ollows. "The
first minister, Mudjed ul Dowlah, is _totally_ deficient in every
military quality, conceited of his own superior talents, and formed to
the practice of _that crooked policy which, generally defeats its own
purpose_, but sincerely attached to his master." The reality of the said
attachment was not improbable, but altogether useless, as the said
minister was the only one among the principal persons about the king who
(besides the total want of all military and civil ability) possessed no
territories, troops, or other means of serving and supporting him, but
was himself solely upheld by his influence over his master: neither doth
the said Hastings free him, any more than the persons more efficient,
who were to be destroyed, from a disposition to alienate the king from
an attention to his affairs, and from all confidence in his own family;
but, on the contrary, he brings him forward as the very first among the
instances he adduces to exemplify the practices of the ministers against
their sovereign and his children.

XVI. That the said Warren Hastings, recommending in general terms, and
yet condemning in detail, every part of his own pretended plan, as
impracticable in itself, and as undertaken in favor of persons all of
whom he describes as incapable, and the principal as indisposed to avail
himself thereof, must have had some other motives for this long,
intricate, dark, and laborious proceeding with the Mogul, which must be
sought in his actions, and the evident drift and tendency thereof, and
in declarations which were brought out by him to serve other purposes,
but which serve fully to explain his real intentions in this intrigue.

XVII. That the other members of the Council-General having abundantly
certified their averseness to his intrigues, and even having shown
apprehensions of his going personally to the Mogul and the Mahrattas for
the purpose of carrying on the same, the said Hastings was driven
headlong to acts which did much more openly indicate the true nature and
purpose of his machinations. For he at length recurred directly, and
with little disguise, to the Mahrattas, and did open an intrigue with
them, although he was obliged to confess, in his letter aforesaid of the
16th June, 1784, that the exception which he contended to be implied in
the orders of the Court of Directors forbidding the intermeddling in the
disputes of "the country powers," namely, "powers not permanent," did by
no means