That on the subject of the farms held by Cantoo Baboo the said Warren Hastings has made the following declaration.

"Many of his farms were taken without my knowledge, and almost all against my advice.

I had no right to use compulsion or authority; nor could I with justice exclude him, because he was my servant, from a liberty allowed to all other persons in the country.

The farms which he quitted he quitted by my advice, because I thought that he might engage himself beyond his abilities, and be involved in disputes, which I did not choose to have come before me as judge of them."[8] That the said declaration contains sundry false and contradictory assertions: that, if _almost all_ the said farms were taken against his advice, it cannot be true that _many_ of them were taken without his knowledge; that, whether Cantoo Baboo had been his servant or not, the said Warren Hastings was bound by his own regulations to prevent his holding any farms to a greater amount than one lac of rupees per annum, and that the said Cantoo Baboo, being the servant of the Governor-General, was excluded by the said regulations from holding any farms whatever; that, if (as the Directors observe) it was thought dangerous to permit the banian of a collector to be concerned in farms, the same or stronger objections would always lie against the Governor's banian being so concerned; that the said Warren Hastings had a right, and was bound by his duty, to prevent his servant from holding the same; that, in advising the said Cantoo Baboo to relinquish some of the said farms, for which he was actually engaged, he has acknowledged an influence over his servant, and has used that influence for a purpose inconsistent with his duty to the India Company, namely, to deprive them of the security of the said Cantoo Baboo's engagement for farms which on trial he had found not beneficial, or not likely to continue beneficial, to himself; and that, if it was improper that he, the said Warren Hastings, should be the judge of any disputes in which his servant might be involved on account of his farms, that reason ought to have obliged him to prevent his servant from being engaged in any farms whatever, or to have advised his said servant to relinquish the remainder of his farms, as well as those which the said Warren Hastings affirms he quitted by his advice.

That on the subject of the said charge the Court of Directors of the East India Company have come to the following resolution: "_Resolved_, That it appears that the conduct of the late President and Council of Fort William in Bengal, in suffering Cantoo Baboo, the present Governor-General's banian, to hold farms in different purgunnahs to a large amount, or to be security for such farms, contrary to the tenor and spirit of the 17th regulation of the Committee of Revenue at Fort William, of the 14th May, 1772, and afterwards relinquishing that security without satisfaction made to the Company, was highly improper, and has been attended with considerable loss to the Company"; and that in the whole of this transaction the said Warren Hastings has been guilty of gross collusion with his servant, and manifest breach of trust to his employers.
That, whereas it was acknowledged by the said Warren Hastings, that the country, in the years 1770 and 1771, had suffered great depopulation and decay, and that the collections of those years, having been violently kept up to their former standard, had added to the distress of the country, the settlement of the revenues made by him for five years, commencing the 1st May, 1772, instead of offering any abatement or relief to the inhabitants who had survived the famine, held out to the East India Company a promise of great _increase_ of revenue, to be exacted from the country by the means hereinbefore described.