it was at the request of the King’s Naib, or viceroy, who put them under the Council’s protection.  That on this footing they were accepted by the said Warren Hastings and his Council, and for some time considered by them as a deposit committed to their care by a prince to whom the possession thereof was particularly guarantied by the East India Company.  In their letter of the 1st of March, 1773, they (the said Warren Hastings and his Council) say, “In no shape can this compulsatory cession by the King release us from the obligation we are under to defend the provinces which we have so particularly guarantied to him.”  But it appears that they soon adopted other ideas and assumed other principles concerning this object.  In the instructions, dated the 23d of June, 1773, which the Council of Fort William gave to the said Warren Hastings, previous to his interview with the Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah at Benares, they say, that, “while the King continued at Delhi, whither he proceeded in opposition to their most strenuous remonstrances, they should certainly consider the engagements between him and the Company as dissolved by his alienation from them and their interest; that the possession of so remote a country could never be expected to yield any profit to the Company, and the defence of it must require a perpetual aid of their forces”:  yet in the same instructions they declare their opinion, that, “if the King should make overtures to renew his former connection, his right to reclaim the districts of Corah and Allahabad could not with propriety be disputed,” and they authorize the said Warren Hastings to restore them to him on condition that he should renounce his claim to the annual tribute of twenty-six lac of rupees, herein before mentioned, and to the arrears which might be due, thereby acknowledging the justice of a claim which they determined not to comply with but in return for the surrender of another equally valid;—­that, nevertheless, in the treaty concluded by the said Warren Hastings with Sujah ul Dowlah on the 7th of September, 1773, it is asserted, that his Majesty, (meaning the King Shah Allum,) “having abandoned the districts of Corah and Allahabad, and given a sunnud for Corah and Currah to the Mahrattas, had thereby forfeited his right to the said districts,” although it was well known to the said Warren Hastings, and had been so stated by him to the Court of Directors, that this surrender on the part of the King had been extorted from him by violence, while he was a prisoner in the hands of the Mahrattas, and although it was equally well known to the said Warren Hastings that there was nothing in the original treaty of 1765 which could restrain the King from changing the place of his residence, consequently that his removal to Delhi could not occasion a forfeiture of his right to the provinces secured to him by that treaty.