action,
and to the conclusions naturally deducible from it, your Committee
attribute that general spirit of disobedience and independence which has
since prevailed in the government of Bengal.

Your Committee find that in the year 1775 Mr. Lauchlan Macleane was sent
into England as agent to the Nabob of Arcot and to Mr. Hastings. The
conduct of Mr. Hastings, in assisting to extirpate, for a sum of money
to be paid to the Company, the innocent nation of the Rohillas, had
drawn upon him the censure of the Court of Directors, and the unanimous
censure of the Court of Proprietors. The former had even resolved to
prepare an application to his Majesty for Mr. Hastings's dismission.

Another General Court was called on this proceeding. Mr. Hastings was
then openly supported by a majority of the Court of Proprietors, who
professed to entertain a good opinion of his general ability and
rectitude of intention, notwithstanding the unanimous censure passed
upon him. In that censure they therefore seemed disposed to acquiesce,
without pushing the matter farther. But, as the offence was far from
trifling, and the condemnation of the measure recent, they did not
directly attack the resolution of the Directors to apply to his Majesty,
but voted in the ballot that it should be reconsidered. The business
therefore remained in suspense, or it rather seemed to be dropped, for
some months, when Mr. Macleane took a step of a nature not in the least
to be expected from the condition in which the cause of his principal
stood, which was apparently as favorable as the circumstances could
bear. Hitherto the support of Mr. Hastings in the General Court was only
by a majority; but if on application from the Directors he should be
removed, a mere majority would not have been sufficient for his
restoration. The door would have been barred against his return to the
Company's service by one of the strongest and most substantial clauses
in the Regulating Act of 1778. Mr. Macleane, probably to prevent the
manifest ill consequences of such a step, came forward with a letter to
the Court of Directors, declaring his provisional powers, and offering
on the part of Mr. Hastings an immediate resignation of his office.

On this occasion the Directors showed themselves extremely punctilious
with regard to Mr. Macleane's powers. They probably dreaded the charge
of becoming accomplices to an evasion of the act by which Mr. Hastings,
resigning the service, would