in the same Consultation, refers the Governor-General to inclosed copies “of all engagements entered into by the late Vizier and by himself [the reigning Vizier] with Fyzoola Khan,” and that the treaty itself, therefore, was at the very moment before the said Warren Hastings:  which treaty (as the said Hastings observed with respect to another treaty, in the case of another person) “most assuredly does not contain a syllable to justify his conduct; but, by the unexampled latitude which he assumes in his constructions, he may, if he pleases, extort this or any other meaning from any part of it."[25]

IV.  That the Vizier himself appears by no means to have been persuaded of his own right to five thousand horse under the treaty,—­since, in his correspondence on the subject, he, the Vizier, nowhere mentions the treaty as the ground of his demand, except where he is recapitulating to the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, the substance of his, the said Hastings’s, own letters; on the contrary, the Vizier hints his apprehensions lest Fyzoola Khan should appeal to the treaty against the demand, as a breach thereof,—­in which case, he, the Vizier, informs the said Hastings of the projected reply.  “Should Fyzoola Khan” (says the Vizier) “mention anything of the tenor of the treaty, the first breach of it has been committed by him, in keeping up more men than allowed of by the treaty:  I have accordingly sent a person to settle that point also.  In case he should mention to me anything respecting the treaty, I will then reproach him with having kept up too many troops, and will oblige him to send the five thousand horse”:  thereby clearly intimating, that, as a remonstrance against the demand as a breach of treaty could only be answered by charging a prior breach of treaty on Fyzoola Khan, so by annulling the whole treaty to reduce the question to a mere question of force, and thus “oblige Fyzoola Khan to send the five thousand horse”:  “for,” (continues the Vizier,) “if, when the Company’s affairs, on which my honor depends, require it, Fyzoola Khan will not lend his assistance, what USE is there to continue the country to him?”

That the Vizier actually did make his application to Fyzoola Khan for the five thousand horse, not as for an aid to which he had a just claim, but as for something over and above the obligations of the treaty, something “that would give increase to their friendship and satisfaction to the Nabob Governor,” (meaning the said Hastings,) whose directions he represents as the motive “of his call for the five thousand horse to be employed,” not in his, the Vizier’s, “but in the Company’s service.”

And that the aforesaid Warren Hastings did, therefore, in recording the answer of Fyzoola Khan as an evasion of treaty, act in notorious contradiction not only to that which ought to have been the fair construction of the said treaty, but to that which he, the said Hastings, must have known to be the Vizier’s own interpretation of the same, disposed as the Vizier was “to reproach Fyzoola Khan with breach of treaty,” and to “send up persons who should settle points with him.”