LXIV. That the said Hastings, by abetting Hyder Beg Khân, a person described by him as aforesaid, in his opposition to all the plans of necessary reformation proposed by the said Hastings himself, and having suggested no other whatever in lieu thereof, to answer the purposes for which he had stipulated in the treaty of Chunar the interference of the Resident in every branch of the Nabob's government, did thereby frustrate every one of the good ends proposed by him in the said treaty of Chunar, and did grossly abuse his trust in giving the exorbitant powers before recited, and asserting them to exist in the British Resident, without suffering them even in appearance to answer any of the proper and justifiable ends for which any power or influence can or ought to exist in any government.
LXV. That there is just ground to violently presume that not only the letters in the name of the Nabob aforesaid were dictated to him by his minister, Hyder Beg Khân, in whose hands the said Hastings has described his master to be "a mere cipher," &c., but which Hyder Beg was the known instrument of the said Hastings, but that the conduct and letters of
complaint of the said Hyder Beg were in effect and substance prescribed and dictated to him by the said Warren Hastings, or his secret agent, Palmer, by his direction: because it is notorious that the powers of the said Hyder Beg were solely supported by him, the said Hastings, who, according to the state of favor or displeasure in which he stood, hath frequently promised him support or threatened him with dismission and punishment, and therefore it is not to be thought that he would take so material a step as to oppose the Company's Resident, acting under the instructions of the Governor-General and Council, and to accuse him with so much confidence, and in a manner so different from the usual style of supplication on all other occasions employed by that court, if he had not been previously well assured that his writing in that manner would be pleasing to the person upon whom he solely depended for his power, his fortune, and perhaps for his life;—secondly, because, when it suited the purposes of the said Hastings on a former occasion, that is, in the year 1784 [1781?], to remove the Resident Bristow aforesaid from his office, a letter from the Nabob was laid before the Council Board at Calcutta, proposing, that, in order to prevent the effects of the said Bristow's application to Europe for redress, the said Hastings should send him drafts of letters which he, the said Nabob, would write in his own name and character to the King, to his Majesty's ministers, and to the Court of Directors, expressing himself, in the letter aforesaid, in the words following, viz., "To prevent his [Bristow's] applying to Europe, send me, if you think proper, the drafts of letters which I may write to the King, the Vizier, and the chiefs of the Company";—thirdly, that, though the said Hastings,
and his secret agent, Palmer, did pretend and positively assert that they had no share in the letters aforesaid from the Nabob and his minister, there was an original note to the Nabob's letters of accusation, referring to distinct parts and specified numbers of the agent Palmer's secret correspondence with the said Warren Hastings, and the said letter, with the said reference, was, through inadvertence, laid before the board.
LXVI. That the said Warren Hastings, having thrown the government of Oude into great confusion and distress, and thereby prevented the discharge of the debt, or pretended debt, to the Company, did, by all the said intrigues, machinations, and charges, aim at the filling the said office of Resident at Oude with his own dependants or by himself personally; as it appears that he did first propose to place in the said office his secret agent, Palmer, and that afterwards, when he was not able to succeed therein, he did propose nominally to abolish the said office, but in effect to fill it by himself,—proposing to the Council and rendering himself responsible (but not in fortune) for the payment of the Company's debt within a certain given time, if he were permitted and commissioned by the Council to act for the board in that province, and did inform them that he was privately well assured that in a few days he should receive an invitation to that effect; and he did state, (as in the year 1781 he had stated as a reason for his former delegation,) "that the state of the country was so disordered in its revenue and administration, and the credit and influence of the Nabob himself so much shook by the late usurpation of his authority, and the
contests which attended it, as to require the accession of an extraneous aid to restore the powers and to reanimate the constitution of his government,"—although he, the said Hastings, did for a long time before attribute the weakness of his government to an extraneous interference. And the said Council, on his engagement aforesaid, did consent thereto; and he did accordingly receive a commission, enabling him to act in the affairs of Oude, not only as the Resident might have done, but as largely as the Council-General might legally delegate their own powers.
LXVII. That the said Warren Hastings, in accepting the said commission, did subject his character and the reputation of his office to great imputations and suspicions, by taking upon himself an inferior office, out of which another had upon his intrigues been removed by a perpetual obstruction which rendered it impossible for him to perform his duty or to obey his instructions; and he did increase the said grounded suspicions by exercising that office in a government from whence it was notorious he had himself received an unlawful gift and present from the ministers, and in which he had notoriously suffered many, and had himself actually directed some, acts of peculation, by granting various pensions and emoluments, to the prejudice of the revenue of a distressed country, which he was not authorized to grant.
LXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings did proceed unto the said province of Oude under color of providing a remedy for the disorders described to be existing in the same, and for the recovery of the
Company's pretended debt. And the said Warren Hastings, who had thought fit to recall the Company's Resident, appointed to that office by the Court of Directors, and to suspend his office, did, notwithstanding, of his own choice and selection, and on his own mere authority, take with him in his progress a large retinue, "and a numerous society of English gentlemen to compose his family," which he represents as necessary, although, in a letter from that very place to which he took that very numerous society, he informs the Court of Directors "that his own consequence and that of the nation he represents are independent of show." And after his arrival there, he, the said Warren Hastings, did write from Lucknow, the capital of that province, a letter, dated the 30th of April, 1784, to the Court of Directors, in which are several particulars to the following purport or tenor, and which he points out to the Directors "to be circumstances of no trivial information," namely,—"that he had found that the lands in that province, as well as in some parts more immediately under the Company, have suffered in a grievous manner, being completely exhausted of their natural moisture by the total failure of one entire season of the periodical rains," with a few exceptions, which were produced only "by the uncommon labor of the husbandman." And in a letter to Edward Wheler, Esquire, a member of the Council-General, from Benares, the 20th of September, 1784, he says, that "the public revenues had declined with the failure of the cultivation in three successive years; and all the stores of grain which the providence of the husbandmen, (as he was informed is their custom,) in defiance of the vigilance of the aumils [collectors], clandestinely
reserved for their own use, were of course exhausted, in which state no person would accept of the charge of the collections on a positive engagement; nor did the rain fall till the 10th of July." And in another letter, dated from Benares, the 1st of October following, he repeats the same accounts, and that the "country could not bear further additions of expense: that it had no inlets of trade to supply the issues that were made from it" (the exceptions stated there being inconsiderable); "therefore every rupee which is drawn into your treasury [the Company's] from its circulation will accelerate the period at which its ability must cease to pay even the stipulated subsidy." Notwithstanding this state of the country, of which he was well apprised before he left Calcutta, and the poverty and distress of the prince having been frequently, but in vain, represented to him, in order to induce him to forbear his oppressive exactions, he did, in order to furnish the Council with a color for permitting him to recall the Company's Resident, and to exercise the whole powers of the Company in his own person, without any check whatsoever, or witness of his proceedings, except the persons of his own private choice, make the express and positive engagement aforesaid, which, if understood of a real and substantial discharge of debt for the relief of the total of the Company's finances, was grossly fallacious: because at the very time he must have been perfectly sensible, that, in the then state of the revenues and country of Oude, (which are in effect the Company's revenues and the Company's country,) the debt or pretended debt aforesaid, asserted to be about five hundred thousand pounds, or thereabouts, could not be paid without contracting another debt at an usurious interest,