Governor-General only, and not as agents of the Governor-General and Council, as they ought to have been, certain persons, among whom were Major Browne and Major Davy, to the court of the king at Delhi, and did there enter into certain engagements with the said king by the means of those agents, and did carry on certain private and dangerous intrigues for various purposes, particularly for making war in favor of the said king against some powers or princes not precisely described, but which, as may be inferred from a subsequent correspondence, were certain Mahomedan princes in the neighborhood of Delhi in amity with the Company, and some of them at that time in the actual service and in the apparent confidence and favor of the said Mogul; and he did order Major Browne to offer to the Mogul king to provide for the entire expense of any troops the Shah [the said king] might require; and the proposal was accordingly accepted, with the conditions annexed:  by which proposal and acceptance thereof the East India Company was placed in a situation of great and perplexing difficulty; since either they were to engage, at an unlimited expense, in new wars, contrary to their orders, contrary to their general declared policy, and contrary to the published resolutions of the House of Commons, and wholly incompatible with the state of their finances, or, to preserve peace, they must risk the imputation of a new violation of faith, by departing from an agreement made on the voluntary proposal of their own government,—­the agent of the said Hastings having declared, in his letter to the said Hastings, by him communicated to the board, “that the business of assisting the Shah [the Mogul emperor] can and must go on, if we wish to be secure in India, or regarded as a nation of faith and honor.”

V. That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 20th day of January, 1784, send in circulation to the other members of the Council a letter to him from his agent, Major Browne, dated at Delhi, on the 30th of December, 1783, viz., that letter to which the foregoing references are made, in which the said Browne did directly press, and indirectly (though sufficiently and strongly) suggest, several highly dangerous measures for realizing the general offers and engagements of the said Warren Hastings,—­proposing, that, besides a proportion of field artillery, and a train of battering cannon for the purpose of sieges, six regiments of sepoys in the Company’s service should be transferred to that of the said king, and that certain other corps should also be raised for the said service in the English provinces and dependencies, to be immediately under the king’s [the Mogul’s] orders, and to be maintained by assignments of territorial revenue within the province of Oude, a dependent member of the British government, but with a caution against having any British officer with the same; the said Major Browne expressing his caution as followeth: