same imputations
with the former. And with regard to the third project, namely, the sale
of the Company's sovereignty to the Nabob of Oude, and his having
actually received proposals for the same, it was an high offence to the
Company, as presuming, without their authority or consent, to put up to
sale their sovereign rights, and particularly to put them up to sale to
that very person against whom the independence of the said province had
been declared by the Governor-General and Council to be necessary, as a
barrier for the security of the other provinces, in case of a future
rupture with him.[59] It was an heinous injury to the said Rajah to
attempt to change his relation without his consent, especially on
account of the person to whom he was to be made over for money, by
reason of the known enmity subsisting between his family and that of the
Nabob, who was to be the purchaser; and it was a grievous outrage on the
innocent inhabitants of the zemindary of Benares to propose putting them
under a person long before described by himself to the Court of
Directors "to want the qualities of the head and heart requisite for his
station"; and a letter from the British Resident at Oude, transmitted to
the said Court, represents him "to have wholly lost, by his
_oppressions_, the confidence and affections of his own subjects"; and
whose distresses, and the known disorders in his government, he, the
said Hastings, did attribute solely to his own bad conduct and evil
character; admitting also, in a letter written to Edward Wheler,
Esquire, and transmitted to the Court of Directors, "that many
circumstances did favor suspicion of his [the said Nabob's] fidelity to
the English interest, the Nabob being surrounded by men base in their
characters and improvident in their understandings, his favorites, and
his companions of his looser hours. These had every cause to dread the
effect of my influence on theirs; and both these, and the relations of
the family, whose views of consequence and power were intercepted by our
participation in the administration of his affairs, entertained a mortal
hatred to our nation, and openly avowed it." And the said Hastings was
well aware, that, in case the Nabob, by him described in the manner
aforesaid, on making such purchase, should continue to observe the
terms of his father's original covenants and engagements with the Rajah,
and should pay the Company the only tribute which he could lawfully
exact