of Senior Counsellor, since the act requires for that
purpose, not a rejected claim, but an actual and effectual
promotion; and General Clavering’s office of
Counsellor could no more be vacated by such a naked
claim, unsupported and disallowed, than the seat of
a member of the House of Commons could be vacated,
and a new writ issued to supply the vacancy, by his
claim to the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds,
when his Majesty has refused to appoint him to the
said office. And with regard to resignation,
although the said Warren Hastings, as a color to his
illegal resolutions, had affectedly introduced the
word “resigned” amongst those of “relinquished,
surrendered, and vacated,” yet he well knew
that General Clavering had made no offer nor declaration
of his resignation of his offices of Senior Counsellor
and Commander-in-Chief, and that he did not claim
the office of Governor-General on the ground of any
such resignation made by himself, but on the ground
of a resignation made by the said Warren Hastings,
which resignation the said Warren Hastings did not
admit; and the use of the term
resigned on
that occasion was therefore a manifest and wilful misconstruction
and misapplication of the words of the act of his
present Majesty. And such misinterpretation and
false extension of the term of resignation was the
more indecent in the said Warren Hastings, as he was
at the same moment disavowing and refusing to give
effect to his own clear and express resignation, according
to the true intent and meaning of the word as used
in the said act, made by his agent, duly authorized
and instructed by himself so to do, to an authority
competent to receive and accept the same.
That, although the said Warren Hastings did afterwards
recede from the said illegal measures, in compliance
with the opinion and advice of the judges again interposed,
and did thereby avoid the guilt of such further acts
and the blame of such further evils as must have been
consequent on a persistence therein, yet he was nevertheless
still guilty of the illegal acts above described;
and the same are great crimes and misdemeanors.
That, although the judges did decide that the office
of Governor-General, held by the said Warren Hastings,
was not ipso facto and instanter vacated
by the arrival of the said dispatches and documents
transmitted by the Court of Directors, and did consider
the said consequences of the resignation as awaiting
some future act or event for its complete and effectual
operation, yet the said judges did not declare any
opinion on the ultimate invalidity of the said acts
of Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, as not being binding
on his principal, Warren Hastings, Esquire; nor did
they declare any opinion that the obligation of the
said resignation was not from the beginning conclusive
and effectual, although its operation was, from the
necessity of the case, on account of the distance
between England and India, to take place only in future,—or