Hastings, having further, in the minute aforesaid, presumed to threaten
to "bring to punishment, if my influence" (his, the said Hastings's,
influence) "can produce that effect, _those incendiaries_ who have
endeavored to make themselves the instruments of division between us,"
hath, as far as in him lay, obstructed the performance of one of the
most essential duties of a prince engaged in an unequal alliance with a
presiding state,--that of representing the grievances of his subjects to
that more powerful state by whose acts they suffer: leaving thereby the
governing power in total ignorance of the effects of its own measures,
and to the oppressed people no other choice than the alternative of an
unqualified submission, or a resistance productive of consequences more
fatal.

X. That, all relief being denied to the Nabob, in the manner and on the
grounds aforesaid, the demands of the Company on the said Nabob in the
year following, that is to say, in the year 1780, did amount to the
enormous sum of 1,400,000_l._ sterling, and the distress of the province
did rapidly increase.

XI. That the Nabob, on the 24th of February of the same year, did again
write to the Governor-General, the said Warren Hastings, a letter, in
which he expressed his constant friendship to the Company, and his
submission and obedience to their orders, and asserting that he had not
troubled them with any of his difficulties, trusting they would learn
them from other quarters, and that he should be relieved by their
friendship. "But," he says, "when _the knife had penetrated to the
bone_, and I was surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no
longer live in expectations, I then wrote an account of my difficulties.
The answer I have received to it is such that it has given me
inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or