still to remain
optional in the said Warren Hastings, to be ratified or departed from at
his future choice or pleasure; nor did the said judges pronounce, nor do
any of their reasonings which accompanied their decision tend to
establish it as their opinion, that even the time for ratifying and
completing the said transaction was to be at the sole discretion of the
said Warren Hastings; but they only delivered their opinion as
aforesaid, that his said office "has not _yet_ been vacated, and
[therefore] that the _actual_ assumption of the government by the
member of the Council next in succession was [in the actual
circumstances, and _rebus sic stantibus_] illegal."

That the said Warren Hastings does nowhere himself contend that the said
resignation was not absolute, but optional, according to the true
meaning and understanding of the parties in England, and so far as the
acts of Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, and the Court of Directors, were
binding on him; but, on the contrary, he grounds his refusal to complete
the same, not on any interpretation of the words in which the said
resignation, and the other instruments aforesaid, were conceived, but
rather on a disavowal (not direct, indeed, but implied) of his said
agent, and of the powers under which the said agent had claimed to act
in his behalf. Neither did the said Warren Hastings ground his said
refusal on any objection to the particular day or period or
circumstances in which the requisition of General Clavering was made,
nor accompany the said refusal with any qualification in that respect,
or with any intimation that he would at any future or more convenient
season comply with the same,--although such an intimation might probably
have induced General Clavering to waive an instant and immediate claim
to the chair, and might therefore have prevented the distractions which
happened, and the greater evils which impended, in consequence of the
said claim of General Clavering, and the said refusal of Warren
Hastings, Esquire; but the said Warren Hastings did, on the contrary,
express his said refusal in such general and unqualified terms as
intimated an intention to resist absolutely and altogether, both then
and at any future time, the said requisition of General Clavering. And
the subsequent proceedings of the said Warren Hastings do all concur in
proving that such was his intention; for he did afterwards, in
conformity to the advice of the judges, move a resolution i