his conquest to Fyzoola Khan, to discourage it as much as was in his power”; although the said Hastings did not once express, or even intimate, any doubt whatever of the Nabob Fyzoola Khan’s innocence as to the origin of the war, or of his hereditary right to the territories which he claimed, but to the said pleas of the Nabob Fyzoola Khan, as well as to the arguments both of policy and justice advanced by the commander-in-chief, he, the said Hastings, did solely oppose certain speculative objects of imagined expediency, summing up his decided rejection of the proposals made by the Nabob Fyzoola Khan in the following remarkable words.  “With respect to Fyzoola Khan, he appears not to merit our consideration.  The petty sovereign of a country estimated at six or eight lacs ought not for a moment to prove an impediment to any of our measures, or to affect the consistency of our conduct.”

IX.  That, in the aforesaid violent and arbitrary position, the said Warren Hastings did avow it to be a public principle of his government, that no right, however manifest, and no innocence, however unimpeached, could entitle the weak to our protection against others, or save them from our own active endeavors for their oppression, and even extirpation, should they interfere with our notions of political expediency; and that such a principle is highly derogatory to the justice and honor of the English name, and fundamentally injurious to our interests, inasmuch as it hath an immediate tendency to excite distrust, jealousy, fear, and hatred against us among all the subordinate potentates of Hindostan.

X. That, in prosecution of the said despotic principle, the President, Warren Hastings aforesaid, did persist to obstruct, as far as in him lay, every advance towards an accommodation between the Vizier Sujah ul Dowlah and the Nabob Fyzoola Khan; and particularly on the 16th of September, only eight days after the said Hastings, in, conjunction with the other members of the Select Committee of Bengal, had publicly testified his satisfaction in the prospect of an accommodation, and had hoped that “his Excellency [the Vizier] would be disposed to conciliate the affections [of the Rohillas] to his government by acceding to lenient terms,” he, the said Hastings, did nevertheless write, and without the consent or knowledge of his colleagues did privately dispatch, a certain answer to a letter of the commander-in-chief, in which answer the said Hastings did express other contradictory hopes, namely, that the commander-in-chief had resolved on prosecuting the war to a final issue,—­“because” (as the said Hastings explains himself) “it appears very plainly that Fyzoola Khan and his adherents lay at your mercy, because I apprehend much inconveniency from delays, and because I am morally certain that no good will he gained by negotiating”:  thereby artfully suggesting his wishes of what might be, in his hopes of what had been, resolved; and plainly, though indirectly, instigating the commander-in-chief to much effusion of blood in an immediate attack on the Rohillas, posted as they were “in a very strong situation,” and “combating for all.”