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 favour 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 Farruckabad; and if the prince Mirza Jehander Shah shall apply, with the authority of the king and the concurrence of Madajee Scindia, 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 neighbourhood 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, endeavour 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 favour 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 endeavour 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 coun

teract.

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 dishonourable to the British character for honour, justice, candour, plain dealing, mo deration, and humanity.

XIX. LIBEL ON THE COURT OF

DIRECTORS.

10404

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.

That the said Warren Hastings did print and pub lish, or cause to be printed and published, at Calcutta 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.

HI.

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

pajah, 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 of March, 1783, "calculated [as the directors truly affirm] to bring contempt, as well as an odium, ou 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 Cheit Sing was a native prince of India. Cheit Sing is the son of a collector of the revenue of that province, which his arte, 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 authori ty 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 favour, 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 favour 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.

to

That the said Warren Hastings did also presume 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