"That the _actual_ disbursements to those troops had fallen upon _our own funds_, and that _we_ support a body of troops, established _solely_ for the defence of the Nabob's possessions, _at our own expense_.

It is true, we charge the Nabob with this expense; but the large balance already due from him shows too justly the little prospect there was of disengaging ourselves 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 other than phantoms raised for the purpose of perpetuating or multiplying commands," and he did trust "all ideas of danger from the neighboring powers were altogether visionary; and that, even if they had been better founded, this mode of anticipating possible evils would be more mischievous than anything they had reason to apprehend," and that the internal state of the Nabob's dominions did not require the continuance of the said troops; and that the Nabob, "_whose concern it was, and not ours_" did affirm the same,--notwithstanding he, the said Hastings, had before, in answer to the humble supplications of the Nabob, asserted, that "_it was our part, and not his_, to judge and determine in what manner and at what time they should be reduced or withdrawn." XXIV.

That the said Warren Hastings, in support of his measure of withdrawing the said brigade and other troops, did also represent, that "the remote stations of those troops, placing the commanding officers beyond the notice and control of the board, afforded too much opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited the _contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army_, and, as an instance thereof, that a court-martial, composed of officers of rank and respectable characters, unanimously and honorably, 'most honorably,' acquitted an officer upon an acknowledged fact which in times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving the severest punishment." XXV.