to obtain the same as a loan, in which attempt he also failed; and the aforesaid money being the only part of the treasures belonging to the Rajah, or any of his family, that had been found, he was altogether frustrated in the acquisition of every part of that dishonorable object which alone he pretended to, and pursued through a long series of acts of injustice, inhumanity, oppression, violence, and bloodshed, at the hazard of his person and reputation, and, in his own opinion, at the risk of the total subversion of the British empire.

XXI.  That the said Warren Hastings, after the commission of the offences aforesaid, being well aware that he should be called to an account for the same, did, by the evil counsel and agency of Sir Elijah Impey, Knight, his Majesty’s chief-justice, who was then out of the limits of his jurisdiction, cause to be taken at Benares, before or by the said Sir Elijah Impey, and through the intervention, not of the Company’s interpreter, but of a certain private interpreter of his, the said Hastings’s, own appointment, and a dependant on him, called Major Davy, several declarations and depositions by natives of Hindostan,—­and did also cause to be taken before the said Sir Elijah Impey several attestations in English, made by British subjects, and which were afterwards transmitted to Calcutta, and laid before the Council-General,—­some of which depositions were upon oath, some upon honor, and others neither upon oath nor honor, but all or most of which were of an irregular and irrelevant nature, and not fit or decent to be taken by a British magistrate, or to be transmitted to a British government.

XXIII.  That one of the said attestations (but not on oath) was made by a principal minister of the Nabob of Oude, to whom the said Hastings had some time before proposed to sell the sovereignty of that very territory of Benares; and that one other attestation (not upon oath) was made by a native woman of distinction, whose son he, the said Hastings, did actually promote to the government of Benares, vacated by the unjust expulsion of the Rajah aforesaid, and who in her deposition did declare that she considered the expelled Rajah as her enemy, and that he never did confer with her, or suffer her to be acquainted with any of his designs.

XXIV.  That, besides the depositions of persons interested in the ruin of the Rajah, others were made by persons who then received pensions from him, the said Hastings; and several of the affidavits were made by persons of mean condition, and so wholly illiterate as not to be able to write their names.