The letter which I have just now read was written preparatory to the
transaction which I am now going to state, called _the treaty of
Chunar_. Having brought his miserable victim thither, he forced him to
sign a paper called a treaty: but such was the fraud in every part of
this treaty, that Mr. Middleton himself, who was the instrument and the
chief agent in it, acknowledges that the Nabob was persuaded to sign it
by the assurance given to him that it never was to be executed. Here,
then, your Lordships have a prince first compelled to enter into a
negotiation, and then induced to accede to a treaty by false assurances
that it should not be executed, which he declares nothing but force
should otherwise have compelled him to accede to.

The first circumstance in this transaction that I shall lay before your
Lordships is that the treaty is declared to have for its objects two
modes of relieving the Nabob from his distresses,--from distresses which
we have stated, and which Mr. Hastings has not only fully admitted, but
has himself proved in the clearest manner to your Lordships. The first
was by taking away that _wicked rabble_, the British troops, represented
by Mr. Hastings as totally ruinous to the Nabob's affairs, and
particularly by removing that part of them which was called the new
brigade. Another remedial part of the treaty regarded the British
pensioners. It is in proof before your Lordships that Mr. Hastings
agreed to recall from Oude that body of pensioners, whose conduct there
is described in such strong terms as being ruinous to the Vizier and to
all his affairs. These pensioners Mr. Hastings engaged to recall; but he
never did recall them. We refer your Lordships to the evidence before
you, in proof that these odious pensioners, so distressing to the Nabob,
so ruinous to his affairs, and so disgraceful to our government, were
not only _not_ recalled by Mr. Hastings, but that, both afterwards, and