brigade and other troops, did also represent, that
"the remote stations of those troops, placing the commanding officers
beyond the notice and control of the board, afforded too much
opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited the
_contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army_, and,
as an instance thereof, that a court-martial, composed of officers of
rank and respectable characters, unanimously and honorably, 'most
honorably,' acquitted an officer upon an acknowledged fact which in
times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving
the severest punishment."

XXV. That the said Warren Hastings, having in the letter aforesaid
contradicted all the grounds and reasons by him assigned for keeping up
the aforesaid establishment, and having declared his own conviction that
the whole was a fallacy and imposition, and a detriment to the Company
instead of a benefit, circumstances (if they are true) which he might
and ought to have well known, was guilty of an high crime and
misdemeanor in carrying on the imposture and delusion aforesaid, and in
continuing an insupportable burden and grievance upon the Nabob for
several years, without attending to his repeated supplications to be
relieved therefrom, to the utter ruin of his country, and to the
destruction of the discipline of the British troops, by diffusing among
them a general spirit of peculation; and the said Hastings hath
committed a grievous offence in upholding the same pernicious system,
until, by his own confession and declaration, in his minute of the 21st
of May, 1781, "the evils had _grown_ to so great an height, that
exertions will be required more powerful than can be made through the
delegated authority of the servants of the Company now in the province,
and that he was far from sanguine in his expectations that _even his own
endeavors would be attended with much success_."

XXVI. That, at the time of making the said treaty, and at the time when,
under color of the distress of the Nabob of Oude, and the failure of all
other means for his relief, he, the said Hastings, broke the Company's
faith with the parents of the Nabob, and first encouraged and afterwards
compelled him to despoil them of their landed estates, money, jewels,
and household goods, and while the said Nabob continued heavily in debt
to the Company, he, the said Warren Hastings, did, "_without
hesitation_," accept of and receive from the