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 112,950l., the latter only to 64,202l.

XC. That his own secret agent, Major Palmer, did receive a salary or allowance, equal to 22,800l. 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 1,440l. a year, claimed from the Vizier, with Mr. Hastings's knowledge, the sum of 9,763l. a year, and upwards, making together 11,203l. per annum. The next was Mr. Trevor Wheler, who did receive, upon the same establishment, when he was Fourth Assistant at Oude, 6,000l. 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 30,000l. 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 (7,200l.) a year; to the Nabob's own mother but half that sum, that is to say, 36,000 rupees (3,600l.) a year; to Rajah Gourdas, son of Nundcomar, (whom he had described as a weak young man,) 72,000 rupees (7,200l.) 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 (7,800l.) a year: the total of which allowances exceeding the salary of Mahomed Reza Khan by 18,000 rupees (1,800l.) 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 [5,000l.], 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 160,000l. 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.