That the commander-in-chief, Colonel Alexander Champion aforesaid, "thought nothing could be more honorable to this nation than the support of so exalted a character; and whilst it could be done on terms so advantageous, supposed it very unlikely that the vakeel's proposition should be received with indifference"; that he did accordingly refer it to the administration through Warren Hastings, Esquire, then Governor of Fort William and President of Bengal; and he did at the same time inclose to the said Warren Hastings a letter from the Nabob Fyzoola Khan to the said Hastings,--which letter does not appear, but must be supposed to have been of the same tenor with those before cited to the commander-in-chief,--of which also copies were sent to the said Hastings by the commander-in-chief; and he, the commander-in-chief aforesaid, after urging to the said Hastings sundry good and cogent arguments of policy and prudence in favor of the Nabob Fyzoola Khan, did conclude by "wishing for nothing so much as for the adoption of some measure that might strike all the powers of the East with admiration of our justice, in contrast to the conduct of the Vizier." VIII.

That, in answer to such laudable wish of the said commander-in-chief, the President, Warren Hastings, preferring his own prohibited plans of extended dominion to the mild, equitable, and wise policy inculcated in the standing orders of his superiors, and now enforced by the recommendation of the commander-in-chief, did instruct and "desire" him, the said commander-in-chief, "instead of soliciting the Vizier to relinquish his conquest to Fyzoola Khan, to discourage it as much as was in his power"; although the said Hastings did not once express, or even intimate, any doubt whatever of the Nabob Fyzoola Khan's innocence as to the origin of the war, or of his hereditary right to the territories which he claimed, but to the said pleas of the Nabob Fyzoola Khan, as well as to the arguments both of policy and justice advanced by the commander-in-chief, he, the said Hastings, did solely oppose certain speculative objects of imagined expediency, summing up his decided rejection of the proposals made by the Nabob Fyzoola Khan in the following remarkable words.

"With respect to Fyzoola Khan, _he appears not to merit our consideration.

The petty sovereign of a country estimated at six or eight lacs ought not for a moment to prove an impediment to any of our measures, or to affect the consistency 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.