e powers, whom he severally empowered to treat and negotiate
a peace. That these ministers, not acting in concert, not knowing the
extent of each other's commissions, and having no instructions to
communicate their respective proceedings to each other, did in effect
counteract their several negotiations. That this want of concert and of
simplicity, and the mystery and intricacy in the mode of conducting the
negotiation on our part, was complained of by our ministers as
embarrassing and disconcerting to us, while it was advantageous to the
adverse party, who were thereby furnished with opportunity and pretence
for delay, when it suited their purpose, and enabled to play off one set
of negotiators against another; that it also created jealousy and
distrust in the various contending parties, with whom we were treating
at the same time, and to whom we were obliged to make contradictory
professions, while it betrayed and exposed to them all our own eagerness
and impatience for peace, raising thereby the general claims and
pretensions of the enemy. That, while Dalhousie Watherston, Esquire, was
treating at Poonah, and David Anderson, Esquire, in Sindia's camp, with
separate powers applied to the same object, the minister at Poonah
informed the said Watherston, that he had received proposals for peace
from the Nabob of Arcot with the approbation of Sir Eyre Coote; that he
had returned other proposals to the said Nabob of Arcot, who had assured
him, the minister, that those proposals _would be acceded to, and that
Mr. Macpherson would set out for Bengal, after which orders should be
immediately dispatched from the Honorable the Governor-General and
Council to the effect he wished_; that the said Nabob "had promised to
obtain and forward to him the expected _orders from Bengal in fifteen
days_, and that he was therefore every instant in expectation of their
arrival,--and observed, that, when General Goddard proposed to send a
confidential person to Poonah, he conceived that those orders must have
actually reached him": that therefore the treaty formally concluded by
David Anderson was in effect and substance the same with that offered
and in reality concluded by the Nabob of Arcot, with the exception only
of Salsette, which the Nabob of Arcot had agreed to restore to the
Mahrattas.

That the intention of the said Warren Hastings, in pressing for a peace
with the Mahrattas on terms so dishonorable and by measures so rash and
ill-