That, among the reasons assigned for putting to death the said Almas Ali, which the said Hastings did recommend directly and repeatedly to the Resident, "as one of the first and most essential duties of his office," was, in substance, "that, by his extensive trust with regard to the revenues, he had been permitted to acquire independency; that the means thereof had been long seen and the effects thereof foretold by every person acquainted with the state of government, except those immediately interested in it"; and he, the said Warren Hastings, did also charge the said Almas Ali with embezzlement of the revenues and oppression of the people; and nothing appears to disprove the same, but much to give ground to a presumption that the said Almas Ali did grievously abuse the power committed to him, as farmer and collector of the revenue, to the great oppression of the inhabitants of the countries which had been rented to him by Hyder Beg Khan with the knowledge and consent of the said Warren Hastings.
LXXIV.

That the Resident, Bristow, declining the violent attempt on the life of Almas Ali deceitfully ordered by the said Warren Hastings, did, on weighty reasons, drawn from the spirit of the said Hastings's own instructions, recommend that his, the said Almas Ali Khan's, farms of revenue, or a great part of them, should be, on the expiration of his lease, taken out of his hands, as being too extensive, and supplying the means of a dangerous power in the country; but yet he, the said Warren Hastings, did not only continue him in the possession of the said revenues, but did give to him a new lease thereof for the term of five years.

And on this renovation and increase of trust, the said Warren Hastings did not consent to produce the informer upon whose credit he had made his charge of capital crimes on the said Almas Ali, and had directed him to be put to death, or call upon him to make good his charges; but, instead of this, totally changing his relation to the said Almas Ali, did himself labor to procure from all parts attestations to prove him not guilty of the perfidy and disloyalty of which the said Hastings himself appears to have been to that very time his sole accuser, as he hath since been his most anxious advocate: but though he did use many endeavors to acquit Almas Ali of his intended flight, yet concerning his embezzlements and oppressions, the most important of all charges relative to that of the revenue and collection, he, the said Hastings, hath made no inquiry whatever; by which it might appear that he was not as fully guilty thereof as he had always represented him to be.

But some time after he, the said Warren Hastings, had arrived at Lucknow, in the year 1784, he suggested to the said Almas Ali Khan the _advance_ to the Company's use of a sum of money amounting to fifty thousand pounds or thereabouts; and the said suggested advance was (as the said Warren Hastings asserts, no witness or document of the transaction appearing) "cheerfully and without hesitation complied with, considering it as an _evidence seasonably_ offered for the general refutation of the charges of perfidy and disloyalty": which practice of charging wealthy persons with treason and disloyalty, and afterwards acquitting them on the payment of a sum of money, is highly scandalous to the honor, justice, and government of Great Britain; and the offence is highly aggravated by the said Hastings's declaration to the Court of Directors that the charges against Almas Ali Khan have been too laboriously urged against him, and carried at one time to such an excess as had nearly driven him to abandon his country "_for the preservation of his life and honor_," and thus to give a "color to the charges themselves," when he, the said Warren Hastings, did well know that he himself did consider as a crime, and did make it an article in a formal accusation against the Resident Middleton, that he did not inform him, the said Hastings, of the supposed treasons of Almas Ali Khan, and of his design to abandon the country, when he himself did most laboriously urge the charges against him, and when no attempt appears to have been made against the life of the said Almas Ali Khan except by the said Warren Hastings himself.
LXXV.

That the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling, or thereabouts, publicly taken by the said Warren Hastings, as an _advance_ for the use of the Company, if given as a consideration or fine, on account of the renewal for a long term of civil authority and military command, and the collection of the revenues to an immense amount, the same being at least eight hundred thousand pounds sterling yearly, was so totally inadequate to the interest granted, that it may justly be presumed it was not on that, or on any public ground or condition, that the said Hastings did delegate, out of all reach of resumption or correction, a lease of boundless power and enormous profit, for so long a term, to a known oppressor of the country.
LXXVI.