unjust demands aforesaid, the said Warren Hastings hath asserted, in direct contradiction to the treaties subsisting between the said Nabob and the Company, "that he [the Nabob] stands engaged to our government to maintain the English armies which at his own request have been formed for the protection of his dominions, and _that it is our part, and not his, to judge and determine in what manner and at what time these shall be reduced and withdrawn_." And in a Minute of Consultation, when the aforesaid measure was proposed by the said Hastings to the Supreme Council, he did affirm and maintain that the troops aforesaid "had now no _separate_ or distinct existence from ours, and may be properly said to consist of our _whole_ military establishment, with the exception only of our European infantry; and that they could not be withdrawn without imposing on the Company _the additional burden of them_, or disbanding nine battalions of disciplined sepoys and three regiments of horse."

IX. That in the Minute of Consultation aforesaid, he, the said Warren Hastings, hath further, in justification of the violent and arbitrary proceedings aforesaid, asserted, "that the arrangement of measures between the British government and their allies, the native powers of India, must, in case of disagreement about the necessity thereof, _be decided by the strongest_"; and hath thereby advanced a dangerous and most indecently expressed position, subversive of the rights of allies, and tending to breed war and confusion, instead of cordiality and cooeperation amongst them, and to destroy all confidence of the princes of India in the faith and justice of the English nation. And the said Hastings, having further, in the minute aforesaid, presumed to threaten to "bring to punishment, if my influence" (his, the said Hastings's, influence) "can produce that effect, _those incendiaries_ who have endeavored to make themselves the instruments of division between us," hath, as far as in him lay, obstructed the performance of one of the most essential duties of a prince engaged in an unequal alliance with a presiding state,--that of representing the grievances of his subjects to that more powerful state by whose acts they suffer: leaving thereby the governing power in total ignorance of the effects of its own measures, and to the oppressed people no other choice than the alternative of an unqualified submission, or a resistance productive of consequences more fatal.

X. That, all relief being denied to the Nabob, in the manner and on the grounds aforesaid, the demands of the Company on the said Nabob in the year following, that is to say, in the year 1780, did amount to the enormous sum of 1,400,000_l._ sterling, and the distress of the province did rapidly increase.

XI. That the Nabob, on the 24th of February of the same year, did again write to the Governor-General, the said Warren Hastings, a letter, in which he expressed his constant friendship to the Company, and his submission and obedience to their orders, and asserting that he had not troubled them with any of his difficulties, trusting they would learn them from other quarters, and that he should be relieved by their friendship. "But," he says, "when _the knife had penetrated to the bone_, and I was surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live in expectations, I then wrote an account of my difficulties. The answer I have received to it is such that it has given me inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or expectation from you and the Council that you would have given your orders in _so afflicting a manner, in which you never before wrote, and I could never have imagined_. I have delivered up all my _private_ papers to him [the Resident], that, after examining my receipts and expenses, he may take whatever remains. That, as I know it to be my duty to satisfy you [the Company and Council], I have not failed to obey in any instance; but requested of him that it might be done so as not to distress me in my _necessary_ expenses. There being no other funds but those for the expenses of my _mutseddies_ [clerks and accountants], household expenses, and servants, &c., he demanded these in such a manner, that, being remediless, I was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly stopped _the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether sepoys [soldiers], mutseddies [secretaries and accountants], or household servants, and the expenses of my family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependants, which were for their support_."

XII. That, in answer to the letter aforesaid, the Resident received from the said Warren Hastings and Council an order to persevere in the demand to its fullest extent,--that is to say, to the amount of 1,400,000_l._ sterling.

XIII. That on the 15th of May the Nabob replied, complaining in an humble and suppliant manner of his distressed situation: that he had at first opposed the assigning to the use of the Company the estates of his mother, of his grandmother, of one of his uncles, and of the sons of another, but that, in obedience to the injunctions of the gentlemen of the Council, it had been done, to the amount, on the whole, of 80,000_l._ sterling a year, or thereabouts; that whatever effects were in the country, with even his table, his animals, and the salaries of his servants, were granted in assignments; that, besides these, if they were resolved again to compel him to give up the estates of his parents and relations, which were granted them for their maintenance, they were at the Company's disposal; saying, "If the Council have directed you to attach them, do it: in the country no further sources remain. I have no means; for I have not a subsistence.--How long shall I dwell upon my misfortunes?"

XIV. That the truth of the said remonstrances was not disputed, nor the _tone_ in which they were written complained of, the same being submissive, and even abject, though the cause (his distresses) was by the said Hastings, in a great degree, and in terms the most offensive, attributed to the Nabob himself; but no relief was given, and the same unwarrantable establishments, maintained at the same ruinous expense, were kept up.

XV. That the said Warren Hastings, having considered as incendiaries those who advised the remonstrances aforesaid, and, to prevent the same in future, having denounced vengeance on those concerned therein, did, for the purpose of keeping in his own power all representations of the state of the court and country aforesaid, and to subject both the one and the other to his own arbitrary will, and to draw to himself and to his creatures the management of the Nabob's revenues, in defiance of the orders of the Court of Directors, a second time recall Mr. Bristow, the Company's Resident, from the court of Oude,--having once before recalled him, as the said Directors express themselves, "without the shadow of a charge being exhibited against him," and having, on the occasion and time now stated, produced no specific charge against the said Resident; and he, the said Hastings, did appoint Nathaniel Middleton, Esquire, to succeed him,--it being his declared principle, that he must have a person of _his own_ confidence in that situation.

XVI. That the said Warren Hastings, after he had refused all relief to the distresses of the Nabob in the manner aforesaid, and had described those who advised the representation of the grievances of Oude as _incendiaries_, did himself, in a minute of the 21st May, 1781, describe that province "as fallen into a state of great disorder and confusion, and its resources in an extraordinary degree diminished,"--and did state, that his presence in the said province was requested by the Nabob, and that, unless some effectual measures were taken for his relief, he [the Nabob] must be under the necessity of leaving his country, and coming down to Calcutta, to represent the situation of his government. And Mr. Wheler did declare that the Governor-General's representation of the state of that province "was but too well founded, and was convinced that it would require his utmost abilities and powers, applied and exercised on the spot, to restore it to its former good order and affluence."

XVII. That the said Warren Hastings, in consequence of the minute aforesaid, did grant to himself, and did procure the consent of his only colleague, Edward Wheler, Esquire, to a commission or delegation, with powers "to assist the Nabob Vizier in forming such regulations as may be necessary for the peace and good order of his government, the improvement of his revenue, and the adjustment of the mutual concerns subsisting between him and the Company." And in the said commission or delegation he, the said Warren Hastings, did cause to be inserted certain powers and provisions of a new and dangerous nature: that is to say, reciting the business before mentioned, he did convey to himself "such authority to enforce the same _as the Governor-General and Council might or could exercise on occasions in which they could be warranted to exercise the same_, and to form and conclude such several engagements or treaties with the Nabob Vizier, the government of Berar, and with any chiefs or powers of Hindostan, as _he_ should judge expedient and necessary." Towards the conclusion of the act or instrument aforesaid are the words following, viz.: "It is hereby declared, that all such acts, and all such engagements or treaties aforesaid, shall be binding on the Governor-General and Council in the same manner, _and as effectually, as if they had been done and passed by the specific and immediate concurrence and actual junction of the Governor-General and Council, in council assembled_." And the said powers were, by the said Warren Hastings, given by himself and the said Wheler, under the seal of the Company, on the 3d July, 1781.

XVIII. That the said commission, delegating to him, the said Warren Hastings, the whole functions of the Council, is destructive to the constitution thereof, and is contrary to the Company's standing orders, and is illegal.

XIX. That, in virtue of those powers, and the illegal delegation aforesaid, the said Warren Hastings, after he had finished his business at Benares, did procure a meeting with the Nabob of Oude at a place called Chunar, upon the confines of the country of Benares, and did there enter into a treaty, or pretended treaty, with the said Nabob; one part of which the said Warren Hastings did pretend was drawn up from a series of requisitions presented to him by the Nabob, but which requisitions, or any copy thereof, or of any other material document relative thereto, he did not at the time transmit to the Presidency,--the said Warren Hastings informing Mr. Wheler, that the Resident, Middleton, had taken the _authentic_ papers relative to this transaction with him to Lucknow: and it does not appear that the said Warren Hastings did ever reclaim the said papers, in order to record them at the Presidency, to be transmitted to the Court of Directors, as it was his duty to do.

XX. That the purport of certain articles of the said treaty, on the part of the Company, was, that, in consideration of the Nabob's _inability_ (which inability the preamble of the treaty asserts to have been "repeatedly and urgently represented") to support the expenses of the temporary brigade, and of three regiments of cavalry, and also of the British officers with their battalions, and of _other_ gentlemen who were then paid by him, the several corps aforesaid, and the other gentlemen, (with the exception of the Resident's office _then on the Nabob's list_, and a regiment of sepoys for the Resident's guard,) should, after a term of two and a half months, be no longer at his, the Nabob's, charge: "the true meaning of this being, that no more troops than one brigade, and the pay and allowances of a regiment of sepoys," (as aforesaid, to the Resident,) amounting in the whole to 342,000_l._ a year, should be paid by the Nabob; and that _no officers, troops, or others, should be put upon the Nabob's establishment_, exclusive of those in the said treaty stipulated.

XXI. That the said Warren Hastings did defend and justify the said articles, in which the troops aforesaid were to be removed from the Nabob's establishment, by declaring as follows. "That the _actual_ disbursements to those troops had fallen upon _our own funds_, and that _we_ support a body of troops, established _solely_ for the defence of the Nabob's possessions, _at our own expense_. It is true, we charge the Nabob with this expense; but the large balance already due from him shows too justly the little prospect there was of disengaging ourselves from _a burden_ which was daily adding to _our_ distresses and must soon become _insupportable_, although it were granted that the Nabob's debt, then suffered to accumulate, _might at some future period be liquidated_, and that this measure would substantially effect an instant relief to the pecuniary distresses of the Company."

XXII. That Nathaniel Middleton, the Resident, did also declare that he would at all times testify, "that, upon the plan of the foregoing years, the receipts from the Nabob were only _a deception_, and _not an advantage_, but _an injury_ to the Company," and "that a remission to the Nabob of this _insufferable burden_ was _a profit_ to the Company." And the said Hastings did assert that the force of the Company was not lessened by withdrawing the temporary troops; although, when it suited the purpose of the said Hastings, in denying just relief to the distresses of the said Nabob of Oude, he had not scrupled to assert the direct contrary of the positions by him maintained in justification of the treaty of Chunar,--having in his minute aforesaid, of the 15th of December, 1779, asserted, "that these troops" (the troops maintained by the Nabob of Oude) "had no _separate or distinct existence_, and may be properly said to consist of our whole military establishment, with the exception only of our European infantry, and that they could not be _withdrawn, without imposing on the Company the additional burden of their expense_, or disbanding nine battalions of disciplined sepoys and three regiments of horse."

XXIII. That he, the said Warren Hastings, in justification of his agreement to withdraw the troops aforesaid from the territories and pay of the Nabob of Oude, did further declare, "that he had been too much accustomed to the tales of hostile preparation and impending invasions, against all the evidence of political probability, to regard them as any other than phantoms raised for the purpose of perpetuating or multiplying commands," and he did trust "all ideas of danger from the neighboring powers were altogether visionary; and that, even if they had been better founded, this mode of anticipating possible evils would be more mischievous than anything they had reason to apprehend," and that the internal state of the Nabob's dominions did not require the continuance of the said troops; and that the Nabob, "_whose concern it was, and not ours_" did affirm the same,--notwithstanding he, the said Hastings, had before, in answer to the humble supplications of the Nabob, asserted, that "_it was our part, and not his_, to judge and determine in what manner and at what time they should be reduced or withdrawn."

XXIV. That the said Warren Hastings, in support of his measure of withdrawing the said brigade and other troops, did also represent, that "the remote stations of those troops, placing the commanding officers beyond the notice and control of the board, afforded too much opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited the _contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army_, and, as an instance thereof, that a court-martial, composed of officers of rank and respectable characters, unanimously and honorably, 'most honorably,' acquitted an officer upon an acknowledged fact which in times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving the severest punishment."

XXV. That the said Warren Hastings, having in the letter aforesaid contradicted all the grounds and reasons by him assigned for keeping up the aforesaid establishment, and having declared his own conviction that the whole was a fallacy and imposition, and a detriment to the Company instead of a benefit, circumstances (if they are true) which he might and ought to have well known, was guilty of an high crime and misdemeanor in carrying on the imposture and delusion aforesaid, and in continuing an insupportable burden and grievance upon the Nabob for several years, without attending to his repeated supplications to be relieved therefrom, to the utter ruin of his country, and to the destruction of the discipline of the British troops, by diffusing among them a general spirit of peculation; and the said Hastings hath committed a grievous offence in upholding the same pernicious system, until, by his own confession and declaration, in his minute of the 21st of May, 1781, "the evils had _grown_ to so great an height, that exertions will be required more powerful than can be made through the delegated authority of the servants of the Company now in the province, and that he was far from sanguine in his expectations that _even his own endeavors would be attended with much success_."

XXVI. That, at the time of making the said treaty, and at the time when, under color of the distress of the Nabob of Oude, and the failure of all other means for his relief, he, the said Hastings, broke the Company's faith with the parents of the Nabob, and first encouraged and afterwards compelled him to despoil them of their landed estates, money, jewels, and household goods, and while the said Nabob continued heavily in debt to the Company, he, the said Warren Hastings, did, "_without hesitation_," accept of and receive from the Nabob of Oude and his ministers (who are notoriously known to be not only under his influence, but under his absolute command) a bribe, or unlawful gift or present, of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, and upwards. That, even if the said pretended gift could be supposed to be voluntary, it was contrary to the express provision of the Regulating Act of the 13th year of his Majesty's reign, prohibiting the receipt of all presents upon any pretence whatsoever, and contrary to his own sense of the true intent and meaning of the said act, declared upon a similar, but not so strong a case,--that is, where the service done, and the present offered in return for it, had taken place before the promulgation of the above laws in India: on that occasion he declared, "that the exclusion by an act of Parliament _admitted of no abatement or evasion_, wherever its authority extended."

XXVII. That the said Warren Hastings, confiding in an interest which he supposed himself to have formed in the East India House, did endeavor to prevail on the Court of Directors to violate the said act, and to suffer him to appropriate the money so illegally accepted by him to his own profit, as a reward for his services.

XXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings has since declared to the Court of Directors, that, when _fortune threw a sum in his way_ (meaning the sum of money above mentioned) _of a magnitude which could not be concealed, he chose to apprise his employers of it_:[15] thereby confessing, that, but for the magnitude of the same rendering it difficult to be concealed, he never would have discovered it to them. And the said unlawful present being received at the time when, for reasons directly contradictory of all his former recorded declarations, he did agree to remove the aforesaid troops from the Nabob's dominions, and to recall the pensioners aforesaid, it must be presumed that he did not agree to give the relief (which he had before so obstinately refused) upon the grounds and motives of justice, policy, or humanity, but in consideration of the sum of money aforesaid, which, in a time of such extreme distress in the Nabob's affairs, could not be rationally given, except for those and other concessions stipulated for in the said treaty, but which had on former occasions been refused.

XXIX. That, notwithstanding his, the said Warren Hastings's, receipt of the present of one hundred thousand pounds, as aforesaid, he did violate every one of the stipulations in the said treaty contained, and particularly he did continue in the country, and in the service of the Nabob of Oude, those troops which he had so recently stipulated to withdraw from his country and to take from his establishment: for, upon the 24th of December following, he did order the temporary brigade, making ten battalions of five hundred men each, to be again put on the Vizier's list,--although he had recently informed the Court of Directors, through Edward Wheler, Esquire, that any benefit to be derived from the Nabob's paying that brigade was _a fallacy and a deception_, and that the same was _a charge_ upon the Company, and not _an alleviation of its distresses_, as well as _an insupportable burden_ to the Nabob: thus having, within a short space of time, twice contradicted himself, both in declaration and in conduct.

XXX. That this measure, in direct violation of a treaty of not three months' duration, was so injudicious, that, in the opinion of the Assistant Resident, Johnson, "nothing less than blows could effect it": he, the said Resident, further adding, "that the Nabob was not even able to pay off the arrears still due to it [the new brigade]; and that the troops being _all_ in arrears, and no possibility of present payment, so large a body assembled here [viz., at Lucknow] without any means to check and control them, nothing but disorder could follow. As one proof that the Nabob is as badly off for funds as we are, I may inform you that his cavalry rose this day upon him, and went all armed to the palace, to demand from thirteen to eighteen months' arrears, and were with great difficulty persuaded to retire, which was probably more effected by a body of troops getting under arms to go against them than any other consideration." But the letter of Warren Hastings, Esquire, of the 24th of December, giving the above orders for the infraction of the treaty, and to which the letter from whence the foregoing extracts are taken is an answer, doth not appear, any otherwise than as the same is recited in the said answer.

XXXI. That, notwithstanding the disorders and deficiencies in the revenue aforesaid had continued and increased, and that three very large balances had accumulated, the said Warren Hastings did cause the Treasury accounts at Calcutta to be examined and scrutinized, and an account of another arrear, composed of various articles, pretended to have accumulated during seven years previous to the year 1779, (the articles composing which, if they had been just, ought to have been charged at the times they severally became due,) was sent to the Resident, and payment thereof demanded, to the amount of 260,000_l._ sterling; which unexpected demand, in so distressed a situation, did not a little embarrass the Nabob. But whilst he and his ministers were examining into the said unexpected demand, another, and fifth balance, made up of similar forgotten articles, was demanded, to the amount of 140,000_l._ sterling more. Which said two last demands did so terrify and confound the Nabob and his ministers, that they declared that the Resident "might at once take the country, since justice was out of the question."

XXXII. That the said Hastings, in order to add to the confusion, perplexity, and distress of the Nabob's affairs, did send to his court (in which he had already a Resident and Assistant Resident) two secret agents, Major Palmer and Major Davy, and did instruct Major Palmer to make a variety of new claims, one of a loan to the Company of 600,000_l._ sterling, although he well knew the Nabob was himself heavily in arrear to the Company, and was utterly unable to discharge the same, as well as in arrear to his own troops, and to many individuals, and that he borrowed (when he could at all borrow) at an interest of near thirty per cent. To this demand was added a new bribe, or unlawful present, to himself, to the amount of 100,000_l._ sterling, which he did not refuse as unlawful and of evil example, but as _indelicate_ in the Nabob's present situation,--and did, as if the same was his own property, presume to dispose of it, and to desire the transfer of it, as of his own bounty, to the Company, his masters. To this second demand he, the said Hastings, added a third demand of 120,000_l._ sterling, for four additional regiments on the Nabob's list, after he had solemnly engaged to take off the ten with which it had been burdened: the whole of the claims through his private agent aforesaid making the sum of 820,000_l._ sterling.

XXXIII. That the demands, claims, &c., made by the said Warren Hastings upon the government of Oude in that year amounted to the enormous sum of 2,530,000_l._ sterling; which joined to the arrears to troops, and some internal failures, amounting to 255,000_l._ sterling more, the whole charge arose to 2,785,000_l._ sterling, which was considerably more than double the net produce of the Nabob's revenue,--the same only amounting to 1,450,000_l._ "nominal revenue, never completely realized."

XXXIV. That, towards providing for these extravagant demands, he, the said Warren Hastings, did direct and authorize another breach of the public faith given in the treaty of Chunar. For whereas, by the second article of the treaty aforesaid, it was left to the Nabob's discretion whether or not he should resume the landed estates, called jaghires, within his dominions, and notwithstanding the said Hastings, in defence of the said article, did declare that the Nabob should be left to the exercise of his own authority and pleasure respecting them, yet he, the said Hastings, did authorize a violent compulsion to be used towards the said Nabob for accomplishing an universal confiscation of that species of landed property; and in so doing he did also compel the Nabob to break his faith with all the landholders of that description, not only in violating the assurance of his own original grants, but his assurance recently given, when, being pressed by the Company, he, the Nabob, had made a temporary seizure of the profits of the lands aforesaid, in the manner of a compulsory loan, for the repayment of which he gave his bonds and obligations; and although he had at the same time solemnly pledged his faith that he never would again resort to the like oppressive measure, yet he, the said Warren Hastings, did cause him to be compelled to confiscate the estates of at least sixty-seven of the principal persons of his country, comprehending therein his own nearest relations and the ancient friends and dependants of his family: the annual value of the said estates thus confiscated amounting to 435,000_l._ sterling, or thereabouts, upon an old valuation, but stated by the Resident, Middleton, as being found to yield considerably more.

XXXV. That the violent and unjust measure aforesaid, subversive of property, utterly destructive of several ancient and considerable families, and most dishonorable to the British government, did produce an universal discontent and the greatest confusion throughout the whole country,--the said confiscated lands being on this occasion put to rack-rents, and the people grievously oppressed: and to prevent a possibility of redress, at least for a considerable time, the said confiscated estates were mortgaged (it appearing otherwise impracticable to make an approach towards satisfying the exorbitant demands of the said Hastings) for a great sum to certain usurious bankers or money-dealers at Benares.

XXXVI. That, besides these enormous demands, which were in part made for the support of several corps of troops under British officers which by the treaty of Chunar ought to have been removed, very large extra charges not belonging to the military list of the said Nabob, and several civil charges and pensions, were continued, and others newly put on since the treaty of Chunar, namely, an allowance to Sir Eyre Coote of 15,554 rupees per month, (being upwards of 18,664_l._ sterling a year,) and an allowance to Trevor Wheler, Esquire, of 5,000 rupees per month (or 6,000_l._ sterling and upwards a year); and the whole of the settled charges, not of a military nature, to British subjects, did amount to little less than 140,000_l._ yearly, and, if other allowances not included in the estimate were added, would greatly exceed that sum, besides much more which may justly be suspected to have been paid, no part whereof had at that time been brought forward to any public account.

XXXVII. That the commander of one of these corps, of whose burden the said Nabob did complain, was Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Hannay, who did farm the revenues of certain districts called Baraitch and Goruckpore, which the said Hastings, in the ninth article of his instructions to Mr. Bristow, did estimate at twenty-three lacs of rupees, or 230,000_l._, per annum: but under his, the said Hannay's, management, the collections did very greatly decline; complaints were made that the countries aforesaid were harassed and oppressed, and the same did fall into confusion, and at last the inhabitants broke out into a general rebellion.

XXXVIII. That the far greater part of the said heavy list was authorized or ordered by him, the said Warren Hastings, for the purpose of extending his own corrupt influence: for it doth appear, that, at the time when he did pretend, in conformity to the treaty of Chunar aforesaid, to remove the Company's servants, "_civil_ and military, from the court and service of the Vizier," he did assert that he thereby did "diminish _his own influence_, as well as that of his colleagues, by narrowing the line of _patronage_"; which proves that the offices, pensions, and other emoluments aforesaid, in Oude, were of _his_ patronage, as his patronage could not be diminished by taking away the said offices, &c., unless the same had been substantially of his gift. And he did, at the time of the pretended reformation aforesaid, express both his knowledge of the existence of the said excessive and abusive establishments, and his sense of his duty in taking them away: for in agreeing to the article in the treaty of Chunar for abolishing the said establishments, he did declare himself "actuated solely by motives of _justice_ to the Nabob, and a regard to _the honor of our national character_"; and, according to his own representation, the said servants of the Company, civil and military, "by their numbers, their influence, and the _enormous amount_ of their salaries, pensions, and emoluments, were an _intolerable_ burden on the revenues and authority of the Vizier, and exposed us to _the envy and resentment of the whole country_, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the Vizier from the rewards of their services and attachment."

XXXIX. That the revenue of the country being anticipated, mortgaged, and dilapidated, by the counsel, concurrence, connivance, and influence, and often by the direct order of the said Warren Hastings, the whole civil government, magistracy, and administration of justice gradually declined and at length totally ceased through the whole of the vast provinces which compose the territory of Oude, and no power was visible therein but that of the farmers of the revenue, attended by bodies of troops to enforce the collections; insomuch that robberies, assassinations, and acts of every description of outrage and violence were perpetrated with impunity,--and even in the capital city of Lucknow, the seat of the sovereign power, there was no court of justice whatever to take cognizance of such offences.

XL. That the said Warren Hastings, when he did interfere in the government of Oude, was obliged by his duty to interfere for the good purposes of government, and not merely for the purpose of extorting money therefrom and enriching his own dependants,--which latter purpose alone he did effect, in the manner before mentioned, but not one of the former. For the said Hastings, having procured the extraordinary powers given by and to himself by his delegation of the 3d of July, 1781, did declare the same to be for the purpose, among many others, "of assisting the Nabob Vizier in forming such regulations as may be necessary for the peace and good order of his government and the improvement of his revenue." And in consequence of the said powers, the said Warren Hastings did, in the treaty of Chunar, obtain an article from the Nabob by which the said Nabob did promise to attend to his advice in the reformation of his civil administration; and he did give certain instructions to the Resident, Middleton, to which he did require him to yield _the most implicit obedience_, and did in one article thereof direct him to urge the Nabob to endeavor gradually, if it could not be done at once, to establish courts of _adawlut_ [justice], and that the _darogahs_ [chief criminal magistrates], _moulavies_ [consulting or assistant lawyers], and other officers, should be selected by the ministers, with his, the Resident's, concurrence; and afterwards, in his instructions to the Resident Bristow, desiring him to pursue the same object, he declared his opinion, "that the want of such courts, and the extreme licentiousness occasioned thereby, is one of the most disreputable defects in his Highness the Nabob's government, and that, while they do not exist, every man knows the hazard which he incurs in lending his money "; but he did give him, the said Resident, no positive instruction concerning the same, supposing the establishment of such courts a matter of difficulty, and did therefore leave him a latitude in his proceedings therein.

XLI. That the said Resident Bristow did, however, in conformity to the said instructions, at last given with such latitude, endeavor to prevail on the said minister gradually to introduce courts of justice for the cognizance of crimes, by beginning to establish a criminal court under a native judge, to judge according to the Mahomedan law in the city of Lucknow. But Hyder Beg Khan, a minister of the said Warren Hastings's nomination, and solely dependent upon him, did elude and obstruct, and in the end totally defeat, the establishment of the same.

XLII. That the obstruction aforesaid, and the evil consequences thereof, were duly represented to the said Hastings; and though the said Hastings had made it the fourth article of a criminal charge against the Resident Middleton, "that he did not report to the Governor-General, or to the board, the progress which he had made from time to time in his endeavors to comply with his instructions, and that, if he met with any impediments in the execution of them, he had omitted to state those impediments, and to apply for fresh orders upon them," yet he, the said Hastings, did give no manner of support to the Resident Bristow against the said Hyder Beg Khan, and did not even answer several of his letters, the said Bristow's letters, stating the said impediments, or take any notice of his remonstrances, but did at length revoke his own instructions, declaring that he, the said Resident, should not presume to act upon the same, and yet did not furnish him with any others, upon which he might act, but did uphold the said Hyder Beg Khan in the obstruction by him given to the performance of the first and fundamental duty of all government,--namely, the administration of justice, and the protection of the lives and property of the subject against wrong and violence.

XLIII. That the said Hastings did afterwards proceed to the length of criminating the Resident Bristow aforesaid for his endeavors to establish the said necessary court, as an invasion of the rights of the Nabob's government,--when, if the Nabob in his own proper person and character, and not the aforesaid Hyder Beg, (who was a creature of the said Hastings,) had opposed the reestablishment of justice in the said country, it was the duty of the said Hastings to have pressed the same upon him by every exertion of his influence. And the said Warren Hastings, in his pretended attention to the Nabob's authority, when exercised by his, the said Hastings's, minister, to prevent the establishment of courts of justice for the protection of life and property, at the same time that he did not hesitate, in the case of the confiscation of the jaghires, and the proceedings against the mother and grandmother of the Nabob, totally to supersede his authority, and to force his inclinations in acts which overturned all the laws of property, and offered violence to all the sentiments of natural affection and duty, and accusing at the same time his instruments for not going to the utmost lengths in the execution of his said orders, is guilty of an high crime and misdemeanor.

XLIV. That the said Hastings did highly aggravate his offence in discountenancing and discouraging the reestablishment of magistracy, law, and order, in the country of Oude, inasmuch as he did in the eighth article of his instructions to the Resident order him to exercise powers which ought to have been exercised by lawful magistrates, and in a manner agreeable to law. And in the said article he did state the prevalence of rebellion in the said country of Oude,--as if rebellion could exist in a country in which there was no magistracy, and no protection for life or property, and in which the native authority had no force whatever, and in which he himself states the exercise of British authority to be an absolute usurpation; and he did accordingly direct a rigorous prosecution against the offence of rebellion under such circumstances, but "with a fair and impartial inquiry," when he did not permit the establishment of those courts of justice and magistracy by which alone rebellion could be prevented, or a fair and impartial inquiry relative to the same could be had; and particularly he did instruct the said Resident to obtain the Nabob's order for employing some sure means for apprehending certain zemindars, and particularly three, in the instruction named, whom he, the said Hastings, did cause to be apprehended upon what he calls good information, founded upon some facts to which he asserts he has the testimony of several witnesses, "that they had the destruction of Colonel Hannay and the officers under his command as their immediate object, and ultimately the extirpation of the English influence and power throughout all the Nabob's dominions," and that they did still persevere in their rebellious conduct without deviation, "though the Nabob's, and not our government, was then the object of it"; and he did direct the said Resident, if it should appear, "_on a fair and regular inquiry_, that their conduct towards the Nabob had been such as it had been reported to be, to insist upon the Nabob's punishing them with _death_, and to treat with the same rigor every zemindar and every subject who shall be the leader in a rebellion against his authority."

XLV. That the crime of the said Hastings, in his procedure aforesaid, was further highly aggravated by his having received information of several striking circumstances which strongly indicated the necessity of a regular magistracy and a legal judicature, from the total failure of justice, affecting not only the subjects at large, but even the reigning family itself,--as also of the causes why no legal magistracy could exist, and why the princes of the reigning family were not only exposed to the attacks of assassins, but even to a want of the protection which might be had from their servants and attendants, who were driven from their masters for want of that maintenance which the princes, their masters, could not procure even for themselves. And the circumstances aforesaid were detailed to him, the said Hastings, by the Resident, Bristow, in a letter from Lucknow, dated the 29th January, 1784, to the Governor-General, the said Warren Hastings, and the Council of Bengal, in the terms following.

"The frequent robberies and murders perpetrated in his Excellency's, the Vizier's, dominions, have been _too often_ the subject of my representations to your honorable board. From the total want of police, hardly a day elapses but I am informed of some tragical event, whereof the bare recital is shocking to humanity. About two months since, an attempt was made to assassinate Rajah Ticket Roy, the acting minister's confidential agent; but he happily escaped unhurt. Nabob Bahadur, _his Highness's brother_, has not been so fortunate, as will appear from translations of two of his letters to me, No. 1, which I have the honor to inclose for your information. Although my feelings are sensibly hurt and my compassion strongly excited by _the disgraceful and miserable state of poverty to which his Excellency's brothers are reduced_, yet, situated as I am, it is not in my power to interfere with effect. My efforts on a former occasion failed of success, _and my interposition now would only excite the resentment of the minister towards the unhappy sufferers, in consequence of their application to me, from whom ALONE, however, they hope for relief from their present distress_, which, their near connection with the Vizier considered, is both shameful and unprecedented. That no regular courts of justice have been established in this country is particularly pointed at in my instructions, as the most disreputable defect in his Highness's government; yet the minister seems determined on abolishing even the shadow of so necessary an institution. The office of Chief Justice, as held by Moulavy Morobine, was ever nugatory, but now it is sunk into the lowest contempt. The original establishment, inadequate as it was, is mouldering away, and the officers now attached to it are literally starving, as no part of their allowance has been paid for above six months past. He himself has proposed to resign his appointment, being every way precluded from a possibility of exercising the duties of it."

XLVI. That it appears by the said letter, and the papers therewith transmitted, as well as other documents in the said correspondence, that, in consequence of the distress brought upon the Nabob's finances, certain of the princes, his brethren, the children of Sujah ul Dowlah, the late sovereign of the country, were put upon pensions unsuitable to their birth and rank, and by the mismanagement of the minister aforesaid, (appointed by the said Warren Hastings,) for two years together no considerable part of the said inadequate pension was paid; and not being able to maintain the attendants necessary for their protection in a city in which all magistracy and justice was abolished, they were not only liable to suffer the greatest extremities of penury, but their lives were exposed to the attempts of assassins: the condition of one of the said princes, called the Nabob Bahadur, being by himself strongly expressed in three letters to the said Resident Bristow,--the first dated the 28th of December, 1783; the second, the 7th of January, 1784; and the third, the 15th of January, 1784,--which letters were duly transmitted, in the dispatch of the 29th of the same month, to Warren Hastings, Esquire, and are as follow.

"Your own servant carried you the account of what he himself was an eye-witness to, after the affair of last night. These are the particulars. About midnight my aunt received twelve wounds from a ruffian, of which she died. I also received six successive stabs, which alarmed the people of the house, who set up a shouting: whereupon the assassin run off. Besides being _without food or the means of providing any_, this misfortune has befallen me. _I am desirous of sending the coffin to your door_. It is your duty, both for the sake of God and of Christ, to execute justice, and to inquire what harm I have done to the murderer sufficient to deserve assassination, or even injury. _You now stand in the place of his Excellency the Vizier_. I request you will do me justice. What more can I say?

"P.S. I am also desirous to show you my wounds."

* * * * *

_From the same, 29th [7th?] January, 1784._

"You have been duly informed of all the circumstances relative both to the murder of the innocent, and of my being wounded, as well by my former letter, as by the messenger whom you sent to inquire into the state of my health; and I have every reason to hope, from your known kindness, that you will not be deficient in seeking out the assassin. _I am at this moment overwhelmed in misfortune. Whilst the blood is flowing from my wounds, neither I nor my children nor my servants have wherewithal to procure subsistence_; nor have I it in my power either to purchase remedies or to reward the physician: _it is for the sake of God alone that he attends me_. Thus loaded with calamity upon calamity, I am unable to support life; for I find no relief from any affliction either day or night. Do you now stand in the place of my father; grant me fresh life by speedy acts of benevolence.

"For these two last years his Excellency established a pension for me of twenty thousand rupees; but I never received the full amount of it, either last year or the year before. Should it, however, be paid me, though inadequate to my desires, I shall still be enabled to support myself. From the beginning of this year to the present time I have not received a farthing, nor do I expect any; though, if you afford protection to the oppressed, all my wishes will be accomplished. I was desirous of waiting on you with my family, that you might be an eye-witness to their condition; but I was advised not to stir out on account of my wounds. What more can I say?"

* * * * *

_The following Extracts are made from the Third Letter from the same Prince, dated January 15, 1784._

"The particulars of the late and unforeseen misfortune with which I have been overwhelmed are not unknown unto you,--that the innocent blood of my aunt, _the prop and ruler of my family_, was shed, and in the same manner I, too, was wounded. Until now I feel the pain and affliction of my wounds; _and no person has regarded my solicitations for redress, sought after the assassin, and brought him to condign punishment, yourself excepted_."--"In like manner as the Honorable Governor-General has adopted my brother Saadut Ali Khan for his son and relieved him from the vexation, affliction, and dependence of this place, would it be extraordinary that you also should, in your bounty and favor, consent to adopt me, who do not possess the necessaries of life, and permit me to attend you to whatever part of the world you may travel, whereby I shall at all times derive honor and advantage? Formerly us three brothers, Saadut Ali, Mirza Jungly, and I, the poor and oppressed, were, in the presence of our blessed father, whose soul rests in heaven, treated alike. Now the ministers of this government put me upon a footing with our younger brothers, who have lately left the zenanah, and whose expenses are small. On this scale, which is in every respect insufficient for my maintenance, they pay _the pitiful allowance only when it is their pleasure to do it_. My situation has for years past been increasing in wretchedness to a degree that _I am in want of daily bread, and my servants and animals are dying of hunger. My distresses are so great that I have not been able to pay a daum to the surgeons for the cure of my wounds; and they, too, are discouraged from affording me their assistance or furnishing me with medicines_. How, then, is it possible for me to exist? Considering you as my patron, participating in my afflictions, I have represented the circumstances concerning my situation; and I hope, from your friendship, that you will honor me with a favorable answer."

XLVII. The Resident, Bristow, did also receive a strong application from three others of the brethren of the reigning sovereign, called Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Ennayut Ali, and Mirza Syef Ali, representing their very pitiable case, in a letter of the 9th of March, 1783, in which, among other particulars, are contained the following.

"Our situation is not fit to be represented. _For two years we have not received a hubba_ on account of our tuncaw [assignment on the revenue], though the ministers have annually charged a lac of rupees, and never paid us anything. _After all, we are the sons of Sujah ul Dowlah!_ It is surprising, having such a friend as you, our situation is arrived at that pass that we should be in distress for _dry bread and clothes_. Whereas you have done many generous acts, be pleased so to show us your favor, that by some means we may receive our allowances from the Company's treasury, and not be obliged to depend upon and solicit others for it."

XLVIII. That one of the princes aforesaid, called the Mirza Jungly, about the beginning of the year 1783, was obliged to fly from the dominions of the Nabob of Oude, and to leave his country and connections; and as the Resident, Bristow, writing from Lucknow, hath observed, "he went to try his fortune at other courts, in preference to starving at home, which might have been his fate, by all accounts, at this place." And the said prince sought for succor at the court of one of the neighboring Mahomedan princes; but conceiving some disgust at the treatment he met with there, he departed from thence, and on the 8th of February, 1783, arrived at the Mahratta camp, while David Anderson, Esquire, was there in the character of Minister Plenipotentiary to the Company, with a view, if his reception there should not prove answerable to his wishes, to pass on to the southward. And the said Anderson, probably considering this event as of very great importance to the honor of the British government, as well as to its interest, on the one hand, by exhibiting the son and brother of a sovereign prince, from whom the Company had received many millions of money, a fugitive from his country, and a wanderer for bread through the courts of India, and, on the other, the consequences which might arise from the Mahrattas having in their possession and under their influence a son of the late Nabob of Oude, did without delay advise Warren Hastings, Esquire, of the event aforesaid; and he did also write to Mr. Bristow, the Resident at the court of the Nabob Vizier, several letters, of the 9th and 20th of February, and of the 6th of March and 6th of April, 1783, in order that some steps should be taken for his return and establishment in his own country. And the said Anderson did inform the Resident, Bristow, in his letter aforesaid, that, on the arrival of the fugitive prince, brother of the reigning sovereign of Oude, at the Mahratta camp, he did cause his tent to be pitched close to that of Mr. Anderson; but finding this not agreeable to the Mahratta general, Sindia, he afterwards removed: and that he showed a strong attachment to the English, and was inclined to throw himself upon their generosity; that he was desirous of going to Calcutta, and declared, that, if he, the said Anderson, "would give him the smallest encouragement, he would quit all his followers, and come alone, and would take up his residence under his protection." And the said Anderson did declare, that he thought it "would be policy, and much to the credit of our government, that some provision should be made for Mirza Jungly in our territories."

XLIX. That the said Bristow did represent the aforesaid circumstances to Hyder Beg Khan, minister to the Nabob of Oude, declaring it his opinion, "that his Highness's brother's thus taking refuge with a foreign prince is a reflection upon the Vizier, and it would be advisable that an allowance should be granted to him upon the footing of his brothers, that he might remain in the presence." But the Nabob was induced to refuse to his brother any offer of any allowance beyond the two hundred pounds per month, allowed, but not paid, to his other brothers,--and which the said prince did observe to Mr. Anderson, "that it was not only inadequate to his expenses, but infinitely less" (as the truth was) "than what his Excellency has settled on many persons of inferior rank, who have not so good a claim to his support; and that it would not be sufficient to enable him to live at Lucknow, where all his friends and relations were, and so many of his inferiors lived in a state of affluence." In case, therefore, it could not be increased, he requested leave to live in the Company's provinces, or at Calcutta; for that in any of these situations "he could with less difficulty regulate his expenses." And he did declare, that, if his request was granted to him, he would immediately quit all his prospects with Sindia. To these propositions he received a very discouraging answer from his brother's minister, containing a positive and final refusal of any increase of allowance, obtaining only the Nabob's permission to retire into the Company's provinces. But Mr. Anderson did not think himself authorized to take any steps for the prince's retreat into the said province without Sindia's concurrence, who, he observed, would use every art to detain him, and accordingly did offer him the command of a battalion of infantry to be paid directly from his own treasury, and six thousand pounds sterling a year for keeping up a corps of horse, and to settle upon him a landed estate of four thousand pounds a year as a provision for his wife and children: which honorable offers it appears he did accept, and did and doth remain in the Mahratta service.

L. That, during the whole course of this transaction, the said Warren Hastings was duly advised thereof, first by a very early letter from the said Anderson, and afterwards by the Resident, Bristow, who, on the 23d of April, 1783, transmitted to him his whole correspondence with Mr. Anderson. But what answer or instructions the said Warren Hastings did give to Mr. Anderson does not appear, he not having recorded anything upon that subject; but it appears that to the Resident, Bristow, who required to be informed whether the reception of the fugitive prince aforesaid in the Company's provinces would meet his approbation, he gave no answer whatsoever: by which criminal neglect, or worse, with regard to a brother of an ally of the Company, who showed a strong attachment and preference to the English nation, and by suffering him, without any known effort to prevent it, to attach himself to the cause and fortunes of the Mahrattas, who, he, the said Hastings, well knew, did keep up claims upon several parts of the dominions of Oude, and had with difficulty been persuaded to include the Nabob in the treaty of peace, he, having suffered him first to languish at home in poverty, and then to fly abroad for subsistence, and afterwards taking no step and countenancing no negotiations for his return from his dangerous place of refuge, at the same time that several of his, the said Hastings's, creatures had each of them allowances much more considerable than would have sufficed for the satisfaction and comfort of him, the said fugitive prince, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.

LI. That the indigent condition before related of the other brothers of the Nabob was also duly transmitted to the said Warren Hastings; but he did never order or direct any steps whatsoever to be taken towards the relief of the family of a reigning prince, who were daily in danger of perishing by famine through the effect of his measures, and those of a person whom he supported in power against the will and inclinations of the said prince and his family.

LII. That the foregoing instances of the penury, distress, dispersion, and exile of the reigning family, as well as the general disorder in all the affairs of Oude, did strongly enforce the necessity of a proper use of the British influence (the only real government then existing) in the province aforesaid for a regulation of the economy of the Vizier's court, as well as for the proper administration of the public concerns, civil and military, which were in the greatest disorder; and the said Warren Hastings was under obligation to provide for the same, and did himself understand it to be his duty so to do, and that he was therein warranted by the spirit of the treaty of Chunar, as well as by other universal powers of control, and even of supersession, supposed by him to exist in the relation between the British government and that of Oude; and accordingly he did, in his instructions to the Resident Middleton, to which he required his most implicit obedience, direct him to an interference in and control upon all the affairs concerning the revenues, the military arrangements, and all the other branches of the Nabob's government.

LIII. That, upon his recall of the said Middleton, he, in his instructions to the Resident Bristow, dated 23d of October, 1781 [1782?], did at large set forth the situation of the court and government of Oude, the situation and character of the Nabob, of the acting minister, and of the British Resident at that court, and did plainly, distinctly, and without reserve, describe the extent of the authority to be exercised by the last of these persons, as well as the unqualified compliance to be expected from the two former. And he did accordingly declare, that, "_from the nature of our connection with the government of Oude_, and from the Nabob's incapacity, _a necessity will forever exist_, while we have the claim of a subsidy upon the resources of his country, of exercising an influence, and frequently substituting it _ENTIRELY in the place of an avowed and constitutional authority, in the administration of his [the Nabob's] government_"; and he did further in the said instructions, namely, in instruction the fourth, direct the said Resident in the words following: "I must have recourse to you for the introduction of a _new_ system in that government; nor can I omit, whilst I express my reliance on you for that purpose, to repeat the sentiments which I expressed in the verbal instructions which I gave you at your departure, _that there can be no medium in the relation between the Resident and the minister, but either the Resident must be the slave and vassal of the minister, or the minister at the absolute disposal of the Resident_." And he, the said Hastings, did state, in the same article of the instructions aforesaid, that, though the conduct of the said Hyder Beg Khan had been highly reprehensible, and that he was much displeased thereat, he would prefer him to any other, on account of his ability and knowledge of business, with the following proviso,--"If he would submit to hold his office on such conditions as I require. He exists by his dependence on the influence of our government. It must be advisable to try him by the mode of conciliation; at the same time that in your _final conversation with him_ it will be necessary to declare to him, _in the plainest terms_, the footing and condition on which he shall be _permitted_ to retain his place, with the alternative of a dismission, and a scrutiny into his conduct, if he refuses it. In the first place, I will not receive from the Nabob, _as his_, letters dictated by _the spirit of opposition_; but shall consider every such attempt _as an insult on our government_. In the second place, I shall expect that _nothing_ is done in his official character but with your knowledge and participation."

LIV. That the said Hastings having described, in the manner aforesaid, the relative situation of the Resident and the minister, he did state also the relative situation of the said minister and his master, the Nabob, declaring, "that the minister did hold _without control_ the unparticipated and entire administration, with all the powers annexed to that government,--_the Nabob being, as he ever must be in the hands of some person, a mere cipher in his_" (the minister's). And having thus stated the subordination of the minister to the Resident, and the subordination of the Nabob to the minister, he did naturally declare, "that the first share of the responsibility would rest upon the said Resident" And he did further declare, "that the other conditions did follow distinctly in their places, because he did _consider the Resident as responsible for them_."

LV. That, for the direction of the Resident in the exercise of so critical a trust, wherein all the true and substantial powers of government were in an inverted relation and proportion to the official and ostensible authorities, and in which the said Hastings did suppose the necessity constantly existing for exercising an influence, and frequently for substituting _entirely_ the British authority "in the place of the avowed and constitutional government," he, the said Hastings, did properly leave to the Resident a discretionary power for his deviation from any part of his instructions,--interposing a caution for his security and direction, that, as much as he could, he would leave the subject free for his, the said Hastings's, correction of it, and would instantly inform him or the board, according to the degree of its importance, with his reasons for it.

LVI. That, besides the institution of the courts of justice, as before recited, four other principal objects in the reformation of the affairs of Oude were expressly recommended to the Residents Middleton and Bristow, and must be understood to be the conditions upon which the said Hastings must have meant to have it understood that the acting minister of Oude was to hold his employment: namely, the limitation of the Nabob's personal expenses; the reduction of the Nabob's troops in number, and the change in arrangement; the appointment of proper collectors for the revenues; and the appointment of proper officers for all parts of the executive administration.

LVII. That the first object, namely, that of the limitation of the Nabob's personal expenses, and separating them from the public establishments, he, the said Hastings, did state as the first and fundamental part of his regulation, and that upon which all the others would depend,--and did declare, "that, in order to prevent the Vizier's alliance from being a clog instead of an aid to the Company, _the most essential_ part is to _limit_ and _separate_ his personal disbursements from the public accounts: _they must not exceed_ what he has received in any of the last three years." And as to the public treasury and disbursements, he, the said Hastings, did, in the said instructions, wholly withdraw them from the personal management or interference of the Nabob, and did expressly order and direct "that they should be under the _sole_ management of the ministers, with the Resident's concurrence." And on the appointment of the Resident Bristow, in October, 1782, he, the said Hastings, did order and direct him in every point of the instructions to Middleton not revoked or qualified by his then instructions, to which he did require his, the said Resident Bristow's, "most attentive and literal obedience."

LVIII. That the said Resident Bristow did, in consequence of the renewal to him of the said instructions as aforesaid, endeavor to limit and put in order the Nabob's expenses; but he was in that particular traversed and counteracted, and in the end wholly defeated, by the minister, Hyder Beg Khan. And though the obstructions aforesaid, agreeably to the instructions given to Middleton, and to him, the said Bristow, were represented to the said Warren Hastings by the Resident aforesaid, yet the said Warren Hastings did give no kind of support to the said Resident, or take any steps towards enabling him, the said Resident, to effectuate the said necessary limitation and distribution of expenses, by himself, the said Hastings, ordered and prescribed; nor, if he disapproved the proceedings of the said Resident, did he give him any instruction for the forbearance of the same, or for the exerting his duty in any other mode; nor did he call for any illustration from him of anything doubtful in his correspondence, nor state to him any complaint made privately of his conduct, in order to receive thereon an explanation; but he did leave him to pursue at his discretion the extensive powers before described, to effect the reformation which he was directed to accomplish, under the responsibility denounced to him as aforesaid, if he should fail therein, as he was supposed to be substantially invested with all the powers of government.

LIX. That, instead of the said support or instruction, he, the said Hastings, did countenance, or more probably cause or direct, a representation to be made to him by the acting minister of the Nabob of Oude, complaining grievously of the proceedings of the Resident aforesaid, as usurpations on the Nabob's authority and indignities on his person. And although he, the said Hastings, did instruct the Resident, Bristow, to inform the said Hyder Beg Khan that he would not receive from the Nabob, as _his_, letters directed by the spirit of opposition, but should consider every such attempt as his, the minister's, as an insult on our government, yet he did receive as _his_ the Nabob's own letters, and as written from the impressions on his own mind, and as the suggestions of his own judgment, letters to the same effect as those written by the minister, although he had declared upon record that the said "Nabob was a mere cipher in his, the said minister's, hands," and "that he had dared to use both the Nabob's name, and even his seal, affixed to letters either directed to the Nabob or written as from him without his knowledge," and although he did assert or record as aforesaid, that, in a letter which he had lately received from the Nabob, the minister had the presumption to make the Nabob declare that which was _true_ to be _false_, and that "his _making use_ of the Nabob in such a manner did show how thin the veil was by which _he_ covered _his own acts_, and that such artifices would only tend to make them the more criminal from _the falsehood and duplicity with which they were associated_."

LX. That the said Hastings did act upon the letters pretended to be written by the Nabob, as well as on those actually written by the minister, without previously communicating the matter of the said complaint to the said Resident, and did give credit to the same, and coming, as aforesaid, from a person by himself, the said Hastings, charged with artifice, falsehood, and duplicity, and with abusing to his own evil purposes the name and seal of his master without his knowledge, and without any previous inquiry into the facts and circumstances; and did thereon ground an accusation against the said Resident, Bristow, before the board at Calcutta, in which he did represent the conduct of the said Bristow, in attempting to limit the household expenses of the Nabob, as an indignity "which no man living, however mean his rank in life, or dependent his condition in it, would permit to be exercised by any other, but with the want or forfeiture of every manly principle." And he did further accuse the said Bristow for that, in his proceedings in the regulation of the Nabob's household, "he should receive to himself, or Mr. Cowper for him, or a treasurer for both, (for the arrangement has never been well defined,) the money assigned for the support of the Nabob's household,--issue it as he pleased, not to the Nabob, but to the menial officers of his household,--dispose of his superfluous horses, and other cattle,--determine how many elephants were necessary to the state of the Vizier of the Empire, the number of domestics for his attendance, and pry into the kitchen for the purpose of ascertaining the quantity of victuals which ought to be dressed in it,--control the accounts of these disbursements,--and appropriate to his own use (for that the consequence was inevitable, if he chose it) the residue produced by those economical retrenchments."

LXI. That the said charge is malicious and insidious; because the attempt to introduce proper officers for the management of household expenses so considerable that the said Hastings has stated the allotment for the same at three hundred thousand pounds sterling yearly, and that other accounts have carried it to four hundred thousand pounds sterling and upwards, and to keep proper and regular accounts thereof, was a necessary regulation, and agreeable to the dignity of the Nabob, and by no means a degradation either of his person or authority, which was specially provided for in the regulations, as no expense could be incurred but by his own personal warrant under his sign manual; nor doth there appear therein anything but what is of absolute necessity to prevent embezzlement to his prejudice. And the said Hastings hath declared, in the fifth article of the instructions to the said Resident, that _no_ administration can be properly conducted without regular offices; and that in the whole province of Oude "there was _not one_, the _whole_ being engrossed by the minister": of which minister, in the fourteenth article, he declares his suspicion that the Nabob did not receive the whole and punctual payment of the sum assigned for the purpose of the household, but that some part had been by him withheld from the Nabob; and that, from private information he had lately received, he had reason to believe that this was actually the case. And the said Hastings well knew that the Nabob's household had been ill conducted, that the allowances of his servants had not been paid, that his distress was scandalous, and that his nearest relations were in a famishing condition; and the said Hastings did also well know that the household of the Nabob was provided for or neglected, not at his own discretion, but at that of the said Hyder Beg Khan; and he did, in the fourteenth article aforesaid, instruct the Resident, Bristow, to show every ostensible and external mark of respect to the Nabob, in order to induce him to become himself the mover of every act necessary for the advancing of his own interests and the discharge of his debts to the Company,--declaring, "that they never could be effected while the minister retained that ascendency over him which he at present holds by the means of a nearer and more private intercourse, and by affecting to be the mediator of his rights against the claims of our government." And the said Hastings did further well know that there was no way of ascertaining the payment of the assignments for the Nabob's household, either for the general purposes of their destination or to the particular objects to which they ought to be applied, without regular offices of receipt and of account, which might prevent the said minister, Hyder Beg Khan, or the British Resident, or any other, from embezzling or misapplying the same. But the total want of offices aforesaid in every department of government did furnish occasion of concealing all frauds, clandestine presents, or pensions to a Governor-General, Commander-in-Chief, or other servant of the Company.

LXII. That the said Warren Hastings, who did pretend so deep a concern for the indignities supposed to be suffered by the Nabob merely in the limitation and regulation of unnecessary expenses relative to his kitchen, domestics, &c., did show no attention or compassion to the said Nabob, when, in the year 1779, the said Nabob represented, that the pensions of his old servants for thirty years, the expenses of his family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of his grandmother, mother, and aunts, and of his brothers and dependants, given for their support, were not _regulated_, but _stopped_.

LXIII. That the other articles of regulation, namely, the reform of the troops in number and in arrangement, the appointment of proper collectors for the revenues, and the general constitution of offices for the executive administration, were in like manner totally defeated by the said Hyder Beg Khan. And the said Hastings did receive a charge from him, and did adopt it as his own, representing the endeavors of the Resident to act in the regulations aforesaid agreeably to the spirit of his instructions, and in confidence of the powers vested in and the responsibility imposed upon him, the said Resident, as usurpations of the authority and prerogative of the Nabob; and he, the said Hastings, did make criminal charges thereon against the said Resident, Bristow, of which charges the Council Board did, on hearing the same, and the defence of the said Bristow, fully acquit him.

LXIV. That the said Hastings, by abetting Hyder Beg Khan, a person described by him as aforesaid, in his opposition to all the plans of necessary reformation proposed by the said Hastings himself, and having suggested no other whatever in lieu thereof, to answer the purposes for which he had stipulated in the treaty of Chunar the interference of the Resident in every branch of the Nabob's government, did thereby frustrate every one of the good ends proposed by him in the said treaty of Chunar, and did grossly abuse his trust in giving the exorbitant powers before recited, and asserting them to exist in the British Resident, without suffering them even in appearance to answer any of the proper and justifiable ends for which any power or influence can or ought to exist in any government.

LXV. That there is just ground to violently presume that not only the letters in the name of the Nabob aforesaid were dictated to him by his minister, Hyder Beg Khan, in whose hands the said Hastings has described his master to be "a mere cipher," &c., but which Hyder Beg was the known instrument of the said Hastings, but that the conduct and letters of complaint of the said Hyder Beg were in effect and substance prescribed and dictated to him by the said Warren Hastings, or his secret agent, Palmer, by his direction: because it is notorious that the powers of the said Hyder Beg were solely supported by him, the said Hastings, who, according to the state of favor or displeasure in which he stood, hath frequently promised him support or threatened him with dismission and punishment, and therefore it is not to be thought that he would take so material a step as to oppose the Company's Resident, acting under the instructions of the Governor-General and Council, and to accuse him with so much confidence, and in a manner so different from the usual style of supplication on all other occasions employed by that court, if he had not been previously well assured that his writing in that manner would be pleasing to the person upon whom he solely depended for his power, his fortune, and perhaps for his life;--secondly, because, when it suited the purposes of the said Hastings on a former occasion, that is, in the year 1784 [1781?], to remove the Resident Bristow aforesaid from his office, a letter from the Nabob was laid before the Council Board at Calcutta, proposing, that, in order to prevent the effects of the said Bristow's application to Europe for redress, the said Hastings should send him drafts of letters which he, the said Nabob, would write in his own name and character to the King, to his Majesty's ministers, and to the Court of Directors, expressing himself, in the letter aforesaid, in the words following, viz., "To prevent his [Bristow's] applying to Europe, send me, if _you_ think proper, the drafts of letters which _I_ may write to the King, the Vizier, and the chiefs of the Company";--thirdly, that, though the said Hastings, and his secret agent, Palmer, did pretend and positively assert that they had no share in the letters aforesaid from the Nabob and his minister, there was an original note to the Nabob's letters of accusation, referring to distinct parts and specified numbers of the agent Palmer's secret correspondence with the said Warren Hastings, and the said letter, with the said reference, was, through inadvertence, laid before the board.

LXVI. That the said Warren Hastings, having thrown the government of Oude into great confusion and distress, and thereby prevented the discharge of the debt, or pretended debt, to the Company, did, by all the said intrigues, machinations, and charges, aim at the filling the said office of Resident at Oude with his own dependants or by himself personally; as it appears that he did first propose to place in the said office his secret agent, Palmer, and that afterwards, when he was not able to succeed therein, he did propose nominally to abolish the said office, but in effect to fill it by himself,--proposing to the Council and rendering himself responsible (but not in fortune) for the payment of the Company's debt within a certain given time, if he were permitted and commissioned by the Council to act for the board in that province, and did inform them that he was privately well assured that in a few days he should receive an invitation to that effect; and he did state, (as in the year 1781 he had stated as a reason for his former delegation,) "that the state of the country was so disordered in its revenue and administration, and the credit and influence of the Nabob himself so much shook by _the late usurpation_ of his authority, and the contests which attended it, as to require the accession of an extraneous aid to restore the powers and to reanimate the constitution of his government,"--although he, the said Hastings, did for a long time before attribute the weakness of his government to an extraneous interference. And the said Council, on his engagement aforesaid, did consent thereto; and he did accordingly receive a commission, enabling him to act in the affairs of Oude, not only as the Resident might have done, but as largely as the Council-General might legally delegate their own powers.

LXVII. That the said Warren Hastings, in accepting the said commission, did subject his character and the reputation of his office to great imputations and suspicions, by taking upon himself an inferior office, out of which another had upon his intrigues been removed by a perpetual obstruction which rendered it impossible for him to perform his duty or to obey his instructions; and he did increase the said grounded suspicions by exercising that office in a government from whence it was notorious he had himself received an unlawful gift and present from the ministers, and in which he had notoriously suffered many, and had himself actually directed some, acts of peculation, by granting various pensions and emoluments, to the prejudice of the revenue of a distressed country, which he was not authorized to grant.

LXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings did proceed unto the said province of Oude under color of providing a remedy for the disorders described to be existing in the same, and for the recovery of the Company's pretended debt. And the said Warren Hastings, who had thought fit to recall the Company's Resident, appointed to that office by the Court of Directors, and to suspend his office, did, notwithstanding, of his own choice and selection, and on his own mere authority, take with him in his progress a large retinue, "and a numerous society of English gentlemen to compose his family," which he represents as necessary, although, in a letter from that very place to which he took that very numerous society, he informs the Court of Directors "that his own consequence and that of the nation he represents are independent of show." And after his arrival there, he, the said Warren Hastings, did write from Lucknow, the capital of that province, a letter, dated the 30th of April, 1784, to the Court of Directors, in which are several particulars to the following purport or tenor, and which he points out to the Directors "to be circumstances of no trivial information," namely,--"that he had found that the lands in that province, as well as in some parts more immediately under the Company, have suffered in a grievous manner, being completely exhausted of their natural moisture by the total failure of one entire season of the periodical rains," with a few exceptions, which were produced only "by the uncommon labor of the husbandman." And in a letter to Edward Wheler, Esquire, a member of the Council-General, from Benares, the 20th of September, 1784, he says, that "_the public revenues_ had declined with the failure of the cultivation _in three successive years_; and all the stores of grain which the _providence_ of the husbandmen, (as he was informed is their _custom_,) in defiance of the _vigilance_ of the aumils [collectors], _clandestinely reserved for their own use_, were of course exhausted, in which state no person would accept of the charge of the collections on a positive engagement; nor did the rain fall till the 10th of July." And in another letter, dated from Benares, the 1st of October following, he repeats the same accounts, and that the "country could not bear further additions of expense: that it had _no inlets of trade_ to supply the issues that were made from it" (the exceptions stated there being inconsiderable); "therefore _every rupee_ which is drawn into your treasury [the Company's] from its circulation will accelerate the period at which its ability must cease _to pay even the stipulated subsidy_." Notwithstanding this state of the country, of which he was well apprised before he left Calcutta, and the poverty and distress of the prince having been frequently, but in vain, represented to him, in order to induce him to forbear his oppressive exactions, he did, in order to furnish the Council with a color for permitting him to recall the Company's Resident, and to exercise the whole powers of the Company in his own person, without any check whatsoever, or witness of his proceedings, except the persons of his own private choice, make the express and positive engagement aforesaid, which, if understood of a real and substantial discharge of debt for the relief of the total of the Company's finances, was grossly fallacious: because at the very time he must have been perfectly sensible, that, in the then state of the revenues and country of Oude, (which are in effect the Company's revenues and the Company's country,) the debt or pretended debt aforesaid, asserted to be about five hundred thousand pounds, or thereabouts, could not be paid without contracting another debt at an usurious interest, without encroaching on the necessary establishments or on private property or on the pay of the army, or without grievous oppression of the country, or all these together. And it doth appear that one hundred thousand pounds towards the said payment of debts was borrowed at Calcutta by the Nabob's agent there, but at what interest is not known; it appears also that other sums were borrowed for arrear of the interest, on which forty thousand pounds sterling appears in the Company's claims for the current year, and that various deductions were made from the jaghires restored to the Begums, as well as other parts of the Nabob's family; and it did and doth appear that an arrear is still due to the old and new brigade,--but whether the same be growing or not doth not appear: yet he hath not hesitated to assert that he had "provided for the _complete_ discharge, in _one_ year, of a debt contracted by _the accumulation of many_, and from a country whose resources have been wasted and dissipated by three successive years of drought and one of anarchy." But the said Hastings never did even realize the payments to be made in the first year, (as he confesses in the said letter,) except by an anticipation of the second; and though he states in his letter aforesaid the following facts and engagements, that is to say, "_that a recovery of so large a part of your property_ [the Company's] will afford a seasonable and substantial relief to the necessities of your government, and enable it (for such is my confident hope) _to begin on the reduction of your debt at interest_ before the conclusion of this year (I mean the year of this computation)." Whereas the said Warren Hastings did apply the whole produce of the revenue to the mere pay of some part of the British army in Oude; and did not mention in his correspondence that he had remitted any money whatsoever to Calcutta, nor to any other place, (except the fifty thousand pounds taken from Almas Ali Khan, and said to be remitted to Surat,) for the said "substantial relief," in consequence of the said pretended "recovery of property,"--admitting that it had been suggested to him, and not by him denied, that he had "disappointed the popular expectation by not adopting the policy which he had, _on the conception of better grounds_, rejected; nor did he begin the reduction of the interest debt" at the time stated, nor at any time; but the whole (he well knowing the state of the country from whence the resources aforesaid were by him promised) was a premeditated deceit and imposition on the Board of Council, his colleagues, and on the Court of Directors, his masters.

LXIX. That no traces of regulation appear to have been adopted by the said Warren Hastings during his residence at Lucknow, in conformity to the spirit and intentions of the treaty of Chunar, or of his instructions to Middleton and Bristow, or of the proposed objects of his own commission. But he did, in lieu thereof, pretend to free the Nabob's government from the interference of the Company's servants, and the usurpation (as he called it) of a Resident, and thereby to restore it to its proper tone and energy; whereas the measures he took were such as to leave no useful or responsible superintendence in the British, and no freedom in the Nabob's government: for he did confirm the sole, unparticipated, and entire administration, with all the powers annexed to the government, on the minister, Hyder Beg Khan, to whom he _prevailed_ on the Nabob Vizier to commit the entire charge of his revenues, although he knew that his master was a cipher in his hands,--that he "had affixed his seal to letters written without his knowledge, and such as evidently tended to promote Hyder Beg Khan's influence and interest,"--that his said master did not consider him as a minister of his choice, but as an instrument of his degradation,--that "he exists as a minister by his dependence on the Calcutta government, and that the Nabob himself had no other opinion of him,--that it is by its _declared_ and most _obvious_ support _alone_ that he could maintain his authority and influence." And in his instructions to his secret agent, Major Palmer, dated 6th of May, 1782, to ease his mind and remove his jealousy with regard to British interference, he did instruct him, "that much delicacy and caution will be required in your declarations on this subject, lest they should be construed to extend to an immediate change in the administration of his affairs, or the instruments of it. Their persons must be considered as _sacred, while_ they act with the _participation of our influence_. This distinction the Nabob _understands_; nor will it be either necessary or proper to allude to it, unless he himself should first introduce the subject." And the said Hastings did assume, as to a dependant of the lowest order, to prescribe to him the conditions on which he is to hold his place,--to threaten him with scrutinies into his conduct, with dismission, with punishment,--that he was guilty of falsehood and duplicity, and that he had made his master assert what was true to be false,--that he suspected he had withheld from his master what he ought to have paid to him,--that the event of his having _prevailed_ on the Nabob to intrust him as aforesaid was, according to his, the said Hastings's, own letter, written to the said Hyder Beg Khan himself, "an accumulation of distress, debasement, and dissatisfaction to the Nabob, and of disappointment and disgrace to me. Every measure which he had himself proposed, and to which he had solicited my assistance, has been so conducted as to give him cause of displeasure; there are no officers established by which his affairs could be regularly conducted; mean, incapable, and indigent man have been appointed aumils of the districts, without authority, and without the means of personal protection; some of them have been murdered by the zemindars, and those zemindars, instead of punishment, have been permitted to retain their zemindaries with independent authority; all the other zemindars suffered to rise up in rebellion, and to insult the authority of the sircar, without any attempt made to suppress them; and the Company's debt, instead of being discharged by the assignments, and extraordinary sources of money provided for that purpose, is likely to exceed even the amount at which it stood at the time in which the arrangement with his Excellency was concluded. _The growth of these evils was early made known to me, and their effects foreboded in the same order and manner as they have since come to pass._ In such a state of calamity and disgrace, I can no longer remain a passive spectator; nor would it be becoming to conceal my sentiments, or qualify the expression of them. I now plainly tell you, that you are answerable for every misfortune and defect of the Nabob Vizier's government." And after giving orders, and expressing some hopes of better behavior, he adds, "If I am disappointed, you will impose on me the painful and humiliating necessity of acknowledging to him that I have been deceived, and of recommending the examination of your conduct to his justice, both for the redress of his own and the Company's grievances, and for the injury sustained by both in their mutual connection. _Do not reply to me_, that what I have written is from the suggestion of your enemies; nor imagine that I have induced myself to write in such plain and declaratory terms, without a clear insight into all the consequences of it, and a fixed determination upon them."

LXX. That the aforesaid being the tenure of the power of the said minister, and such his character, as given by the said Warren Hastings himself, who did originally compel the Nabob to receive him, who did constantly support him against the Nabob, his master, as well as against the Company's Resident,--the delivering over to such a person his master, his family, his country, and the care of the British interests therein, without control or public inspection, was an high crime and misdemeanor.

LXXI. That the next person whom the said Hastings did invest with power in the said country was a certain opulent and powerful native manager of revenue, called Almas Ali Khan, closely connected with the said Hyder Beg Khan, and to whom the said Hyder Beg Khan, as the said Hastings has admitted, "had intrusted the _greatest_ part of his revenues, without any pledge or security for his fidelity." And afterwards the said Hastings charges the said Almas Ali with an intention of removing from the Nabob's dominions: he states, "as taking with him," and therefore being possessed of, "an immense treasure, the fruits of his embezzlements and oppressions, and an army raised for its protection."

LXXII. That the said Warren Hastings was, or pretended to be, impressed with the evil character, dangerous designs, and immoderate power of the said Almas Ali; that he did insert among his instructions to the Resident Bristow an order of a dangerous and unwarrantable nature, in which, upon his, the said Hastings's, simple allegation of offences, not accurately described or specified, with regard either to the fact, the nature of the offence, or the proof, he was required to urge the Nabob to put him to death, with many qualifications in the said instructions, full of fraud and duplicity, calculated to insnare the said Resident Bristow, and to throw upon him the responsibility of the conduct of the said Almas Ali Khan, if he should continue at large contrary to his orders, or to subject him, the said Resident, to the shame and scandal of apprehending and putting him to death by means which, in the circumstances, must necessarily be such as would be construed into treachery, and he, the said Almas Ali Khan, being from nature and situation suspicious and watchful, and being at that very time in the collection, or farmer of the most important part of the revenues, with an extensive jurisdiction annexed, and at the head of fourteen thousand of his own troops, and having been recently accepted by the Resident Middleton as security for large sums of money advanced by the bankers of Benares to the use of the East India Company; which orders (if the said Resident would or could have executed them) must have raised an universal alarm among all the considerable men of the country concerned in the government, and would have been a means of subverting the public credit of the Company, by the murder of a person engaged for very great sums of money that had been advanced for their use. And the said instruction is as followeth.

"If any engagement shall actually subsist between them at the time you have charge of the Residency, it must, however exceptionable, be faithfully observed; but if he has been guilty of any criminal offence to the Nabob, his master, for which no immunity is provided in the engagement, or he shall break any one of the conditions of it, I do most strictly enjoin you, and it must be your special care to endeavor, _either by force or surprise_, to secure his person and bring him to justice. By bringing him to justice I mean, that you urge the Nabob, on due conviction, _to punish him with death_, as a necessary example to deter others from the commission of the like crimes; nor must you desist till this is effected. I cannot prescribe the means; but to guard myself against the obloquy to which I may be exposed by a forced misconstruction of this order by those who may hereafter be employed in searching our records for cavils and informations against me, I think it proper to forbid and protest against the use of any _fraudulent artifice or treachery to accomplish the end which I have prescribed_; and as you alone are privy to the order, you will of course observe the greatest secrecy, that it may not transpire: but I repeat my recommendation of it, as one of the first and most essential duties of your office."

LXXIII. That, among the reasons assigned for putting to death the said Almas Ali, which the said Hastings did recommend directly and repeatedly to the Resident, "as one of the first and most essential duties of his office," was, in substance, "that, by his extensive trust with regard to the revenues, he had been permitted to acquire independency; that the means thereof had been long seen and the effects thereof foretold by every person acquainted with the state of government, except those immediately interested in it"; and he, the said Warren Hastings, did also charge the said Almas Ali with embezzlement of the revenues and oppression of the people; and nothing appears to disprove the same, but much to give ground to a presumption that the said Almas Ali did grievously abuse the power committed to him, as farmer and collector of the revenue, to the great oppression of the inhabitants of the countries which had been rented to him by Hyder Beg Khan with the knowledge and consent of the said Warren Hastings.

LXXIV. That the Resident, Bristow, declining the violent attempt on the life of Almas Ali deceitfully ordered by the said Warren Hastings, did, on weighty reasons, drawn from the spirit of the said Hastings's own instructions, recommend that his, the said Almas Ali Khan's, farms of revenue, or a great part of them, should be, on the expiration of his lease, taken out of his hands, as being too extensive, and supplying the means of a dangerous power in the country; but yet he, the said Warren Hastings, did not only continue him in the possession of the said revenues, but did give to him a new lease thereof for the term of five years. And on this renovation and increase of trust, the said Warren Hastings did not consent to produce the informer upon whose credit he had made his charge of capital crimes on the said Almas Ali, and had directed him to be put to death, or call upon him to make good his charges; but, instead of this, totally changing his relation to the said Almas Ali, did himself labor to procure from all parts attestations to prove him not guilty of the perfidy and disloyalty of which the said Hastings himself appears to have been to that very time his sole accuser, as he hath since been his most anxious advocate: but though he did use many endeavors to acquit Almas Ali of his intended flight, yet concerning his embezzlements and oppressions, the most important of all charges relative to that of the revenue and collection, he, the said Hastings, hath made no inquiry whatever; by which it might appear that he was not as fully guilty thereof as he had always represented him to be. But some time after he, the said Warren Hastings, had arrived at Lucknow, in the year 1784, he suggested to the said Almas Ali Khan the _advance_ to the Company's use of a sum of money amounting to fifty thousand pounds or thereabouts; and the said suggested advance was (as the said Warren Hastings asserts, no witness or document of the transaction appearing) "cheerfully and without hesitation complied with, considering it as an _evidence seasonably_ offered for the general refutation of the charges of perfidy and disloyalty": which practice of charging wealthy persons with treason and disloyalty, and afterwards acquitting them on the payment of a sum of money, is highly scandalous to the honor, justice, and government of Great Britain; and the offence is highly aggravated by the said Hastings's declaration to the Court of Directors that the charges against Almas Ali Khan have been too laboriously urged against him, and carried at one time to such an excess as had nearly driven him to abandon his country "_for the preservation of his life and honor_," and thus to give a "color to the charges themselves," when he, the said Warren Hastings, did well know that he himself did consider as a crime, and did make it an article in a formal accusation against the Resident Middleton, that he did not inform him, the said Hastings, of the supposed treasons of Almas Ali Khan, and of his design to abandon the country, when he himself did most laboriously urge the charges against him, and when no attempt appears to have been made against the life of the said Almas Ali Khan except by the said Warren Hastings himself.

LXXV. That the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling, or thereabouts, publicly taken by the said Warren Hastings, as an _advance_ for the use of the Company, if given as a consideration or fine, on account of the renewal for a long term of civil authority and military command, and the collection of the revenues to an immense amount, the same being at least eight hundred thousand pounds sterling yearly, was so totally inadequate to the interest granted, that it may justly be presumed it was not on that, or on any public ground or condition, that the said Hastings did delegate, out of all reach of resumption or correction, a lease of boundless power and enormous profit, for so long a term, to a known oppressor of the country.

LXXVI. That Warren Hastings, being at Lucknow in consequence of his deputation aforesaid, did, in his letter from that city, dated 30th of April, 1784, recommend to the Court of Directors, "as his _last and ultimate hope_, that their wisdom would put a _final_ period to _the ruinous and disreputable system_ of interference, whether _avowed or secret_, in the affairs of the Nabob of Oude, and withdraw _forever the influence_ by which it is maintained," and that they ought to confine their views to the sole maintenance of the old brigade stationed in Oude by virtue of the first treaty with the reigning Nabob, expressing himself in the following words to the Court of Directors. "If you transgress that line, you may extend _the distribution of patronage, and add to the fortunes of individuals_, and to the nominal riches of Great Britain; but your _own_ interests will suffer by it; and _the ruin of a great and once flourishing nation will he recorded as the work of your administration, with an everlasting reproach to the British name_. To this reasoning I shall join _the obligations of justice and good faith, which cut off every pretext for your exercising any power or authority in this country, as long as the sovereign of it fulfils the engagements he has articled with you_."

LXXVII. That it appears by the extraordinary recommendation aforesaid, asserted by him, the said Hastings, to be enforced by the "_obligations of justice and good faith_," that the said Warren Hastings, at the time of writing the said letter, had made an agreement to withdraw the British interference, represented by him as a "ruinous and disreputable system," out of the dominions of the Nabob of Oude. But the instrument itself, in which the said agreement is made, (if at all existing,) does not appear; nor hath the said Hastings transmitted any documents relative to the said treaty, which is a neglect highly criminal,--especially as he has informed the Company, in his letter from Benares, "that he has promised the Nabob that he will not abandon him to the _chance_ of any other mode of relation, and most confidently given him assurance of _the ratification and confirmation_ of that which he [the said Hastings] had established between his government and the Company": the said _confident assurance_ being given to an agreement never produced, and made without any sort of authority from the Court of Directors,--an agreement precluding, on the one hand, the operation of the discretion of his masters in the conduct of their affairs, or, on the other, subjecting them to the hazard of an imputation on their faith, by breaking an engagement confidently made in their name, though without their consent, by the first officer of their government.

That the said Hastings, further to preclude the operation of such discretionary conduct in the administration of this kingdom as circumstances might call for, has informed the Directors that he has gone so far as even to condition the existence of the revenue itself with the exclusion of the Company, his masters, from all interference whatsoever: for in his letter to Mr. Wheler, dated Benares, 20th September, 1784, are the following words. "The aumils [collectors] demanded that a clause should be inserted in their engagements, that they were to be in full force for the complete term of their leases, _provided that no foreign authority_ was exercised over them,--or, in other words, _that their engagements were to cease whenever they should be interrupted in their functions by the interference of an English agent_. This requisition was officially notified to me by the acting minister, and referred to me in form by the Nabob Vizier, for my _previous_ consent to it. I encouraged it, and I gave my consent to it." And the said Hastings has been guilty of the high presumption to inform his said masters, that he has taken that course to compel them not to violate the assurances given by him in their name: "There is one condition" (namely, the above condition) "which _essentially connects the confirmation of the settlement itself with the interests of the Company_."

LXXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings, who did show an indecent distrust of the Company's faith, did endeavor, before that time, at other times, namely, in his instructions to his secret agent, Major Palmer, dated the 6th of May, 1782, to limit the confidence to be reposed in the British government to the duration of his own power, in the following words in the fifth article. "It is very much my desire to impress the Nabob with a _thorough_ confidence in the faith and justice of our government,--that is to say, _in my own_, while I am at the head of it: I cannot be answerable for the acts of others independent of me."

LXXIX. That the said Warren Hastings did, in his letter, dated Benares, the 1st of October, 1784, to the Court of Directors, write, "that, if they [the Directors] manifested no _symptoms_ of an (1.) _intended_ interference, the objects of his engagements will be obtained; (2.) but if a different policy shall be adopted,--if new agents are sent into the country, and armed with authority for the purposes of vengeance or corruption (_for to no other will they be applied_),--if new demands are made on the Nabob Vizier, (4.) and accounts overcharged on one side, with a wide latitude taken on the other, to swell his debt beyond the means of payment,--(5.) if political dangers are portended, to ground on them the plea of burdening his country with unnecessary defences and enormous subsidies,--(6.) or if, even abstaining from _direct encroachment on the Nabob's rights_, your government shall show but _a degree of personal kindness to the partisans_ of the late usurpation, or by any constructive indication of partiality and dissatisfaction _furnish_ grounds for the _expectation_ of an _approaching_ change of system,--I am sorry to say, that all my labors will prove abortive."

LXXX. That all the measures deprecated in future by the said Warren Hastings, with a reference to former conduct, in his several letters aforesaid, being (so far as the same are intelligible) six in number, have been all of them the proper acts and measures of the said Warren Hastings himself. For he did himself first of all introduce, and did afterwards continue and support, that interference which he now informs the Court of Directors "is ruinous and disreputable, and which the very _symptoms_ of an _intention_ to renew" he considers in the highest degree dangerous; he did direct, with a controlling and absolute authority, in every department of government, and in every district in the dominions of the Nabob of Oude. Secondly, the appointment of agents, which was eminently the act of his own administration: he not only retaining many agents in the country of Oude, both "_secret and avowed_," but also sending some of them, in defiance to the orders of that very Court of Directors, to whom, in his said letter of the 1st of October, 1784, he assigns "vengeance and corruption" as the only motives that can produce such appointments. Thirdly, that he, the said Warren Hastings, did instruct one of the said agents, and did charge him upon pain of "_a dreadful responsibility_," to perform sundry acts of violence against persons of the highest distinction and nearest relation to the prince; which acts were justly liable to the imputation of "_vengeance_" in the execution, and which he, in his reply to the defence of Middleton to one of his charges, did declare to be liable to the suspicion of "_corruption_ in the relaxation." Fourthly, that he did raise new demands on the Vizier, "and overcharge accounts on one side and take a wide latitude on the other," by sending up a new and before unheard-of overcharge of four hundred thousand pounds and upwards, not made by the Resident or admitted by the Vizier, and, by adding the same, did swell his debt "beyond the means of payment"; and did even insert, as the ninth article of his charge against Middleton, "his omitting to take any notice of the additional balance of Rupees 26,48,571, stated by the Accountant-General to be due from the Vizier on the 30th of April, 1780," to which he did add fourteen lac more, making together the above sum. Fifthly, that he, the said Warren Hastings, did assign "political dangers," in his minute of the 13th December, 1779, for burdening the said Nabob of Oude "with unnecessary defences and enormous subsidies," with regard to which he then declared, that "it was _our_ part, not _his_ [the Nabob's], to judge and to determine." And, sixthly, that he did not only show the _design_, but the _fact_, of personal kindness to the partisans of what he here calls, as well as in another letter, and in one Minute of Consultation, a "late usurpation,"--he having rewarded the principal and most obnoxious of the instruments of the said late usurpation, (if such it was,) Richard Johnson, Esquire, with an honorable and profitable embassy to the court of the Nizam.

LXXXI. That the said Warren Hastings, therefore,--by assuming an authority which he himself did consider as an _usurpation_, and by acts in virtue of that usurped authority, done in his own proper person and by agents appointed by himself, and proceeding (though with some mitigation, for which one of them was by him censured and accused) under his own express and positive orders and instructions, and thereby establishing, as he himself observed, "a system of interference, disreputable and ruinous, which could only be subservient to promote patronage, private interest, private embezzlement, corruption, and vengeance," to the public detriment of the Company, "and to the ruin of a once flourishing nation, and eternally reproachful to the British name," and for the evil effects of which system, "as his sole and ultimate hope" and remedy, he recommends an entire abdication, forever, not only of all power and authority, but even of the interference and influence of Great Britain,--is guilty of an high crime and misdemeanor.

LXXXII. That the said Warren Hastings, in his letter from Chunar of the 29th of November, 1781, has represented that very influence and interference, which in three public papers he denominates "_a late usurpation_" as being authorized by a regular treaty and agreement, voluntarily made with the Nabob himself, at a place called Chunar, on the 19th of September, 1781, a copy of which hath been transmitted to the Court of Directors,--and that three persons were present at the execution of the same, two whereof were Middleton and Johnson, his agents and Residents at Oude, the third the minister of the Nabob. And he did, in his paper written to the Council-General, and transmitted to the Court of Directors, not only declare that the said interference was agreed to by the said Nabob, and sealed with his seal, but would be highly beneficial to him: assuring the said Council, "that, if the Resident performed his duty in the execution of his [the said Hastings's] instructions, the Nabob's part of the engagement will prove of still greater benefit to him than to our government, in whose behalf it was exacted; and that the _participation_ which is allowed our Resident in the _inspection_ of the public treasure will secure the receipt of the Company's demands, whilst _the influence which our government will ALWAYS possess over the public minister of the Nabob, and the authority of our own_, will be an effectual means of securing an attentive and faithful discharge of their several trusts, both towards the Company and the Vizier."

LXXXIII. And the said Warren Hastings did not only settle a plan, of which the agency and interference aforesaid was a part, and assert the beneficial consequences thereof, but did also record, that the same "was a great public measure, constituted on a large and _established system_, and destructive, in its instant effects, of the interest and fortune of many patronized individuals"; and in consequence of the said treaty, he, the said Warren Hastings, did authorize and positively require his agent aforesaid to interfere in and control and regulate _all the Nabob's affairs whatsoever_: and the said Warren Hastings having made for the Company, and in its name, an acquisition of power and authority, even if it had been abused by others, he ought to have remedied the abuse, and brought the guilty to condign punishment, instead of making another treaty without their approbation, consent, or knowledge, and to this time not communicated to them, by which it appears he has annulled the former treaty, and the authority thereby acquired to the Company, as a grievance and usurpation, to which, from the general corruption of their service, no other remedy could be applied than a formal renunciation of their power and influence: for which said actings and doings the said Warren Hastings is guilty of an high crime and misdemeanor.

LXXXIV. That the Company's army in India is an object requiring the most vigilant and constant inspection, both to the happiness of the natives, the security of the British power, and to its own obedience and discipline, and does require that inspection in proportion as it is removed from the principal seat of government; and the number and discipline of the troops kept up by the native princes, along with British troops, is also of great moment and importance to the same ends. That Warren Hastings, Esquire, pretending to pursue the same, did, in virtue of an authority acquired by the treaty of Chunar aforesaid, give strict orders, and to which he did demand _a most implicit obedience_, that _all_ officers of the Nabob's army should be appointed "with _the concurrence of the Resident_," and supposing the case that persons of obnoxious description or of known disaffection to the British government should be appointed, (of which he left the Resident to be the judge,) he did direct in the following words: "You are in such case to remonstrate against it; and if the Vizier should persist in his choice, you are peremptorily, _and in my name_, to oppose it as _a breach of his agreement_"; and he did also direct that the "_mootiana_ [or soldiers employed for the collection of revenue] should be reformed, and reduced into one corps for the whole service, and that _no_ infantry should be left in the Nabob's service but what may be necessary for his bodyguard"; and he did further order and direct as follows: "That in quelling disturbances the commander of the forces should assist you [the said Resident] on the requisition of the Vizier communicated through you to him [the said commander], _or at your own tingle application_. It is directed that the regiment ordered for the immediate protection of your office and person at Lucknow shall be relieved every three months, and during its stay there shall act solely and exclusively under your orders." And it appears in the course of the Company's correspondence, that the country troops under the Nabob's sole direction would be ill-disciplined and unserviceable, if not worse, and therefore the said Warren Hastings did order that "no infantry should be kept in his service"; yet it appears that the said Warren Hastings did make an arrangement for a body of native troops wholly out of the control or inspection of the British government, and left a written order in the hands of Major Palmer (one of _his_ agents, who had been continued there, though the Company was not permitted to employ any) to be transmitted to Colonel Cumming as soon as an adequate force shall be provided _for the defence of the Nabob's frontier_ by detachments from _the Nabob's own battalions_,--the said Colonel Cumming's forces, whom the others were to supersede and replace, consisting wholly of infantry, and which, being intended for the same service, were probably of the same constitution.

LXXXV. That the old brigade of British troops, which by treaty was to remain, had been directed, by the instructions of the said Hastings to the Resident Middleton and to the Resident Bristow, "not to be employed at the requisition of the Vizier any otherwise than through the Resident"; and the said direction was properly given,--it not being fit that British troops should be under the sole direction of foreign independent princes, or of any other than the British government: yet, notwithstanding the proper and necessary direction aforesaid, he, the said Warren Hastings, hath left the said troops, by his new treaty, without any local control, or even inspection, notwithstanding his powers under the treaty of Chunar, and his own repeated orders, and notwithstanding the mischiefs and dangers which the said Warren Hastings did foresee would result therefrom, if left under the sole direction of the Nabob, and their own discretion, the said Hastings having stipulated with the said Nabob not to exercise any authority, or even influence, _secret_ or _avowed_, within his dominions.

LXXXVI. That the crime of the said Warren Hastings, in attempting thus to abandon the British army to the sole discretion of the Nabob of Oude, is exceedingly aggravated by the description given by him severally of the said Nabob of Oude, and of the British army stationed for the defence of his dominions. In his letters to the Court of Directors, and in his Minutes of Consultation, and particularly in his letter of ----, immediately on the accession of the Nabob, he did inform the said Court, "that the Nabob had not, by all accounts, the qualities of the head or heart which fitted him for that office, though there was no dispute concerning his right to succeed"; and some years afterwards, when his accounts must have been rendered more certain, he did, in his Minute of Consultation of the 15th of December, 1779, (regularly transmitted to the Court of Directors,) upon a discussion for withdrawing certain troops kept up in the Nabob's country without his consent, by him, the said Warren Hastings, strongly urge as follows,--"the _necessity_ of maintaining the influence and force which we possess in the country; that the disorders of his state [the Nabob of Oude's state] and dissipation of his revenues are the effects of his own conduct, which has failed, not so much from the usual effects of _incapacity_ as from the detestable choice he has made of the ministers of his power and the participation of his confidence. I forbear to expatiate further on his character; it is sufficient that I am understood by the members of this board, who must know the truth of my allusions. Mr. Francis" (a member of the board) "surely was not aware of the injury he did me [Warren Hastings] by attributing to the spirit of party the character I gave Asoph ul Dowlah [the Nabob of Oude]; he himself knows it _to be true; and it is one of those notorieties which supersede the necessity of any evidence. I was forced to the allusion I made by the imputation cast on this government, as having caused the evils which prevail in the government of the Nabob of Oude, which I could only answer by ascribing them to their true cause, the character and conduct of the Nabob of Oude."_ And the Resident (appointed by the said Hastings, against the orders of the Court of Directors, as his particular confidential representative, one whom the said Nabob did himself request might be continued with him _by an engagement in writing forever_) did some time before, that is, on the 3d of January, 1779, assure the said Hastings and the Council-General, that "such is his Excellency's [the Nabob of Oude's] disposition, and so entirely has he lost the confidence and affections of his subjects, that, unless some restraint is imposed on him which would effectually secure those who live under the protection of his government from violence and oppression, I am but too well convinced that no man of reputation or property will long continue in these provinces"; and that the said Resident proceeds to an instance of oppression and rapine, "out of _many_ of the Nabob's, which has caused a total disaffection and want of confidence among his subjects: he hoped the board would take it into their humane consideration, and interpose their _influence_, and prevent an act which would inevitably bring disgrace upon himself, and a proportionable degree of discredit on the national character of the English, which I consider to be more or less concerned in every act of his administration."

LXXXVII. That no exception was ever taken by the said Warren Hastings to the truth of the facts, or to the justness of the observation of the said Resident, which he did transmit to the Court of Directors. And the said Warren Hastings, in his letter from Chunar, dated the 29th of November, 1781, speaking of the restraints which had been put by him, the said Hastings, on the Nabob, relative to his own _mootiana_, or forces for collection and police, and the necessity of giving the Resident a control in the nomination of the officers of his army, has asserted, "that the necessity of the reservation arose from a too well known defect in the Nabob's character: if this _check_ be withdrawn, and the choice left absolutely to the Nabob, the first commands in his army will be filled with the most worthless and abandoned of his subjects: his late commander-in-chief is a signal and scandalous instance of this."

LXXXVIII. And the said Warren Hastings, in his letter to the Court of Directors, dated Benares, the 15th of October, 1784, even after he had made the aforesaid renunciation of the Company's authority and influence to the Nabob, did write, "that the Nabob, though most gentle in his manners, and endued with an understanding much above the common level, has been _unfortunately bred up in habits_ that draw his attention too much from his own affairs, and often subject him to the guidance of _insidious and unworthy confidants_"; which, though more decently expressed with regard to the Nabob than in his former minutes, substantially agrees with them. And the said Warren Hastings did inform the Court of Directors, after he had solemnly covenanted to withdraw all the Company's influence on the assurances and promises of a person so by himself described, that, for reasons grounded on his knowledge of the imbecility of the character of the Nabob, he waited in a frontier town, "that he might be at hand to counteract any attempt to defeat the effect of his proceedings at Lucknow"; and in his letter to Mr. Wheler from the same place he did write in the following words: "I am still near enough to attend to the first effects of the execution, and to interfere with my influence for the removal of any obstructions to which they are or may be liable." He therefore found that there was none or but an insufficient security to the effect of his treaty, but in his own direct personal violation of it. What otherwise was wanting in the security for the Nabob's engagements was to be supplied as follows: "The most respectable persons of his family will be employed to counteract every other which may tend to warp him from it; and I am sorry to say _that such assistance was wanting_." And in another letter, "that he had equal ground to expect every degree of support which could be given it by _the first characters of his family_, who are warmly and zealously interested in it": the principal male character of the family, and of the most influence in that family, being Salar Jung, uncle to the Nabob; and the first female characters of the family being the mother and grandmother of the reigning sovereign: all of whom, male and female, he, the said Warren Hastings, in sundry letters of his own, in the transmission of various official documents, and even in affidavits studiously collected and sworn before Sir Elijah Impey during his short residence at Lucknow and Benares, did himself represent as persons entirely disaffected to the English power in India,--as having been principal promoters, if not original contrivers, of a general rebellion and revolt for the utter extirpation of the English nation,--and as such, he, the said Warren Hastings, did compel the Nabob reluctantly to take from them their landed estates; and yet the said Warren Hastings has had the presumption to attempt to impose on the East India Company by pretending to place his reliance on those three persons for a settlement favorable to the Company's interests, on his renunciation of all their own power, authority, and influence, and on his leaving their army to the sole and uncontrolled discretion of a stranger, meriting in his opinion the description given by him as aforesaid, as well as by him frequently asserted to be politically incapable of supporting his own power without the aid of the forces of the Company. And the offence of the said Warren Hastings, in abandoning a considerable part of the British army in the manner aforesaid, is much increased by the description which he has himself given of the state of the said army, and particularly of that part thereof which is stationed in the Nabob of Oude's dominions: for he did himself, on the 29th of November, 1781, transmit the information following, on that subject, to the Court of Directors, namely,--"that the remote stations of those troops, placing the commanding officers beyond the notice and control of the board [the Council-General] at Calcutta, afforded too much of opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable _emoluments, and excited the contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army_. A most remarkable instance and uncontrovertible proof of the prevalence of this spirit has been seen in the court-martial upon Captain Erskine, where the court, composed of officers of rank, and respectable characters, unanimously and honorably, (_most_ honorably,) upon an acknowledged fact, acquitted him, which in times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving the severest punishment." From which representation (if the said Warren Hastings did not falsely and unjustly accuse and slander the Company's service) it appeared that the peculation which infected the whole army, derived from the taint which it had in Oude, and so fatal to the discipline of the troops, would be dangerously increased by his treaty and agreement aforesaid with the Nabob, and by his own said evil counsel to the Court of Directors.

LXXXIX. That it appears, after the said Warren Hastings had, on grounds so disgraceful to the British nation and government, agreed to remove forever the British influence and interference from the government of Oude, on account of the disorders in the said government, solely produced by his own criminal acts and criminal connivances, that he did overturn his own settlement as soon as he had made it, and did, after he had abolished the Company's Residency, as a grievance, wholly violate his own solemn agreement: for he did, for his private purposes, continue therein his own private agent, Major Palmer, with a number of officers and pensioners, at a charge to the revenues of the country greatly exceeding that of the establishment under Mr. Bristow, which he did represent as frightfully enormous, and which he pretended to remove: the former amounting to 112,950_l._, the latter only to 64,202_l._

XC. That his own secret agent, Major Palmer, did receive a salary or allowance, equal to 22,800_l._ a year, out of the distressed province of Oude; and this the said Palmer did declare not to be more than he absolutely did really and _bona fide_ spend, and that he had retrenched considerably "in some of the articles since the expense has been borne by the Vizier, and in every particular he made as little parade and appearance as his station would admit,"--his station being that of the said Warren Hastings's private agent. But if the said large salary must be considered as merely equal to the expenses, large secret emoluments must be presumed to attend it, in order to make it a place advantageous to the holder thereof. That the said Palmer did apply to the board at Calcutta for a new authority to continue the said establishments,--he conceiving their continuance, "after the period of the Governor-General's departure, depended upon the pleasure of the board, and not upon the _authority of the Governor-General, under the sanction of which they were established or confirmed_."

XCI. That the said Warren Hastings, in order to ruin the Resident Bristow, and to justify himself for his former proceedings respecting him, did bring before the board a new charge against him, for having paid a large establishment of offices and pensions to the Company's servants from the revenues of Oude; and the said Bristow, in making his defence against the charge aforesaid, did plead, that he had found all the allowances on his list established before his last appointment to the Residency,--that they had grown to that excess in the interval between his first removal by the said Warren Hastings and his reappointment; and having adduced many reasons to make it highly probable that the said Hastings was perfectly well acquainted with it, and did approve of the expensive establishments which he, the said Bristow, simply had paid, but not imposed, he did allege, besides the official assurances of his predecessor, Middleton, certain facts, as amounting to a direct proof that the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, was not averse to the Vizier's granting large salaries to more than one European gentleman. And the first instance was to Mr. Thomas, a surgeon, who, exclusive of his pay from the Company, which was 1,440_l._ a year, claimed from the Vizier, with Mr. Hastings's knowledge, the sum of 9,763_l._ a year, and upwards, making together 11,203_l._ per annum. The next was Mr. Trevor Wheler, who did receive, upon the same establishment, when he was Fourth Assistant at Oude, 6,000_l._ a year; and which last fact the said Hastings has admitted upon record "that the accusations of Mr. Bristow and Mr. Cowper did _oblige_ and _compel_ him to acknowledge,"--denying, at the same time, that the allowances of the Residents Middleton and Bristow, except in this single instance, were ever authorized by him; whereas his own agent, Palmer, did, in his letter of the 27th of March, 1785, represent, that the said salaries and allowances (if not more and larger) were by him authorized or confirmed.

XCII. That the aforesaid Bristow did also produce the following letter in proof that Mr. Hastings knew and approved of large salaries to British subjects upon the revenues of Oude, and which he did declare that nothing but the necessity of self-defence could have induced him to produce.

'DEAR BRISTOW,--

"Sir Eyre Coote has some field-allowances to receive from the Vizier; they amount to Sicca Rupees 15,554 per month, and he has been paid up by the Vizier to the 20th of August, 1782. The Governor has directed me to write to you, to request you to receive what is due from the Vizier from the 20th August last, at the rate of Lucknow Sicca Rupees 15,664 per month, and send me a bill for the amount, the receipt of which I will acknowledge in the capacity of Sir Eyre Coote's attorney; and the Governor desires that you will continue to receive Sir Eyre Coote's field-allowances at the same rate, and remit the money to me as it comes in.

(Signed) "CHARLES CROFTES.

"CALCUTTA, January 25, 1783."

XCIII. That Sir Eyre Coote aforesaid was at the time of the said field-allowances not serving in the country of Oude, on which the said allowances were charged, but in the Carnatic.

XCIV. That, from the declaration of the said Hastings himself, that it was the conviction of Mr. Bristow and Mr. Cowper that could alone _oblige_ and _compel_ him to _acknowledge_ certain of his aforesaid practices, and that nothing _but the necessity of self-defence_ could have induced Mr. Bristow to make public another and much stronger instance of the same, it is to be violently presumed, that, where these two, or either, or both necessities did not exist, many evil and oppressive practices of the said Hastings do remain undiscovered,--that, if it had not been for the contests between him, the said Hastings, and the Resident Bristow, not only the before-mentioned particulars, but the whole of the expensive civil establishments for English servants at Oude, would have been forever concealed from the Directors and from Parliament: and yet the said Hastings has had the audacity to pretend so complete an ignorance of the facts, that, representing the Vizier as objecting to the largeness of the payments made by Bristow, and stating a very reduced list, which he was willing to allow for, amounting to 30,000_l._ a year, the said Hastings did affect to be alarmed at the magnitude even of the list so curtailed, expressing himself as follows, in his minute of the 7th of December, 1784: "For my own part, when the Vizier's minister first informed me that the amount which his master had authorized, and was willing to admit, for the charges of the Residency, and the allowances of the gentlemen at Lucknow, was 25,000 rupees per month, I own I was startled at the magnitude of the sum, and was some days hesitating in my mind whether I could with propriety admit of it": whereas he well knew that the three sums alone of which the necessities aforesaid had compelled the discovery did greatly exceed that sum of which at the first hearing he affects to have been so exceedingly alarmed and thrown into a state of hesitation which continued for some days, and although he, the said Hastings, was conscious that he had at the very time authorized an establishment to more than four times the amount thereof.

XCV. That, in the said deceits, prevarications, contradictions, malicious accusations, fraudulent concealments, and compelled discoveries, as well as in the said secret, corrupt, and prodigal disposition of the revenues of Oude, as well as in his breach of faith to the Nabob, in continuing expensive establishments under a private agent of his own after he had agreed to remove the Company's agent, the said Warren Hastings is guilty of an high offence and misdemeanor.

XVII.--MAHOMED REZA KHAN.

I. That it was the declared policy of the Company, on the acquisition of the dewanny of Bengal, to continue the country government, under the inspection of the Resident at the Nabob's durbar in the first instance, and that of the President and Council in the last; and for that purpose they did stipulate to assign, for the support of the dignity of the Nabob, an annual allowance from the revenues, equal to four hundred thousand pounds a year.

II. That, during the country government, the principal active person in the administration of affairs, for rank, and for reputation of probity, and of knowledge in the revenues and the laws, was Mahomed Reza Khan, who, besides large landed property, was possessed of offices whose emoluments amounted nearly, if not altogether, to one hundred thousand pounds a year.

IV.[16] That the Company's servants, in the beginning, were not conversant in the affairs of the revenue, and stood in need of natives of integrity and experience to act in the management thereof. On that ground, as well as in regard to the rank which Mahomed Reza Khan held in the country, and the confidence of the people in him, they, the President and Council, did inform the Court of Directors, in their letter of the 30th of September, 1765, that, "as Mahomed Reza Khan's short administration was irreproachable, they determined to continue him in a share of the authority"; and this information was not given lightly, but was founded upon an inquiry into his conduct, and a minute examination of charges made against him by his rivals in the Nabob's court,--they having insinuated to the Nabob that a design was formed for deposing him, and placing Mahomed Reza on his throne; but, on examination, the President and Council declare, that "he had so openly and candidly accounted _for every rupee_ disbursed from the treasury, that they could not, without injury to his character, and injustice to his conduct during his short administration, refuse continuing him in a share of the government."

V. That the Company had reason to be satisfied with the arrangement made, so far as it regarded him: the President and Council having informed them, in the following year, in their letter of the 9th of December, 1766, that "the _large_ increase of the revenue must in a great measure be ascribed to Mr. Sykes's assiduity, and to _Mahomed Reza Khan's profound knowledge in the finances_."

VI. That the then President and Council, finding it necessary to make several reforms in the administration, were principally aided in the same by the suggestion, advice, and assistance of the said Mahomed Reza Khan; and in their letter to the Court of Directors of the 24th of June, 1767, they state their resolution of reducing the emoluments of office, which before had arisen from a variety of presents and other perquisities, to fixed allowances; and they state the merits of Mahomed Reza Khan therein, as well as the importance, dignity, and responsibility of his station, in the following manner.

"Mahomed Reza Khan has now _of himself, with great delicacy of honor_, represented to us the evil consequences that must ensue from the continuance of this practice,--since, by suffering the principal officers of the government to depend for the support of their dignity on the precarious fund of perquisites, they in a manner oblige them to pursue oppressive and corrupt measures, equally injurious to the country and the Company; and they accordingly assigned twelve lac of rupees for the maintenance and support of the said Mahomed Reza Khan, and two other principal persons, who held in their hands the most important employments of that government,--having regard to their elevated stations, and to the expediency of supporting them in all the show and parade requisite to keep up the authority and influence of their respective offices, as they are all men of weight and consideration in the country, who held places of great trust and profit under the former government. We further propose, by this act of generosity, to engage their cordial services, and confirm them steady in our interests; since they cannot hope, from the most successful ambition, to rise to greater advantages by any chance or revolution of affairs. At the same time it was reasonable we should not lose sight of Mahomed Reza Khan's past services. He has pursued the Company's interest with steadiness and diligence; his abilities qualify him to perform the most important services; the unavoidable charges of his particular situation are great; in dignity he stands second to the Nabob only;--and as he engages to increase the revenues, without injustice or oppression, to more than the amount of his salary, _and to relinquish those advantages, to the amount of eight lacs of rupees per annum_, which he heretofore enjoyed, we thought it proper, in the distribution of salaries, to consider Mahomed Reza Khan in a light superior to the other ministers. We have only to observe further, that, great and enormous as the sum must appear which we have allotted for the support of the ministers of the government, we will not hesitate to pronounce that it is necessary and reasonable, and will appear so on the consideration of the power which men employed on these important services have either to obstruct or promote the public good, unless their integrity be confirmed by the ties of gratitude and interest."

VII. That the said Mahomed Reza Khan continued, with the same diligence, spirit, and fidelity, to execute the trust reposed in him, which comprehended a large proportion of the weight of government, and particularly of the collections; and his attachment to the interest of the Company, and his extensive knowledge, were again, in the course of the year 1767, fully acknowledged, and stated to the Court of Directors. And it further appears that by an incessant application to business his health was considerably impaired, which gave occasion in the year following, that is, in February, 1768, to a fresh acknowledgment of his services in these terms: "We must, in justice to Mahomed Reza Khan, express the high sense we entertain of his abilities, and of the indefatigable attention he has shown in the execution of the important trust reposed in him; and we cannot but lament the prospect of losing his services from the present declining state of his health."

VIII. That as in the increase of the revenue the said Mahomed Reza Khan was employed as a person likely to improve the same without detriment to the people, so, when the state of any province seemed to require a remission, he was employed as a person disposed to the relief of the people without fraud to the revenue; and this was expressed by the President and Council as follows, with relation to the remissions granted in the province of Bahar: "That the general knowledge of Mahomed Reza Khan, in all matters relative to the dewanny revenues, induced us to consent to such deductions being made from the general state of that province at the _last poonah_ as may be deemed irrecoverable, or such as may procure an immediate relief and encouragement to the ryots in the future cultivation of their lands."

IX. That the said Mahomed Reza Khan, in the execution of the said great and important trusts and powers, was not so much as suspected of an ambitious or encroaching spirit, which might make him dangerous to the Company's then recent authority, or which might render his precedence injurious to the consideration due to his colleagues in office; but, on the contrary, it appears, that, a plan having been adopted for dividing the administration, in order to remove the Nabob's jealousies, the same was in danger of being subverted by the ambition "of two of his colleagues, and _the excessive moderation of Mahomed Reza Khan_." And for a remedy of the inconveniencies which might arise from the excess of an accommodating temper, though attended with irreproachable integrity, the President and Council did send one of their own members, as their deputy, to the Nabob of Bengal, at his capital of Moorshedabad; and this measure appears to have been adopted for the support of Mahomed Reza Khan, in consequence of an inquiry made and advice given by Lord Clive, in his letter of the 3d of July, 1765, in which letter he expresses himself of the said Mahomed Reza Khan as follows: "It is with pleasure I can acquaint you, _that, the more I see of Mahomed Reza Khan, the stronger is my conviction of his honor and moderation_, but that, at the same time, I cannot help observing, that, either from timidity or an erroneous principle, he is too ready to submit to encroachments upon that proportion of power that has been allotted him."

X. That, the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khan dying in February, 1765, Mahomed Reza Khan was appointed guardian to his children, and administrator of his office, or regent, which appointment the Court of Directors did approve. But the party opposite to Mahomed Reza Khan having continued to cabal against him, sundry accusations were framed relative to oppression at the time of the famine, and for a balance due during his employment of collector of the revenues; upon which the Directors did order him to be deprived of his office, and a strict inquiry to be made into his conduct.

XI. That the said Warren Hastings, then lately appointed to the Presidency, did, on the 1st of April, and on the 24th of September, 1772, write letters to the Court of Directors, informing them that on the very next day after he had received (as he asserts) their private orders, "addressed to himself alone," and not to the board, he did dispatch, by express messengers, his orders to Mr. Middleton, the Resident at the Nabob's court at Moorshedabad, in a public character and trust with the Nabob, to arrest, in his capital, and at his court, and without any previous notice given of any charge, his principal minister, the aforesaid Mahomed Reza Khan, and to bring him down to Calcutta; and he did carefully conceal his said proceedings from the knowledge of the board, on pretext of his not being acquainted with their dispositions, and the influence which he thought that the said Mahomed Reza Khan had amongst them.

XII. That the said Warren Hastings, at the time he gave his orders as aforesaid for arresting the said Mahomed Reza Khan, did not take any measures to compel the appearance of any other persons as witnesses,--declaring it as his opinion, "that there would be little need of violence to obtain such intelligence as they could give against their former master, when his authority is taken from him"; but he did afterwards, in excuse for the long detention and imprisonment of the said Mahomed Reza Khan, without any proofs having been obtained of his guilt, or measures taken to bring him to a trial, assure the Directors, in direct contradiction to his former declaration, "that the influence of Mahomed Reza Khan still prevailed generally throughout the country, in the Nabob's household, and at the capital, and was scarcely affected by his present disgrace,"--notwithstanding, as he, the said Hastings, doth confess, he had used his utmost endeavors "to break that influence, by removing his dependants, and putting the direction of all the affairs that had been committed to his care into the hands of _the most powerful or active of his enemies_; that he depended on the activity of their hatred to Mahomed Reza Khan, incited by the expectation of rewards, for investigating the conduct of the latter; that with this the institution of the new dewanny coincided; and that the same principle had guided him in the choice of Munny Begum and Rajah Gourdas,--the former for the chief administration, the latter" (the son of Nundcomar, and a mere instrument in the hands of his father) "for the dewanny of the Nabob's household,--both _the declared enemies_ of Mahomed Reza Khan."

XIII. That, although it might be true that enemies will become the most active prosecutors, and as such may, though under much guard and many precautions, be used even as witnesses, and that it ought not to be an exception, supposing their character and capacity otherwise good, to the appointing them to power, yet to advance persons to power on the ground not of their honor and integrity, which might have produced the enmity of bad men, but merely for the enmity itself, without any reference whatsoever to a laudable cause, and even with a declared ill opinion of the morals of one of the party, such as was actually delivered in the said letter by him, the said Hastings, of Nundcomar, (and which time has shown he might also on good ground have conceived of others,) was, in the circumstances of a criminal inquiry, a motive highly disgraceful to the honor of government, and destructive of impartial justice, by holding out the greatest of all possible temptation to false accusation, to corrupt and factious conspiracies, to perjury, and to every species of injustice and oppression.

XIV. That, in consequence of the aforesaid motives, and others pretended, which were by no means a sufficient justification to the said Warren Hastings, he did appoint the woman aforesaid, called Munny Begum, who had been of the lowest and most discreditable order in society, according to the ideas prevalent in India, but from whom he received several sums of money, to be guardian to the Nabob in preference to his own mother, _and to administer the affairs of the government_ in the place of the said Mahomed Reza Khan, the second Mussulman in rank after the Nabob, and the first in knowledge, gravity, weight, and character among the Mussulmen of that province. And in order to try every method and to take every chance for his destruction, the said Warren Hastings did maliciously and oppressively keep him under confinement, for a part of the time without any inquiry, and afterwards with a slow and dilatory trial, for two years together.

XV. That, notwithstanding a total revolution in the power, in part avowedly made for his destruction, the persons appointed for his trial did, on full inquiry, completely acquit the said Mahomed Reza Khan of the criminal charges against him, on account of which he had been so long persecuted and confined, and suffered much in mind, body, and fortune: and the Court of Directors, in their letter of the 3d of March, 1775, testify their satisfaction in the conduct and result of the said inquiry, and did direct the restoration of the said Mahomed Reza Khan to liberty, and to the offices which he had lately held, which comprehended the management of the Nabob's household, and the general superintendency of the justice of Bengal; but, according to the orders of the Court of Directors, his appointments were reduced to thirty thousand pounds a year, or thereabouts, of which he did make grievous complaint, on account of the expenses attendant on his station, and the heavy debts which he had been obliged to contract during his unjust persecution and imprisonment aforesaid.

XVI. That, on the removal of the said Mahomed Reza Khan from the superintendency of the criminal justice, and in consequence of letting the province of Bengal in farm by the said Warren Hastings, several dangerous and mischievous innovations were made by him, the said Warren Hastings, and the criminal justice of the country was almost wholly subverted, and great irregularities and disorders did actually ensue.

XVII. That the Council-General, established by act of Parliament in the year 1773, did restore the said Mahomed Reza Khan, with the consent and approbation of the Nabob, (but under a protest from the said Warren Hastings,) to his liberty and to his offices, according to the spirit of the orders given by the Court of Directors as aforesaid; and the Court of Directors did approve of the said appointment, and did assure the said Mahomed Reza Khan of their favor and protection as long as his conduct should merit the same, in the following terms. "As the abilities of Mahomed Reza Khan have been sufficiently manifested, as official experience qualifies him for so high a station in a more eminent degree than any other native with whom the Company has been connected, and as no proofs of maladministration have been established against him, either during the strict investigation of his conduct or since his retirement, we cannot under all circumstances but approve your recommendation of him to the Nabob to constitute him his Naib. We are well pleased that he has received that appointment, and authorize you to assure him of our favor, so long as a firm attachment to the interest of the Company and a proper discharge of the duties of his station shall render him worthy of our protection." And the said Mahomed Reza Khan did continue to execute the same without any complaint whatsoever of malversation or negligence, in any manner or degree, in his said office.

XVIII. That in March, 1778, the said Warren Hastings, under color that the Nabob had completed his twentieth year, and had desired to be placed in the entire and uncontrolled management of his own affairs, and that Mahomed Reza Khan should be removed from his office, and that Munny Begum, his step-mother, the dancing-girl aforesaid, "should take on herself the management of the _nizamut_ [the government and general superintendency of criminal justice] without the interference of any person whatsoever," and notwithstanding the contradictions in the pretended applications from the Nabob, with whose incapacity for all affairs he was well acquainted, did, in defiance of the orders of the Court of Directors, and without regard to the infamy of an arrangement made for the evident and declared purpose of delivering not only the family with the prince, but the government and justice of a great kingdom, into such insufficient, corrupt, and scandalous hands, and though he has declared his opinion "that our national character is concerned in the character which the Nabob may obtain in the public opinion," on obtaining a majority in Council, without any complaint, real or pretended, remove the said Mahomed Reza from all his offices, and did partition his salary as a spoil in the following manner: to Munny Begum, the dancing-girl aforesaid, an additional allowance of 72,000 rupees (7,200_l._) a year; to the Nabob's own mother but half that sum, that is to say, 36,000 rupees (3,600_l._) a year; to Rajah Gourdas, son of Nundcomar, (whom he had described as a weak young man,) 72,000 rupees (7,200_l._) a year, as controller of the household; and to a magistrate called Sudder ul Hock, who, in real subserviency to the said Munny Begum, was nominally to act in the department of criminal justice, 78,000 rupees (7,800_l._) a year: the total of which allowances exceeding the salary of Mahomed Reza Khan by 18,000 rupees (1,800_l._) yearly, he did, for the corrupt and scandalous purposes aforesaid, order the same to be made up from the Company's treasury.

XIX. That Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler having moved that the execution of the aforesaid arrangement, the whole expense of which, ordinary and extraordinary, was charged upon the Company's treasury, and therefore could not be even colorably disposed of at the pretended will of the said Nabob, might be suspended until the pleasure of the Court of Directors thereon should be known, and the same being resolved agreeably to law by a majority of the Council then present, the said Hastings, urging on violently the immediate execution of his corrupt project, and having obtained, by the return of Richard Barwell, Esquire, a majority in Council in his own casting vote, did rescind the aforesaid resolution, and did carry into immediate execution the aforesaid most unwarrantable, mischievous, and scandalous design.

XX. That the consequences which might be expected from such a plan of administration did almost instantly flow from it. For the person appointed to execute one of the offices which had been filled by Mahomed Reza Khan did soon find that the eunuchs of Munny Begum began to employ their power with great superiority and insolence in all the concerns of government and the administration of justice, and did endeavor to dispose of the offices relative to the same for their corrupt purposes, and to rob the Nabob's servants of their due allowances; and in his letter of the 1st September, 1778, he sent a complaint to the board, stating, "that certain bad men had gained an ascendency over the Nabob's temper, by whose instigation he acts"; and after complaining of the slights he received from the Nabob, he adds: "Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me, sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think proper to advise him; their view is, that, by compelling me to displeasure at most unworthy treatment, they may force me either to relinquish my station, or to join with them, and act by their advice, and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves."

XXI. That, in a subsequent letter to the Governor, the said Superintendent of Justice did inform him, the said Warren Hastings, of the audacious and corrupt manner in which, by violence, fraud, and forgery, the eunuchs of Munny Begum had abused the Nabob's name, to deprive the judicial and executory officers of justice of the salaries which they ought to have drawn from the Company's treasury, in the following words: "The Begum's ministers, before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received, at two different times, near 50,000 rupees [5,000_l._], in the name of the officers of the Adawlut, Phousdary, &c., from the Company's sircars; and having drawn up an account-current _in the manner they wished_, they had got the Nabob to sign it, and sent it to me." And in the same letter he asserts, "that these people had the Nabob entirely in their power."

XXII. That the said Warren Hastings, upon this representation, did, notwithstanding his late pretended opinion of the fitness and the right of the Nabob to the sole administration of his own affairs, authoritatively forbid him from any interference therein, and ordered that the whole should be left to the magistrate aforesaid; to which the Nabob did, notwithstanding his pretended independence, yield an immediate and unreserved submission: for the said Hastings's order being given on the 1st of September at Calcutta, he received _an answer_ from Moorshedabad on the 3d, in the following terms: "Agreeably to your pleasure, I have relinquished all concern with the affairs of the Phousdary and Adawlut, leaving the entire management in Sudder ul Hock's hands." Which said circumstance, as well as many others, abundantly proves that all the Nabob's actions were in truth and fact entirely governed by the influence of the said Hastings, and that, however the said Hastings may have publicly discouraged the corrupt transactions of the said court, yet he did secretly uphold the authority and influence of Munny Begum, who did entirely direct, with his knowledge and countenance, all the proceedings therein. For

XXIII. That on the 13th of the same month of September he did receive a further complaint of the corrupt and fraudulent practices of the chief eunuch of the said Munny Begum; and these corrupt practices did so continue and increase, that on the 10th of October, 1778, he was obliged to confess, in the strongest terms, the pernicious consequences of his before-created unwarrantable and illegal arrangements; for, in a letter of that date to the Nabob, he expresses himself as follows. "At your Excellency's request, I sent Sudder ul Hock Khan to take on him the administration of the affairs of the Adawlut and Phousdary, and hoped by that means not only to have given satisfaction to your Excellency, but that, through his abilities and experience, these affairs would have been conducted in such manner as to have secured the peace of the country and the happiness of the people; and it is with the greatest concern I learn that this measure is so far from being attended with the expected advantages, that the affairs both of the Phousdary and Adawlut are in the greatest confusion imaginable, and daily robberies and murders are perpetrated throughout the country. This is evidently owing to the want of a proper authority in the person appointed to superintend them. I therefore addressed your Excellency on the importance and delicacy of the affairs in question, and of the necessity of lodging full power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them; in reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with mine; notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated by _selfish, and avaricious views, have by their interference so impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited power lodged in the hands of the superintendent_. I therefore request that your Excellency will give the strictest injunctions to all your dependants not to interfere in any manner with any matter relative to the affairs of the Adawlut and Phousdary, and that you will yourself relinquish all interference therein, and leave them entirely to the management of Sudder ul Hock Khan: this is absolutely necessary to restore the country to a state of tranquillity." And he concluded by again recommending the Nabob to withdraw all interference with the administrator aforesaid: "otherwise a measure which I adopted at your Excellency's request, and with a view to your satisfaction and the benefit of the country, will be attended with quite contrary effects, and bring discredit on me."

XXIV. That the said Hastings, in the letter aforesaid, in which he so strongly condemns the acts and so clearly marks out the mischievous effects of the corrupt influence under which alone the Nabob acted, and under which alone, from his known incapacity, and his dependence on the person supported by the said Hastings, he could act, did propose to put all the offices of justice (which on another occasion he had requested him to _permit_ to remain in the hands which then held them) into his own disposal,--telling him, or rather the woman and eunuchs who governed him, "that, if his Excellency has any plan for the management of the affairs in future, be pleased to communicate it to me, and every attention shall be paid to give your Excellency satisfaction": by which means not only particular parts, as before, but the whole system of justice was to be afloat, and to be subject to the purposes of the aforesaid corrupt cabal of women and eunuchs.

XXV. That the Court of Directors, on receiving an account of the above arrangements, and being well apprised of the spirit, intention, and probable effect of the same, did, in a clear, firm, and decisive manner, express their condemnation of the measure, and their rejection and reprobation of all the pretended grounds and reasons on which the same was supported,--marking distinctly his prevarication and contradictions in the same, and pointing to him their full conviction of the unworthy motives on which he had made so shameful an arrangement: telling him, in the 17th paragraph of their general letter of the 4th of February, 1779, "The Nabob's letters of the 25th and 30th of August, of the 3d of September, and 17th of November, leave us no doubt of the _true_ design of this _extraordinary_ business being _to bring forward_ Munny Begum, and again to invest her with improper power and influence, notwithstanding our former declaration, that _so great_ a part of the Nabob's allowance had been embezzled and misapplied under her superintendence."

XXVI. That, in consequence of the censure and condemnation of the unwarrantable measures of the said Warren Hastings by the Court of Directors, on the aforesaid and other weighty and substantial grounds, they did order and direct as follows, in the 20th paragraph of the general letter of the same date. "As we deem it for the welfare of the country that the office of Naib Subahdar be for the present continued, and that this high office should be filled by a person of wisdom, experience, and of approved fidelity to the Company, and as we have no reason to alter the opinion given of Mahomed Reza Khan in our letter of the 24th of December, 1776, we positively direct, that you forthwith signify to the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah our pleasure that Mahomed Reza Khan be immediately restored to the office of Naib Subahdar; and we further direct, that Mahomed Reza Khan be again assured of the continuance of our favor, so long as a firm attachment to the interest of the Company and a proper discharge of the duties of his station shall render him worthy of our protection."

XXVII. That the aforesaid direction did convey in it such evident and cogent reason, and was so far enforced by justice to individuals and by regard to the peace and happiness of the natives, as well as by the common decorum to be observed in all the transactions of government, that the said Hastings ought to have yielded a cheerful obedience thereto, even if he had not been by a positive statute, and his relation of servant to the Company, bound to that just submission. Yet the said Hastings did, without denying or evading any one of the reasons assigned by the Court of Directors, or controverting the scandalous motives assigned by them for his conduct, contumaciously refuse obedience to the above positive order, on pretence that the Nabob, who, he had declared it on record "to be as visible as the light of the sun, is a mere pageant, and without even the shadow of authority," did dissent from the same; and he did encourage the said Nabob, or rather the eunuchs, the corrupt ministers of Munny Begum, to oppose himself and themselves to the authority of the said Court of Directors: by which means the arrangement, three times either ratified or expressly ordered by them, was wholly defeated; the aforesaid corrupt system was continued; Mahomed Reza Khan was not restored to his office; and a lesson was taught to the natives of all ranks, that the declared approbation, the avowed sanction, and the decided authority of the Court of Directors were wholly nugatory to their protection against the corrupt influence of their servants.

XXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings, on a reconciliation with Mr. Francis, one of the Council-General, who made it a condition thereof that certain of the Company's orders should be obeyed, and that Mahomed Reza Khan should be restored to his offices, did, a considerable time after, notwithstanding the pretended reluctance of the Nabob, and his pretended freedom, make, for his convenience in the said accommodation, the arrangement which he had unwarrantably and illegally refused to the orders of the Court of Directors, and did of his own authority and that of the board restore Mahomed Reza Khan to his offices.

XXIX. That soon after the departure of the said Mr. Francis he did again deprive the said Mahomed Reza Khan of his said offices, and did make several great changes in the constitution of the criminal justice in the said country; and after having, under pretence of the Nabob's sufficiency for the management of his own affairs, displaced, without any specific charge, trial, or inquiry whatsoever, the said Mahomed Reza Khan, he did submit the said Nabob to the entire direction, in all parts of his concerns, of a Resident of his own nomination, Sir John D'Oyly, Baronet, and did order an account of the most minute parts of his domestic economy to be made out, and to be delivered to the said Sir John D'Oyly, in the following words, contained in a paper by him intituled, INSTRUCTIONS from the Governor-General to the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah respecting his conduct in the management of his affairs. "You will be pleased to direct your _mutseddies_ to form an account of the fixed sums of your monthly expenses, such as servants' wages in the different departments, pensions, and other allowances, as well as of the estimated amount of variable expenses, to be delivered to Sir John D'Oyly _for my inspection_. I have given such orders to Sir John D'Oyly as will enable him to propose to you such reductions of the pensions and other allowances, and such a distribution of the variable expenses, as shall be proportionable to the total sum of your monthly income; _and I must request you will conform to it_." And he did, in the subsequent articles of his said instructions, order the whole management to be directed by Sir John D'Oyly, subject to his own directions as aforesaid; and did even direct what company he should keep; and did throw reflections on some persons, in places the nearest to him, as of bad character and base origin,--persons whom he should decline to name as such, "unless he heard that they still availed themselves of his goodness to retain _the places_ which they improperly hold near his person." And he did particularly order the said Nabob not to admit any English, but such as the said Sir John D'Oyly should approve, to his presence; and did repeat the said order in the following peremptory manner: "You _must forbid any_ person of _that nation_ to be intruded into _your_ presence without _his_ introduction." And he did require his obedience in the following authoritative style: "I shall think myself obliged to interfere _in another manner_, if you neglect it."

XXX. That he, the said Warren Hastings, did insult the captive condition of the said Nabob by informing him, in his imperious instructions aforesaid, that this total, blind, and implicit obedience, in every respect whatsoever, to Sir John D'Oyly and himself personally, and without any reference to the board, "was the very _conditions_ of the compliance of the Governor-General and Council with his late requisition"; which requisition was, that he should enjoy _the free and uncontrolled_ management of his own affairs. And though the said captive did offer, as he, the said Hastings, himself admits, _four lacs_ of his stipend, at that time reduced to sixteen lac, for _the free use of the remainder_, yet he did place him, the said Nabob, in the state of servitude in the said instructions laid down but a very short time after he had assumed and used the said Nabob's independent rights as a ground for refusing to obey the Company's orders,--and although he has declared, or pretended, on another occasion, which he would have thought similar, that any attempt to limit the household expenses of the Nabob of Oude was an indignity, "which no man living, however mean his rank in life, or dependent his condition in it, would permit to be exercised by any other, without the want or forfeiture of every manly principle."

XXXI. That the said Warren Hastings did order the said stipend (which was to be distributed, in the minutest particular, according to the said Hastings's personal directions) to be paid monthly, not to any officer of the Nabob, but to the said Resident, Sir John D'Oyly. And whereas the Governor-General and Council did, on the appointment of Mahomed Reza Khan, according to their duty, instruct him, that "he do conform to the _orders_ of the Company, which direct that an annual account of the Nabob's expenses be transmitted through the Resident at the Durbar, for the inspection of this _board_" the said Hastings, in making his new establishment in favor of his Resident, did wholly omit the said instruction, and did confine the said communication to _himself_, privately. And in fact it does not appear that any account whatsoever of the disposition of the said large sum, exceeding 160,000_l._ sterling a year, has been laid before the board, or at least that any such account has been transmitted to the Court of Directors; and it is not fitting that any British servant of the Company should have the management of any public money, much less of so great a sum, without a public well-vouched account of the specific expenditure thereof.

XXXII. That the Court of Directors did, on the 17th of May, 1766, propose certain rules for regulating the correspondence of the Resident with the Nabob of Bengal, in which they did direct, as a principle for the said regulations, as follows (paragraph 16th). "We would have his correspondence to be carried on with the _Select Committee_ through the channel of the President: he should keep a diary of all his transactions. His correspondence with the natives _must be publicly conducted_: copies of _all_ his letters, sent and received, be transmitted monthly to the Presidency, with duplicates and triplicates to be transmitted home in our general packet by every ship."

XXXIII. That the President and Select Committee (Lord Clive being then President) did approve of the whole substantial part of the said regulation (the diary excepted); and the principle, in all matters of account, ought to have been strictly adhered to, whatever limitations may have been given to the office of Resident. Yet he, the said Warren Hastings, in defiance of the aforesaid good rules, orders, and late precedent in conformity to the same, did not only withhold any order for the purpose, but, in order to carry on the business of the said durbar in a clandestine manner for his own purposes, did, as aforesaid, exclude all English from an intercourse with the Nabob, who might carry complaints or representations to the board, or the Court of Directors, of his condition, or the conduct of the Resident,--and did further, to defeat all possible publicity, insinuate to him to give the preference to verbal communication above letters, in the words following, of the ninth article of his instructions to the Nabob: "Although I desire to receive your letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which cannot be _so easily explained by letters as by conversation_, I desire that you will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing every other concern, will give an immediate and the most satisfactory reply concerning them." Accordingly, no relation whatsoever has been received by the Court of Directors of the said Nabob's affairs, nor any account of the money monthly paid, except from public fame, which reports that his affairs are in groat disorder, his servants unpaid, and many of them dismissed, and all the Mussulmen dependent on his family in a state of indigence.

XVIII.--THE MOGUL DELIVERED UP TO THE MAHRATTAS.

I. That Shah Allum, the prince commonly called the Great Mogul, or, by eminence, _The King_, is, or lately was, in the possession of the ancient capital of Hindostan, and though without any considerable territory, and without a revenue sufficient to maintain a moderate state, he is still much respected and considered, and the custody of his person is eagerly sought by many of the princes in India, on account of the use to be made of his title and authority; and it was for the interest of the East India Company, that, while on one hand no wars shall be entered into in support of his pretensions, on the other no steps should be taken which may tend to deliver him into the hands of any of the powerful states of that country, but that he should be treated with friendship, good faith, and respectful attention.

II. That Warren Hastings, in contradiction to this safe, just, and honorable policy, strongly prescribed and enforced by the orders of the Court of Directors, did, at a time when he was engaged in a negotiation the declared purpose of which was to give peace to India, concur with the captain-general of the Mahratta state, called Mahdajee Sindia, in hostile designs against the few remaining territories of that same Mogul emperor, by virtue of whose grant the Company actually possess the government and enjoy the revenues of great provinces, and also against the possessions of a Mahomedan chief called Nudjif Khan, a person of much merit with the East India Company, in acknowledgment of which they had granted him a pension, included in the tribute due to the king, and, together with that tribute, taken from him by the said Warren Hastings, though expressly _guarantied_ to him by the Company. With both these powers the Company had been in friendship, and were actually at peace at the time of the said clandestine concurrence in a design against them; and the said Hastings hath since declared, that the right of one of them, namely, "the right of the Mogul emperor, to our assistance, has been constantly acknowledged."

III. That the said Warren Hastings, at the time of his treacherous concurrence in a design against a power which he was himself of opinion we were bound to assist, and against whom there was no doubt he was bound neither to form nor to concur in any hostile attempt, did give a caution to Colonel Muir, to whom the negotiation aforesaid was intrusted on the part of the Company, against "inserting anything in the treaty which might _expressly_ mark our _knowledge_ of his [the Mahratta general's] views, _or concurrence in them_." Which said transaction was full of duplicity and fraud; and the crime of the said Hastings therein is aggravated by his having some years before withheld the tribute which by treaty was solemnly agreed to be paid to the said king, on pretence that he had thrown himself, for the recovery of his city of Delhi, on the protection of the Mahrattas, whom the said Warren Hastings then called _the natural enemies_ of the Company, and the growth of whose power he then alleged to be highly dangerous to the interests of this kingdom in India.

IV. That, after having concurred, in the manner before mentioned, in a design of the Mahrattas against the Mogul, and notwithstanding he, the said Warren Hastings, had formerly declared, "that with him [the Mogul] our connection had been a long time suspended, and _he wished never to see it renewed_, as it had proved a fatal drain to the wealth of Bengal and the treasury of the Company, without yielding one advantage or possible resource, even of remote benefits, in return," the said Warren Hastings did nevertheless, on or about the month of March, 1783, with the privity and consent of the members of the board, but by no authoritative act, dispatch, as agents of him, the Governor-General only, and not as agents of the Governor-General and Council, as they ought to have been, certain persons, among whom were Major Browne and Major Davy, to the court of the king at Delhi, and did there enter into certain engagements with the said king by the means of those agents, and did carry on certain private and dangerous intrigues for various purposes, particularly for making war in favor of the said king against some powers or princes not precisely described, but which, as may be inferred from a subsequent correspondence, were certain Mahomedan princes in the neighborhood of Delhi in amity with the Company, and some of them at that time in the actual service and in the apparent confidence and favor of the said Mogul; and he did order Major Browne to offer to the Mogul king to provide for the _entire_ expense of _any_ troops the Shah [the said king] might require; and the proposal was accordingly accepted, with the conditions annexed: by which proposal and acceptance thereof the East India Company was placed in a situation of great and perplexing difficulty; since either they were to engage, at an unlimited _expense_, in new wars, contrary to their orders, contrary to their general declared policy, and contrary to the published resolutions of the House of Commons, and wholly incompatible with the state of their finances, or, to preserve peace, they must risk the imputation of a new violation of faith, by departing from an agreement made on the voluntary proposal of their own government,--the agent of the said Hastings having declared, in his letter to the said Hastings, by him communicated to the board, "that the business of assisting the Shah [the Mogul emperor] can and _must_ go on, if we wish to be secure in India, or regarded as a nation of faith and honor."

V. That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 20th day of January, 1784, send in circulation to the other members of the Council a letter to him from his agent, Major Browne, dated at Delhi, on the 30th of December, 1783, viz., that letter to which the foregoing references are made, in which the said Browne did directly press, and indirectly (though sufficiently and strongly) suggest, several highly dangerous measures for realizing the general offers and engagements of the said Warren Hastings,--proposing, that, besides a proportion of field artillery, and a train of battering cannon for the purpose of sieges, six regiments of sepoys in the Company's service should be transferred to that of the said king, and that certain other corps should also be raised for the said service in the English provinces and dependencies, to be immediately under the king's [the Mogul's] orders, and to be maintained by assignments of territorial revenue within the province of Oude, a dependent member of the British government, but with a caution against having any British officer with the same; the said Major Browne expressing his caution as followeth: "If any European officer _be_ with this corps, a very nice judgment indeed must direct the choice; for scarce any are in the smallest degree _fit_ for _such_ employ, but much more likely to do harm than good." And the letter aforesaid being without any observation thereon, or any disavowal of the matters of fact or of the counsels so strongly and authoritatively delivered therein by the said Warren Hastings's agent, and without any mark of disapprobation of any part of his plan, whether that of the assignment of territory belonging to the Company's allies for the maintenance of troops which were to be by that plan put under the orders of a foreign independent power, or that of employing the said troops without any British officer with them, or for his alarming observation by him entered on the Company's records, which, if not an implied censure on the nature of the service in which British officers are supposed improper to be trusted, is a strong reflection on the character of the British officers, which was to render them unfit to be employed in an honorable service,--the said Warren Hastings did thereby give a countenance to the said unwarrantable and dangerous proposals and reflections.

VI. That a considerable time before the production and circulation of Major Browne's letter, the said Hastings did enter a Minute of Consultation containing a proposition similar in the general intent to that in the said letter contained for assisting the Mogul with a military force; but the other members of the board did disagree thereto, and, being alarmed at the disposition so strongly shown by the said Hastings to engage in new wars and dangerous foreign connections, and possibly having intelligence of the proceedings of his agent, did call upon him to produce his instructions to Major Browne; and he did, on the 5th of October, 1783, and not before, enter on the Consultations a certain paper purporting to be the instructions which he had given to Major Browne the preceding March, the time of his, the said Browne's, appointment, in which pretended instructions no direction whatsoever was given to the effect of his, the said Hastings's, Minute of Consultation propounded: that is to say, no power was given in the said instructions to make a direct offer of military aid to the Mogul, or to form the arrangements stated by the said Browne, in his letter to the said Hastings, as having been made by the express authority of the said Hastings himself; but the said instructions contained nothing further on that subject but a conditional direction, that, in case a military force should be required for the Mogul's aid or protection, the Major is to know the service on which it is to be employed, and the resources from whence it is to be paid; and the instructions produced as his real instructions by the said Hastings are so guarded as to caution the said Browne against _taking any part in the intrigues of those who are about the King's person_. By which letters, instructions, and transactions, compared with each other, it appears that the said Warren Hastings, after six months' delay in entering of (contrary to the Company's order) any instructions to the said Browne, did at last enter a false paper as the true, or that he did give other secret instructions, totally different from, and even opposite to, his public ostensible instructions, thereby to deceive the Council, and to carry on with less obstruction dark and dangerous intrigues, contrary to the orders of the Court of Directors, to the true policy of this kingdom, and to the safety of the British possessions in the East.

VII. That the said letter from Major Browne was by the said Warren Hastings transmitted to the Court of Directors, without being accompanied by any part of the previous correspondence; by which wilful concealment the said Warren Hastings is guilty of an high and criminal disrespect to the Court of Directors, and of a most flagrant breach and violation of their orders, which he was bound by an act of Parliament to obey.

VIII. That the said Hastings having early in the year 1784 procured to himself a deputation to act in the upper provinces, the Council, being well aware of his disposition to engage in unwarrantable designs against the neighboring states, did expressly confine his powers to the circumstance of his actual residence within the Company's provinces. But it appears that ways were found out by which he hoped to defeat the precautions of the board: for the said Warren Hastings did write from Lucknow, the capital of the country of Oude, to the Court of Directors, a certain postscript of a letter, dated the 4th of May, 1784, in which he informs the Court that the son and heir-apparent of the Great Mogul had taken refuge with him and the Nabob of Oude; that he had a conference with that prince on the 10th of the same month of May, "no person being either present or within hearing" during the same; and that in the said conference the prince had informed him of the distresses of his father, and his wish for the relief of the king and the restoration of the dominions of his house, as well as to rescue him from the power of certain persons not named, who degraded him into a mere instrument of their interested and sordid designs, and that, on a failure of his application to him, he would either return to his father, or proceed to Calcutta, and thence to England; and that the said Warren Hastings did give him an answer to the following effect: "That our [the British] government had just obtained relief from a state of universal warfare, and required a term of repose; that our whole nation was weary of war, and dreaded the renewal of it, _and would he equally alarmed at any movement of which it could not see the issue or progress, but which might eventually tend to create new hostilities_; that he came hither [to Lucknow] with a limited authority, and could not, if he chose it, engage in a business of that nature _without the concurrence of his colleagues in office, who he believed would be adverse to it_; that he would represent the same to the joint members of his own government, and wait their determination. In the mean time he advised the prince to make advances to Mahdajee Sindia, both because our government _was in intimate and sworn connection_ with him, and because he was the effectual head of the Mahratta state; besides that he [the said Warren Hastings] feared his [Sindia's] taking the other side of the question, unless he was early prevented."

IX. That in the statement of this discourse there is much criminal reserve towards the Court of Directors,--it not appearing distinctly what the objects were, nor who the persons concerned, nor what the side was which he apprehended the Mahrattas might take, if not prevented by his advances; and in the discourse itself there were many particulars highly criminal, namely,--for that in the said conversation, in which he describes himself as declining a compliance with the request of the prince on account of the aversion (therein strongly expressed) of his colleagues, of the Company, and of the whole British nation, to engage in any measures which might even "_eventually lead to hostilities_," he spoke to the prince as if he had been entirely ignorant of the offers which but five months before had been made to the king, his father, on the part of that very government, (whose repugnance to such measures he then for the first time chose to profess, but which he always had known,) through Major Browne, the Company's representative at the court of Delhi, "to provide for the _entire_ expense of _any_ troops which the Shah [the king] might require," and that this was "what the Resident had _always_ proposed to the king and his confidential ministers,"--the said Browne further declaring, "that, if, in consequence of the said proposals, certain arrangements for the Shah's service by _troops_ were not immediately ordered, in his opinion all our [English government's] _offers and promises_ will be considered as false and insidious." This being the known state of the business, as represented by the said Hastings's own agent, and this the public opinion of it, although to impose on the ignorance of the prince with regard to the proceedings at his father's court would have been unworthy in itself, yet he, the said Warren Hastings, could not hope to succeed in such imposition, as in the postscript aforesaid he represents the said prince (who was the king's eldest son, and thirty-six years of age) as a person of considerable qualifications, and perfectly acquainted with the transactions at his father's court, and as one who had long held the _principal_ and most active part in the little that remained of _the administration of Shah Allum_. And the said Hastings conferring with a prince so well instructed, without making the slightest allusions to his said positive and recent engagements, or without giving any explanation with regard to them, the said Warren Hastings must appear to the said prince either as a person not only contracting engagements, but actually being the first mover and proposer of them, without any authority from _his colleagues_, and against theirs and the general inclination of the British nation, and on that ground not to be trusted, or that he had used this plea of disagreement between him and his Council as a pretence, set up without color or decency, for a gross violation of his own engagements, leaving the princes and states of the country no solid ground on which they can or ought to contract with the Company, to the utter destruction of all public confidence, and to the equal disgrace of the national candor, integrity, and wisdom.

X. That in a letter dated from the same place, Lucknow, the 16th of the following June, 1784, the said Warren Hastings informs the Court of Directors, that Major Browne, their agent to the Mogul, had arrived there in the character also of agent from the Mogul, with two sets of instructions from two opposite parties in his ministry, which instructions were directly contrary to each other: the first, which were the ostensible instructions, being to engage the said Hastings, in the Mogul's name, to enter into a treaty of mutual alliance with a chief of the country, then minister to the said Mogul, called Afrasaib Khan; the second were from another principal person, called Mudjed ul Dowlah, also a minister of the said Mogul, (but styled in the said letter _confidential_, for distinction,) which were directly destructive of the former; and the said latter instructions, to which it seems credence was to be given, were sent "under the most solemn adjurations of secrecy." The purpose of these latter and secret instructions was to require the Company's aid in freeing the Mogul from the oppressions of his servants, namely, from the oppressions of the said Afrasaib, between whom and the Company Major Browne (at once agent to that Company, and to two opposite factions in the Mogul's court) accepted a power to make a treaty of mutual alliance under the sanction of his sovereign. And it does not appear that he, Warren Hastings, did discountenance the double-dealing and fraudulent agencies of his and the Company's minister at that court, or did disavow any particular in the letter from him, the said Browne, of the 30th of December, 1783, stating the offers made on his part to the Mogul, so contradictory to his late declarations to the heir-apparent of that monarch, or did give any reprimand to the said Browne, or did show any mark of displeasure against him, as having acted without orders, but did again send him, with renewed confidence, to the court aforesaid.

XI. That the said Warren Hastings, still pursuing his said evil designs, did apply to the Council for discretionary powers relative to the intrigues and factions in the Mogul's court, giving assurances of his resolution not to proceed against their sense; but the said Council, being fully aware of his disposition, and having Major Browne's letter, recorded by himself, the said Warren Hastings, before them, did refuse to grant the said discretionary powers, but, on the contrary, did exhort him "most sedulously and cautiously to avoid, in his correspondence with the different princes in India, whatever may commit, or be strained into an interpretation of committing the Company, either as to their army or treasure,"--observing, "that the Company's orders are positive against their interference in the objects of dispute between the country powers."

XII. That, in order to subvert the plain and natural interpretation given by the Council to the orders of the Court of Directors, and to justify his dangerous intrigues, the said Warren Hastings, in his letter of the 16th June, 1784, to the said Court, did, in a most insolent and contemptuous manner, endeavor to persuade them of their ignorance of the true sense of their own orders, and to limit their prohibition of interference with the disputes of the country powers to such country powers as are _permanent_,--expressing himself as follows: "The faction which now surrounds the throne [the Mogul's throne] is widely different from the idea which your commands are intended to convey by the expressions to which you have generally applied them, of _country powers_, to which that _of permanency is a necessary adjunct_, and which may be more properly compared to a splendid bubble, which the slightest breath of opposition may dissipate with every trace of its existence." By which construction the said Hastings did endeavor to persuade the Court of Directors that they meant to confine their prohibition of sinister intrigues to those powers only who could not be easily hurt by them, and whose strength was such that their resentment of such clandestine interference was to be dreaded; but that, where the powers were weak and fragile, such intrigues might be allowed.

XIII. That the said Hastings, further to persuade the Court of Directors to involve themselves in the affairs of the Mogul, and to reconcile this measure with his former conduct and declared opinions, did write to them to the following effect: That "at that former period to which the ancient policy with regard to the Mogul applied, the king's authority was sufficiently respected" (which he knew not to be true,--having himself declared, in his minute of the 25th of October, 1774, "that he remained at Delhi, the ancient capital of the empire, _a mere cipher_ in the administration of it") to maintain itself against common vicissitudes; that he would not have advised interference, if the king himself retained the exercise of it, _however feeble_, in his own hands; that, if it [the Mogul's authority] is suffered to receive its final extinction, it is impossible to foresee _what power may arise out of its ruins_, or what events may be linked in the same chain of revolution with it: but your interests _may_ suffer by it, your reputation _certainly will_, as his right to our assistance _has been constantly acknowledged_, and by a train of consequences to which our government has not intentionally given birth, but most especially by the movements which _its influence, by too near an approach_, has excited, it has unfortunately become the efficient instrument of a great portion of the king's present distresses and dangers,--intimating (as well as the studied obscurity of his expressions will permit anything to be discerned) that his own late intrigues had been among the causes of the distresses and dangers, which by new intrigues he did pretend to remove: and he did conclude this part of his letter with some loose general expressions of his caution not to affect the Company's interests or revenues by any measures he might at that time take.

XIV. That the principle, so far as the same hath been directly avowed, of the said proceedings at the Mogul's court, was as altogether irrational, and the pretended object as impracticable, as the means taken in pursuit of it were fraudulent and dishonorable, namely, the restoration of the Mogul in some degree to the dignity of his situation, and to his free agency in the conduct of his affairs. For the said Hastings, at the very time in which he did with the greatest apparent earnestness urge the purpose which he pretended to have in view with regard to the dignity and liberty of the Mogul emperor, did represent him as a person wholly disqualified, and even indisposed, to take any active part whatsoever in the conduct of his own affairs, and that any attempt for that purpose would be utterly impracticable; and this he hath stated to the Court of Directors as a matter of public notoriety, in his said letter of the 16th of June, 1784, in the following emphatical and decisive terms.

"_You need not be told_ the character of the king, whose inertness, and the habit of long-suffering, has debased his dignity and the fortunes of his house _beyond the power of retrieving either the one or the other_. Whilst his personal repose is undisturbed, he will _prefer_ to live in _the meanest state of indigence_, under the rule of men whose views are bounded by avarice and the power which they derive from his authority, rather than commit any share of it to his own sons, (though his affection for them is boundless in every other respect,) from a natural jealousy, founded on the experience of a very different combination of those circumstances which once served as a temptation and example of unlawful ambition in the princes of the royal line. His ministers, from a policy more reasonable, have constantly employed every means of influence to confirm this disposition, and to prevent his sons from having any share in the distribution of affairs, so as to have established a complete usurpation of the royal prerogative under its own sanction and patronage."

XV. That the said Warren Hastings, having given this opinion of the sovereign for whose freedom he pretended so anxious a concern, did describe the minister with whom he had long acted in concurrence, and from whom he had just received the extraordinary secret embassy aforesaid for the purpose of effecting the deliverance of his master, the Mogul, from the usurpations of _his ministers_, as follows. "The first minister, Mudjed ul Dowlah, is _totally_ deficient in every military quality, conceited of his own superior talents, and formed to the practice of _that crooked policy which, generally defeats its own purpose_, but sincerely attached to his master." The reality of the said attachment was not improbable, but altogether useless, as the said minister was the only one among the principal persons about the king who (besides the total want of all military and civil ability) possessed no territories, troops, or other means of serving and supporting him, but was himself solely upheld by his influence over his master: neither doth the said Hastings free him, any more than the persons more efficient, who were to be destroyed, from a disposition to alienate the king from an attention to his affairs, and from all confidence in his own family; but, on the contrary, he brings him forward as the very first among the instances he adduces to exemplify the practices of the ministers against their sovereign and his children.

XVI. That the said Warren Hastings, recommending in general terms, and yet condemning in detail, every part of his own pretended plan, as impracticable in itself, and as undertaken in favor of persons all of whom he describes as incapable, and the principal as indisposed to avail himself thereof, must have had some other motives for this long, intricate, dark, and laborious proceeding with the Mogul, which must be sought in his actions, and the evident drift and tendency thereof, and in declarations which were brought out by him to serve other purposes, but which serve fully to explain his real intentions in this intrigue.

XVII. That the other members of the Council-General having abundantly certified their averseness to his intrigues, and even having shown apprehensions of his going personally to the Mogul and the Mahrattas for the purpose of carrying on the same, the said Hastings was driven headlong to acts which did much more openly indicate the true nature and purpose of his machinations. For he at length recurred directly, and with little disguise, to the Mahrattas, and did open an intrigue with them, although he was obliged to confess, in his letter aforesaid of the 16th June, 1784, that the exception which he contended to be implied in the orders of the Court of Directors forbidding the intermeddling in the disputes of "the country powers," namely, "powers not permanent," did by no means apply to the Mahrattas; and he informs the Court of Directors that he did, on the very first advice he received of the flight of the Mogul's son, write to Mr. James Anderson to apprise the Mahratta chief, Sindia, of that event,--"for which as he was unprepared, he desired his [the said Sindia's] advice for his conduct on the occasion of it." Which method of calling for the advice of a foreign power to regulate his political conduct, instead of being regulated therein by the advice of the British Council and the standing orders of the Court of Directors, was a procedure highly criminal; and the crime is aggravated by his not communicating the said correspondence to the Council-General, as by his duty he was bound to do; but it does abundantly prove his concert with the Mahrattas in all that related to his negotiations in the Mogul court, which were carried on agreeably to their advice, and in subserviency to their views and purposes.

XVIII. That, in consequence of the cabal begun with the Mahrattas, the said chief, Sindia, did send his "familiar and confidential ministers" to him, the said Hastings, being at Lucknow, with whom the said Hastings did hold several secret conferences, without any secretary or other assistant: and the said Hastings hath not conveyed to the Court of Directors any minutes thereof, but hath purposely involved even the general effect and tendency of these conferences in such obscurity that it is no otherwise possible to perceive the drift and tendency of the same, but by the general scope of councils and acts relative to the politics of the Mogul and of the Mahrattas together, and by the final event of the whole, which is sufficiently visible. For

XIX. That the said Hastings had declared, in his said letter of the 16th June, 1784, that the Mogul's right to our assistance had been constantly acknowledged, that the Mogul had been oppressed by the lesser Mahomedan princes in the character of his officers of state and military commanders, and he did plainly intimate that the said Mogul ought to be relieved from that servitude. And he did, in giving an account to the Court of Directors of the conferences aforesaid, assure them that "his inclinations [the inclinations of the Mahratta chief aforesaid] were not very dissimilar from his own"; and that "neither in this nor in any other instance would he suffer himself to be drawn into measures which shall tend to weaken their connection, nor _in this even to oppose his_ [the said chiefs] _inclinations_": the said Hastings well knowing, as in his letter to Colonel Muir of the ---- he has confessed, that the inclinations of the said Sindia were to seize on the Mogul's territories, and that he himself did secretly concur therein, though he did not formally insert his concurrence in the treaty with the said Mahratta chief. It is plain, therefore, that he did all along concur with the Mahrattas in their designs against the said king and his ministers, under the treacherous pretence of supporting the authority of the former against the latter, and did contrive and effect the ruin of them all. For, first, he did give evil and fraudulent counsel to the heir-apparent of the Mogul "to make advances to the Mahrattas," when he well knew, and had expressly concurred in, the designs of that state against his father's, the Mogul's, dominions; and further to engage and entrap the said prince, did assert that "our government" (meaning the British government) "was in intimate and sworn connection with Mahdajee Sindia," when no alliance, offensive or defensive, appears to exist between the said Sindia and the East India Company, nor can exist, otherwise than in virtue of some secret agreement between him, the said Sindia, and Warren Hastings, entered into by the latter without the knowledge of his colleagues and the government, and never communicated to the Court of Directors. And, secondly, he did, in order to further the designs of the Mahrattas, contrive and effect the ruin of the said Mogul and his authority, by setting on foot, through the aforesaid Major Browne, sundry perplexed and intricate negotiations, contrary to public faith, and to the honor of the British nation; by which he did exceedingly increase the confusion and disorders of the Mogul's court, exposing the said Mogul to new indignities, insults, and distresses, and almost all of the northern parts of India to great and ruinous convulsions, until three out of four of the principal chieftains, some of them possessing the territories lately belonging to Nudjif Khan, and maintaining among them eighty thousand troops of horse and foot, and some of which chiefs wore the ministers aforesaid, being cut off by their mutual dissensions, and the fort of Delhi being at length delivered to the Mahrattas, the said Sindia became the uncontrolled ruler of the royal army, and the person of the Mogul, with the use of all his pretensions and claims, fell into the hands of a nation already too powerful, together with an extensive territory, which entirely covers the Company's possessions and dependencies on one side, and particularly those of the Nabob of Oude.

XX. That the circumstances of these countries did, in the opinion of the said Warren Hastings himself, sufficiently indicate to him the necessity of not aggrandizing any power whatsoever on their borders, he having in the aforesaid letter of the 16th June given a deliberate opinion of the situation of Oude in the words following: "That, whilst we are at peace with the powers of Europe, it is only in this quarter that your possessions under the government of Bengal are vulnerable." And he did further in the said letter state, that, "if things had continued as they had been to that time, with a divided government," (viz., the Company's and the Vizier's, which government he had himself established, and under which it ever must in a great degree remain, whilst the said country continues in a state of dependence,) "the _slightest_ shock from a foreign hand, or even an _accidental internal commotion_, might have thrown the whole into confusion, and produced the most fatal consequences." In this perilous situation he made the above-recited sacrifices to the ambition of the Mahrattas, and did all along so actively countenance and forward their proceedings, and with so full a sense of their effect, that in his minute of the 24th December, 1784, he has declared, "that in the countries which border on the dominions of the Nabob Vizier, or on that quarter of our own, in effect _there is no other power_." And he did further admit, that the presence of the Mahratta chief aforesaid, so near the borders of the Nabob's dominions, was no cause of suspicion; for "that it is the effect _of his own solicitation_, and is _so far_ the effect of an act of that government."

XXI. That, in further pursuit of the same pernicious design, he, the said Warren Hastings, did enter into an agreement to withdraw a very great body of the British troops out of the Nabob's dominions,--asserting, however truly, yet in direct contradiction to his own declarations, that "this government" (meaning the British government) "has not any right to force defence with its maintenance upon him" (the Nabob); and he did thus not only avowedly aggrandize the Mahratta state, and weaken the defence upon the frontier, but did as avowedly detain their captain-general in force on that very frontier, notwithstanding he was well apprised that they had designs against those dependent territories of Oude, which they had with great difficulty been persuaded, even in appearance, to include in the treaty of peace,--and that they have never renounced their claims upon certain large and valuable portions of them, and have shown evident signs of their intentions, on the first opportunity, of asserting and enforcing them. And, finally, the said Warren Hastings, in contradiction to sundry declarations of his own concerning the necessity of curbing the power of the Mahrattas, and to the principle of sundry measures undertaken by himself professedly for that purpose, and to the sense of the House of Commons, expressed in their resolution of 28th May, 1782, against any measures that tended to unite the dangerous powers of the Mahratta empire under one active command, has endeavored to persuade the Company, that, "while Sindia lives, every accession of territory obtained by him will be an advantage to this [the British] government"; which if it was true as respecting the personal dispositions of Sindia, which there is no reason to believe, yet it was highly criminal to establish a power in the Mahrattas which must survive the man in confidence of whose personal dispositions a power more than personal was given, and which may hereafter fall into hands disposed to make a more hostile use of it.

XXII. That, in consequence of all the before-recited intrigues, the Mogul emperor being in the hands of the Mahrattas, he, the said Mogul, has been obliged to declare the head of the Mahratta state to be vicegerent of the Mogul empire, an authority which supersedes that of Vizier, and has thereby consolidated in the Mahratta state all the powers acknowledged to be of legal authority in India; in consequence of which, they have acquired, and have actually already attempted to use, the said claims of general superiority against the Company itself,--the Mahrattas claiming a right in themselves to a fourth part of the revenues of all the provinces in the Company's possession, and claiming, in right of the Mogul, the tribute due to him: by which actings and doings the said Hastings has to the best of his power brought the British provinces in India into a dependence on the Mahratta state: and in order to add to the aforesaid enormous claims a proportioned force, he did never cease, during his stay in India, to contrive the means for its increase; for it is of public notoriety, that one great object of the Mahratta policy is to unite under their dominion the nation or religious sect of the Seiks, who, being a people abounding with soldiers, and possessing large territories, would extend the Mahratta power over the whole of the vast countries to the northwest of India.

XXIII. That the said Warren Hastings, further to augment the power of the said Mahrattas, and to endanger the safety of the British possessions, having established in force the said Mahrattas on the frontier, as afore-recited, and finding the Council-General averse in that situation to the withdrawing the British forces therefrom, and for disbanding them to the extent required by the said Hastings, did, in a minute of the 4th December, 1784, after stating a supposition, that, contrary to his opinion, the said troops should not be reduced, propose to employ them under the command of the Mogul's son, then under the influence of the Mahrattas, in a war against the aforesaid people or religious sect called Seiks, defending the same on the following principles: "I feel the sense of an obligation, imposed on me by the supposition I have made, to state a mode of rendering the detachment of use in its prescribed station, and of affording the _appearance_ of a cause for its retention."

XXIV. That the said Hastings did admit that there was no present danger to the Company's possessions from that nation which could justify him in such a war, as he had declared that the Mahrattas were _the only power_ that bordered on the Company's possessions and those of the Vizier; but he did assign as a reason for going to war with them their military and enthusiastic spirit,--the hardiness of their natural constitution,--the dangers which might arise from them in some future time, if they should ever happen to be united under one head, they existing at present in a state little different from anarchy; and he did predict great danger from them, and at no very remote period, "if this people be permitted to grow into maturity without interruption." And though he doth pretend that the solicitations of the heir-apparent of the Mogul, who, he says, did repeatedly and earnestly solicit him to obtain the permission to use the Company's troops for the purpose aforesaid, had weight with him, yet he doth declare, as he expresses himself in the minute aforesaid, that "a _stronger impulse_, arising from the hope of _blasting the growth_ of a generation whose strength _might_ become fatal to our own, strongly pleaded in my mind for supporting his wishes."

XXV. That the said Warren Hastings, after forcibly recommending the plan aforesaid, did state strong objections, that did, "in his judgment, outweigh the advantages which might arise from a compliance with it." Yet the said Hastings, being determined to pursue his scheme for aggrandizing at any rate the Mahratta power, in whose adult growth and the recent effects of it he could see no danger, did pursue the design of war against a nation or sect of religion in its infancy, from whom he had received no injury, and in whose present state of government he did not apprehend any mischief whatsoever; and finding the Council fixed and determined on not disbanding the frontier regiments, and thinking that therein he had found an advantage, he did ground thereon the following proposition.

"If the expense [of the frontier troops] is to be continued, it may be surely better continued for some useful purpose than to keep up the parade of a great military corps designed merely to lie inactive in its quarters. On this ground, therefore, and on the supposition premised, I revert to my original sentiments in favor of the prince's plan; but as this will require some qualification in the execution of it, I will state my recommendation of it in the terms of a proposition, viz., that, if it shall be the resolution of the board to continue the detachment now under the command of Colonel Sir John Cumming at Furruckabad, and if the prince Mirza Jehander Shah shall apply, _with the authority of the king, and the concurrence of Mahdajee Sindia_, for the assistance of an English military force, to act in conjunction with him, to expel the Seiks from the territories of which they have lately possessed themselves in the neighborhood of Delhi, it may be granted, and such a portion of the said detachment allotted to that service as shall be hereafter judged adequate to it."

XXVI. That the said Warren Hastings did, in the said proposal, endeavor to circumvent and overreach the Council-General, by converting an apparent and literal compliance with their resolution into a real and substantial opposition to and disappointment thereof. For his first proposal was, to withdraw the Company's troops from the Vizier's country on the pretence of relieving him from the burden of that establishment, but in reality with a view of facilitating the Mahratta pretensions on that province, which would then be deprived of the means of defence. And when the Council rejected the said proposal on the express ground of danger to the province by withdrawing from the Mahrattas the restraint of our troops, the said Hastings, finding his first scheme in favor of the Mahrattas against the provinces dependent on the Company defeated by the refusal of the Council to concur in the said measure of withdrawing the troops, did then endeavor to obtain the same purpose in a different way; and instead of leaving the troops, according to the intention and policy of the Council, as a check to the ambition and progress of the Mahrattas, he proposed to employ them in the actual furtherance of those schemes of aggrandizement of which his colleagues were jealous, and which it was the object of their resolution to counteract.

XXVII. That, in the whole of the letters, negotiations, proposals, and projects of the said Warren Hastings relative to the Mogul, he did appear to pursue but one object, namely, the aggrandizement of the lately hostile and always dangerous power of the Mahrattas, and did pursue the same by means highly dishonorable to the British character for honor, justice, candor, plain-dealing, moderation, and humanity.

XIX.--LIBEL ON THE COURT OF DIRECTORS.

I. That Warren Hastings, Esquire, was, during the whole of the year 1783, a servant of the East India Company, and was bound by the duties of that relation not only to yield obedience to the orders of the Court of Directors, but to give to the whole of their service an example of submission, reverence, and respect to their authority; and that, if they should in the course of their duty call in question any part of his conduct, he was bound to conduct his defence with temper and decency; and while his conduct was under their consideration, it was not allowable to print and publish any of his letters to them without their consent first had and obtained; and he was bound by the same principles of duty, enforced by still more cogent reasons, to observe, in a paper intended for publication, great modesty and moderation, and to treat the said Court of Directors, his lawful masters, with respect.

II. That the said Warren Hastings did print and publish, or cause to be printed and published, at Calcutta in Bengal, the narrative of his transactions at Benares, in a letter written at that place, without leave had of the Court of Directors, in order to preoccupy the judgment of the servants in that settlement, and to gain from them a factious countenance and support, previous to the judgment and opinion of the Court of Directors, his lawful superiors.

III. That the Court of Directors, having come to certain resolutions of fact relative to the engagements subsisting between them and the Rajah of Benares, and the manner in which the same had been fulfilled on the part of the Rajah, did, in the fifth resolution, which was partly a resolution of opinion, declare as follows: "That it appears to this Court that the conduct of the Governor-General towards the Rajah, whilst he was at Benares, was improper; and that the imprisonment of his person, thereby disgracing him in the eyes of his subjects and others, was unwarrantable and highly impolitic, and may tend to weaken the confidence which the native princes of India ought to have in the justice and moderation of the Company's government."

IV. That the said resolutions being transmitted to the said Warren Hastings, he, the said Warren Hastings, did write, and cause to be printed and published, a certain false, insolent, malicious, and seditious libel, purporting to be a letter from him, the said Warren Hastings, to the Court of Directors, dated Fort William, 20th March, 1783, "calculated," as the Directors truly affirm, "to bring contempt, as well as an odium, on the Court of Directors, for their conduct on that occasion"; and the said libel had a direct tendency to excite a spirit of disobedience to the lawful government of this nation in India through all ranks of their service.

V. That he, the said Warren Hastings, among other insolent and contumacious charges and aspersions on the Court of Directors, did address them in the printed letter aforesaid as follows. "I deny that Rajah Cheyt Sing was a native prince of India. Cheyt Sing is the son of a collector of the revenue of that province, which his arts, and the misfortunes of his master, enabled him to convert to a permanent and hereditary possession. This man, whom _you have thus ranked among the princes_ of India, will be astonished, when he hears it, at an elevation so unlooked for, nor less at the independent rights which _your_ commands have assigned him,--rights which are _so foreign to his conceptions, that I doubt whether he will know in what language to assert them, unless_ the example which _you have thought it consistent with justice, however opposite to policy, to show, of becoming his advocates against your own interests, should inspire any of your own servants to be his advisers and instructors_." And he did further, to bring into contempt the authority of the Company, and to excite a resistance to their lawful orders, frame a supposition that the Court of Directors had intended the restoration of the Rajah of Benares, and on that ground did presume in the said libel to calumniate, in disrespectful and contumelious terms, the policy of the Court of Directors, as well as the person whom he did conceive to be the object of their protection, as followeth. "Of the consequences of such a policy I forbear to speak. _Most happily, the wretch whose hopes may be excited by the appearances in his favor is ill qualified to avail himself of them_, and _the force which is stationed in the province of Benares is sufficient to suppress any symptoms of internal sedition_; but it cannot fail to create distrust and suspense in the minds both of the rulers and of the people, and such a state is always productive of disorder. But it is not in this partial consideration that I dread the effects of your commands; it is in your proclaimed indisposition against the first executive member of your first government in India. I almost shudder at the reflection of what might have happened, had these denunciations against your own minister, in favor of a man universally considered in this part of the world as justly attainted for his crimes, the murderer of your servants and soldiers, and the rebel to your authority, arrived two months earlier."

VI. That the said Warren Hastings did also presume to censure and asperse the Court of Directors for the moderate terms in which they had expressed their displeasure against him, as putting him under the necessity of stating in his defence a strong accusation against himself, and as implying in the said Court a consciousness that he was not guilty of the offences charged upon him,--being, as he asserts, in the resolutions of the Court of Directors, "arraigned and prejudged of _a violation of national faith, in acts of such complicated aggravation_, that, _if they were true_, no punishment SHORT OF DEATH could atone for the injury which the interest and credit of the public had sustained in them"; and he did therefore censure the said Court for applying no stronger or more criminating epithets than those of "improper, unwarrantable, and highly impolitic," to an offence so by them charged, and by him described. And though it be true that the expressions aforesaid are much too reserved for the purpose of duly characterizing the offences of the said Hastings, yet was it _in him_ most indecent to libel the Court of Directors for the same; and his implication, from the tenderness of the epithets and descriptions aforesaid used towards him, was not only indecent, but ungrounded, malicious, and scandalous,--he having himself highly, though truly, aggravated "the charge of the injuries done by him to the Rajah of Benares," in order to bring the said Directors into contempt and suspicion, the paragraphs in the said libel being as follow.--"Here I must crave leave to say, that the terms 'improper, unwarrantable, and highly impolitic' are much too gentle, as deductions from such premises; and as every reader of the latter will obviously feel, as he reads, the deductions which inevitably belong to them, I will add, that the strict performance of solemn engagements on one part, followed by acts directly subversive of them and by total dispossession on the other, stamps on the perpetrators of the latter the guilt of the greatest possible violation of faith and justice."--"There is an appearance of tenderness in this deviation from plain construction, of which, however meant, I have a right to complain; because it imposes on me the necessity of framing the terms of the accusation against myself, which you have only not made, but have stated the leading arguments to it so strongly, that no one who reads these can avoid making it, _or not know it to have been intended_."

VII. That the said Hastings, being well aware that his own declarations did contain the clearest condemnation of his own conduct from his own pen, did in the said libel attempt to overturn, frustrate, and render of none effect all the proofs to be given of prevarication, contradiction, and of opposition of action to principle, which can be used against men in public trust, and did contend that the same could not be used against him; and as if false assertions could be justified by factious motives, he did endeavor to do away the authority of his own _deliberate, recorded_ declarations, entered by him _in writing_ on the Council-Books of the Presidency; for, after asserting, _but not attempting to prove_, that his declarations were consistent with his conduct, he writes in the said libel as follows: For "were it otherwise, they were not to be made the rules of my conduct; and God forbid that every expression dictated by the impulse of present emergency, and unpremeditatedly uttered in the heat of party contention, should impose upon me the obligation of a fixed principle, and be applied to every variable occasion!"

VIII. That the said Hastings, in order to draw the lawful dependence of the servants of the Company from the Court of Directors to a factious dependence on himself, did, in the libel aforesaid, treat the acts and appointments of their undoubted authority, when exercised in opposition to his arbitrary will, as ruinous to their affairs, in the following terms. "It is as well known to the Indian world as to the Court of English Proprietors, that the first declaratory instruments of the dissolution of my influence, in the year 1774, were Mr. John Bristow and Mr. Francis Fowke. By your ancient and known constitution the Governor has been ever held forth and understood to possess the ostensible powers of government; all the correspondence with foreign princes is conducted in his name; and every person resident with them for the management of your political concerns is understood to be _more especially his_ representative, and of _his_ choice: and such ought to be the rule; for how otherwise can they trust an agent nominated against the will of _his_ principal? When the state of this administration was such as seemed to _admit of_ the appointment of Mr. Bristow to the Residency of Lucknow without _much_ diminution of _my own_ influence, I gladly seized the occasion to show my readiness to submit to your commands; I proposed his nomination; he was nominated, and declared to _be the agent of my own choice_. Even this effect of my caution _is defeated by your absolute command for his reappointment independent of me, and with the supposition that I should be adverse to it_.--I am now wholly deprived of my official powers, both in the province of Oude, and in the zemindary of Benares."

IX. That, further to emancipate others and himself from due obedience to the Court of Directors, he did, in the libel aforesaid, enhance his services, which, without specification or proof, he did suppose in the said libel to be important and valuable, by representing them as done under their displeasure, and doth attribute his not having done more to their opposition, as followeth. "It is now a complete period of eleven years since I first received the first nominal charge of your affairs; in the course of it I have _invariably_ had to contend, not with ordinary difficulties, but such as most _unnaturally_ arose _from the opposition of those very powers from which I primarily derived my authority, and which were required for the support of it_. My exertions, though applied to an unvaried and consistent line of action, have been occasional and desultory; yet I please myself with the hope, that, in the annals of your dominion, which shall be written after the extinction of recent prejudices, this term of its administration will appear not the least conducive to the interests of the Company, nor the least reflective of the honor of the British name: and allow me to suggest the instructive reflection of _what good might have been done, and what evil prevented, had due support been given to that administration which has performed such eminent and substantial services without it_."

And the said Hastings, further to render the authority of the said Court perfectly contemptible, doth, in a strain of exultation for his having escaped out of a measure in which by his guilt he had involved the Company in a ruinous war, and out of which it had escaped by a sacrifice of almost all the territories before acquired (from that enemy which he had made) either by war or former treaties, and by the abandoning the Company's allies to their mercy, attribute the said supposed services to his acting in such a manner as had on former occasions excited their displeasure, in the following words. "Pardon, Honorable Sirs, this digressive exultation. I cannot suppress the pride which I feel in this successful achievement of a measure so fortunate for your interests and the national honor; for that pride is the source of my zeal, so frequently exerted in your support, and never more happily than in those instances _in which I have departed from the prescribed and beaten path of action, and assumed a responsibility which has too frequently drawn on me the most pointed effects of your displeasure_. But however I may yield to my private feelings in thus enlarging on the subject, my motive in introducing it was immediately connected with its context, and was to contrast _the actual state of your political affairs, derived from a happier influence, with that which might have attended an earlier dissolution of it_": and he did value himself upon "the _patience_ and temper with which he had submitted to all the indignities which have been heaped upon him" (meaning, by the said Court of Directors) "in this long service"; and he did insolently attribute to an unusual strain of zeal for their service, that he "_persevered_ in the VIOLENT MAINTENANCE OF HIS OFFICE."

X. That, in order further to excite the spirit of disobedience in the Company's servants to the lawful authority set over them, he, the said Warren Hastings, did treat contemptuously and ironically the supposed disposition of the Company's servants to obey the orders of the Court of Directors, in the words following. "The recall of Mr. Markham, who was known to be the public agent of my own nomination at Benares, and the reappointment of Mr. Francis Fowke by your order, contained in the same letter, would place it [the restoration of Cheyt Sing] beyond a doubt. _This order has been obeyed; and whenever you shall be pleased to order the restoration of Cheyt Sing, I will venture to promise the same ready and exact submission in the other members of the Council._" And he did, in the postscript of the said letter, and as on recollection, endeavor to make a reparation of honor to his said colleagues, as if his expressions aforesaid had arisen from animosity to them, as follows. "Upon a careful revisal of what I have written, I fear that an expression which I have used, respecting the probable conduct of the board in the event of orders being received for the restoration of Cheyt Sing, may be construed as intimating a sense of dissatisfaction applied to transactions already past.--It is not my intention to complain of any one."

XI. That the said Hastings, in the acts of injury aforesaid to the Rajah of Benares, did assume and arrogate to himself an illegal authority therein, and did maintain that the acts done in consequence of that measure were not revocable by any subsequent authority, in the following words. "If you should proceed to order the restoration of Cheyt Sing to the zemindary, from which, _by the powers which I legally possessed_, and conceive myself legally _bound to assert_ against any _subsequent authority to the contrary_ derived from _the same common source_, he was dispossessed for crimes of the greatest enormity, and your Council shall resolve to execute the order, I will instantly give up my station and the service."

XII. That the said Warren Hastings did attempt to justify his publication of the said libellous letter to and against the Court of Directors by asserting therein that these resolutions (meaning the resolutions of the Court of Directors relative to the Rajah of Benares) "were _either_ published or _intended_ for publication": evidently proving that he did take this unwarrantable course without any sufficient assurance that the ground and motive by him assigned had any existence.

XX.--MAHRATTA WAR AND PEACE.

I. That by an act passed in 1773 it was expressly ordered and provided, "that it should not be lawful for any President and Council of Madras, Bombay, or Bencoolen, for the time being, to make any orders for commencing hostilities, or declaring or making war, against any Indian princes or powers, or for negotiating or concluding any treaty of peace, or other treaty, with any such Indian princes or powers, without the consent and approbation of the Governor-General and Council first had and obtained, except in such cases of _imminent necessity_ as would render it dangerous to postpone such hostilities or treaties until the orders from the Governor-General and Council might arrive." That, nevertheless, the President and Council of Bombay did, in December, 1774, without the consent and approbation of the Governor-General and Council of Fort William, and in the midst of profound peace, commence an unjust and unprovoked war against the Mahratta government, did conclude a treaty with a certain person, a fugitive from that government, and proscribed by it, named Ragonaut Row, or Ragoba, and did, under various base and treacherous pretences, invade and conquer the island of Salsette, belonging to the Mahratta government.

II. That Warren Hastings, on the first advices received in Bengal of the above transactions, did condemn the same in the strongest terms,--declaring that "the measures adopted by the Presidency of Bombay had a tendency to a very extensive and indefinite scene of troubles, and that their conduct was unseasonable, impolitic, unjust, and unauthorized." And the Governor-General and Council, in order to put a stop to the said unjust hostilities, did appoint an ambassador to the Peshwa, or chief of the Mahratta state, resident at Poonah; and the said ambassador did, after a long negotiation, conclude a definitive treaty of peace with the said Peshwa on terms highly honorable and beneficial to the East India Company, who by the said treaty obtained from the Mahrattas a cession of considerable tracts of country, the Mahratta share of the city of Baroach, twelve lacs of rupees for the expenses of the said unjust war, and particularly the island of Salsette, of which the Presidency of Bombay had possessed themselves by surprise and treachery. That, in return for these extraordinary concessions, the articles principally insisted on by the Mahrattas, with a view to their own future tranquillity and internal quiet, were, that _no assistance should he given to any subject or servant of the Peshwa that should cause disturbances or rebellion in the Mahratta dominions_, and particularly that the English _should not assist Ragonaut Row_, to whom the Mahrattas agreed to allow five lacs of rupees a year, or a jaghire to that amount, and that he should reside at Benares. That, nevertheless, the Presidency of Bombay did receive and keep Ragonaut Row at Bombay, did furnish him with a considerable establishment, and continue to carry on secret intrigues and negotiations with him, thereby giving just ground of jealousy and distrust to the Mahratta state. That the late Colonel John Upton, by whom the treaty of Poorunder was negotiated and concluded, did declare to the Governor-General and Council, "that, while Ragonaut Row resides at Bombay in expectation of being supported, the ministers can place no confidence in the Council there, which must now be productive of the greatest inconveniencies, and perhaps in the end of fatal consequences." That the said Warren Hastings, concurring with his Council, which then consisted of Sir John Clavering, Richard Barwell, and Philip Francis, Esquires, did, on the 18th of August, 1777, declare to the Presidency of Bombay, that "he could see no reason to doubt that the presence of Ragoba at Bombay would continue to be _an insuperable bar_ to the completion of the treaty concluded with the Mahratta government; nor could any sincere cordiality and good understanding be established with them, as long as he should appear to derive encouragement and support from the English." That Sir John Clavering died soon after, and that the late Edward Wheler, Esquire, succeeded to a seat in the Supreme Council. That on the 29th of January, 1778, the Governor-General and Council received a letter from the Presidency of Bombay, dated 12th December, 1777, in which they declared, "that they had agreed to give encouragement to a _party_ formed in Ragoba's favor, and flattered themselves they should meet with the hearty concurrence of the Governor-General and Council in the measures they might be obliged to pursue in consequence." That the _party_ so described was said to consist of four principal persons in the Mahratta state, on whose part _some overtures_ had been made to Mr. William Lewis, the Resident of Bombay at Poonah, _for the assistance of the Company to bring Ragoba to Poonah_. That the said Warren Hastings, immediately on the receipt of the preceding advices, did propose and carry it in Council, by means of his casting voice, and against the remonstrances, arguments, and solemn protest of two members of the Supreme Council, that the _sanction_ of that government should be given to the plan which the President and Council of Bombay had agreed to form with the Mahratta government; and also that a supply of money (to the amount of ten lacs of rupees) should be immediately granted to the President and Council of Bombay _for the support of their engagements above mentioned_; and also that a military force should be sent to the Presidency of Bombay. That in defence of these resolutions the said Warren Hastings did falsely pretend and affirm, "that the resolution of the Presidency of Bombay was formed on such a case of _imminent necessity_ as would have rendered it dangerous to postpone the execution of it until the orders from the Governor-General and Council might arrive; and that the said Presidency of Bombay _were warranted by the treaty of Poorunder_ to join in a plan for conducting Ragonaut Row to Poonah on the application of the ruling part of the Mahratta state": whereas the main object of the said treaty on the part of the Mahrattas, and to obtain which they made many important concessions to the India Company, was, that the English should withdraw their forces, and give no assistance to Ragoba, and that he should be excluded forever from any share in their government, being a person _universally held in abhorrence_ in the Mahratta empire; and if it had been true (instead of being, as it was, notoriously false) that _the ruling part_ of the administration of the Mahratta state solicited the return of Ragonaut Row to Poonah, his return in that case might have been effected by acts of their own, without the interposition of the English power, and without our interference in their affairs. That it was the special duty of the said Warren Hastings, derived from a special trust reposed in him and power committed to him by Parliament, to have restrained, as by law he had authority to do, the subordinate Presidency of Bombay from entering into hostilities with the Mahrattas, or from making engagements the manifest tendency of which was to enter into those hostilities, and to have put a stop to them, if any such had been begun; that he was bound by the duty of his office to preserve the faith of the British government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder, inviolate and sacred, as well as by the special orders and instructions of the East India Company _to fix his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India_: all which important duties the said Warren Hastings did wilfully violate, in giving the _sanction_ of the Governor-General and Council to the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects of the President and Council of Bombay hereinbefore mentioned, from which the subsequent Mahratta war, with all the expense, distress, and disgraces which have attended it, took their commencement; and that the said Warren Hastings, therefore, is specially and principally answerable for the said war, and for all the consequences thereof. That in a letter dated the 20th of January, 1778, the President and Council of Bombay informed the Governor-General and Council, that, in consequence of later intelligence received from Poonah, they had _immediately resolved that nothing further could be done, unless Saccaram Baboo, the principal in the late treaty_ (of Poorunder) _joined in making a formal application to them_. That no such application was ever made by that person. That the said Warren Hastings, finding that all this pretended ground for engaging in an invasion of the Mahratta government had totally failed, did then pretend to give credit to, and to be greatly alarmed by, the suggestions of the President and Council of Bombay, that the Mahrattas were negotiating with the French, and had agreed to give them the port of Choul, on the Malabar coast, and did affirm that the French _had obtained possession of that port_. That all these suggestions and assertions were false, and, if they had been true, would have furnished no just occasion for attacking either the Mahrattas or the French, with both of whom the British nation was then at peace. That the said Warren Hastings did then propose and carry the following resolution in Council, against the protest of two members thereof, that, "for the purpose of granting you [the Presidency of Bombay] the most effectual support in our power, we have resolved to assemble a strong military force near Calpee, the commanding officer of which is to be ordered to march by the most practicable route to Bombay, or to such other place as future occurrences and your directions to him may render it expedient"; and with respect to the _steps_ said to be taking _by the French to obtain a settlement on the Malabar coast_, the said Warren Hastings did declare to the Presidency of Bombay, "that it was the opinion of the Governor-General and Council that no time ought to be lost in forming and carrying into execution such measures as might most effectually tend to frustrate such dangerous designs." That the said Warren Hastings, therefore, instead of fixing his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India, as it was his duty to have done, did continue to abet, encourage, and support the dangerous projects of the Presidency of Bombay, and did thereby manifest a determined intention to disturb the peace of India, by the unfortunate success of which intention, and by the continued efforts of the said Hastings, the greatest part of India has been for several years involved in a bloody and calamitous war. That both the Court of Directors and Court of Proprietors did specially instruct the said Warren Hastings, in all his measures, "to make the safety and prosperity of Bengal his principal object," and did heavily censure the said Warren Hastings for having employed their troops at a great distance from Bengal in a war against the Rohillas, which the House of Commons have pronounced to be _iniquitous_,[17] and did on that occasion expressly declare, "that they disapproved of all such distant expeditions as might eventually carry their forces to any situation too remote to admit of their speedy and safe return to the protection of their own provinces, in case of emergency."[18] That the said Warren Hastings nevertheless ordered a detachment from the Bengal army to cross the Jumna, and to proceed across the peninsula by a circuitous route through the diamond country of Bundelcund, and through the dominions of the Rajah of Berar, situated in the centre of Hindostan, and did thereby strip the provinces subject to the government of Fort William of a considerable part of their established defence, and did thereby disobey the general instructions and positive orders of the Court of Directors, (given upon occasion of a crime of the same nature committed by the said Hastings,) and was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.

That the said Warren Hastings, having taken the measures hereinbefore described for supporting those of the Presidency of Bombay, did, on the 23d of March, 1778, "invest the said Presidency with authority to form a new alliance with Ragoba, and to engage with him in _any_ scheme which they should deem expedient and safe for retrieving his affairs." That the said Hastings was then in possession of a letter from the Court of Directors, dated the 4th of July, 1777, containing a positive order to the Presidency of Bombay in the following words. "Though that treaty" (meaning the treaty of Poorunder) "is not, upon the whole, so agreeable to us as we could wish, still we are resolved strictly to adhere to it on our parts. You must therefore be particularly vigilant, while Ragoba is with you, to prevent him from forming any plan against what is called the ministerial party at Poonah; and we hereby positively order you not to engage with him in any scheme whatever in retrieving his affairs, without the consent of the Governor-General and Council, or the Court of Directors." That the said Ragoba neither did or could form any plan for his restoration but what was and must be against the ministerial party at Poonah, who held and exercised the regency of that state in the infancy of the Peshwa; and that, supposing him to have formed any other _scheme_, in conjunction with Bombay, _for retrieving his affairs_, the said Hastings, in giving a previous _general_ authority to the Presidency of Bombay to engage with Ragoba in _any_ scheme for that purpose, without knowing what such scheme might be, and thereby relinquishing and transferring to the discretion of a subordinate government that superintendence and control over all measures tending to create or provoke a war which the law had exclusively vested in the Governor-General and Council, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.

That the said Warren Hastings, having first declared that the measures taken by him were for the support of the engagements made by the Presidency of Bombay in favor of Ragoba, did afterwards, when it appeared that those negotiations were _entirely laid aside_, declare that his apprehension of the consequence of a pretended _intrigue_ between the Mahrattas and the French _was the sole motive of all the late measures taken for the support of the Presidency of Bombay_; but that neither of the preceding declarations contained the true motives and objects of the said Hastings, whose real purpose, as it appeared soon after, was, to make use of the superiority of the British power in India to carry on offensive wars, and to pursue schemes of conquest, impolitic and unjust in their design, ill-concerted in the execution, and which, as this House has resolved, _have brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the East India Company_.

That the said Warren Hastings, on the 22d of June, 1778, made the following declaration in Council. "Much less can I agree, that, with such superior advantages as we possess over every power which can oppose us, we should act _merely on the defensive_. On the contrary, if it be really true that the British arms and influence have suffered so severe a check in the Western world, it is more incumbent on those who are charged with the interests of Great Britain in the East _to exert themselves for the retrieval of the national loss_. We have the means in our power, and, if they are not frustrated by our own dissensions, I trust that the event of this expedition will yield every advantage _for the attainment of which it was undertaken_."

That, in pursuance of the principles avowed in the preceding declaration, the said Warren Hastings, on the 9th of July, 1778, did propose and carry it in Council, that an embassy should be sent from Bengal to Moodajee Boosla, the Rajah of Berar,--falsely asserting that the said Rajah "was, by interest and inclination, likely to join in an alliance with the British government, and suggesting that two advantages might be offered to him as the inducements to it: first, the support of his pretensions to the sovereign power" (viz., of the Mahratta empire); "second, the recovery of the captures made on his dominions by Nizam Ali." That the said Hastings, having already given full authority to the Presidency of Bombay to engage the British faith to Ragonaut Row to support him in _his_ pretensions to the government or to the regency of the Mahratta empire, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor in proposing to engage the same British faith to support the pretensions of another competitor for the same object; and that, in offering to assist the Rajah of Berar to recover the captures made on his dominions by the Nizam, the said Hastings did endeavor, as far as depended on him, to engage the British nation in a most unjust and utterly unprovoked war against the said Nizam, between whom and the East India Company a treaty of peace and friendship did then subsist, unviolated on his part,--notwithstanding the said Hastings well knew that it made part of the East India Company's fundamental policy to support that prince against the Mahrattas, and _to consider him as one of the few remaining chiefs who were yet capable of coping with the Mahrattas_, and that it was the Company's _true interest to preserve a good understanding with him_. That, by holding out such offers to the Rajah of Berar, the said Hastings professed to hope that the Rajah _would ardently catch at the objects presented to his ambition_: and although the said Hastings did about this time lay it down as a maxim that _there is always a greater advantage in receiving solicitations than in making advances_, he nevertheless declared to the said Rajah that _in the whole of his conduct he had departed from the common line of policy, and had made advances where others in his situation would have waited for solicitation_. That the said unjust and dangerous projects did not take effect, because the Rajah of Berar refused to join or be concerned therein; yet so earnest was the said Hastings for the execution of those projects, that in a subsequent letter he daringly and treacherously assured the Rajah, "that, if he had accepted of the terms offered him by Colonel Goddard, and concluded a treaty with the government of Bengal upon them, he should have held the obligation of it superior to that of any engagement formed by the government of Bombay, and should have thought it his duty to maintain it, &c., against every consideration _even of the most valuable interests and safety of the English possessions intrusted to his charge_." That all the offers of the said Hastings were rejected with slight and contempt by the Rajah of Berar; but the same being discovered, and generally known throughout India, did fill the chief of the princes and states of India with a general suspicion and distrust of the ambitious designs and treacherous principles of the British government, and with an universal hatred of the British nation. That the said princes and states were thereby so thoroughly convinced of the necessity of uniting amongst themselves to oppose a power which kept no faith with any of them, and equally threatened them all, that, renouncing all former enmities against each other, they united in a common confederacy against the English, viz.: the Peshwa, as representative of the Mahratta state, and Moodajee Boosla, the Rajah of Berar, that is, the principal Hindoo powers of India, on one side; and Hyder Ali, and the Nizam of the Deccan, that is, the principal Mahomedan powers of India, on the other: and that in consequence of this confederacy Hyder Ali invaded, overran, and ruined the Carnatic; and that Moodajee Boosla, instead of _ardently catching at the objects presented to his ambition_ by the said Hastings, sent an army to the frontiers of Bengal,--which army the said Warren Hastings was at length forced to buy off with twenty-six lacs of rupees, or 300,000_l._ sterling, after a series of negotiations with the Mahratta chiefs who commanded that army, founded and conducted on principles so dishonorable to the British name and character, that the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, by whom the rest of the proceedings in that business were reported to the House, _have upon due consideration thought it proper to leave out the letter of instructions to Mr. Anderson_, viz., those given by the said Warren Hastings to the representative of the British government, and concerning which the said committee have reported in the following terms: "The schemes of policy by which the Governor-General seems to have dictated the instructions he gave to Mr. Anderson" (the gentleman deputed) "will also appear in this document, as well respecting the particular succession to the _rauje_, as also the mode of accommodating the demand of _chout_, the establishment of which was apparently the great aim of Moodajee's political manoeuvres, while the Governor-General's wish to defeat it was avowedly more intent on the removal of a nominal disgrace than on the anxiety or resolution to be freed from an expensive, if an unavoidable incumbrance."

That, while the said Warren Hastings was endeavoring to persuade the Rajah of Berar to engage with him in a scheme to place the said Rajah at the head of the Mahratta empire, the Presidency of Bombay, by virtue of the powers specially vested in them for that purpose by the said Hastings, did really engage with Ragonaut Row, the other competitor for the same object, and sent a great part of their military force, established for the defence of Bombay, on an expedition with Ragonaut Row, to invade the dominions of the Peshwa, and to take Poonah, the capital thereof; that this army, being surrounded and overpowered by the Mahrattas, was obliged to capitulate; and then, through the moderation of the Mahrattas, was permitted to return quietly, but _very disgracefully_, to Bombay. That, supposing the said Warren Hastings could have been justified in abandoning the project of reinstating Ragonaut Row, which he at first authorized and promised to support, and in preferring a scheme to place the Rajah of Berar at the head of the Mahratta empire, he was bound by his duty, as well as injustice to the Presidency of Bombay, to give that Presidency timely notice of such his intention, and to have restrained them positively from resuming their own project; that, on the contrary, the said Warren Hastings did, on the 17th of August, 1778, again _authorize_ the said Presidency "to assist Ragoba with a military force to conduct him to Poonah, and to establish him in the regency there," and, so far from communicating his change of plan to Bombay, did keep it concealed from that Presidency, insomuch that, even so late as the 19th of February, 1779, William Hornby, then Governor of Bombay, declared in Council his total ignorance of the schemes of the said Hastings in the following terms: "The schemes of the Governor-General and Council with regard to the Rajah of Berar _being yet unknown to us_, it is impossible for us to found any measures on them; yet I cannot help now observing, that, if, as has been conjectured, the gentleman of that Presidency have entertained thoughts of restoring, in his person, the ancient Rajah government, the attempt seems likely to be attended with no small difficulty." That, whereas the said Warren Hastings did repeatedly affirm that it was his intention to support the plan formed by the Presidency of Bombay in favor of Ragoba, and did repeatedly authorize and encourage them to pursue it, he did nevertheless, at the same time, in his letters and declarations to the Peshwa, to the Nizam, and to the Rajah of Berar, falsely and perfidiously affirm, _that it never was nor is designed by the English chiefs to give support to Ragonaut Row,--that he_ (Hastings) _had no idea of supporting Ragonaut Row,--and that the detachment he had sent to Bombay was solely to awe the French, without the least design to assist Ragonaut Row_. That, supposing it to have been the sole _professed_ intention of the said Hastings, in sending an army across India, to protect Bombay against a Trench invasion, even that pretence was false, and used only to cover the real design of the said Hastings, viz., to engage in projects of war and conquest with the Rajah of Berar. That on the 11th of October, 1778, he informed the said Rajah "that the detachment would soon arrive in his territories, and depend on him [Moodajee Boosla] for its subsequent operations"; that on the 7th of December, 1778, the said Hastings revoked the powers he had before given[19] to the Presidency of Bombay over the detachment, declaring that the event of Colonel Goddard's negotiation with the Rajah of Berar _was likely to cause a very speedy and essential change in the design and operations of the detachment_; and that on the 4th of March, 1779, the said Hastings, immediately after receiving advice of the defeat of the Bombay army near Poonah, and when Bombay, if at any time, particularly required to be protected against a French invasion, did declare in Council that he _wished for the return of the detachment to Berar, and dreaded to hear of its proceeding to the Malabar coast_: and therefore, if the said Hastings did not think that Bombay was in danger of being attacked by the French, he was guilty of repeated falsehoods in affirming the contrary for the purpose of covering a criminal design; or, if he thought that Bombay was immediately threatened with that danger, he then was guilty of treachery in ordering an army necessary on that supposition to the immediate defence of Bombay to halt in Berar, to depend on the Rajah of Berar for its subsequent operations, or on _the event of a negotiation_ with that prince, which, as the said Hastings declared, _was likely to cause a very speedy and essential change in the design and operations of the detachment_; and finally, in declaring that _he dreaded to hear of the said detachment's proceeding to the Malabar coast_, whither he ought to have ordered it to proceed without delay, if, as he has solemnly affirmed, it was true that _he had been told by the highest authority that a powerful armament had been prepared in France, the first object of which was an attack upon Bombay, and that he knew with moral certainty that all the powers of the adjacent continent were ready to join the invasion_.

That through the whole of these transactions the said Warren Hastings has been guilty of continued falsehood, fraud, contradiction, and duplicity, highly dishonorable to the character of the British nation; that, in consequence of the unjust and ill-concerted schemes of the said Hastings, the British arms, heretofore respected in India, have suffered repeated disgraces, and great calamities have been thereby brought upon India; and that the said Warren Hastings, as well in exciting and promoting the late unprovoked and unjustifiable war against the Mahrattas, as in the conduct thereof, has been guilty of sundry high crimes and misdemeanors.

That, by the definitive treaty of peace concluded with the Mahrattas at Poorunder, on the 1st of March, 1776, the Mahrattas gave up all right and title to the island of Salsette, unjustly taken from them by the Presidency of Bombay; did also give up to the English Company forever all right and title to their entire shares of the city and purgunnah of Baroach; did also give forever to the English Company a country of three lacs of rupees revenue, near to Baroach; and did also agree to pay to the Company twelve lacs of rupees, in part of the expenses of the English army: and that the terms of the said treaty _were honorable and advantageous to the India Company_.[20]

That Warren Hastings, having broken the said treaty, and forced the Mahrattas into another war by a repeated invasion of their country, and having conducted that war in the manner hereinbefore described, did, on the 17th of May, 1782, by the agency of Mr. David Anderson, conclude another treaty of perpetual friendship and alliance with the Mahrattas, by which the said Hastings agreed to deliver up to them all the countries, places, cities, and forts, particularly the island of Bassein, (taken from the Peshwa during the war,) and to relinquish all claim to the country of three lacs of rupees ceded to the Company by the treaty of Poorunder; that the said Warren Hastings did also at the said time, by a private and separate agreement, deliver up to Mahdajee Sindia the whole of the city of Baroach,--that is, not only the share in the said city which the India Company acquired by the treaty of Poorunder, but the other share thereof which the India Company possessed for several years before that treaty; and that among the reasons assigned by Mr. David Anderson for totally stripping the Presidency of Bombay of all their possessions on the Malabar coast, he has declared, "that, from the general tenor of the _rest_ of the treaty, the settlement of Bombay would be in future put on such a footing that it might well become a question whether the possession of an inconsiderable territory without forts would not be attended with more loss than advantage, as it must necessarily occasion considerable expense, must require troops for its defence, and might probably in the end lead, as Sindia apprehended, to a renewal of war."

That the said Warren Hastings, having in this manner put an end to a war commenced by him without provocation, and continued by him without necessity, and having for that purpose made so many sacrifices to the Mahrattas in points of essential interest to the India Company, did consent and agree to other articles utterly dishonorable to the British name and character, having sacrificed or abandoned every one of the native princes who by _his_ solicitations and promises had been engaged to take part with us in the war,--and that he did so without necessity: since it appears that Sindia, the Mahratta chief who concluded the treaty, _in every part of his conduct manifested a hearty desire of establishing a peace_ with us; and that this was the disposition of all the parties in the Mahratta confederacy, who were only kept together by a general dread of their common enemy, the English, and who only waited for a cessation of hostilities with us to return to their habitual and permanent enmity against each other. That the Governor-General and Council, in their letter of 31st August, 1781, made the following declaration to the Court of Directors. "The Mahrattas have demanded the sacrifice of the person of Ragonaut Row, the surrender of the fort and territories of Ahmedabad, and of the fortress of Gualior, _which are not ours to give, and which we could not wrest from the proprietors without the greatest violation of public faith_. No state of affairs, in our opinions, could warrant our acquiescence to such requisition; and we are morally certain, that, had we yielded to them, such a consciousness of the state of our affairs would have been implied as would have produced an effect the very reverse from that for which it was intended, by raising the presumption of the enemy to exact yet more _ignominious_ terms, or perhaps their refusal to accept of any; nor, in our opinion, would they have failed to excite in others the same belief, and the consequent decision of all parties against us, as the natural consequences of our decline." That the said Hastings himself, in his instructions to Mr. David Anderson, after authorizing him to restore _all_ that we had conquered during the war, expressly "_excepted_ Ahmedabad, and the territory conquered for Futty Sing Gwicowar." That, nevertheless, the said Hastings, in the peace concluded by him, has yielded to every one of the conditions reprobated in the preceding declarations as _ignominious_ and incompatible with public faith.

That the said Warren Hastings did abandon the Ranna of Gohud in the manner already charged; and that the said Ranna has not only lost the fort of Gualior, but all his own country, and is himself a prisoner. That the said Hastings did not interpose to obtain any terms in favor of the Nabob of Bopaul, who was _with great reason desirous of concealing from the Mahrattas the attachment he had borne to the English government_:[21] the said Nabob having a just dread of the danger of being exposed to the resentment of the Mahrattas, and no dependence on the faith and protection of the English. That by the ninth article of the treaty with Futty Sing it was stipulated, that, when a negotiation for peace should take place, his interest should be primarily considered; and that Mr. David Anderson, the minister and representative of the Governor-General and Council, did declare to Sindia, that it was indispensably incumbent on us to support Futty Sing's rights: that, nevertheless, every acquisition made for or by the said Futty Sing during the war, particularly _the fort and territories of Ahmedabad_, were given up by the said Hastings; that Futty Sing was replaced under the subjection of the Peshwa, (whose resentment he had provoked by taking part with us in the war,) and under an obligation to pay a tribute, not specified, to the Peshwa, and to perform such services and to be subject to such obedience _as had long been established and customary_; and that, no limit being fixed to such tribute or services, the said Futty Sing has been left wholly at the mercy of the Mahrattas.

That, with respect to Ragoba, the said Hastings, in his instructions to Mr. Anderson, dated 4th of November, 1781, contented himself with saying, "We cannot _totally_ abandon the interests of Ragonaut Row. Endeavor to obtain for him an adequate provision." That Mr. Anderson declared to Mahdajee Sindia,[22] "that, as we had given Ragoba protection as an independent prince, and not brought him into our settlement as a prisoner, we could not _in honor_ pretend to impose the _smallest_ restraint on his will, and he must be at liberty to go wherever he pleased; that it must rest with Sindia himself to prevail on him to reside in his country: all that we could do was to _agree_, after a reasonable time, _to withdraw our protection from him, and not to insist on the payment of the stipend to him_, as Sindia had proposed, unless on the condition of his residing in some part of Sindia's territories."

That, notwithstanding all the preceding declarations, and in violation of the public faith repeatedly pledged to Ragoba, he was totally abandoned by the said Hastings in the treaty, no provision whatever being made even for his subsistence, but on a condition to which he could not submit without the certain loss of his liberty and probable hazard of his life, namely, _that he should voluntarily and of his own accord repair to Sindia, and quietly reside with him_. That such treacherous desertion of the said Ragoba is not capable of being justified by any plea of necessity: but that in fact no such necessity existed; since it appears that the Nizam, who of all the contracting parties in the confederacy was personally most hostile to Ragoba, did himself _propose that Ragoba, might have an option given him_ of residing within the Company's territories.

That the plan of negotiating a peace with the Mahrattas by application to Sindia, and through his mediation, was earnestly recommended to the said Hastings by the Presidency of Bombay so early as in February, 1779, who stated clearly to him the reasons why such application ought to be made to Sindia in preference to any other of the Mahratta chiefs, and why it would probably be successful; the truth and justice of which reasons were fully evinced in the issue, when the said Hastings, after incurring, by two years' delay, all the losses and distresses of a calamitous war, did actually pursue that very plan with much less effect or advantage than might have been obtained at the time the advice was given. That he neglected the advice of the Presidency of Bombay, and retarded the peace, as well as made its conditions worse, from an obstinate attachment to his project of an alliance offensive and defensive with the Rajah of Berar, the object of which was rather a new war than a termination of the war then existing against the Peshwa.

That the said Hastings did further embarrass and retard the conclusion of a peace by employing different ministers at the courts of the several confederate powers, whom he severally empowered to treat and negotiate a peace. That these ministers, not acting in concert, not knowing the extent of each other's commissions, and having no instructions to communicate their respective proceedings to each other, did in effect counteract their several negotiations. That this want of concert and of simplicity, and the mystery and intricacy in the mode of conducting the negotiation on our part, was complained of by our ministers as embarrassing and disconcerting to us, while it was advantageous to the adverse party, who were thereby furnished with opportunity and pretence for delay, when it suited their purpose, and enabled to play off one set of negotiators against another; that it also created jealousy and distrust in the various contending parties, with whom we were treating at the same time, and to whom we were obliged to make contradictory professions, while it betrayed and exposed to them all our own eagerness and impatience for peace, raising thereby the general claims and pretensions of the enemy. That, while Dalhousie Watherston, Esquire, was treating at Poonah, and David Anderson, Esquire, in Sindia's camp, with separate powers applied to the same object, the minister at Poonah informed the said Watherston, that he had received proposals for peace from the Nabob of Arcot with the approbation of Sir Eyre Coote; that he had returned other proposals to the said Nabob of Arcot, who had assured him, the minister, that those proposals _would be acceded to, and that Mr. Macpherson would set out for Bengal, after which orders should be immediately dispatched from the Honorable the Governor-General and Council to the effect he wished_; that the said Nabob "had promised to obtain and forward to him the expected _orders from Bengal in fifteen days_, and that he was therefore every instant in expectation of their arrival,--and observed, that, when General Goddard proposed to send a confidential person to Poonah, he conceived that those orders must have actually reached him": that therefore the treaty formally concluded by David Anderson was in effect and substance the same with that offered and in reality concluded by the Nabob of Arcot, with the exception only of Salsette, which the Nabob of Arcot had agreed to restore to the Mahrattas.

That the intention of the said Warren Hastings, in pressing for a peace with the Mahrattas on terms so dishonorable and by measures so rash and ill-concerted, was not to restore and establish a general peace throughout India, but to engage the India Company in a new war against Hyder Ali, and to make the Mahrattas parties therein. That the eagerness and passion with which the said Hastings pursued this object laid him open to the Mahrattas, who depended thereon for obtaining whatever they should demand from us. That, in order to carry the point of an offensive alliance against Hyder Ali, the said Hastings exposed the negotiation for peace with the Mahrattas to many difficulties and delays. That the Mahrattas were bound by a clear and recent engagement, which Hyder had never violated in any article, to make no peace with us which should not include him; that they pleaded the sacred nature of this obligation in answer to all our requisitions on this head, while the said Hastings, still importunate for his favorite point, suggested to them various means of reconciling a substantial breach of their engagement with a formal observance of it, and taught them how they might at once be parties in a peace with Hyder Ali and in an offensive alliance for immediate hostility against him. That these lessons of public duplicity and artifice, and these devices of ostensible faith and real treachery, could have no effect but to degrade the national character, and to inspire the Mahrattas themselves, with whom we were in treaty, with a distrust in our sincerity and good faith. That the object of this fraudulent policy (viz., the utter destruction of Hyder Ali, and a partition of his dominions) was neither wise in itself, or authorized by the orders and instructions of the Company to their servants; that it was incompatible with the treaty of peace, in which Hyder Ali was included, and contrary to the repeated and best-understood injunctions of the Company,--being, in the first place, a bargain for a new war, and, in the next, aiming at an extension of our territory by conquest. That the best and soundest political opinions on the relations of these states have always represented our great security against the power of the Mahrattas to depend on its being balanced by that of Hyder Ali; and the Mysore country is so placed as a barrier between the Carnatic and the Mahrattas as to make it our interest rather to strengthen and repair that barrier than to level and destroy it. That the said treaty of partition does express itself to be _eventual_ with regard to the making and keeping of peace; but through the whole course of the said Hastings's proceeding he did endeavor to prevent any peace with the Sultan or Nabob of Mysore, Tippoo Sahib, and did for a long time endeavor to frustrate all the methods which could have rendered the said treaty of conquest and partition wholly unnecessary.

That the Mahrattas having taken no effectual step to oblige Hyder Ali to make good the conditions for which they had engaged in his behalf, and the war continuing to be carried on in the Carnatic by Tippoo Sultan, son and successor of Hyder Ali, the Presidency of Fort St. George undertook, upon their own authority, to open a negotiation with the said Tippoo: which measure, though indispensably necessary, the said Hastings utterly disapproved and discountenanced, expressly denying that there was any ground or motive for entering into any direct or separate treaty with Tippoo, and not consenting to or authorizing any negotiation for such treaty, until after a cessation of hostilities had been brought about with him by the Presidency of Fort St. George, in August, 1783, and the ministers of Tippoo had been received and treated with by that Presidency, and commissioners, in return, actually sent by the said Presidency to the court of Poonah: which late and reluctant consent and authority were extorted from him, the said Hastings, in consequence of the acknowledgment of his agent at the court of Mahdajee Sindia, upon whom the said Warren Hastings had depended for enforcing the clauses of the Mahratta treaty, of the precariousness of such dependence, and of the necessity of that direct and separate treaty with Tippoo, so long and so lately reprobated by the said Warren Hastings, notwithstanding the information and entreaties of the Presidency of Fort St. George, as well as the known distresses and critical situation of the Company's affairs. That, though the said Warren Hastings did at length give instructions for negotiating and making peace with Tippoo, expressly adding, that those instructions extended to _all_ the points which occurred to _him or them_ as capable of being agitated or gained upon the occasion,--though the said instructions were sent after the said commissioners by the Presidency of Fort St. George, with directions to obey them,--though not only the said instructions were obeyed, but advantages gained which did not occur to the said Warren Hastings,--though the said peace formed a contrast with the Mahratta peace, in neither ceding any territory possessed by the Company before the war, or delivering up any dependant or ally to the vengeance of his adversaries, but providing for the restoration of all the countries that had been taken from the Company and their allies,--though the Supreme Council of Calcutta, forming the legal government of Bengal in the absence of the said Warren Hastings, ratified the said treaty,--yet the said Warren Hastings, then absent from the seat of government, and out of the province of Bengal, and forming no legal or integral part of the government during such absence, did, after such ratification, usurp the power of acting as a part of such government (as if actually sitting in Council with the other members of the same) in the consideration and unqualified censure of the terms of the said peace.

That the Nabob of Arcot, with whom the said Hastings did keep up an unwarrantable clandestine correspondence, without any communication with the Presidency of Madras, wrote a letter of complaint, dated the 27th of March, 1784, against the Presidency of that place, without any communication thereof to the said Presidency, the said complaint being addressed to the said Warren Hastings, the substance of which complaint was, that he, the Nabob, had not been made a party to the late treaty; and although his interest had been sufficiently provided for in the said treaty, the said Warren Hastings did sign a declaration, on the 23d of May, at Lucknow, forming the basis of a new article, and making a new party to the treaty, after it had been by all parties (the Supreme Council of Calcutta included) completed and ratified, and did transmit the said new stipulation to the Presidency at Calcutta, solely for the purposes and at the instigation of the Nabob of Arcot; and the said declaration was made without any previous communication with the Presidency aforesaid, and in consequence thereof orders were sent by the Council at Calcutta to the Presidency of Fort St. George, _under the severest threats in case of disobedience_: which orders, whatever were their purport, would, as an undue assumption of and participation in the government, from which he was absent, become a high misdemeanor; but, being to the purport of opening the said treaty after its solemn ratification, and proposing a new clause and a new party to the same, was also an aggravation of such misdemeanor, as it tended to convey to the Indian powers an idea of the unsteadiness of the councils and determinations of the British government, and to take away all reliance on its engagements, and as, above all, it exposed the affairs of the nation and the Company to the hazard of seeing renewed all the calamities of war, from whence by the conclusion of the treaty they had emerged, and upon a pretence so weak as that of proposing the Nabob of Arcot to be a party to the same,--though he had not been made a party by the said Warren Hastings in the Mahratta treaty, which professed to be for the relief of the Carnatic,--though he was not a party to the former treaty with Hyder, also relative to the Carnatic,--though it was not certain, if the treaty were once opened, and that even Tippoo should then consent to that Nabob's being a party, whether he, the said Nabob, would agree to the clauses of the same, and consequently whether the said treaty, once opened, could afterwards be concluded: an uncertainty of which he, the said Hastings, should have learned to be aware, having already once been disappointed by the said Nabob's refusing to accede to a treaty which he, the said Warren Hastings, made for him with the Dutch, about a year before.

That the said Warren Hastings,--having broken a solemn and honorable treaty of peace by an unjust and unprovoked war,--having neglected to conclude that war when he might have done it without loss of honor to the nation,--having plotted and contrived, as far as depended on him, to engage the India Company in another war as soon as the former should be concluded,--and having at last put an end to a most unjust war against the Mahrattas by a most ignominious peace with them, in which he sacrificed objects essential to the interests, and submitted to conditions utterly incompatible with the honor of this nation, and with his own declared sense of the dishonorable nature of those conditions,--and having endeavored to open anew the treaty concluded with Tippoo Sultan through the means of the Presidency of Fort St. George, upon principles of justice and honor, and which established peace in India, and thereby exposing the British possessions there to the renewal of the dangers and calamities of war,--has by these several acts been guilty of sundry high crimes and misdemeanors.

XXI.--CORRESPONDENCE.

That, by an act of the 13th year of his present Majesty, intituled, "An act for establishing certain regulations for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company, as well in India as in Europe, the Governor-General and Council are required and directed to pay due obedience to all such orders as they shall receive from the Court of Directors of the said United Company, and to correspond from time to time, and constantly and diligently transmit to the said Court an exact particular of all advices or intelligence and of all transactions and matters whatsoever that shall come to their knowledge, relating to the government, commerce, revenues, or interest of the said United Company."

That, in consequence of the above-recited act, the Court of Directors, in their general instructions of the 29th March, 1774, to the Governor-General and Council, did direct, "that the correspondence with the princes or country powers in India should be carried on through the Governor-General only; but that all letters to be sent by him should be first approved in Council; and that he should lay before the Council, at their next meeting, all letters received by him in the course of such correspondence, for their information."

And the Governor-General and Council were therein further ordered, "that, in transacting the business of their department, they should enter with the utmost perspicuity and exactness all their proceedings whatsoever, and all dissents, if such should at any time be made by any member of their board, together with all letters sent or received in the course of their correspondence; and that broken sets of such proceedings, to the latest period possible, be transmitted to them [the Court of Directors], a complete set at the end of every year, and a duplicate by the next conveyance."

That, in defiance of the said orders, and in breach of the above-recited act of Parliament, the said Warren Hastings has, in sundry instances, concealed from his Council the correspondence carried on between him and the princes or country powers in India, and neglected to communicate the advices and intelligence he from time to time received from the British Residents at the different courts in India to the other members of the government, and, without their knowledge, counsel, or participation, has dispatched orders on matters of the utmost consequence to the interests of the Company.

That, moreover, the said Warren Hastings, for the purpose of covering his own improper and dangerous practices from his employers, has withheld from the Court of Directors, upon sundry occasions, copies of the proceedings had, and the correspondence carried on by him in his official capacity as Governor-General, whereby the Court of Directors have been kept in ignorance of matters which it highly imported them to know, and the affairs of the Company have been exposed to much inconvenience and injury.

That, in all such concealments and acts done or ordered without the consent and authority of the Supreme Council, the said Warren Hastings has been guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

XXII.--FYZOOLA KHAN.