That the said compact for offensive alliance in favor of a great prince against a considerable nation was not carried on by projects and counter-projects in writing; nor were the articles and conditions thereof formed into any regular written instrument, signed and sealed by the parties; but the whole (both the negotiation and the compact of offensive alliance against the Rohillas) was a mere verbal engagement, the purport and conventions whereof nowhere appeared, except in subsequent correspondence, in which certain of the articles, as they were stated by the several parties, did materially differ: a proceeding new and unprecedented, and directly leading to mutual misconstruction, evasion, and ill faith, and tending to encourage and protect every species of corrupt, clandestine practice. That, at the time when this private verbal agreement was made by the said Warren Hastings with the Nabob of Oude, a public ostensible treaty was concluded by him with the said Nabob, in which there is no mention whatever of such agreement, or reference whatever to it: in defence of which omission, it is asserted by the said Warren Hastings, that the multiplication of treaties weakens their efficacy, and therefore they should be reserved only for very important and permanent obligations; notwithstanding he had previously declared to the said Nabob, "that the points which he had proposed required much consideration, and the previous ratification of a formal agreement, before he could consent to them." That the whole of the said verbal agreement with the Nabob of Oude in his own person, without any assistance on his part, was carried on and concluded by the said Warren Hastings alone, without any person who might witness the same, without the intervention even of an interpreter, though he confesses that he spoke the Hindostan language imperfectly, and although he had with him at that time and place several persons high in the Company's service and confidence, namely, the commander-in-chief of their forces, two members of their Council, and the Secretary to the Council, who were not otherwise acquainted with the proceedings between him and the said Nabob than by such communications as he thought fit to make to them.
That the object avowed by the said Warren Hastings, and the motives urged by him for employing the British arms in the utter extirpation of the Rohilla nation, are stated by himself in the following terms:—"The acquisition of forty lacs of rupees to the Company, and of so much specie added to the exhausted currency of our provinces;—that it would give wealth to the Nabob of Oude, of which we should participate;—that the said Warren Hastings should always be ready to profess that he did reckon the probable acquisition of wealth among his reasons for taking up arms against his neighbors;—that it would ease the Company of a considerable part of their military expense, and preserve their troops from inaction and relaxation of discipline;—that the weak state of the Rohillas promised an easy conquest of them;—and, finally, that such was his idea of the Company's distress at home, added to his knowledge of their wants abroad, that he should have been glad of any occasion to employ their forces which saved so much of their pay and expenses."
That, in the private verbal agreement aforesaid for offensive war, the said Warren Hastings did transgress the bounds of the authority given him by his instructions from the Council of Fort William, which had limited his powers to such compacts "as were consistent with the spirit of the Company's orders"; which Council he afterwards persuaded, and with difficulty drew into an acquiescence in what he had done.
That the agreement to the effect aforesaid was settled in the said secret conferences before the 10th of September, 1773; but the said Warren Hastings, concealing from the Court of Directors a matter of which it was his duty to afford them the earliest and fullest information, did, on the said 10th of September, 1773, write to the Directors, and dispatched his letter over land, giving them an account of the public treaty, but taking not the least notice of his agreement for a mercenary war against the nation of the Rohillas.
That, in order to conceal the true purport of the said clandestine agreement the more effectually, and until he should find means of gaining over the rest of the Council to a concurrence in his disobedience of orders, he entered a minute in the Council books, giving a false account of the transaction; in which minute he represented that the Nabob had indeed proposed the design aforesaid, and that he, the said Warren Hastings, was pleased that he urged the scheme of this expedition no further, when in reality and truth he had absolutely consented to the said enterprise, and had engaged to assist him in it, which he afterwards admitted, and confessed that he did act in consequence of the same.
That the said Warren Hastings and his Council were sensible of the true nature of the enterprise in which they had engaged the Company's arms, and of the heavy responsibility to which it would subject himself and the Council,—"the personal hazard they, the Council, run, in undertaking so uncommon a measure without positive instructions, at their own risk, with the eyes of the whole nation on the affairs of the Company, and the passions and prejudices of almost every man in England inflamed against the conduct of the Company and the character of its servants"; yet they engaged in the very practice which had brought such odium on the Company, and on the character of its servants, though they further say that they had continually before their eyes the dread of forfeiting the favor of their employers, and becoming the "objects of popular invectives." The said Warren Hastings himself says, at the very time when he proposed the measure, "I must confess I entertain some doubts as to its expediency at this time, from the circumstances of the Company at home, exposed to popular clamor, and all its measures liable to be canvassed in Parliament, their charter drawing to a close, and his Majesty's ministers unquestionably ready to take advantage of every unfavorable circumstance in the negotiations of its renewal." All these considerations did not prevent the said Warren Hastings from making and carrying into execution the said mercenary agreement for a sum of money, the payment of which the Nabob endeavored to evade on a construction of the verbal treaty, and was so far from being insisted on, as it ought to have been, by the said Warren Hastings, that, when, after the completion of the service, the commander-in-chief was directed to make a demand of the money, the agent of the said Warren Hastings at the same time assured the Nabob "that the demand was nothing more than matter of form, common, and even necessary, in all public transactions, and that, although the board considered the claim of the government literally due, it was not the intention of administration to prescribe to his Excellency the mode, or even limits, of payment." Nor was any part of the money recovered, until the establishment of the Governor-General and Council by act of Parliament, and their determination to withdraw the brigade from the Nabob's service,—the Resident at his court, appointed by the said Warren Hastings, having written, that he had experienced much duplicity and deceit in most of his transactions with his Excellency; and the said Nabob and his successors falling back in other payments in the same or greater proportion as he advanced in the payment of this debt, the consideration of lucre to the Company, the declared motive to this shameful transaction, totally failed, and no money in effect and substance (as far as by any account to be depended on appears) has been obtained.
That the said Nabob of Oude did, in consequence of the said agreement, and with the assistance of British troops, which were ordered to march and subjected to his disposal by the said Warren Hastings and the Council, unjustly enter into and invade the country of the Rohillas, and did there make war in a barbarous and inhuman manner, "by an abuse of victory," "by the unnecessary destruction of the country," "by a wanton display of violence and oppression, of inhumanity and cruelty," and "by the sudden expulsion and casting down of an whole race of people, to whom the slightest benevolence was denied." When prayer was made not to dishonor the Begum (a princess of great rank, whose husband had been killed in battle) and other women, by dragging them about the country, to be loaded with the scoffs of the Nabob's rabble, and otherwise still worse used, the Nabob refused to listen to the entreaties of a British commander-in-chief in their favor; and the said women of high rank were exposed not only to the vilest personal indignities, but even to absolute want: and these transactions being by Colonel Champion communicated to the said Warren Hastings, instead of commendations for his intelligence, and orders to redress the said evils, and to prevent the like in future, by means which were suggested, and which appear to have been proper and feasible, he received a reprimand from the said Warren Hastings, who declared that we had no authority to control the conduct of the Vizier in the treatment of his subjects; and that Colonel Champion desisted from making further representations on this subject to the said Warren Hastings, being apprehensive of having already run some risk of displeasing by perhaps a too free communication of sentiments. That, in consequence of the said proceedings, not only the eminent families of the chiefs of the Rohilla nation were either cut off or banished, and their wives and offspring reduced to utter ruin, but the country itself, heretofore distinguished above all others for the extent of its cultivation as a garden, not having one spot in it of uncultivated ground, and from being in the most flourishing state that a country could be, was by the inhuman mode of carrying on the war, and the ill government during the consequent usurpation, reduced to a state of great decay and depopulation, in which it still remains.
That the East India Company, having had reason to conceive, that, for the purpose of concealing corrupt transactions, their servants in India had made unfair, mutilated, and garbled communications of correspondence, and sometimes had wholly withheld the same, made an order in their letter of the 23d of March, 1770, in the following tenor:—"The Governor singly shall correspond with the country powers; but all letters, before they shall be by him sent, must be communicated to the other members of the Select Committee, and receive their approbation; and also all letters whatsoever which may be received by the Governor, in answer to or in course of correspondence, shall likewise be laid before the said Select Committee for their information and consideration"; and that in their instructions to their Governor-General and Council, dated 30th March, 1774, they did repeat their orders to the same purpose and effect.
That the said Warren Hastings did not obey, as in duty he was bound to do, the said standing orders; nor did communicate all his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, the Company's agent at the court of the Subah of Oude, or with Colonel Champion, the commander-in-chief of the Company's forces in the Rohilla war, to the Select Committee: and when afterwards, that is to say, on the 25th of October, 1774, he was required by the majority of the Council appointed by the act of Parliament of 1773, whose opinion was by the said act directed to be taken as the act of the whole Council, to produce all his correspondence with Mr. Middleton and Colonel Champion for the direction of their future proceedings relative to the obscure, intricate, and critical transaction aforesaid, he did positively and pertinaciously refuse to deliver any other than such parts of the said correspondence as he thought convenient, covering his said illegal refusal under general vague pretences of secrecy and danger from the communication, although the said order and instruction of the Court of Directors above mentioned was urged to him, and although it was represented to him by the said Council, that they, as well as he, were bound by an oath of secrecy: which refusal to obey the orders of the Court of Directors (orders specially, and on weighty grounds of experience, pointed to cases of this very nature) gave rise to much jealousy, and excited great suspicions relative to the motives and grounds on which the Rohilla war had been undertaken.
That the said Warren Hastings, in the grounds alleged in his justification of his refusal to communicate to his colleagues in the Superior Council his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, the Company's Resident at Oude, was guilty of a new offence, arrogating to himself unprecedented and dangerous powers, on principles utterly subversive of all order and discipline in service, and introductory to corrupt confederacies and disobedience among the Company's servants; the said Warren Hastings insisting that Mr. Middleton, the Company's covenanted servant, the public Resident for transacting the Company's affairs at the court of the Subah of Oude, and as such receiving from the Company a salary for his service, was no other than the official agent of him, the said Warren Hastings, and that, being such, he was not obliged to communicate his correspondence.