That the said Sulivan had been but a few months in Bengal when the above contract was given to him; that he was a stranger to the country, and to all the local commerce thereof, and therefore unqualified for the management of such a concern; and that the said Sulivan, instead of executing the contract himself, did, shortly after obtaining the same, assign it over to John Benn and others, and in consideration of such assignment did receive from the said Benn a great sum of money.
That from the preceding facts, as well as from sundry other circumstances of restrictions taken off (particularly by abolishing the office of inspector into the quality of the opium) and of beneficial clauses introduced, it appears that the said Warren Hastings gave this contract to the said Stephen Sulivan in contradiction to the orders of the Court of Directors, and without any regard to the interests of the India Company, for the sole purpose of creating an instant fortune for the said Sulivan at the expense of the India Company, without any claim of service or pretence of merit on his part, and without any apparent motive whatever, except that of securing or rewarding the attachment and support of his father, Lawrence Sulivan, a person of great authority and influence in the direction of the Company's affairs, and notoriously attached to and connected with the said Warren Hastings.
That the said Stephen Sulivan neither possessed nor pretended to possess any skill in the business of his contract; that he exerted no industry, nor showed or could show any exactness, in the performance of it, since he immediately sold the contract for a sum of money to another person, (for the sole purpose of
which sale it must be presumed the same was given,) by which person another profit was to be made; and by that person the same was again sold to a third, by whom a third profit was to be made.
That the said Warren Hastings, at the very time when he engaged the Company in a contract for engrossing the whole of the opium produced in Bengal and Bahar in the ensuing four years on terms of such exorbitant profit to the contractor, affirmed, that "there was little prospect of selling the opium in Bengal at a reasonable price, and that it was but natural to suppose that the price of opium would fall, from the demand being lessened"; that in a letter dated the 5th of May, 1781, he informed the Directors, "that, owing to the indifferent state of the markets last season to the Eastward, and the very enhanced rates of insurance which the war had occasioned, they had not been able to dispose of the opium of the present year to so great an advantage as they expected, and that more than one half of it remained still in their warehouses." That the said Warren Hastings was guilty of a manifest breach of trust to his constituents and his employers in monopolizing, for their pretended use, an article of commerce for which he declared no purchasers had offered, and that there was little prospect of any offering, and the price of which, he said, it was but natural to suppose would fall.
That the said Warren Hastings, having, by his own act, loaded the Company with a commodity for which, either in the ordinary and regular course of public auction, or even by private contract, there was, as he affirmed, no sale, did, under pretence of finding a market for the same, engage the Company in an enterprise of great and certain expense, subject to
a manifest risk, and full of disgrace to the East India Company, not only in their political character, as a great sovereign power in India, but in their commercial character, as an eminent and respectable body of merchants; and that the execution of this enterprise was accompanied with sundry other engagements with other persons, in all of which the Company's interest was constantly sacrificed to that of individuals favored by the said Warren Hastings.
That the said Warren Hastings first engaged in a scheme to export one thousand four hundred and sixty chests of opium, on the Company's account, on board a ship belonging to Cudbert Thornhill, half of which was to be disposed of in a coasting voyage, and the remainder in Canton. That, besides the freight and commission payable to the said Thornhill on this adventure, twelve pieces of cannon belonging to the Company were lent for arming the ship; though his original proposal was, that the ship should be armed at his expense. That this part of the adventure, depending for its success on a prudent and fortunate management of various sales and resales in the course of a circuitous voyage, and being exposed to such risk both of sea and enemy that all private traders had declined to be concerned in it, was particularly unfit for a great trading company, and could not be undertaken on their account with any rational prospect of advantage.
That the said Warren Hastings soon after engaged in another scheme for exporting two thousand chests of opium directly to China on the Company's account, and for that purpose accepted of an offer made by Henry Watson, the Company's chief engineer, to convey the same in a vessel of his own, and to deliver