ces between
the King and Sujah ul Dowlah, the Directors then said, "that they should
be subject to no further claim or requisition from the King, excepting
for the stipulated tribute for Bengal, which they [the Governor and
Council] were to pay to his agent, or remit to him in such manner as he
might direct."

That, in the year 1772, the King Shah Allum, who had hitherto resided at
Allahabad, trusting to engagements which he had entered into with the
Mahrattas, quitted that place, and removed to Delhi; but, having soon
quarrelled with those people, and afterwards being taken prisoner, had
been treated by them with very great disrespect and cruelty. That, among
other instances of their abuse of their immediate power over him, the
Governor and Council of Bengal, in their letter of the 16th of August,
1773, inform the Court of Directors that he had been _compelled, while a
prisoner in their hands, to grant sunnuds for the surrender of Corah and
Allahabad to them_; and it appears from sundry other minutes of their
own that the said Governor and Council did at all times consider the
surrender above mentioned as _extorted_ from the King, and
_unquestionably an act of violence_, which could not alienate or impair
his right to those provinces, and that, when they took possession
thereof, it was at the request of the King's Naib, or viceroy, who put
them under the Council's _protection_. That on this footing they were
accepted by the said Warren Hastings and his Council, and for some time
considered by them as a deposit committed to their care by a prince to
whom the possession thereof was particularly guarantied by the East
India Company. In their letter of the 1st of March, 1773, they (the said
Warren Hastings and his Council) say, "In no shape can this compulsatory
cession by the King release us from the obligation we are under to
defend the provinces which we have so particularly guarantied to him."
But it appears that they soon adopted other ideas and assumed other
principles concerning this object. In the instructions, dated the 23d of
June, 1773, which the Council of Fort William gave to the said Warren
Hastings, previous to his interview with the Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah at
Benares, they say, that, "while the King continued at Delhi, whither he
proceeded in opposition to their most strenuous remonstrances, they
should certainly consider the engagements between him and the Company as
dissolved by his alienation from them and