That the said Hastings did further embarrass and retard the conclusion of a peace by employing different ministers at the courts of the several confederate powers, whom he severally empowered to treat

and negotiate a peace. That these ministers, not acting in concert, not knowing the extent of each other's commissions, and having no instructions to communicate their respective proceedings to each other, did in effect counteract their several negotiations. That this want of concert and of simplicity, and the mystery and intricacy in the mode of conducting the negotiation on our part, was complained of by our ministers as embarrassing and disconcerting to us, while it was advantageous to the adverse party, who were thereby furnished with opportunity and pretence for delay, when it suited their purpose, and enabled to play off one set of negotiators against another; that it also created jealousy and distrust in the various contending parties, with whom we were treating at the same time, and to whom we were obliged to make contradictory professions, while it betrayed and exposed to them all our own eagerness and impatience for peace, raising thereby the general claims and pretensions of the enemy. That, while Dalhousie Watherston, Esquire, was treating at Poonah, and David Anderson, Esquire, in Sindia's camp, with separate powers applied to the same object, the minister at Poonah informed the said Watherston, that he had received proposals for peace from the Nabob of Arcot with the approbation of Sir Eyre Coote; that he had returned other proposals to the said Nabob of Arcot, who had assured him, the minister, that those proposals would be acceded to, and that Mr. Macpherson would set out for Bengal, after which orders should be immediately dispatched from the Honorable the Governor-General and Council to the effect he wished; that the said Nabob "had prom

ised to obtain and forward to him the expected orders from Bengal in fifteen days, and that he was therefore every instant in expectation of their arrival,—and observed, that, when General Goddard proposed to send a confidential person to Poonah, he conceived that those orders must have actually reached him": that therefore the treaty formally concluded by David Anderson was in effect and substance the same with that offered and in reality concluded by the Nabob of Arcot, with the exception only of Salsette, which the Nabob of Arcot had agreed to restore to the Mahrattas.

That the intention of the said Warren Hastings, in pressing for a peace with the Mahrattas on terms so dishonorable and by measures so rash and ill-concerted, was not to restore and establish a general peace throughout India, but to engage the India Company in a new war against Hyder Ali, and to make the Mahrattas parties therein. That the eagerness and passion with which the said Hastings pursued this object laid him open to the Mahrattas, who depended thereon for obtaining whatever they should demand from us. That, in order to carry the point of an offensive alliance against Hyder Ali, the said Hastings exposed the negotiation for peace with the Mahrattas to many difficulties and delays. That the Mahrattas were bound by a clear and recent engagement, which Hyder had never violated in any article, to make no peace with us which should not include him; that they pleaded the sacred nature of this obligation in answer to all our requisitions on this head, while the said Hastings, still importunate for his favorite point, suggested to them various means of reconciling a substantial

breach of their engagement with a formal observance of it, and taught them how they might at once be parties in a peace with Hyder Ali and in an offensive alliance for immediate hostility against him. That these lessons of public duplicity and artifice, and these devices of ostensible faith and real treachery, could have no effect but to degrade the national character, and to inspire the Mahrattas themselves, with whom we were in treaty, with a distrust in our sincerity and good faith. That the object of this fraudulent policy (viz., the utter destruction of Hyder Ali, and a partition of his dominions) was neither wise in itself, or authorized by the orders and instructions of the Company to their servants; that it was incompatible with the treaty of peace, in which Hyder Ali was included, and contrary to the repeated and best-understood injunctions of the Company,—being, in the first place, a bargain for a new war, and, in the next, aiming at an extension of our territory by conquest. That the best and soundest political opinions on the relations of these states have always represented our great security against the power of the Mahrattas to depend on its being balanced by that of Hyder Ali; and the Mysore country is so placed as a barrier between the Carnatic and the Mahrattas as to make it our interest rather to strengthen and repair that barrier than to level and destroy it. That the said treaty of partition does express itself to be eventual with regard to the making and keeping of peace; but through the whole course of the said Hastings's proceeding he did endeavor to prevent any peace with the Sultan or Nabob of Mysore, Tippoo Sahib, and did for a long time endeavor to frustrate all the

methods which could have rendered the said treaty of conquest and partition wholly unnecessary.

That the Mahrattas having taken no effectual step to oblige Hyder Ali to make good the conditions for which they had engaged in his behalf, and the war continuing to be carried on in the Carnatic by Tippoo Sultan, son and successor of Hyder Ali, the Presidency of Fort St. George undertook, upon their own authority, to open a negotiation with the said Tippoo: which measure, though indispensably necessary, the said Hastings utterly disapproved and discountenanced, expressly denying that there was any ground or motive for entering into any direct or separate treaty with Tippoo, and not consenting to or authorizing any negotiation for such treaty, until after a cessation of hostilities had been brought about with him by the Presidency of Fort St. George, in August, 1783, and the ministers of Tippoo had been received and treated with by that Presidency, and commissioners, in return, actually sent by the said Presidency to the court of Poonah: which late and reluctant consent and authority were extorted from him, the said Hastings, in consequence of the acknowledgment of his agent at the court of Mahdajee Sindia, upon whom the said Warren Hastings had depended for enforcing the clauses of the Mahratta treaty, of the precariousness of such dependence, and of the necessity of that direct and separate treaty with Tippoo, so long and so lately reprobated by the said Warren Hastings, notwithstanding the information and entreaties of the Presidency of Fort St. George, as well as the known distresses and critical situation of the Company's affairs. That, though the said Warren Hastings did at length give instructions for negotiating and making

peace with Tippoo, expressly adding, that those instructions extended to all the points which occurred to him or them as capable of being agitated or gained upon the occasion,—though the said instructions were sent after the said commissioners by the Presidency of Fort St. George, with directions to obey them,—though not only the said instructions were obeyed, but advantages gained which did not occur to the said Warren Hastings,—though the said peace formed a contrast with the Mahratta peace, in neither ceding any territory possessed by the Company before the war, or delivering up any dependant or ally to the vengeance of his adversaries, but providing for the restoration of all the countries that had been taken from the Company and their allies,—though the Supreme Council of Calcutta, forming the legal government of Bengal in the absence of the said Warren Hastings, ratified the said treaty,—yet the said Warren Hastings, then absent from the seat of government, and out of the province of Bengal, and forming no legal or integral part of the government during such absence, did, after such ratification, usurp the power of acting as a part of such government (as if actually sitting in Council with the other members of the same) in the consideration and unqualified censure of the terms of the said peace.

That the Nabob of Arcot, with whom the said Hastings did keep up an unwarrantable clandestine correspondence, without any communication with the Presidency of Madras, wrote a letter of complaint, dated the 27th of March, 1784, against the Presidency of that place, without any communication thereof to the said Presidency, the said complaint being addressed to the said Warren Hastings, the

substance of which complaint was, that he, the Nabob, had not been made a party to the late treaty; and although his interest had been sufficiently provided for in the said treaty, the said Warren Hastings did sign a declaration, on the 23d of May, at Lucknow, forming the basis of a new article, and making a new party to the treaty, after it had been by all parties (the Supreme Council of Calcutta included) completed and ratified, and did transmit the said new stipulation to the Presidency at Calcutta, solely for the purposes and at the instigation of the Nabob of Arcot; and the said declaration was made without any previous communication with the Presidency aforesaid, and in consequence thereof orders were sent by the Council at Calcutta to the Presidency of Fort St. George, under the severest threats in case of disobedience: which orders, whatever were their purport, would, as an undue assumption of and participation in the government, from which he was absent, become a high misdemeanor; but, being to the purport of opening the said treaty after its solemn ratification, and proposing a new clause and a new party to the same, was also an aggravation of such misdemeanor, as it tended to convey to the Indian powers an idea of the unsteadiness of the councils and determinations of the British government, and to take away all reliance on its engagements, and as, above all, it exposed the affairs of the nation and the Company to the hazard of seeing renewed all the calamities of war, from whence by the conclusion of the treaty they had emerged, and upon a pretence so weak as that of proposing the Nabob of Arcot to be a party to the same,—though he had not been made a party by the said Warren Has