General and Council of Bengal; and a treaty was accordingly agreed to, executed by the Nabob, and guarantied by John Bristow, Esquire, the Resident at Oude, under the authority, and with the express consent, of the said Warren Hastings and the Council-General, and, in consequence thereof, the sum last required was paid, and discharges given to the Nabob for all the money, which he had borrowed from his own mother and the mother of his father.

That the distresses and disorders in the Nabob's Government, and his debt to the Company, continuing to increase, notwithstanding the violent methods before mentioned taken to augment his resources, the said Warren Hastings, on the 21st of May, and on the 31st July 1781 (he and Mr. Wheler being the only remaining members of the Council-General, and he having the conclusive and casting voice, and thereby being in effect the whole Council) did, in the name and under the authority of the Board, resolve on a journey to the Upper Provinces, in order to a personal interview with the Nabob of Oude, towards the settlement of his distressed affairs; and did give to himself a delegation of the powers of the said Council, in direct violation of the Company's orders, forbidding such delegation.

VIII.

That the said Warren Hastings, having by his

B3

appointment

appointment met the Nabob of Oude near a place.
called Chunar, and possessing an entire and abso-
lute command over the said prince, did, contrary
to justice and equity, and the security of property,
as well as to publick faith, and the sanction of the
Company's guarantee, under the colour of a treaty,
which treaty was conducted secretly without a
written document of any part of the proceeding
(except the pretended treaty itself) authorize the
said Nabob to seize upon, and confiscate to his
own profit, the landed estates, called Jaghires, of
his parents, kindred, and principal nobility; only
stipulating a pension to the net amount of the rent
of the said lands as an equivalent, and that equi-
valent to such only, whose lands had been gua-
rantied to them by the Company: but provided
neither in the said pretended treaty, nor in any
subsequent act, the least security for the payment
of the said pension to those, for whom such pen-
sion was ostensibly reserved; and, for the others,
not so much as a show of indemnity;-to the ex-
treme scandal of the British Government, which,
valuing itself upon a strict regard to property, did
expressly authorize, if it did not command, an
attack upon that right, unprecedented in the de-
spotick Governments of India.

IX.

1

That the said Warren Hastings, in order to cover the violent and unjust proceedings aforesaid,

did assert a claim of right in the same Nabob to all the possessions of his said mother and grandmother, as belonging to him by the Mahomedan law; and this pretended claim was set up by the said Warren Hastings, after the Nabob had, by a regular treaty, ratified and guarantied by the said Hastings as Governour-General, renounced and released all demands on them. And this false pretence of a legal demand was taken up and acted upon by the said Warren Hastings, without laying the said question on record before the Council-General, or giving notice to the persons to be affected thereby, to support their rights before any of the principal magistrates and expounders of the Mahomedan law, or taking publickly the opinions of any person conversant therein.

X.

That, in order to give further colour to the acts of ill faith and violence aforesaid, the said Warren Hastings did cause to be taken at Lucknow, and other places, before divers persons, and particularly before Sir Elijah Impey, knight, his Majesty's Chief Justice, acting extra-judicially, and not within the limits of his jurisdiction, several passionate, careless, irrelevant, and irregular affidavits, consisting of matter not fit to be deposed on oath; of reports, conjectures, and hearsays; some of the persons swearing to the said hearsays

having declined to declare from whom they heard the accounts at second-hand sworn to; the said affidavits in general tending to support the calumnious charge of the said Warren Hastings, namely, that the aged women before mentioned had formed, or engaged in, a plan for the deposition of their son and sovereign, and the utter extirpation of the English nation: and neither the said charge against persons, whose dependence was principally, if not wholly, on the good faith of this nation, and highly affecting the honour, property, and even lives, of women of the highest condition; nor the affidavits intended to support the same, extra-judicially taken ex parte, and without notice, by the said Sir Elijah Impey, and others, were at any time communicated to the parties charged, or to any agent for them; nor were they called upon to answer, nor any explanation demanded of them.

XI.

That the article affecting private property secured by publick acts, in the said pretended treaty, contains nothing more than a general permission, given by the said Warren Hastings, for confiscating such Jaghires, or landed estates, with the modifications therein contained, "as he [the Nabob] แ ́may find necessary;" but does not directly point at, or express by name, any of the landed possessions of the Nabob's mother. But soon after the

signing

signing of the said pretended treaty (that is, on the 29th November 1781) it did appear, that a principal object thereof was to enable the Nabob to seize upon the estates of his female parents aforesaid, which had been guarantied to them by the East-India Company. And although in the treaty, or pretended treaty, aforesaid, nothing more is purported than to give a simple permission to the Nabob to seize upon and confiscate the estates, leaving the execution or non-execution of the same wholly to his discretion, yet it appears, by several letters from Nathaniel Middleton, Esquire, the Resident at the Court of Oude, of the 6th, 7th, and 9th of December 1781, that no such discretion, as expressed in the treaty, was left, or intended to be left, with him the said Nabob; but that the said article ought practically to have a construction of a directly contrary tendency; that, instead of considering the article as originating from the Nabob, and containing a power provided in his favour, which he did not possess before, the confiscation of the Jaghires aforesaid was to be considered as a measure from the English, and to be intended for their benefit, and as such, that the execution was to be forced upon him; and the execution thereof was accordingly forced upon him. And the Resident, Middleton, on the Nabob's refusal to act in contradiction to his sworn engagement, guarantied by the East-India Company, and in the undutiful and unnatural manner required, did totally