his, totally changing his relation to the said
Almas Ali, did himself labor to procure from all parts attestations to
prove him not guilty of the perfidy and disloyalty of which the said
Hastings himself appears to have been to that very time his sole
accuser, as he hath since been his most anxious advocate: but though he
did use many endeavors to acquit Almas Ali of his intended flight, yet
concerning his embezzlements and oppressions, the most important of all
charges relative to that of the revenue and collection, he, the said
Hastings, hath made no inquiry whatever; by which it might appear that
he was not as fully guilty thereof as he had always represented him to
be. But some time after he, the said Warren Hastings, had arrived at
Lucknow, in the year 1784, he suggested to the said Almas Ali Khan the
_advance_ to the Company's use of a sum of money amounting to fifty
thousand pounds or thereabouts; and the said suggested advance was (as
the said Warren Hastings asserts, no witness or document of the
transaction appearing) "cheerfully and without hesitation complied with,
considering it as an _evidence seasonably_ offered for the general
refutation of the charges of perfidy and disloyalty": which practice of
charging wealthy persons with treason and disloyalty, and afterwards
acquitting them on the payment of a sum of money, is highly scandalous
to the honor, justice, and government of Great Britain; and the offence
is highly aggravated by the said Hastings's declaration to the Court of
Directors that the charges against Almas Ali Khan have been too
laboriously urged against him, and carried at one time to such an excess
as had nearly driven him to abandon his country "_for the preservation
of his life and honor_," and thus to give a "color to the charges
themselves," when he, the said Warren Hastings, did well know that he
himself did consider as a crime, and did make it an article in a formal
accusation against the Resident Middleton, that he did not inform him,
the said Hastings, of the supposed treasons of Almas Ali Khan, and of
his design to abandon the country, when he himself did most laboriously
urge the charges against him, and when no attempt appears to have been
made against the life of the said Almas Ali Khan except by the said
Warren Hastings himself.

LXXV. That the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling, or thereabouts,
publicly taken by the said Warren Hastings, as an _advance_ for the use
of the Com