That the principle, so far as the same hath been directly avowed,
of the said proceedings at the Mogul's court, was as altogether
irrational, and the pretended object as impracticable, as the means
taken in pursuit of it were fraudulent and dishonorable, namely, the
restoration of the Mogul in some degree to the dignity of his situation,
and to his free agency in the conduct of his affairs. For the said
Hastings, at the very time in which he did with the greatest apparent
earnestness urge the purpose which he pretended to have in view with
regard to the dignity and liberty of the Mogul emperor, did represent
him as a person wholly disqualified, and even indisposed, to take any
active part whatsoever in the conduct of his own affairs, and that any
attempt for that purpose would be utterly impracticable; and this he
hath stated to the Court of Directors as a matter of public notoriety,
in his said letter of the 16th of June, 1784, in the following
emphatical and decisive terms.

"_You need not be told_ the character of the king, whose inertness, and
the habit of long-suffering, has debased his dignity and the fortunes of
his house _beyond the power of retrieving either the one or the other_.
Whilst his personal repose is undisturbed, he will _prefer_ to live in
_the meanest state of indigence_, under the rule of men whose views are
bounded by avarice and the power which they derive from his authority,
rather than commit any share of it to his own sons, (though his
affection for them is boundless in every other respect,) from a natural
jealousy, founded on the experience of a very different combination of
those circumstances which once served as a temptation and example of
unlawful ambition in the princes of the royal line. His ministers, from
a policy more reasonable, have constantly employed every means of
influence to confirm this disposition, and to prevent his sons from
having any share in the distribution of affairs, so as to have
established a complete usurpation of the royal prerogative under its
own sanction and patronage."

XV. That the said Warren Hastings, having given this opinion of the
sovereign for whose freedom he pretended so anxious a concern, did
describe the minister with whom he had long acted in concurrence, and
from whom he had just received the extraordinary secret embassy
aforesaid for the purpose of effecting the deliverance of his master,
the Mogul, from the usurpations of _his ministers_, as f