, 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 enterpr