exclude him, because he was my servant, from a liberty
allowed to all other persons in the country. The
farms which he quitted he quitted by my advice, because
I thought that he might engage himself beyond his
abilities, and be involved in disputes, which I did
not choose to have come before me as judge of them."[8]
That the said declaration contains sundry false and
contradictory assertions: that, if almost all
the said farms were taken against his advice, it cannot
be true that many of them were taken without
his knowledge; that, whether Cantoo Baboo had been
his servant or not, the said Warren Hastings was bound
by his own regulations to prevent his holding any
farms to a greater amount than one lac of rupees per
annum, and that the said Cantoo Baboo, being the servant
of the Governor-General, was excluded by the said regulations
from holding any farms whatever; that, if (as the Directors
observe) it was thought dangerous to permit the banian
of a collector to be concerned in farms, the same
or stronger objections would always lie against the
Governor’s banian being so concerned; that the
said Warren Hastings had a right, and was bound by
his duty, to prevent his servant from holding the
same; that, in advising the said Cantoo Baboo to relinquish
some of the said farms, for which he was actually engaged,
he has acknowledged an influence over his servant,
and has used that influence for a purpose inconsistent
with his duty to the India Company, namely, to deprive
them of the security of the said Cantoo Baboo’s
engagement for farms which on trial he had found not
beneficial, or not likely to continue beneficial,
to himself; and that, if it was improper that he,
the said Warren Hastings, should be the judge of any
disputes in which his servant might be involved on
account of his farms, that reason ought to have obliged
him to prevent his servant from being engaged in any
farms whatever, or to have advised his said servant
to relinquish the remainder of his farms, as well
as those which the said Warren Hastings affirms he
quitted by his advice. That on the subject of
the said charge the Court of Directors of the East
India Company have come to the following resolution:
“Resolved, That it appears that the conduct
of the late President and Council of Fort William in
Bengal, in suffering Cantoo Baboo, the present Governor-General’s
banian, to hold farms in different purgunnahs to a
large amount, or to be security for such farms, contrary
to the tenor and spirit of the 17th regulation of
the Committee of Revenue at Fort William, of the 14th
May, 1772, and afterwards relinquishing that security
without satisfaction made to the Company, was highly
improper, and has been attended with considerable
loss to the Company”; and that in the whole of
this transaction the said Warren Hastings has been
guilty of gross collusion with his servant, and manifest
breach of trust to his employers.