and act in direct contradiction to the orders of
the Court of Directors, and to his own opinion of his public duty, as
well as to the truth and reality thereof,--he having some years before
entered in writing the declaration which follows.

"The very idea of _prize-money_ suggests to my remembrance _the former
disorders which arose in our army from this source, and had almost
proved fatal to it_. Of this circumstance you must be sufficiently
apprised, and of the necessity for discouraging every expectation of
this kind amongst the troops. _It is to be avoided like poison._ The bad
effects of a similar measure were but too plainly felt in a former
period, and our honorable masters did not fail on that occasion to
reprobate with their censure, in the most severe terms, a practice which
they regarded as the source of infinite evils, and which, if
established, would in their judgment necessarily bring corruption and
ruin on their army."

XXI. That the said Hastings, after he had given the license aforesaid,
and that in consequence thereof the booty found in the castle, to the
amount of 23,27,813 current rupees, was distributed among the soldiers
employed in its reduction, the said Hastings did retract his declaration
of right, and his permission to the soldiers to appropriate to
themselves the plunder, and endeavored, by various devices and
artifices, to explain the same away, and to recover the spoil aforesaid
for the use of the Company; and wholly failing in his attempts to resume
by a breach of faith with the soldiers what he had unlawfully disposed
of by a breach of duty to his constituents, he attempted to obtain the
same as a loan, in which attempt he also failed; and the aforesaid money
being the only part of the treasures belonging to the Rajah, or any of
his family, that had been found, he was altogether frustrated in the
acquisition of every part of that dishonorable object which alone he
pretended to, and pursued through a long series of acts of injustice,
inhumanity, oppression, violence, and bloodshed, at the hazard of his
person and reputation, and, in his own opinion, at the risk of the total
subversion of the British empire.

XXI. That the said Warren Hastings, after the commission of the
offences aforesaid, being well aware that he should be called to an
account for the same, did, by the evil counsel and agency of Sir Elijah
Impey, Knight, his Majesty's chief-justice, who was then out of the
limits of h