That these instances are proofs of a criminal profusion and high breach
of trust to the India Company in the said Warren Hastings, under whose
government, and by means of whose special power, derived from the effect
of his casting voice, all the said waste and profusion did take place.

That at the end of the year 1780, when, as the Court of Directors
affirm, _the Company were in the utmost distress for money, and almost
every department in arrear_, and when it appears that there was a great
scarcity and urgent want of grain at Fort St. George, the said Warren
Hastings did accept of a proposal made to him by James Peter Auriol,
then Secretary to the Council, to supply the Presidency of Fort St.
George with rice and other articles, and did appoint the said Auriol to
be the agent for supplying _all the other_ Presidencies with those
articles; that the said Warren Hastings declared that the intention of
the appointment "was most likely to be fulfilled by a liberal
consideration of it," and therefore allowed the said Auriol a commission
of fifteen per cent on the whole of his disbursements, thereby rendering
it the direct interest of the said Auriol to make his disbursements as
great as possible; that the chance of capture by the enemy, or danger of
the sea, was to be at the risk of the India Company, and not of the said
Auriol; that the said Warren Hastings declared personally to the said
Auriol, "that this post was intended as a reward for his long and
faithful services." That the President and Council of Bombay did
remonstrate against what they called _the enormous amount of the
charges_ of the rice with which they wore supplied, which they state to
be nine rupees a bag at Calcutta, when they themselves could have
contracted for its delivery at Bombay, free of all risk and charges, at
five rupees and three sixteenths per bag; and that even at Madras, where
the distress and demand was greatest, the supplies of grain by private