special trust reposed in him
and power committed to him by Parliament, to have restrained, as by law
he had authority to do, the subordinate Presidency of Bombay from
entering into hostilities with the Mahrattas, or from making engagements
the manifest tendency of which was to enter into those hostilities, and
to have put a stop to them, if any such had been begun; that he was
bound by the duty of his office to preserve the faith of the British
government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder, inviolate and sacred, as
well as by the special orders and instructions of the East India Company
_to fix his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India_:
all which important duties the said Warren Hastings did wilfully
violate, in giving the _sanction_ of the Governor-General and Council to
the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects of the President
and Council of Bombay hereinbefore mentioned, from which the subsequent
Mahratta war, with all the expense, distress, and disgraces which have
attended it, took their commencement; and that the said Warren Hastings,
therefore, is specially and principally answerable for the said war, and
for all the consequences thereof. That in a letter dated the 20th of
January, 1778, the President and Council of Bombay informed the
Governor-General and Council, that, in consequence of later intelligence
received from Poonah, they had _immediately resolved that nothing
further could be done, unless Saccaram Baboo, the principal in the late
treaty_ (of Poorunder) _joined in making a formal application to them_.
That no such application was ever made by that person. That the said
Warren Hastings, finding that all this pretended ground for engaging in
an invasion of the Mahratta government had totally failed, did then
pretend to give credit to, and to be greatly alarmed by, the suggestions
of the President and Council of Bombay, that the Mahrattas were
negotiating with the French, and had agreed to give them the port of
Choul, on the Malabar coast, and did affirm that the French _had
obtained possession of that port_. That all these suggestions and
assertions were false, and, if they had been true, would have furnished
no just occasion for attacking either the Mahrattas or the French, with
both of whom the British nation was then at peace. That the said Warren
Hastings did then propose and carry the following resolution in Council,
against the protest of two members thereof, that, "