of Directors to break and violate the most solemn, the most advantageous, and useful treaty that the Company had ever made in India; and that this conduct of his produced the strange and unnatural junction which he says he found formed against the Company, and with which he had to combat.  I should trouble your Lordships with but a brief statement of the facts; and if I do not enter more at large in observing upon them, it is because I cannot but feel shocked at the indecency and impropriety of your being obliged to hear of that as merit which the House of Commons has condemned in every part.  Your Lordships received obliquely evidence from the prisoner at your bar upon this subject; yet, when we came and desired your full inquiry into it, your Lordships, for wise and just reasons, I have no doubt, refused our request.  I must, however, again protest on the part of the Commons against your Lordships receiving such evidence at all as relevant to your judgment, unless the House of Commons is fully heard upon it.

But to proceed.—­The government of Bombay had offended the Mahratta States by a most violent and scandalous aggression.  They afterwards made a treaty of peace with them, honorable and advantageous to the Company.  This treaty was made by Colonel Upton, and is called the Treaty of Poorunder.  Mr. Hastings broke that treaty, upon his declared principle, that you are to look in war for the resources of your government.  All India was at that time in peace.  Hyder Ali did not dare to attack us, because he was afraid that his natural enemies, the Mahrattas, would fall upon him.  The Nizam could not attack us, because he was also afraid of the Mahrattas.  The Mahratta state itself was divided into such discordant branches as to make it impossible for them to unite in any one object; that commonwealth, which, certainly at that time was the terror of India, was so broken, as to render it either totally ineffective or easy to be resisted.  There was not one government in India that did not look up to Great Britain as holding the balance of power, and in a position to control and do justice to every individual party in it.  At that juncture Mr. Hastings deliberately broke the treaty of Poorunder; and afterwards, by breaking faith with and attacking all the powers, one after another, he produced that very union which one would hardly have expected that the incapacity or ill faith of any Governor could have effected.  Your Lordships shall hear the best and most incontrovertible evidence both of his incapacity and ill faith, and of the consequences which they produced.  It is the declaration of one of the latest of their allies concerning all these proceedings.  It is contained in a letter from the Rajah of Berar, directly and strongly inculpating Mr. Hastings, upon facts which he has never denied and by arguments which he has never refuted, as being himself the cause of that very junction of all the powers of India against us.

     Letter from Benaram Pundit.