II.  That, soon after he had removed the Company’s Resident, he prepared for a journey to the upper provinces, and particularly to Benares, in order to execute the wicked and perfidious designs by him before meditated and contrived:  and although he did communicate his purpose privately to such persons as he thought fit to intrust therewith, he did not enter anything on the Consultations to that purpose, or record the principles, real or pretended, on which he had resolved to act, nor did he state any guilt in the Rajah which he intended to punish, or charge him, the said Rajah, with entertaining any hostile intentions, the effects of which were to be prevented by any strong measure; but, on the contrary, he did industriously conceal his real designs from the Court of Directors, and did fallaciously enter on the Consultations a minute declaratory of purposes wholly different therefrom, and which supposed nothing more than an amicable adjustment, founded on the treaties between the Company and the Rajah, investing himself by his said minute with “full power and authority to form such arrangements with the Rajah of Benares for the better government and management of his zemindary, and to perform such acts for the improvement of the interest which the Company possesses in it, as he shall think fit and consonant to the mutual engagements subsisting between the Company and the Rajah”; and for this and other purposes he did invest himself with the whole power of the Council, giving to himself an authority as if his acts had been the acts of the Council itself:  which, though a power of a dangerous, unwarrantable, and illegal extent, yet does plainly imply the following limits, namely, that the acts done should be arranged with the Rajah, that is, with his consent; and, secondly, that they should be consonant to the actual engagements between the parties; and nothing appears in the minute conferring the said power, which did express or imply any authority for depriving the Rajah of his government, or selling the sovereignty thereof to his hereditary enemy, or for the plunder of his fort-treasures.

III.  That the said Warren Hastings, having formed the plans aforesaid for the ruin of the Rajah, did set out on a journey to the city of Benares with a great train, but with a very small force, not much exceeding six companies of regular black soldiers, to perpetrate some of the unjust and violent acts by him meditated and resolved on; and the said Hastings was met, according to the usage of distinguished persons in that country, by the Rajah of Benares with a very great attendance, both in boats and on shore, which attendance he did apparently intend as a mark of honor and observance to the place and person of the said Hastings, but which the said Hastings did afterwards groundlessly and maliciously represent as an indication of a design upon his life; and the said Rajah came into the pinnace in which the said Hastings was carried,