XVI.  That the said Hastings, having formed a resolution to execute one of the three violent and arbitrary resolutions aforesaid,—­namely, to sell the Company’s sovereignty over Benares to the Nabob of Oude, or to dispossess the Rajah of his territories, or to seize upon his forts, and to plunder them of the treasure therein contained, to the amount of four or five hundred thousand pounds,—­did reject the offer of two hundred thousand pounds, tendered by the said Rajah for his redemption from the injuries which he had discovered that the said Hastings had clandestinely meditated against him, although the sum aforesaid would have been a considerable and seasonable acquisition at that time:  the said Hastings being determined, at a critical period, to risk the existence of the British empire, rather than fail in the gratification of his revenge against the said Rajah.

XVII.  That the first of his three instituted projects, namely, the depriving the Rajah of his territories, was by himself considered as a measure likely to be productive of much odium to the British government:  he having declared, whatever opinions he might entertain of its justice, “that it would have an appearance of severity, and might furnish grounds unfavorable to the credit of our government, and to his own reputation, from the natural influence which every act of rigor, exercised in the persons of men in elevated situations, is apt to impress on those who are too remote from the scene of action to judge, by any evidence of the facts themselves, of their motives or propriety.”  And the second attempt, the sum of money which he aimed at by attacking the fortresses of the Rajah, and plundering them of the treasure supposed to be there secured, besides the obvious uncertainty of acquiring what was thus sought, would be liable to the same imputations with the former.  And with regard to the third project, namely, the sale of the Company’s sovereignty to the Nabob of Oude, and his having actually received proposals for the same, it was an high offence to the Company, as presuming, without their authority or consent, to put up to sale their sovereign rights, and particularly to put them up to sale to that very person against whom the independence of the said province had been declared by the Governor-General and Council to be necessary, as a barrier for the security of the other provinces, in case of a future rupture with him.[59] It was an heinous injury to the said Rajah to attempt to change his relation without his consent, especially on account of the person to whom he was to be made over for money, by reason of the known enmity subsisting between his family and that of the Nabob, who was to be the purchaser; and it was a grievous outrage on the innocent inhabitants of the zemindary of Benares to propose putting them under a person long before described by himself to the Court of Directors “to want the qualities of the head and heart requisite