The whole style and tenor of these accusations, as well as the nature of them, rendered Mr. Hastings’s first postponing, and afterwards totally declining, all denial, or even defence or explanation, very extraordinary.  No Governor ought to hear in silence such charges; and no Court of Directors ought to have slept upon them.

The Court of Directors were not wholly inattentive to this business.  They condemned his act as it deserved, and they went into the business of his legal right to dissolve the Council.  Their opinions seemed against it, and they gave precise orders against the use of any such power in future.  On consulting Mr. Sayer, the Company’s counsel, he was of a different opinion with regard to the legal right; but he thought, very properly, that the use of a right, and the manner and purposes for which it was used, ought not to have been separated.  What he thought on this occasion appears in his opinion transmitted by the Court of Directors to Mr. Hastings and the Council-General.  “But it was as great a crime to dissolve the Council upon base and sinister motives as it would be to assume the power of dissolving, if he had it not.  I believe he is the first governor that ever dissolved a council inquiring into his behavior, when he was innocent.  Before he could summon three councils and dissolve them, he had time fully to consider what would be the result of such conduct, to convince everybody, beyond a doubt, of his conscious guilt.”

It was a matter but of small consolation to Mr. Hastings, during the painful interval he describes, to find that the Company’s learned counsel admitted that he had legal powers of which he made an use that raised an universal presumption of his guilt.

Other counsel did not think so favorably of the powers themselves.  But this matter was of less consequence, because a great difference of opinion may arise concerning the extent of official powers, even among men professionally educated, (as in this case such a difference did arise,) and well-intentioned men may take either part.  But the use that was made of it, in systematical contradiction to the Company’s orders, has been stated in the Ninth Report, as well as in many of the others made by two of your committees.

FOOTNOTES: 

[14] Appendix B. No. 1.

[15] Vide Supplement to the Second Report, page 7.

[16] Appendix.  B. No. 2.

[17] Vide Appendix B. No. 1.

[18] Appendix B. No. 7.

[19] Appendix B. No. 3 and No. 5.

[20] Appendix B. No 6.

[21] Vide Larkins’s Affidavit, Appendix B. No. 5.

[22] Vide Appendix B. No. 1.

[23] Vide Appendix B. No. 1.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid., No. 8.

[26] Ibid., No. 1.

[27] Ibid., No. 4.

[28] Appendix B. No. 8.

[29] Ibid.