posing to the Council
and rendering himself responsible (but not in fortune) for the payment
of the Company's debt within a certain given time, if he were permitted
and commissioned by the Council to act for the board in that province,
and did inform them that he was privately well assured that in a few
days he should receive an invitation to that effect; and he did state,
(as in the year 1781 he had stated as a reason for his former
delegation,) "that the state of the country was so disordered in its
revenue and administration, and the credit and influence of the Nabob
himself so much shook by _the late usurpation_ of his authority, and the
contests which attended it, as to require the accession of an
extraneous aid to restore the powers and to reanimate the constitution
of his government,"--although he, the said Hastings, did for a long time
before attribute the weakness of his government to an extraneous
interference. And the said Council, on his engagement aforesaid, did
consent thereto; and he did accordingly receive a commission, enabling
him to act in the affairs of Oude, not only as the Resident might have
done, but as largely as the Council-General might legally delegate their
own powers.

LXVII. That the said Warren Hastings, in accepting the said commission,
did subject his character and the reputation of his office to great
imputations and suspicions, by taking upon himself an inferior office,
out of which another had upon his intrigues been removed by a perpetual
obstruction which rendered it impossible for him to perform his duty or
to obey his instructions; and he did increase the said grounded
suspicions by exercising that office in a government from whence it was
notorious he had himself received an unlawful gift and present from the
ministers, and in which he had notoriously suffered many, and had
himself actually directed some, acts of peculation, by granting various
pensions and emoluments, to the prejudice of the revenue of a distressed
country, which he was not authorized to grant.

LXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings did proceed unto the said province
of Oude under color of providing a remedy for the disorders described to
be existing in the same, and for the recovery of the Company's
pretended debt. And the said Warren Hastings, who had thought fit to
recall the Company's Resident, appointed to that office by the Court of
Directors, and to suspend his office, did, notwithstanding, of his own