sistency of
our conduct_."

IX. That, in the aforesaid violent and arbitrary position, the said
Warren Hastings did avow it to be a public principle of his government,
that no right, however manifest, and no innocence, however unimpeached,
could entitle the weak to our protection against others, or save them
from our own active endeavors for their oppression, and even
extirpation, should they interfere with our notions of political
expediency; and that such a principle is highly derogatory to the
justice and honor of the English name, and fundamentally injurious to
our interests, inasmuch as it hath an immediate tendency to excite
distrust, jealousy, fear, and hatred against us among all the
subordinate potentates of Hindostan.

X. That, in prosecution of the said despotic principle, the President,
Warren Hastings aforesaid, did persist to obstruct, as far as in him
lay, every advance towards an accommodation between the Vizier Sujah ul
Dowlah and the Nabob Fyzoola Khan; and particularly on the 16th of
September, only eight days after the said Hastings, in, conjunction with
the other members of the Select Committee of Bengal, had publicly
testified his _satisfaction_ in the prospect of _an accommodation_, and
had _hoped_ that "his Excellency [the Vizier] would be disposed to
conciliate the affections [of the Rohillas] to his government _by
acceding to lenient terms_," he, the said Hastings, did nevertheless
write, and without the consent or knowledge of his colleagues did
privately dispatch, a certain answer to a letter of the
commander-in-chief, in which answer the said Hastings did express other
_contradictory hopes_, namely, that the commander-in-chief _had resolved
on prosecuting the war to a final issue_,--"because" (as the said
Hastings explains himself) "it appears very plainly that Fyzoola Khan
and his adherents _lay at your mercy_, because I apprehend much
inconveniency from delays, and because _I am morally certain that no
good will he gained by negotiating_": thereby artfully suggesting his
wishes of what might be, in his hopes of what had been, resolved; and
plainly, though indirectly, instigating the commander-in-chief to much
effusion of blood in an immediate attack on the Rohillas, posted as they
were "in a very strong situation," and "combating for all."

XI. That the said Hastings, in the answer aforesaid, did further
endeavor to inflame the commander-in-chief against the Nabob Fyzoola
Khan, by repr