the Company’s instructions might stop or be defeated.  That no valid reason was or could be assigned why the said Phousdar should not be examined on oath; that the charge was not against himself; and that, if any questions had been put to him, tending to make him accuse himself, he might have declined to answer them.  That, if he could have safely sworn to the innocence of the said Warren Hastings, from whom he received his employment, he was bound in gratitude as well as justice to the said Warren Hastings to have consented to be examined on oath; that, not having done so, and having been supported and abetted in his refusal by the said Warren Hastings himself, whose character and honor, were immediately at stake, the whole of the evidence for the truth of the charge remains unanswered, and in full force against the said Warren Hastings, who on this occasion recurred to the declaration he had before made to the Directors, viz., “that he would most fully and liberally explain every circumstance of his conduct,” but has never since that time given the Directors any explanation whatsoever of his said conduct.  And finally, that, when the Court of Directors, in January, 1776, referred the question (concerning the legality of the power assumed and repeatedly exercised by the said Warren Hastings, of dissolving the Council at his pleasure) to the late Charles Sayer, then standing counsel of the East India Company, the said Charles Sayer declared his opinion in favor of the power, but concerning the use and exercise of it in the cases stated did declare his opinion in the following words:  “I believe he, Warren Hastings, is the first governor that ever dissolved a council inquiring into his behavior, when he was innocent.”  Before he could summon three councils, and dissolve them, he had time fully to consider what would be the result of such conduct, to convince everybody beyond a doubt of his conscious guilt.—­That, by a resolution of a majority of the Council, constituting a lawful act of the Governor-General and Council, the said Khan Jehan Khan was dismissed from the office of Phousdar of Hoogly for a contempt of the authority of the board; that, within a few weeks after the death of the late Colonel Monson, the number of the Council being then even, and all questions being then determined by the Governor-General’s casting voice, the said Warren Hastings did move and carry it in Council, that the said Khan Jehan Khan should be restored to his office; and that restoration, not having been preceded, accompanied, or followed by any explanation or defence whatsoever, or even by a denial of the specific and circumstantial charge of collusion with the said Khan Jehan Khan, has confirmed the truth of the said charge.