the before-mentioned particulars, but the whole of
the expensive civil establishments for English servants
at Oude, would have been forever concealed from the
Directors and from Parliament: and yet the said
Hastings has had the audacity to pretend so complete
an ignorance of the facts, that, representing the Vizier
as objecting to the largeness of the payments made
by Bristow, and stating a very reduced list, which
he was willing to allow for, amounting to 30,000_l._
a year, the said Hastings did affect to be alarmed
at the magnitude even of the list so curtailed, expressing
himself as follows, in his minute of the 7th of December,
1784: “For my own part, when the Vizier’s
minister first informed me that the amount which his
master had authorized, and was willing to admit, for
the charges of the Residency, and the allowances of
the gentlemen at Lucknow, was 25,000 rupees per month,
I own I was startled at the magnitude of the sum, and
was some days hesitating in my mind whether I could
with propriety admit of it”: whereas he
well knew that the three sums alone of which the necessities
aforesaid had compelled the discovery did greatly exceed
that sum of which at the first hearing he affects
to have been so exceedingly alarmed and thrown into
a state of hesitation which continued for some days,
and although he, the said Hastings, was conscious that
he had at the very time authorized an establishment
to more than four times the amount thereof.
XCV. That, in the said deceits, prevarications,
contradictions, malicious accusations, fraudulent
concealments, and compelled discoveries, as well as
in the said secret, corrupt, and prodigal disposition
of the revenues of Oude, as well as in his breach of
faith to the Nabob, in continuing expensive establishments
under a private agent of his own after he had agreed
to remove the Company’s agent, the said Warren
Hastings is guilty of an high offence and misdemeanor.
XVII.—MAHOMED REZA KHAN.
I. That it was the declared policy of the Company,
on the acquisition of the dewanny of Bengal, to continue
the country government, under the inspection of the
Resident at the Nabob’s durbar in the first instance,
and that of the President and Council in the last;
and for that purpose they did stipulate to assign,
for the support of the dignity of the Nabob, an annual
allowance from the revenues, equal to four hundred
thousand pounds a year.
II. That, during the country government, the
principal active person in the administration of affairs,
for rank, and for reputation of probity, and of knowledge
in the revenues and the laws, was Mahomed Reza Khan,
who, besides large landed property, was possessed of
offices whose emoluments amounted nearly, if not altogether,
to one hundred thousand pounds a year.