of the said Hastings having
declared, in his letter to the said Hastings, by him communicated to the
board, "that the business of assisting the Shah [the Mogul emperor] can
and _must_ go on, if we wish to be secure in India, or regarded as a
nation of faith and honor."

V. That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 20th day of January, 1784,
send in circulation to the other members of the Council a letter to him
from his agent, Major Browne, dated at Delhi, on the 30th of December,
1783, viz., that letter to which the foregoing references are made, in
which the said Browne did directly press, and indirectly (though
sufficiently and strongly) suggest, several highly dangerous measures
for realizing the general offers and engagements of the said Warren
Hastings,--proposing, that, besides a proportion of field artillery, and
a train of battering cannon for the purpose of sieges, six regiments of
sepoys in the Company's service should be transferred to that of the
said king, and that certain other corps should also be raised for the
said service in the English provinces and dependencies, to be
immediately under the king's [the Mogul's] orders, and to be maintained
by assignments of territorial revenue within the province of Oude, a
dependent member of the British government, but with a caution against
having any British officer with the same; the said Major Browne
expressing his caution as followeth: "If any European officer _be_ with
this corps, a very nice judgment indeed must direct the choice; for
scarce any are in the smallest degree _fit_ for _such_ employ, but much
more likely to do harm than good." And the letter aforesaid being
without any observation thereon, or any disavowal of the matters of fact
or of the counsels so strongly and authoritatively delivered therein by
the said Warren Hastings's agent, and without any mark of disapprobation
of any part of his plan, whether that of the assignment of territory
belonging to the Company's allies for the maintenance of troops which
were to be by that plan put under the orders of a foreign independent
power, or that of employing the said troops without any British officer
with them, or for his alarming observation by him entered on the
Company's records, which, if not an implied censure on the nature of the
service in which British officers are supposed improper to be trusted,
is a strong reflection on the character of the British officers, which
was to render them unfi