and claims, fell into the hands of a nation already
too powerful, together with an extensive territory, which entirely
covers the Company's possessions and dependencies on one side, and
particularly those of the Nabob of Oude.

XX. That the circumstances of these countries did, in the opinion of the
said Warren Hastings himself, sufficiently indicate to him the necessity
of not aggrandizing any power whatsoever on their borders, he having in
the aforesaid letter of the 16th June given a deliberate opinion of the
situation of Oude in the words following: "That, whilst we are at peace
with the powers of Europe, it is only in this quarter that your
possessions under the government of Bengal are vulnerable." And he did
further in the said letter state, that, "if things had continued as they
had been to that time, with a divided government," (viz., the Company's
and the Vizier's, which government he had himself established, and under
which it ever must in a great degree remain, whilst the said country
continues in a state of dependence,) "the _slightest_ shock from a
foreign hand, or even an _accidental internal commotion_, might have
thrown the whole into confusion, and produced the most fatal
consequences." In this perilous situation he made the above-recited
sacrifices to the ambition of the Mahrattas, and did all along so
actively countenance and forward their proceedings, and with so full a
sense of their effect, that in his minute of the 24th December, 1784, he
has declared, "that in the countries which border on the dominions of
the Nabob Vizier, or on that quarter of our own, in effect _there is no
other power_." And he did further admit, that the presence of the
Mahratta chief aforesaid, so near the borders of the Nabob's dominions,
was no cause of suspicion; for "that it is the effect _of his own
solicitation_, and is _so far_ the effect of an act of that government."

XXI. That, in further pursuit of the same pernicious design, he, the
said Warren Hastings, did enter into an agreement to withdraw a very
great body of the British troops out of the Nabob's
dominions,--asserting, however truly, yet in direct contradiction to his
own declarations, that "this government" (meaning the British
government) "has not any right to force defence with its maintenance
upon him" (the Nabob); and he did thus not only avowedly aggrandize the
Mahratta state, and weaken the defence upon the frontier, but did as
avowedly detain thei