distresses of the Company."

XXII. That Nathaniel Middleton, the Resident, did also declare that he
would at all times testify, "that, upon the plan of the foregoing years,
the receipts from the Nabob were only _a deception_, and _not an
advantage_, but _an injury_ to the Company," and "that a remission to
the Nabob of this _insufferable burden_ was _a profit_ to the Company."
And the said Hastings did assert that the force of the Company was not
lessened by withdrawing the temporary troops; although, when it suited
the purpose of the said Hastings, in denying just relief to the
distresses of the said Nabob of Oude, he had not scrupled to assert the
direct contrary of the positions by him maintained in justification of
the treaty of Chunar,--having in his minute aforesaid, of the 15th of
December, 1779, asserted, "that these troops" (the troops maintained by
the Nabob of Oude) "had no _separate or distinct existence_, and may be
properly said to consist of our whole military establishment, with the
exception only of our European infantry, and that they could not be
_withdrawn, without imposing on the Company the additional burden of
their expense_, or disbanding nine battalions of disciplined sepoys and
three regiments of horse."

XXIII. That he, the said Warren Hastings, in justification of his
agreement to withdraw the troops aforesaid from the territories and pay
of the Nabob of Oude, did further declare, "that he had been too much
accustomed to the tales of hostile preparation and impending invasions,
against all the evidence of political probability, to regard them as any
other than phantoms raised for the purpose of perpetuating or
multiplying commands," and he did trust "all ideas of danger from the
neighboring powers were altogether visionary; and that, even if they had
been better founded, this mode of anticipating possible evils would be
more mischievous than anything they had reason to apprehend," and that
the internal state of the Nabob's dominions did not require the
continuance of the said troops; and that the Nabob, "_whose concern it
was, and not ours_" did affirm the same,--notwithstanding he, the said
Hastings, had before, in answer to the humble supplications of the
Nabob, asserted, that "_it was our part, and not his_, to judge and
determine in what manner and at what time they should be reduced or
withdrawn."

XXIV. That the said Warren Hastings, in support of his measure of
withdrawing the said