to join in a plan for conducting Ragonaut Row to Poonah
on the application of the ruling part of the Mahratta
state”: whereas the main object of the
said treaty on the part of the Mahrattas, and to obtain
which they made many important concessions to the India
Company, was, that the English should withdraw their
forces, and give no assistance to Ragoba, and that
he should be excluded forever from any share in their
government, being a person universally held in
abhorrence in the Mahratta empire; and if it had
been true (instead of being, as it was, notoriously
false) that the ruling part of the administration
of the Mahratta state solicited the return of Ragonaut
Row to Poonah, his return in that case might have been
effected by acts of their own, without the interposition
of the English power, and without our interference
in their affairs. That it was the special duty
of the said Warren Hastings, derived from a special
trust reposed in him and power committed to him by
Parliament, to have restrained, as by law he had authority
to do, the subordinate Presidency of Bombay from entering
into hostilities with the Mahrattas, or from making
engagements the manifest tendency of which was to
enter into those hostilities, and to have put a stop
to them, if any such had been begun; that he was bound
by the duty of his office to preserve the faith of
the British government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder,
inviolate and sacred, as well as by the special orders
and instructions of the East India Company to fix
his attention to the preservation of peace throughout
India: all which important duties the said
Warren Hastings did wilfully violate, in giving the
sanction of the Governor-General and Council
to the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects
of the President and Council of Bombay hereinbefore
mentioned, from which the subsequent Mahratta war,
with all the expense, distress, and disgraces which
have attended it, took their commencement; and that
the said Warren Hastings, therefore, is specially
and principally answerable for the said war, and for
all the consequences thereof. That in a letter
dated the 20th of January, 1778, the President and
Council of Bombay informed the Governor-General and
Council, that, in consequence of later intelligence
received from Poonah, they had immediately resolved
that nothing further could be done, unless Saccaram
Baboo, the principal in the late treaty (of Poorunder)
joined in making a formal application to them.
That no such application was ever made by that person.
That the said Warren Hastings, finding that all this
pretended ground for engaging in an invasion of the
Mahratta government had totally failed, did then pretend
to give credit to, and to be greatly alarmed by, the
suggestions of the President and Council of Bombay,
that the Mahrattas were negotiating with the French,
and had agreed to give them the port of Choul, on
the Malabar coast, and did affirm that the French had