abob
did write several letters to him, the said Hastings, expressive of his
dislike of being used as an instrument in the dishonorable acts
aforesaid, and refusing to be further concerned therein, he, the said
Warren Hastings, did not only suppress and hide the said letters from
the view of the Court of Directors, but in his instructions to the
Resident, Bristow, did attribute them to Hyder Beg Khan, minister to the
Nabob, (whom in other respects he did before and ever since support
against his master,) and did express himself with great scorn and
contempt of the said Nabob, and with much asperity against the said
minister: affirming, in proud and insolent terms, that he had, "by an
abuse of his influence over the Nabob,--he, the Nabob himself, being
(_as he ever must be in the hands of some person_) _a mere cipher in
his [the said minister's],--dared_ to make him [the Nabob] _assume_ a
very _unbecoming_ tone of refusal, reproach, and resentment, in
opposition to _measures recommended by ME_, and even to _acts done by MY
authority_": the said Hastings, in the instruction aforesaid,
particularizing the resumption of the jaghires, and the confiscation of
the treasures that had been so long suffered to remain in the hands of
his, the Nabob's, mother. But the letters of the Nabob, which in the
said instructions he refers to as containing an opposition to the
measures recommended by him, and which he asserts was conveyed in a very
unbecoming tone of refusal, reproach, and resentment, he, the said
Hastings, hath criminally withheld from the Company, contrary to their
orders, and to his duty,--and the more, as the said letters must tend to
show in what manner the said Nabob did feel the indignities offered to
his mother, and the manner in which the said ministers, notwithstanding
their known dependence on the English government, did express their
sense of the part which their sovereign was compelled to act in the said
disgraceful measures. And in farther instructions to him, the said new
Resident, he did declare his approbation of the evil acts aforesaid, as
well as his resolution of compelling the Nabob to those rigorous
proceedings against his parent from which he had long shown himself so
very averse, in the following words. "The severities which have been
increased towards the Begums were most justly merited by the advantage
which they took of the troubles in which I was personally involved last
year, to create a rebellion