was impossible such loss could be recruited in four or five years,
would have been in fact, what it appeared to be in form, an act of the
most cruel and tyrannical oppression; but that the real use made of that
unjust demand upon the natives of Bengal was, to oblige them to
compound privately with the persons who formed the settlement, and who
threatened to enforce it. That the enormous balances and remissions on
that settlement arose from a general collusion between the farmers and
collectors, and from a general peculation and embezzlement of the
revenues, by which the East India Company was grossly imposed on, in the
first instance, by a promised _increase_ of revenue, and defrauded, in
the second, not only by the failure of that _increase_, but by the
revenues falling short of what they were in the two years preceding the
said settlement to a great amount. That the said Warren Hastings, being
then at the head of the government of Bengal, was a party to all the
said imposition, fraud, peculation, and embezzlement, and is principally
and specially answerable for the same; and that, whereas sundry proofs
of the said peculation and embezzlement were brought before the Court of
Directors, the said Directors (in a letter dated the 4th of March, 1778,
and signed by William Devaynes and Nathaniel Smith, Esquires, now
Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the said Court, and members of this
House) did declare, that, "although it was rather their wish to prevent
future evils than to enter into a severe retrospection of past abuses,
yet, as in some of the cases then before them they conceived there had
been _flagrant corruption_, and in others great oppressions committed on
the native inhabitants, they thought it unjust to suffer the delinquents
to pass wholly unpunished, and therefore they directed the
Governor-General and Council forthwith to commence a prosecution against
the persons who composed the Committee of Circuit, and their
representatives, and against all other proper parties"; but that the
prosecutions so ordered by the Court of Directors in the year 1778 have
never been brought to trial; and that the said Warren Hastings did, on
the 23d of December, 1783, propose and carry it in Council, _that orders
should be given for withdrawing_ the said prosecutions,--declaring, that
he was clearly of opinion that there was no ground to maintain them, and
_that they would only be productive of expense to the Company and
unmerited ve