I shall take it
as a particular favor, if you will indulge me with a line at
Fyzabad, that I may make the necessary previous arrangements with
respect to the disposal of my family, which I would not wish to
retain here, in the event either of a rupture with the Nabob, or
the necessity of employing our forces on the reduction of his
aumils and troops. This done, I can begin the work in three days
after my return from Fyzabad."
Besides this letter, which I think is sufficiently clear upon the
subject, there is also another much more clear upon your Lordships'
minutes, much more distinct and much more pointed, expressive of his
being resolved to make such representations of every matter as the
Governor-General may wish. Now a man who is master of the manner in
which facts are represented, and whose subsequent conduct is to be
justified by such representations, is not simply accountable for his
conduct; he is accountable for culpably attempting to form, on false
premises, the judgment of others upon that conduct. This species of
delinquency must therefore be added to the rest; and I wish your
Lordships to carry generally in your minds, that there is not one single
syllable of representation made by any of those parties, except where
truth may happen to break out in spite of all the means of concealment,
which is not to be considered as the representation of Mr. Hastings
himself in justification of his own conduct.
The letter which I have just now read was written preparatory to the
transaction which I am now going to state, called _the treaty of
Chunar_. Having brought his miserable victim thither, he forced him to
sign a paper called a treaty: but such was the fraud in every part of
this treaty, that Mr. Middleton himself, who was the instrument and the
chief agent in it, acknowledges that the Nabob was persuaded to sign it
by the assurance given to him that it never was to be executed. Here,
then, your Lordships have a prince first compelled to enter into a
negotiation, and then induced to accede to a treaty by false assurances
that it should not be executed, which he declares nothing but force
should otherwise have compelled him to accede to.
The first circumstance in this transaction that I shall lay before your
Lordships is that the treaty is declared to have for its objects two
modes of relieving the Nabob from his distresses,--from distresses which
we have stated, and which M
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