LXVIII.  That the said Warren Hastings did proceed unto the said province of Oude under color of providing a remedy for the disorders described to be existing in the same, and for the recovery of the Company’s pretended debt.  And the said Warren Hastings, who had thought fit to recall the Company’s Resident, appointed to that office by the Court of Directors, and to suspend his office, did, notwithstanding, of his own choice and selection, and on his own mere authority, take with him in his progress a large retinue, “and a numerous society of English gentlemen to compose his family,” which he represents as necessary, although, in a letter from that very place to which he took that very numerous society, he informs the Court of Directors “that his own consequence and that of the nation he represents are independent of show.”  And after his arrival there, he, the said Warren Hastings, did write from Lucknow, the capital of that province, a letter, dated the 30th of April, 1784, to the Court of Directors, in which are several particulars to the following purport or tenor, and which he points out to the Directors “to be circumstances of no trivial information,” namely,—­“that he had found that the lands in that province, as well as in some parts more immediately under the Company, have suffered in a grievous manner, being completely exhausted of their natural moisture by the total failure of one entire season of the periodical rains,” with a few exceptions, which were produced only “by the uncommon labor of the husbandman.”  And in a letter to Edward Wheler, Esquire, a member of the Council-General, from Benares, the 20th of September, 1784, he says, that “the public revenues had declined with the failure of the cultivation in three successive years; and all the stores of grain which the providence of the husbandmen, (as he was informed is their custom,) in defiance of the vigilance of the aumils [collectors], clandestinely reserved for their own use, were of course exhausted, in which state no person would accept of the charge of the collections on a positive engagement; nor did the rain fall till the 10th of July.”  And in another letter, dated from Benares, the 1st of October following, he repeats the same accounts, and that the “country could not bear further additions of expense:  that it had no inlets of trade to supply the issues that were made from it” (the exceptions stated there being inconsiderable); “therefore every rupee which is drawn into your treasury [the Company’s] from its circulation will accelerate the period at which its ability must cease to pay even the stipulated subsidy.”  Notwithstanding this state of the country, of which he was well apprised before he left Calcutta, and the poverty and distress of the prince having been frequently, but in vain, represented to him, in order to induce him to forbear his oppressive exactions, he did, in order to furnish the Council