IX. 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 Governor-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 publicly the opinions of any person conversant
therein.
X. That, in order to give further color 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 honor, 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.
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