PART III.
EXPULSION OF THE RAJAH OF BENARES.
I. That the said Warren Hastings, being resolved on the ruin of the
Rajah aforesaid, as a preliminary step thereto, did, against the express
orders of the Court of Directors, remove Francis Fowke, Esquire, the
Company's Resident at the city of Benares, without any complaint or
pretence of complaint whatsoever, but merely on his own declaration that
he must have as a Resident at Benares a person of his own special and
personal nomination and confidence, and not a man of the Company's
nomination,--and in the place of the said Francis Fowke, thus illegally
divested of his office, did appoint thereto another servant of the
Company of his own choice.
II. That, soon after he had removed the Company's Resident, he prepared
for a journey to the upper provinces, and particularly to Benares, in
order to execute the wicked and perfidious designs by him before
meditated and contrived: and although he did communicate his purpose
privately to such persons as he thought fit to intrust therewith, he did
not enter anything on the Consultations to that purpose, or record the
principles, real or pretended, on which he had resolved to act, nor did
he state any guilt in the Rajah which he intended to punish, or charge
him, the said Rajah, with entertaining any hostile intentions, the
effects of which were to be prevented by any strong measure; but, on the
contrary, he did industriously conceal his real designs from the Court
of Directors, and did fallaciously enter on the Consultations a minute
declaratory of purposes wholly different therefrom, and which supposed
nothing more than an amicable adjustment, founded on the treaties
between the Company and the Rajah, investing himself by his said minute
with "full power and authority to form _such_ arrangements _with_ the
Rajah of Benares for the _better_ government and management of his
zemindary, and to perform such acts for the improvement of the interest
which the Company possesses in it, as he shall think _fit and consonant
to the mutual engagements subsisting between the Company and the
Rajah_"; and for this and other purposes he did invest himself with the
whole power of the Council, giving to himself an authority as if his
acts had been the acts of the Council itself: which, though a power of a
dangerous, unwarrantable, and illegal extent, yet does plainly imply the
following limits, namely, that the acts done should be _arranged with_
the Rajah, that is, _with his consent_; and, secondly, that they should
be consonant to the actual engagements between the parties; and nothing
appears in the minute conferring the said power, which did express or
imply any authority for depriving the Rajah of his government, or
selling the sovereignty thereof to his hereditary enemy, or for the
plunder of his fort-treasures.
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