pressing the subject upon your Lordships for your decision, and letting you and all this great auditory know what sort of a criminal you have before you, who has had the impudence to represent to your Lordships at your bar that Benares is in a flourishing condition, in defiance of the evidence which we have under his own hands, and who, in all the false papers that have been circulated to debauch the public opinion, has stated that we, the Commons, have given a false representation as to the state of the country under the English government.

    Lucknow, the 2d of April, 1784.  Addressed to the Honorable Edward
    Wheler, Esq., &c.  Signed Warren Hastings.  It is in page 306 of the
    printed Minutes.

“Gentlemen,—­Having contrived, by making forced stages, while the troops of my escort marched at the ordinary rate, to make a stay of five days at Benares, I was thereby furnished with the means of acquiring some knowledge of the state of the province, which I am anxious to communicate to you:  indeed, the inquiry, which was in a great degree obtruded upon me, affected me with very mortifying reflections on my own inability to apply it to any useful purpose.

“From the confines of Buxar to Benares I was followed and fatigued by the clamors of the discontented inhabitants.  It was what I expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of it.  The distresses which were produced by the long continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration.  Of a multitude of petitions which were presented to me, and of which I took minutes, every one that did not relate to a personal grievance contained the representation of one and the same species of oppression, which is in its nature of an influence most fatal to the future cultivation.  The practice to which I allude is this.  It is affirmed that the aumils and renters exact from the proprietors of the actual harvest a large increase in kind on their stipulated rent:  that is, from those who hold their pottahs by the tenure of paying one half of the produce of their crops, either the whole without a subterfuge, or a large proportion of it by false measurement or other pretexts; and from those whose engagements are for a fixed rent in money the half or a greater proportion is taken in kind.  This is in effect a tax upon the industry of the inhabitants; since there is scarcely a field of grain in the province, I might say not one, which has not been preserved by the incessant labor of the cultivator, by digging wells for their supply, or watering them from the wells of masonry with which this country abounds, or from the neighboring tanks, rivers, and nullahs.  The people who imposed on themselves this voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended with expense,