the
Resident Bristow an order of a dangerous and unwarrantable nature, in
which, upon his, the said Hastings's, simple allegation of offences, not
accurately described or specified, with regard either to the fact, the
nature of the offence, or the proof, he was required to urge the Nabob
to put him to death, with many qualifications in the said instructions,
full of fraud and duplicity, calculated to insnare the said Resident
Bristow, and to throw upon him the responsibility of the conduct of the
said Almas Ali Khan, if he should continue at large contrary to his
orders, or to subject him, the said Resident, to the shame and scandal
of apprehending and putting him to death by means which, in the
circumstances, must necessarily be such as would be construed into
treachery, and he, the said Almas Ali Khan, being from nature and
situation suspicious and watchful, and being at that very time in the
collection, or farmer of the most important part of the revenues, with
an extensive jurisdiction annexed, and at the head of fourteen thousand
of his own troops, and having been recently accepted by the Resident
Middleton as security for large sums of money advanced by the bankers of
Benares to the use of the East India Company; which orders (if the said
Resident would or could have executed them) must have raised an
universal alarm among all the considerable men of the country concerned
in the government, and would have been a means of subverting the public
credit of the Company, by the murder of a person engaged for very great
sums of money that had been advanced for their use. And the said
instruction is as followeth.

"If any engagement shall actually subsist between them at the time you
have charge of the Residency, it must, however exceptionable, be
faithfully observed; but if he has been guilty of any criminal offence
to the Nabob, his master, for which no immunity is provided in the
engagement, or he shall break any one of the conditions of it, I do most
strictly enjoin you, and it must be your special care to endeavor,
_either by force or surprise_, to secure his person and bring him to
justice. By bringing him to justice I mean, that you urge the Nabob, on
due conviction, _to punish him with death_, as a necessary example to
deter others from the commission of the like crimes; nor must you desist
till this is effected. I cannot prescribe the means; but to guard myself
against the obloquy to which I may be exposed by a