said Munny Begum, a woman evidently unqualified for and
incapable of such offices, and restrained from acting in such capacities
by her necessary seclusion from the world and retirement in a seraglio.
That, a considerable deficiency or embezzlement appearing in this
woman's account of the young Nabob's stipend, she voluntarily declared,
by a writing under her seal, that she had given fifteen thousand pounds
to the said Warren Hastings for an entertainment,--which declaration
corresponds with and confirms that part of the charge produced by Rajah
Nundcomar to which it relates. That neither this nor any other part of
the said charge has been at any time directly denied or disputed by the
said Warren Hastings, though made to his face, and though he was
repeatedly accused by his colleagues, who were appointed by Parliament
at the same time with himself, of peculation of every sort. That,
instead of promoting a strict inquiry into his conduct for the clearance
of his innocence and honor, he did repeatedly endeavor to elude and
stifle all inquiry by attempting to dissolve the meetings of the Council
at which such charges were produced, and by other means, and has not
since taken any steps to disprove or refute the same. That the said
Warren Hastings, so long ago as September, 1775, assured the Court of
Directors, "that it was his fixed determination most fully and
liberally to explain every circumstance of his conduct on the points on
which he had been injuriously arraigned, and to afford them the clearest
conviction of his own integrity, and of the propriety of his motives for
declining a present defence of it"; and having never since given to the
Court of Directors any explanation whatever, much less the full and
liberal explanation he had promised so repeatedly, has thereby abandoned
even that late and protracted defence which he himself must have thought
necessary to be made at some time or other, and which he would be
thought to have deferred to a period more suitable and convenient than
that in which the facts were recent, and the impression of these and
other charges of the same nature against him was fresh and unimpaired in
the minds of men.

That on the 30th of March, 1775, a member of the Council produced and
laid before the board a petition from Mir Zein Abul Deen, (formerly
farmer of a district, and who had been in creditable stations,) setting
forth, that Khan Jehan Khan, then Phousdar of Hoogly, had obtained tha