V. That the said Warren Hastings, not thinking himself justified, on the mere plea of an evasion, to push forward his proceedings to that extremity which he seems already to have made his scope and object, and seeking some better color for his unjust and violent purposes, did further move, that commissioners should be sent from the Vizier and the Company to Fyzoola Khan, to insist on a clause of a treaty which nowhere appears, being essentially different from the treaty of Lall-Dang, though not in the part on which the requisition is founded; and the said Hastings did then, in a style unusually imperative, proceed as follows.

“Demand immediate delivery of three thousand cavalry; and if he should evade or refuse compliance, that the deputies shall deliver him a formal protest against him for breach of treaty, and return, making this report to the Vizier, which Mr. Middleton is to transmit to the board.”

VI.  That the said motion of the Governor-General, Hastings, was ordered accordingly,—­the Council, as already has been herein related, consisting but of two members, and the said Hastings consequently “uniting in his own person all the powers of government.”

VII.  That, when the said Hastings ordered the said demand for three thousand cavalry, he, the said Hastings, well knew that a compliance therewith, on the part of the Nabob Fyzoola Khan, was utterly impossible:  for he, the said Hastings, had at the very moment before him a letter of Fyzoola Khan, stating, that he, Fyzoola Khan, had “but two thousand cavalry” altogether; which letter is entered on the records of the Company, in the same Consultation, immediately preceding the Governor-General’s minute.  That the said Hastings, therefore, knew that the only possible consequence of the aforesaid demand necessarily and inevitably must be a protest for a breach of treaty; and the Court of Directors did not hesitate to declare that the said demand “carried the appearance of a determination to create a pretext for depriving him [Fyzoola Khan] of his jaghire entirely, or to leave him at the mercy of the Vizier.”

VIII.  That Richard Johnson, Esquire, Assistant Resident at Oude, was, agreeably to the afore-mentioned order of Council, deputed commissioner from Mr. Middleton and the Vizier to Fyzoola Khan; but that he did early give the most indecent proofs of glaring partiality, to the prejudice of the said Fyzoola Khan:  for that the very next day (as it seems) after his arrival, he, the said Johnson, from opinions imbibed in his journey, did state himself to be “unwilling to draw any favorable or flattering inferences relatively to the object of his mission,” and did studiously seek to find new breaches of treaty, and, without any form of regular inquiry whatever, from a single glance of his eye in passing, did take upon himself to pronounce “the Rohilla soldiers, in the district of Rampoor alone, to be not less than twenty thousand,” and the grant of course to be forfeited.  And that such a gross and palpable display of a predetermination to discover guilt did argue in the said Johnson a knowledge, a strong presumption, or a belief, that such representations would be agreeable to the secret wishes and views of the said Hastings, under whose orders he, the said Johnson, acted, and to whom all his reports were to be referred.