That the said Warren Hastings, having taken the measures hereinbefore described for supporting those of the Presidency of Bombay, did, on the 23d of March, 1778, “invest the said Presidency with authority to form a new alliance with Ragoba, and to engage with him in any scheme which they should deem expedient and safe for retrieving his affairs.”  That the said Hastings was then in possession of a letter from the Court of Directors, dated the 4th of July, 1777, containing a positive order to the Presidency of Bombay in the following words.  “Though that treaty” (meaning the treaty of Poorunder) “is not, upon the whole, so agreeable to us as we could wish, still we are resolved strictly to adhere to it on our parts.  You must therefore be particularly vigilant, while Ragoba is with you, to prevent him from forming any plan against what is called the ministerial party at Poonah; and we hereby positively order you not to engage with him in any scheme whatever in retrieving his affairs, without the consent of the Governor-General and Council, or the Court of Directors.”  That the said Ragoba neither did or could form any plan for his restoration but what was and must be against the ministerial party at Poonah, who held and exercised the regency of that state in the infancy of the Peshwa; and that, supposing him to have formed any other scheme, in conjunction with Bombay, for retrieving his affairs, the said Hastings, in giving a previous general authority to the Presidency of Bombay to engage with Ragoba in any scheme for that purpose, without knowing what such scheme might be, and thereby relinquishing and transferring to the discretion of a subordinate government that superintendence and control over all measures tending to create or provoke a war which the law had exclusively vested in the Governor-General and Council, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.

That the said Warren Hastings, having first declared that the measures taken by him were for the support of the engagements made by the Presidency of Bombay in favor of Ragoba, did afterwards, when it appeared that those negotiations were entirely laid aside, declare that his apprehension of the consequence of a pretended intrigue between the Mahrattas and the French was the sole motive of all the late measures taken for the support of the Presidency of Bombay; but that neither of the preceding declarations contained the true motives and objects of the said Hastings, whose real purpose, as it appeared soon after, was, to make use of the superiority of the British power in India to carry on offensive wars, and to pursue schemes of conquest, impolitic and unjust in their design, ill-concerted in the execution, and which, as this House has resolved, have brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the East India Company.