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 appointment met the
Nabob of Oude near a place called Chunar, and possessing an entire and
absolute command over the said prince, he did, contrary to justice and
equity and the security of property, as well as to public faith and the
sanction of the Company's guaranty, under the color 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 equivalent to such only whose
lands had been guarantied 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
pension was ostensibly reserved, and for the others not so much as a
show of indemnity;--to the extreme 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 despotic governments of India.
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