farms in different purgunnahs to a large amount, or to be security for
such farms, contrary to the tenor and spirit of the 17th regulation of
the Committee of Revenue at Fort William, of the 14th May, 1772, and
afterwards relinquishing that security without satisfaction made to the
Company, was highly improper, and has been attended with considerable
loss to the Company"; and that in the whole of this transaction the said
Warren Hastings has been guilty of gross collusion with his servant, and
manifest breach of trust to his employers.

That, whereas it was acknowledged by the said Warren Hastings, that the
country, in the years 1770 and 1771, had suffered great depopulation and
decay, and that the collections of those years, having been violently
kept up to their former standard, had added to the distress of the
country, the settlement of the revenues made by him for five years,
commencing the 1st May, 1772, instead of offering any abatement or
relief to the inhabitants who had survived the famine, held out to the
East India Company a promise of great _increase_ of revenue, to be
exacted from the country by the means hereinbefore described. That this
settlement was not realized, but fell considerably short, even in the
first of the five years, when the demand was the lightest; and that on
the whole of the five years the real collections fell short of the
settlement to the enormous amount of two millions and a half sterling,
and upwards. That such a settlement, if it had been or could have been
rigorously exacted from a country already so distressed, and from a
population so impaired, that, in the belief of the said Warren Hastings,
it was impossible such loss could be recruited in four or five years,
would have been in fact, what it appeared to be in form, an act of the
most cruel and tyrannical oppression; but that the real use made of that
unjust demand upon the natives of Bengal was, to oblige them to
compound privately with the persons who formed the settlement, and who