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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
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