[59] It was an heinous injury to the said Rajah to
attempt to change his relation without his consent, especially on
account of the person to whom he was to be made over for money, by
reason of the known enmity subsisting between his family and that of the
Nabob, who was to be the purchaser; and it was a grievous outrage on the
innocent inhabitants of the zemindary of Benares to propose putting them
under a person long before described by himself to the Court of
Directors "to want the qualities of the head and heart requisite for his
station"; and a letter from the British Resident at Oude, transmitted to
the said Court, represents him "to have wholly lost, by his
_oppressions_, the confidence and affections of his own subjects"; and
whose distresses, and the known disorders in his government, he, the
said Hastings, did attribute solely to his own bad conduct and evil
character; admitting also, in a letter written to Edward Wheler,
Esquire, and transmitted to the Court of Directors, "that many
circumstances did favor suspicion of his [the said Nabob's] fidelity to
the English interest, the Nabob being surrounded by men base in their
characters and improvident in their understandings, his favorites, and
his companions of his looser hours.
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