the same.  That the said Warren Hastings, so long ago as September, 1775, assured the Court of Directors, “that it was his fixed determination most fully and liberally to explain every circumstance of his conduct on the points on which he had been injuriously arraigned, and to afford them the clearest conviction of his own integrity, and of the propriety of his motives for declining a present defence of it”; and having never since given to the Court of Directors any explanation whatever, much less the full and liberal explanation he had promised so repeatedly, has thereby abandoned even that late and protracted defence which he himself must have thought necessary to be made at some time or other, and which he would be thought to have deferred to a period more suitable and convenient than that in which the facts were recent, and the impression of these and other charges of the same nature against him was fresh and unimpaired in the minds of men.

That on the 30th of March, 1775, a member of the Council produced and laid before the board a petition from Mir Zein Abul Deen, (formerly farmer of a district, and who had been in creditable stations,) setting forth, that Khan Jehan Khan, then Phousdar of Hoogly, had obtained that office from the said Warren Hastings, with a salary of seventy-two thousand sicca rupees a year, and that the said Phousdar had given a receipt of bribe to the patron of the city, meaning Warren Hastings, to pay him annually thirty-six thousand rupees a year, and also to his banian, Cantoo Baboo, four thousand rupees a year, out of the salary above mentioned.  That by the thirty-fifth article of the instructions given to the Governor-General and Council, they are directed “immediately to cause the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions which might have been committed either against the natives or Europeans, and into all abuses that might have prevailed in the collection of the revenues, or any part of the civil government of the Presidency, and to communicate to the Directors all information which they might be able to obtain relative thereto, or to any dissipation or embezzlement of the Company’s money.”  That the above petition and instruction having been read in Council, it was moved that the petitioner should be ordered to attend the next day to make good his charge.  That the said Warren Hastings declared, “that it appeared to him to be the purpose of the majority to make him the sole object of their personal attacks; that they had taken their line, and might pursue it; that he should have other remarks to make upon this transaction, but, as they would be equally applicable to many others which in the course of this business were likely to be brought before the board, he should say no more on the subject";—­and he objected to the motion.  That by the preceding declaration the said Warren Hastings did admit that many other charges were likely to be brought against him, and that such charges would be of a similar nature to the first,