as not only unsatisfactory in substance, but offensive in style.  “This answer you will perceive to be not only unsatisfactory in substance, but offensive in style, and less a vindication of himself than a recrimination on me.  It expresses no concern for the causes of complaint contained in my letter, or desire to atone for them, nor the smallest intention to pursue a different line of conduct.  An answer couched nearly in terms of defiance to requisitions of so serious a nature I could not but consider as a strong indication of that spirit of independency which the Rajah has for some years past assumed, and of which indeed I had early observed other manifest symptoms, both before and from the instant of my arrival.”  Which representation is altogether and in all parts thereof groundless and injurious; as the substance of the answer is a justification proper to be pleaded, and the style, if in anything exceptionable, it is in its extreme humility, resulting rather from an unmanly and abject spirit than from anything of an offensive liberty; but being received as disrespectful by the said Hastings, it abundantly indicates the tyrannical arrogance of the said Hastings, and the depression into which the natives are sunk under the British government.

IX.  That the said Warren Hastings, pretending to have been much alarmed at the offensive language of the said Rajah’s defence, and at certain appearances of independency which he had observed, not only on former occasions, but since his arrival at Benares, (where he had been but little more than one day,) and which appearances he never has specified in any one instance, did assert that he conceived himself indispensably obliged to adopt some decisive plan; and without any farther inquiry or consultation (which appears) with any person, did, at ten o’clock of the very night on which he received the before-mentioned full and satisfactory as well as submissive answer, send an order to the British Resident (then being a public minister representing the British government at the court of the said Rajah, and as such bound by the law of nations to respect the prince at whose court he was Resident, and not to attempt anything against his person or state, and who ought not, therefore, to have been chosen by the said Hastings, and compelled to serve in that business) that he should on the next morning arrest the said prince in his palace, and keep him in his custody until further orders; which said order being conceived in the most peremptory terms, the Rajah was put under arrest, with a guard of about thirty orderly sepoys, with their swords drawn; and the particulars thereof were reported to him as follows.