Chapter IX: Part II (5)

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.