or more criminating epithets than those of "improper,
unwarrantable, and highly impolitic," to an offence so by them charged,
and by him described. And though it be true that the expressions
aforesaid are much too reserved for the purpose of duly characterizing
the offences of the said Hastings, yet was it _in him_ most indecent to
libel the Court of Directors for the same; and his implication, from the
tenderness of the epithets and descriptions aforesaid used towards him,
was not only indecent, but ungrounded, malicious, and scandalous,--he
having himself highly, though truly, aggravated "the charge of the
injuries done by him to the Rajah of Benares," in order to bring the
said Directors into contempt and suspicion, the paragraphs in the said
libel being as follow.--"Here I must crave leave to say, that the terms
'improper, unwarrantable, and highly impolitic' are much too gentle, as
deductions from such premises; and as every reader of the latter will
obviously feel, as he reads, the deductions which inevitably belong to
them, I will add, that the strict performance of solemn engagements on
one part, followed by acts directly subversive of them and by total
dispossession on the other, stamps on the perpetrators of the latter the
guilt of the greatest possible violation of faith and justice."--"There
is an appearance of tenderness in this deviation from plain
construction, of which, however meant, I have a right to complain;
because it imposes on me the necessity of framing the terms of the
accusation against myself, which you have only not made, but have stated
the leading arguments to it so strongly, that no one who reads these can
avoid making it, _or not know it to have been intended_."

VII. That the said Hastings, being well aware that his own declarations
did contain the clearest condemnation of his own conduct from his own
pen, did in the said libel attempt to overturn, frustrate, and render of
none effect all the proofs to be given of prevarication, contradiction,
and of opposition of action to principle, which can be used against men
in public trust, and did contend that the same could not be used against
him; and as if false assertions could be justified by factious motives,
he did endeavor to do away the authority of his own _deliberate,
recorded_ declarations, entered by him _in writing_ on the Council-Books
of the Presidency; for, after asserting, _but not attempting to prove_,
that his declarations were