strictly regular and legal.

That the refusal of the said Warren Hastings to ratify the said
resignation, and his disavowal of the said Lauchlan Macleane, his agent,
is not justified by anything contained in his said letter to the Court
of Directors, dated on the 15th of August, 1777,--the said Warren
Hastings nowhere directly and positively asserting that the said
Lauchlan Macleane was not his agent, and had not both full and general
powers, and even particular instructions for this very act, although the
said Warren Hastings uses many indirect and circuitous, but insufficient
and inapplicable, insinuations to that effect. And the said letter does,
on the contrary, contain a clear and express avowal that the said
Lauchlan Macleane was his confidential agent, and that in that capacity
he acted throughout, and particularly in this special matter, with zeal
and fidelity. And the said letter does further admit in effect the
instructions produced by the said Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, confirmed
by Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Stewart, and relied on and confided in by the
Court of Directors, by which the said Lauchlan Macleane appeared to be
specially empowered to declare the said resignation, the words of the
said instruction being as follows: "That he [Mr. Hastings] _will not
continue in the government of Bengal_, unless certain conditions therein
specified can be obtained"; and the words of the said letter being as
follows: "What I myself know with certainty, or can recollect at this
distance of time, concerning the powers and instructions which were
given to Messieurs Macleane and Graham, when they undertook to be my
agents in England, I will circumstantially relate. I am in possession of
two papers which were presented to those gentlemen at the time of their
departure from Bengal, one of which comprises four short propositions
_which I required as the conditions of my being confirmed in this
government_." And although the said Warren Hastings does here artfully
somewhat change the words of his written instructions (and which having
in his possession he might as easily have given verbatim) to other words
which may appear less explicit, yet they are in fact capable of only the
same meaning: for, as, at the time of giving the said instructions to
his agents, he was in full possession of his office, he could want no
confirmation therein except _his own_; and, in such circumstances, "to
require certain things, _as the conditions o