ise as a condition of his assistance, and
asserting "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 principals 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 embarrassed 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 asserted
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 poin