resignation was not absolute, but optional, according to the true
meaning and understanding of the parties in England, and so far as the
acts of Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, and the Court of Directors, were
binding on him; but, on the contrary, he grounds his refusal to complete
the same, not on any interpretation of the words in which the said
resignation, and the other instruments aforesaid, were conceived, but
rather on a disavowal (not direct, indeed, but implied) of his said
agent, and of the powers under which the said agent had claimed to act
in his behalf. Neither did the said Warren Hastings ground his said
refusal on any objection to the particular day or period or
circumstances in which the requisition of General Clavering was made,
nor accompany the said refusal with any qualification in that respect,
or with any intimation that he would at any future or more convenient
season comply with the same,--although such an intimation might probably
have induced General Clavering to waive an instant and immediate claim
to the chair, and might therefore have prevented the distractions which
happened, and the greater evils which impended, in consequence of the
said claim of General Clavering, and the said refusal of Warren
Hastings, Esquire; but the said Warren Hastings did, on the contrary,
express his said refusal in such general and unqualified terms as
intimated an intention to resist absolutely and altogether, both then
and at any future time, the said requisition of General Clavering. And
the subsequent proceedings of the said Warren Hastings do all concur in
proving that such was his intention; for he did afterwards, in
conformity to the advice of the judges, move a resolution in Council,
"that all parties be placed in the same situation in which they stood
before the receipt of the last advices from England, reserving and
submitting to a decision in England the respective claims that each
party may conceive they have a right to make, but not acting upon those
claims till such decision shall arrive in Bengal": thereby clearly and