XXII. That the said Hastings, in asserting that he was bound to the acts
aforesaid by public duty, and even by national faith, in the very
instance in which that national faith was by him grossly violated, and
in justifying himself by alleging that he was bound to the _complete_
execution by a responsibility to the Company which he immediately
served, and by asserting that these violent and rapacious proceedings,
subjecting all persons concerned in them to obloquy, would be the means
of strengthening the connection of the Nabob with the British United
Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, did disgrace the
authority under which he immediately acted. And that the said Hastings,
in justifying his obligations to the said acts by a responsibility to
the _king_, namely, to the King of Great Britain, did endeavor to throw
upon his Majesty, his lawful sovereign, (whose name and character he was
bound to respect, and to preserve in estimation with all persons, and
particularly with the sovereign princes, the allies of his government,)
the disgrace and odium of the aforesaid acts, in which a sovereign
prince was by him, the said Hastings, made an instrument of perfidy,
wrong, and outrage to two mothers and wives of sovereign princes, and in
which he did exhibit to all Asia (a country remarkable for the utmost
devotion to parental authority) the spectacle of a Christian governor,
representing a Christian sovereign, compelling a son to become the
instrument of such violence and extortion against his own mother.
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