in India, to contrive the means for
its increase; for it is of public notoriety, that one great object of
the Mahratta policy is to unite under their dominion the nation or
religious sect of the Seiks, who, being a people abounding with
soldiers, and possessing large territories, would extend the Mahratta
power over the whole of the vast countries to the northwest of India.

XXIII. That the said Warren Hastings, further to augment the power of
the said Mahrattas, and to endanger the safety of the British
possessions, having established in force the said Mahrattas on the
frontier, as afore-recited, and finding the Council-General averse in
that situation to the withdrawing the British forces therefrom, and for
disbanding them to the extent required by the said Hastings, did, in a
minute of the 4th December, 1784, after stating a supposition, that,
contrary to his opinion, the said troops should not be reduced, propose
to employ them under the command of the Mogul's son, then under the
influence of the Mahrattas, in a war against the aforesaid people or
religious sect called Seiks, defending the same on the following
principles: "I feel the sense of an obligation, imposed on me by the
supposition I have made, to state a mode of rendering the detachment of
use in its prescribed station, and of affording the _appearance_ of a
cause for its retention."

XXIV. That the said Hastings did admit that there was no present danger
to the Company's possessions from that nation which could justify him in
such a war, as he had declared that the Mahrattas were _the only power_
that bordered on the Company's possessions and those of the Vizier; but
he did assign as a reason for going to war with them their military and
enthusiastic spirit,--the hardiness of their natural constitution,--the
dangers which might arise from them in some future time, if they should
ever happen to be united under one head, they existing at present in a
state little different from anarchy; and he did predict great danger
from them, and at no very remote period, "if this people be permitted to
grow into maturity without interruption." And though he doth pretend
that the solicitations of the heir-apparent of the Mogul, who, he says,
did repeatedly and earnestly solicit him to obtain the permission to use
the Company's troops for the purpose aforesaid, had weight with him, yet
he doth declare, as he expresses himself in the minute aforesaid, that
"a _stronger im