held criminal for a deviation from the precise letter of them."

LXXXVII. That the said Warren Hastings did enter a reply to this answer,
in support of his criminal charge, continuing to insist "that his orders
ought to have been literally obeyed," although he did not deny that the
above difficulties occurred, and the above consequences must have been
the result,--and though the reports of the military officers charged
with the execution of his commission confirmed the moral impossibility,
as well as inutility in point of profit, of forcing a son to greater
violence and rigor against his mother.

LXXXVIII. That the said Hastings, after all the acts aforesaid, did
presume to declare on record, in his minute of the 23d September, 1788,
"that, whatever may happen of the events which he dreads in the train of
affairs now subsisting, he shall at least receive this consolation under
them, that he used his utmost exertions to prevent them, and that in the
annals of the nations of India which have been subjected to the British
dominions _HE shall not be remembered among their oppressors_." And
speaking of certain alleged indignities offered to the Nabob of Oude,
and certain alleged suspicions of his authority with regard to the
management of his household, he, the said Hastings, did, in the said
minute, endeavor to excite the spirit of the British nation, severely
animadverting on such offences, making use of the following terms: "If
there be a spark of generous virtue in the breasts of any of my
countrymen who shall be the readers of this compilation, this letter" (a
letter of complaint from the Nabob) "shall stand for an instrument to
awaken it to the call of vengeance against so flagitious an abuse of
authority and reproach to the British name."

_From her Excellency the Bhow Begum to Mr. Bristow, Resident at the
Vizier's Court._

There is no necessity to write to you by way of information a detail of
my sufferings. From common report, and the intelligence of those who are
about you, the account of them will have reached your ears. I will here
relate a part of them.

After the death of Sujah Dowlah, most of his ungrateful servants were
constantly laboring to gratify their enmity; but finding, from the firm
and sincere friendship which subsisted between me and the English, that
the accomplishment of their purposes was frustrated, they formed the
design of occasioning a breach in that alliance, to insure their own
suc