The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VIII Part 17

There does not appear to have been any interest paid on the above bonds to 31st May, 1782, the last accounts received. In the Interest Books, 1780-81, the last received, the Governor-General has credit for interest on the first six to April, 1781, to the amount of CRs. 21,964 12 8.

(Errors excepted.)

JOHN ANNIS, _Auditor of Indian Accounts._ EAST INDIA HOUSE, 5th June, 1783.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] As the Appendixes originally printed with the foregoing Reports, and which consist chiefly of official doc.u.ments, would have swelled this volume to an enormous size, it has been thought proper to omit them, with the exception of the first nine numbers of the Appendix B. to the Eleventh Report, the insertion of which has been judged necessary for the elucidation of the subject-matter of that Report.

[58] {Received 19th May, {Cancelled 30th July, 1774.

ARTICLES OF CHARGE

OF

HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

AGAINST

WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE

LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL:

PRESENTED TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

IN APRIL AND MAY, 1786.

ARTICLES I.-VI.

ARTICLES OF CHARGE

AGAINST

WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ.,

LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL.

I.--ROHILLA WAR.

That the Court of Directors of the East India Company, from a just sense of the danger and odium incident to the extension of their conquests in the East Indies, and from an experience of the disorders and corrupt practices which intrigues and negotiations to bring about revolutions among the country powers had produced, did positively and repeatedly direct their servants in Bengal not to engage in any offensive war whatsoever. That the said Court laid it down as _an invariable maxim, which ought ever to be maintained, that they were to avoid taking part in the political schemes of any of the country princes_,--and did, in particular, order and direct that they should not engage with a certain prince called Sujah ul Dowlah, Nabob of Oude, and Vizier of the Empire, in any operations beyond certain limits in the said orders specially described.

That Warren Hastings, Esquire, then Governor of Fort William in Bengal, did, with other members of the Council, declare his clear understanding of the true intent and meaning of the said positive and repeated orders and injunctions,--did express to the Court of Directors his approbation of the policy thereof,--did declare that he adopted the same _with sincerity and satisfaction_, and that he was _too well aware of the ruinous tendency of all schemes of conquest ever to adopt them, or ever to depart from the absolute line of self-defence, unless impelled to it by the most obvious necessity_,--did signify to the Nabob of Oude the said orders, and his obligation to yield punctual obedience thereto,--and did solemnly engage and promise to the Court of Directors, with the _unanimous concurrence_ of the whole Council, "that no object or consideration should either tempt or compel him to pa.s.s the political line which they [the Directors] had laid down for his operations with the Vizier," a.s.suring the Court of Directors that he "scarce saw a possible advantage which could compensate the hazard and expense to be incurred by a contrary conduct,"--that he did frequently repeat the same declarations, or declarations to the same effect, particularly in a letter to the Nabob himself, of the 22d of November, 1773, in the following words: "The commands of my superiors are, as I have repeatedly informed you, peremptory, that I shall not suffer their arms to be carried beyond the line of their own boundaries, and those of your Excellency, their ally."

That the said Warren Hastings, in direct contradiction to the said orders, and to his own sense of their propriety and coercive authority, and in breach of his express promises and engagements, did, in September, 1773, enter into a private engagement with the said Nabob of Oude, who was the special object of the prohibition, to furnish him, for a stipulated sum of money to be paid to the East India Company, with a body of troops for the declared purpose of "thoroughly extirpating the nation of the Rohillas": a nation from whom the Company had never received, or pretended to receive or apprehend, any injury whatsoever; whose country, in the month of February, 1773, by an unanimous resolution of the said Warren Hastings and his Council, was included in the line of defence against the Mahrattas; and from whom the Nabob never complained of an aggression or act of hostility, nor pretended a distinct cause of quarrel, other than the non-payment of a sum of money in dispute between him and that people.

That, supposing the sum of money in question to have been strictly due to the said Nabob by virtue of any engagement between him and the Rohilla chiefs, the East India Company, or their representatives, were not parties to that engagement, or guaranties thereof, nor bound by any obligation whatever to enforce the execution of it.

That, previous to the said Warren Hastings's entering into the agreement or bargain aforesaid to extirpate the said nation, he did not make, or cause to be made, a due inquiry into the validity of the sole pretext used by the said Nabob; nor did he give notice of the said claims of debt to the nation of the Rohillas, in order to receive an explanation on their part of the matter in litigation; nor did he offer any mediation, nor propose, nor afford an opportunity of proposing, an agreement or submission by which the calamities of war might be avoided, as, by the high state in which the East India Company stood as a sovereign power in the East, and the honor and character it ought to maintain, as well as by the principles of equity and humanity, and by the true and obvious policy of uniting the power of the Mahometan princes against the Mahrattas, he was bound to do. That, instead of such previous inquiry, or tender of good offices, the said Warren Hastings did stimulate the ambition and ferocity of the Nabob of Oude to the full completion of the inhuman end of the said unjustifiable enterprise, by informing him "that it would be absolutely necessary to persevere in it until it should be accomplished"; pretending that a fear of the Company's displeasure was his motive for annexing the accomplishment of the enterprise as a condition of his a.s.sistance, and a.s.serting "that he could not hazard or answer for the displeasure of the Company, his masters, if they should find themselves involved in a _fruitless_ war, or in an expense for prosecuting it,"--a pretence tending to the high dishonor of the East India Company, as if the gain to be acquired was to reconcile that body to the breach of their own orders prohibiting all such enterprises;--and in order further to involve the said Nabob beyond the power of retreating, he did, in the course of the proceeding, purposely put the said Nabob under difficulties in case he should decline that war, and did oblige him to accept even the permission to relinquish the execution of this unjust project as a favor, and _to make concessions for it_; thereby acting as if the Company were princ.i.p.als in the hostility; and employing for this purpose much double dealing and divers unworthy artifices to entangle and perplex the said Nabob, but by means of which he found himself (as he has entered it on record) _hampered and embarra.s.sed in a particular manner_.

That the said compact for offensive alliance in favor of a great prince against a considerable nation was not carried on by projects and counter-projects in writing; nor were the articles and conditions thereof formed into any regular written instrument, signed and sealed by the parties; but the whole (both the negotiation and the compact of offensive alliance against the Rohillas) was a mere verbal engagement, the purport and conventions whereof nowhere appeared, except in subsequent correspondence, in which certain of the articles, as they were stated by the several parties, did materially differ: a proceeding new and unprecedented, and directly leading to mutual misconstruction, evasion, and ill faith, and tending to encourage and protect every species of corrupt, clandestine practice. That, at the time when this private verbal agreement was made by the said Warren Hastings with the Nabob of Oude, a public ostensible treaty was concluded by him with the said Nabob, in which there is no mention whatever of such agreement, or reference whatever to it: in defence of which omission, it is a.s.serted by the said Warren Hastings, that _the multiplication of treaties weakens their efficacy, and therefore they should be reserved only for very important and permanent obligations_; notwithstanding he had previously declared to the said Nabob, "that the points which he had proposed required much consideration, and the previous ratification of a formal agreement, before he could consent to them." That the whole of the said verbal agreement with the Nabob of Oude in his own person, without any a.s.sistance on his part, was carried on and concluded by the said Warren Hastings alone, without any person who might witness the same, without the intervention even of an interpreter, though he confesses that he spoke the Hindostan language _imperfectly_, and although he had with him at that time and place several persons high in the Company's service and confidence, namely, the commander-in-chief of their forces, two members of their Council, and the Secretary to the Council, who were not otherwise acquainted with the proceedings between him and the said Nabob than by such communications as he thought fit to make to them.

That the object avowed by the said Warren Hastings, and the motives urged by him for employing the British arms in the utter extirpation of the Rohilla nation, are stated by himself in the following terms:--"The acquisition of forty lacs of rupees to the Company, and of so much specie added to the exhausted currency of our provinces;--that it would give wealth to the Nabob of Oude, of which we should partic.i.p.ate;--that the said Warren Hastings _should_ always be ready to profess that he did reckon the probable acquisition of wealth among his reasons for taking up arms against his _neighbors_;--that it would ease the Company of a considerable part of their military expense, and preserve their troops from inaction and relaxation of discipline;--that the weak state of the Rohillas promised an easy conquest of them;--and, finally, that such was his idea of the Company's distress at home, added to his knowledge of their wants abroad, that he should have been glad of _any_ occasion to employ their forces which saved so much of their pay and expenses."

That, in the private verbal agreement aforesaid for offensive war, the said Warren Hastings did transgress the bounds of the authority given him by his instructions from the Council of Fort William, which had limited his powers to such compacts "as were consistent with the spirit of the Company's orders"; which Council he afterwards persuaded, and with difficulty drew into an acquiescence in what he had done.

That the agreement to the effect aforesaid was settled in the said secret conferences before the 10th of September, 1773; but the said Warren Hastings, concealing from the Court of Directors a matter of which it was his duty to afford them the earliest and fullest information, did, on the said 10th of September, 1773, write to the Directors, and dispatched his letter over land, giving them an account of the public treaty, but taking not the least notice of his agreement for a mercenary war against the nation of the Rohillas.

That, in order to conceal the true purport of the said clandestine agreement the more effectually, and until he should find means of gaining over the rest of the Council to a concurrence in his disobedience of orders, he entered a minute in the Council books, giving a false account of the transaction; in which minute he represented that the Nabob had indeed _proposed_ the design aforesaid, and that he, the said Warren Hastings, _was pleased that he urged the scheme of this expedition no further_, when in reality and truth he had absolutely consented to the said enterprise, and had engaged to a.s.sist him in it, which he afterwards admitted, and confessed that he did act in consequence of the same.

That the said Warren Hastings and his Council were sensible of the true nature of the enterprise in which they had engaged the Company's arms, and of the heavy responsibility to which it would subject himself and the Council,--"the personal hazard they, the Council, run, in undertaking so _uncommon_ a measure without _positive_ instructions, at their own risk, with the eyes of the whole nation on the affairs of the Company, and the pa.s.sions and prejudices of almost every man in England inflamed against the conduct of the Company and the character of its servants"; yet they engaged in the very practice which had brought such odium on the Company, and on the character of its servants, though they further say that they had continually before _their eyes the dread of forfeiting the favor of their employers_, and becoming the "objects of _popular_ invectives." The said Warren Hastings himself says, at the very time when he proposed the measure, "I must confess I entertain some doubts as to its expediency at this time, from the circ.u.mstances of the _Company_ at home, exposed to _popular_ clamor, and all its measures liable to be canva.s.sed in _Parliament_, their charter drawing to a close, and his Majesty's ministers unquestionably ready to take advantage of every unfavorable circ.u.mstance in the negotiations of its renewal." All these considerations did not prevent the said Warren Hastings from making and carrying into execution the said mercenary agreement for a sum of money, the payment of which the Nabob endeavored to evade on a construction of the verbal treaty, and was so far from being insisted on, as it ought to have been, by the said Warren Hastings, that, when, after the completion of the service, the commander-in-chief was directed to make a demand of the money, the agent of the said Warren Hastings at the same time a.s.sured the Nabob "that the demand was nothing more than matter of form, common, and even necessary, in all public transactions, and that, although the board considered the claim of the government literally due, it was not the intention of administration to prescribe to his Excellency _the mode, or even limits, of payment_." Nor was any part of the money recovered, until the establishment of the Governor-General and Council by act of Parliament, and their determination to withdraw the brigade from the Nabob's service,--the Resident at his court, appointed by the said Warren Hastings, having written, _that he had experienced much duplicity and deceit in most of his transactions with his Excellency_; and the said Nabob and his successors falling back in other payments in the same or greater proportion as he advanced in the payment of this debt, the consideration of lucre to the Company, the declared motive to this shameful transaction, totally failed, and no money in effect and substance (as far as by any account to be depended on appears) has been obtained.

That the said Nabob of Oude did, in consequence of the said agreement, and with the a.s.sistance of British troops, which were ordered to march and subjected to his disposal by the said Warren Hastings and the Council, unjustly enter into and invade the country of the Rohillas, and did there make war in a barbarous and inhuman manner, "by an abuse of victory," "by the unnecessary destruction of the country," "by a wanton display of violence and oppression, of inhumanity and cruelty," and "by the sudden expulsion and casting down of an whole race of people, to whom the slightest benevolence was denied." When prayer was made not to dishonor the Begum (a princess of great rank, whose husband had been killed in battle) and other women, by _dragging them about the country, to be loaded with the scoffs of the Nabob's rabble, and otherwise still worse used_, the Nabob refused to listen to the entreaties of a British commander-in-chief in their favor; and the said women of high rank were exposed not only to the vilest personal indignities, but even to absolute want: and these transactions being by Colonel Champion communicated to the said Warren Hastings, instead of commendations for his intelligence, and orders to redress the said evils, and to prevent the like in future, by means which were suggested, and which appear to have been proper and feasible, he received a reprimand from the said Warren Hastings, who declared that we had no authority to control the conduct of the Vizier in the treatment of his subjects; and that Colonel Champion desisted from making further representations on this subject to the said Warren Hastings, being apprehensive of having already run some risk of displeasing by perhaps a too free communication of sentiments.

That, in consequence of the said proceedings, not only the eminent families of the chiefs of the Rohilla nation were either cut off or banished, and their wives and offspring reduced to utter ruin, but the country itself, heretofore distinguished above all others for the extent of its cultivation as a _garden_, not having _one spot_ in it of _uncultivated_ ground, and from being _in the most flourishing state that a country could be_, was by the inhuman mode of carrying on the war, and the ill government during the consequent usurpation, reduced to a state of great decay and depopulation, in which it still remains.

That the East India Company, having had reason to conceive, that, for the purpose of concealing corrupt transactions, their servants in India had made unfair, mutilated, and garbled communications of correspondence, and sometimes had wholly withheld the same, made an order in their letter of the 23d of March, 1770, in the following tenor:--"The Governor singly shall correspond with the country powers; but _all_ letters, before they shall be by him sent, must be communicated to the other members of the Select Committee, and receive their approbation; and also _all_ letters _whatsoever_ which may be received by the Governor, in answer to or in course of correspondence, shall likewise be laid before the said Select Committee for their information and consideration"; and that in their instructions to their Governor-General and Council, dated 30th March, 1774, they did repeat their orders to the same purpose and effect.

That the said Warren Hastings did not obey, as in duty he was bound to do, the said standing orders; nor did communicate all his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, the Company's agent at the court of the Subah of Oude, or with Colonel Champion, the commander-in-chief of the Company's forces in the Rohilla war, to the Select Committee: and when afterwards, that is to say, on the 25th of October, 1774, he was required by the majority of the Council appointed by the act of Parliament of 1773, whose opinion was by the said act directed to be taken as the act of the whole Council, to produce _all_ his correspondence with Mr. Middleton and Colonel Champion for the direction of their future proceedings relative to the obscure, intricate, and critical transaction aforesaid, he did positively and pertinaciously refuse to deliver any other than such parts of the said correspondence as he thought convenient, covering his said illegal refusal under general vague pretences of secrecy and danger from the communication, although the said order and instruction of the Court of Directors above mentioned was urged to him, and although it was represented to him by the said Council, that they, as well as he, were bound by an oath of secrecy: which refusal to obey the orders of the Court of Directors (orders specially, and on weighty grounds of experience, pointed to cases of this very nature) gave rise to much jealousy, and excited great suspicions relative to the motives and grounds on which the Rohilla war had been undertaken.

That the said Warren Hastings, in the grounds alleged in his justification of his refusal to communicate to his colleagues in the Superior Council his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, the Company's Resident at Oude, was guilty of a new offence, arrogating to himself unprecedented and dangerous powers, on principles utterly subversive of all order and discipline in service, and introductory to corrupt confederacies and disobedience among the Company's servants; the said Warren Hastings insisting that Mr. Middleton, the Company's covenanted servant, the public Resident for transacting the Company's affairs at the court of the Subah of Oude, and as such receiving from the Company a salary for his service, was no other than the _official agent_ of him, the said Warren Hastings, and that, being such, he was not obliged to communicate his correspondence.

That the Court of Directors, and afterwards a General Court of the Proprietors of the East India Company, (although the latter showed favorable dispositions towards the said Warren Hastings, and expressed, but without a.s.signing any ground or reason, the highest opinion of his services and integrity,) did unanimously condemn, along with his conduct relative to the Rohilla treaty and war, his refusal to communicate his whole correspondence with Mr. Middleton to the Superior Council: yet the said Warren Hastings, in defiance of the opinion of the Directors, and the unanimous opinion of the General Court of the said East India Company, as well as the precedent positive orders of the Court of Directors, and the injunctions of an act of Parliament, has, from that time to the present, never made any communication of the whole of his correspondence to the Governor-General and Council, or to the Court of Directors.

II.--SHAH ALLUM.

That, in a solemn treaty of peace, concluded the 16th of August, 1765, between the East India Company and the late Nabob of Oude, Sujah ul Dowlah, and highly approved of, confirmed, and ratified by the said Company, it is agreed, "that the King Shah Allum shall remain in full possession of Corah, and such part of the province of Allahabad as he now possesses, which are ceded to his Majesty as a royal demesne for the support of his dignity and expenses." That, in a separate agreement, concluded at the same time, between the King Shah Allum and the then Subahdar of Bengal, under the immediate security and guaranty of the English Company, the faith of the Company was pledged to the said King for the annual payment of twenty-six lac of rupees for his support out of the revenues of Bengal; and that the said Company did then receive from the said King a grant of the duanne of the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, on the express condition of their being security for the annual payment above mentioned. That the East India Company have held, and continue to hold, the duanne so granted, and for some years have complied with the conditions on which they accepted of the grant thereof, and have at all times acknowledged that they held the duanne _in virtue of the Mogul's grants_. That the said Court of Directors, in their letter of the 30th June, 1769, to Bengal, declared, "that they esteemed themselves bound by treaty to protect the King's person, and to secure him the possession of the Corah and Allahabad districts"; and supposing an agreement should be made respecting these provinces between the King and Sujah ul Dowlah, the Directors then said, "that they should be subject to no further claim or requisition from the King, excepting for the stipulated tribute for Bengal, which they [the Governor and Council] were to pay to his agent, or remit to him in such manner as he might direct."

That, in the year 1772, the King Shah Allum, who had hitherto resided at Allahabad, trusting to engagements which he had entered into with the Mahrattas, quitted that place, and removed to Delhi; but, having soon quarrelled with those people, and afterwards being taken prisoner, had been treated by them with very great disrespect and cruelty. That, among other instances of their abuse of their immediate power over him, the Governor and Council of Bengal, in their letter of the 16th of August, 1773, inform the Court of Directors that he had been _compelled, while a prisoner in their hands, to grant sunnuds for the surrender of Corah and Allahabad to them_; and it appears from sundry other minutes of their own that the said Governor and Council did at all times consider the surrender above mentioned as _extorted_ from the King, and _unquestionably an act of violence_, which could not alienate or impair his right to those provinces, and that, when they took possession thereof, it was at the request of the King's Naib, or viceroy, who put them under the Council's _protection_. That on this footing they were accepted by the said Warren Hastings and his Council, and for some time considered by them as a deposit committed to their care by a prince to whom the possession thereof was particularly guarantied by the East India Company. In their letter of the 1st of March, 1773, they (the said Warren Hastings and his Council) say, "In no shape can this compulsatory cession by the King release us from the obligation we are under to defend the provinces which we have so particularly guarantied to him."

But it appears that they soon adopted other ideas and a.s.sumed other principles concerning this object. In the instructions, dated the 23d of June, 1773, which the Council of Fort William gave to the said Warren Hastings, previous to his interview with the Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah at Benares, they say, that, "while the King continued at Delhi, whither he proceeded in opposition to their most strenuous remonstrances, they should certainly consider the engagements between him and the Company as dissolved by his alienation from them and their interest; that the possession of so remote a country could never be expected to yield any profit to the Company, and the defence of it must require a perpetual aid of their forces": yet in the same instructions they declare their opinion, that, "if the King should make overtures to renew his former connection, _his right to reclaim the districts of Corah and Allahabad could not with propriety be disputed_," and they authorize the said Warren Hastings to restore them to him _on condition that he should renounce his claim to the annual tribute of twenty-six lac of rupees_, herein before mentioned, _and to the arrears which might be due_, thereby acknowledging the justice of a claim which they determined not to comply with but in return for the surrender of another equally valid;--that, nevertheless, in the treaty concluded by the said Warren Hastings with Sujah ul Dowlah on the 7th of September, 1773, it is a.s.serted, that his Majesty, (meaning the King Shah Allum,) "having abandoned the districts of Corah and Allahabad, and given a sunnud for Corah and Currah to the Mahrattas, had thereby forfeited his right to the said districts," although it was well known to the said Warren Hastings, and had been so stated by him to the Court of Directors, that this surrender on the part of the King had been extorted from him by violence, while he was a prisoner in the hands of the Mahrattas, and although it was equally well known to the said Warren Hastings that there was nothing in the original treaty of 1765 which could restrain the King from changing the place of his residence, consequently that his removal to Delhi could not occasion a forfeiture of his right to the provinces secured to him by that treaty.

That the said Warren Hastings, in the report which he made of his interview and negotiations with Sujah ul Dowlah, dated the 4th of October, 1773, declared, "that the administration would have been culpable in the highest degree in retaining possession of Corah and Allahabad _for any other purpose than that of making an advantage by the disposal of them_," and therefore he had ceded them to the Vizier for fifty lac of rupees: a measure for which he had no authority whatever from the King Shah Allum, and in the execution of which no reserve whatever was made in favor of the rights of that prince, nor any care taken of his interests.

That the sale of these provinces to Sujah Dowlah involved the East India Company in a triple breach of justice; since by the same act they violated a treaty, they sold the property of another, and they alienated a deposit committed to their friendship and good faith, and as such accepted by them. That a measure of this nature is not to be defended on motives of policy and convenience, supposing such motives to have existed, without a total loss of public honor, and shaking all security in the faith of treaties; but that in reality the pretences urged by the said Warren Hastings for selling the King's country to Sujah Dowlah were false and invalid. It could not strengthen our alliance with Sujah ul Dowlah; since, paying a price for a purchase, he received no favor and incurred no obligation. It did not free the Company from all the dangers attending either a remote property or a remote connection; since, the moment the country in question became part of Sujah Dowlah's dominions, it was included in the Company's former guaranty of those dominions, and in case of invasion the Company were obliged to send part of their army to defend it at the requisition of the said Sujah Dowlah; and if the remote situation of those provinces made the defence of them difficult and dangerous, much more was it a difficult and dangerous enterprise to engage the Company's force in an attack and invasion of the Rohillas, whose country lay at a much greater distance from the Company's frontier,--which, nevertheless, the said Warren Hastings agreed to and undertook at the very time when, under pretence of the difficulty of defending Corah and Allahabad, he sold those provinces to Sujah Dowlah.

It did not relieve the Company from the _expense_ of defending the country; since the revenues thereof far exceeded the subsidy to be paid by Sujah Dowlah, and these revenues justly belonged to the Company as long as the country continued under their protection, and would have answered the expense of defending it. Finally, that the sum of fifty lac of rupees, stipulated with the said Sujah Dowlah, was inadequate to the value of the country, the annual revenues of which were stated at twenty-five lac of rupees, which General Sir Robert Barker, then commander-in-chief of the Company's forces, affirms _was certain, and too generally known to admit of a doubt_.

That the King Shah Allum received for some years the annual tribute of twenty-six lac of rupees above mentioned, and was ent.i.tled to continue to receive it by virtue of an engagement deliberately, and for an adequate consideration, entered into with him by the Company's servants, and approved of and ratified by the Company themselves;--that this engagement was absolute and unconditional, and did neither express nor suppose any case in which the said King should forfeit or the Company should have a right to resume the tribute;--that, nevertheless, the said Warren Hastings and his Council, immediately after selling the King's country to Sujah Dowlah, resolved to withhold, and actually withheld, the payment of the said tribute, of which the King Shah Allum has never since received any part;--that this resolution of the Council is not justified even by themselves on principles of right and justice, but by arguments of policy and convenience, by which the best founded claims of right and justice may at all times be set aside and defeated. "They judged it highly impolitic and unsafe to answer the drafts of the King, until they were satisfied of his amicable intentions, and those of his new allies." But neither had they any reason to question the King's amicable intentions, nor was he pledged to answer for those of the Mahrattas; his trusting to the good faith of that people, and relying on their a.s.sistance to reinstate him in the possession of his capital, might have been imprudent and impolitic, but these measures, however ruinous to himself, indicated no enmity to the English, nor were they productive of any effects injurious to the English interests. And it is plain that the said Warren Hastings and his Council were perfectly aware that their motives or pretences for withholding the tribute were too weak to justify their conduct, having princ.i.p.ally insisted on the reduced state of their treasury, which, as they said, _rendered it impracticable to comply with those payments_. The _right_ of a creditor does not depend on the circ.u.mstances of the debtor: on the contrary, the plea of inability includes a virtual acknowledgment of the debt; since, if the creditor's right were denied, the plea would be superfluous.