That the said Warren Hastings, in the report which he made of his interview and negotiations with Sujah ul Dowlah, dated the 4th of October, 1773, declared, “that the administration would have been culpable in the highest degree in retaining possession of Corah and Allahabad for any other purpose than that of making an advantage by the disposal of them,” and therefore he had ceded them to the Vizier for fifty lac of rupees:  a measure for which he had no authority whatever from the King Shah Allum, and in the execution of which no reserve whatever was made in favor of the rights of that prince, nor any care taken of his interests.

That the sale of these provinces to Sujah Dowlah involved the East India Company in a triple breach of justice; since by the same act they violated a treaty, they sold the property of another, and they alienated a deposit committed to their friendship and good faith, and as such accepted by them.  That a measure of this nature is not to be defended on motives of policy and convenience, supposing such motives to have existed, without a total loss of public honor, and shaking all security in the faith of treaties; but that in reality the pretences urged by the said Warren Hastings for selling the King’s country to Sujah Dowlah were false and invalid.  It could not strengthen our alliance with Sujah ul Dowlah; since, paying a price for a purchase, he received no favor and incurred no obligation.  It did not free the Company from all the dangers attending either a remote property or a remote connection; since, the moment the country in question became part of Sujah Dowlah’s dominions, it was included in the Company’s former guaranty of those dominions, and in case of invasion the Company were obliged to send part of their army to defend it at the requisition of the said Sujah Dowlah; and if the remote situation of those provinces made the defence of them difficult and dangerous, much more was it a difficult and dangerous enterprise to engage the Company’s force in an attack and invasion of the Rohillas, whose country lay at a much greater distance from the Company’s frontier,—­which, nevertheless, the said Warren Hastings agreed to and undertook at the very time when, under pretence of the difficulty of defending Corah and Allahabad, he sold those provinces to Sujah Dowlah.  It did not relieve the Company from the expense of defending the country; since the revenues thereof far exceeded the subsidy to be paid by Sujah Dowlah, and these revenues justly belonged to the Company as long as the country continued under their protection, and would have answered the expense of defending it.  Finally, that the sum of fifty lac of rupees, stipulated with the said Sujah Dowlah, was inadequate to the value of the country, the annual revenues of which were stated at twenty-five lac of rupees, which General Sir Robert Barker, then commander-in-chief of the Company’s forces, affirms was certain, and too generally known to admit of a doubt.