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