threatened to enforce it. That the enormous balances and remissions on
that settlement arose from a general collusion between the farmers and
collectors, and from a general peculation and embezzlement of the
revenues, by which the East India Company was grossly imposed on, in the
first instance, by a promised _increase_ of revenue, and defrauded, in
the second, not only by the failure of that _increase_, but by the
revenues falling short of what they were in the two years preceding the
said settlement to a great amount. That the said Warren Hastings, being
then at the head of the government of Bengal, was a party to all the
said imposition, fraud, peculation, and embezzlement, and is principally
and specially answerable for the same; and that, whereas sundry proofs
of the said peculation and embezzlement were brought before the Court of
Directors, the said Directors (in a letter dated the 4th of March, 1778,
and signed by William Devaynes and Nathaniel Smith, Esquires, now
Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the said Court, and members of this
House) did declare, that, "although it was rather their wish to prevent
future evils than to enter into a severe retrospection of past abuses,
yet, as in some of the cases then before them they conceived there had
been _flagrant corruption_, and in others great oppressions committed on
the native inhabitants, they thought it unjust to suffer the delinquents
to pass wholly unpunished, and therefore they directed the
Governor-General and Council forthwith to commence a prosecution against
the persons who composed the Committee of Circuit, and their
representatives, and against all other proper parties"; but that the
prosecutions so ordered by the Court of Directors in the year 1778 have
never been brought to trial; and that the said Warren Hastings did, on
the 23d of December, 1783, propose and carry it in Council, _that orders
should be given for withdrawing_ the said prosecutions,--declaring, that
he was clearly of opinion that there was no ground to maintain them, and
_that they would only be productive of expense to the Company and