from _a burden_ which was daily adding to _our_ distresses and must soon
become _insupportable_, although it were granted that the Nabob's debt,
then suffered to accumulate, _might at some future period be
liquidated_, and that this measure would substantially effect an instant
relief to the pecuniary distresses of the Company."

XXII. That Nathaniel Middleton, the Resident, did also declare that he
would at all times testify, "that, upon the plan of the foregoing years,
the receipts from the Nabob were only _a deception_, and _not an
advantage_, but _an injury_ to the Company," and "that a remission to
the Nabob of this _insufferable burden_ was _a profit_ to the Company."
And the said Hastings did assert that the force of the Company was not
lessened by withdrawing the temporary troops; although, when it suited
the purpose of the said Hastings, in denying just relief to the
distresses of the said Nabob of Oude, he had not scrupled to assert the
direct contrary of the positions by him maintained in justification of
the treaty of Chunar,--having in his minute aforesaid, of the 15th of
December, 1779, asserted, "that these troops" (the troops maintained by
the Nabob of Oude) "had no _separate or distinct existence_, and may be
properly said to consist of our whole military establishment, with the
exception only of our European infantry, and that they could not be
_withdrawn, without imposing on the Company the additional burden of
their expense_, or disbanding nine battalions of disciplined sepoys and
three regiments of horse."

XXIII. That he, the said Warren Hastings, in justification of his
agreement to withdraw the troops aforesaid from the territories and pay
of the Nabob of Oude, did further declare, "that he had been too much
accustomed to the tales of hostile preparation and impending invasions,
against all the evidence of political probability, to regard them as any