"The first minister, Mudjed ul Dowlah, is _totally_ deficient in every military quality, conceited of his own superior talents, and formed to the practice of _that crooked policy which, generally defeats its own purpose_, but sincerely attached to his master." The reality of the said attachment was not improbable, but altogether useless, as the said minister was the only one among the principal persons about the king who (besides the total want of all military and civil ability) possessed no territories, troops, or other means of serving and supporting him, but was himself solely upheld by his influence over his master: neither doth the said Hastings free him, any more than the persons more efficient, who were to be destroyed, from a disposition to alienate the king from an attention to his affairs, and from all confidence in his own family; but, on the contrary, he brings him forward as the very first among the instances he adduces to exemplify the practices of the ministers against their sovereign and his children.
XVI.

That the said Warren Hastings, recommending in general terms, and yet condemning in detail, every part of his own pretended plan, as impracticable in itself, and as undertaken in favor of persons all of whom he describes as incapable, and the principal as indisposed to avail himself thereof, must have had some other motives for this long, intricate, dark, and laborious proceeding with the Mogul, which must be sought in his actions, and the evident drift and tendency thereof, and in declarations which were brought out by him to serve other purposes, but which serve fully to explain his real intentions in this intrigue.
XVII.

That the other members of the Council-General having abundantly certified their averseness to his intrigues, and even having shown apprehensions of his going personally to the Mogul and the Mahrattas for the purpose of carrying on the same, the said Hastings was driven headlong to acts which did much more openly indicate the true nature and purpose of his machinations.

For he at length recurred directly, and with little disguise, to the Mahrattas, and did open an intrigue with them, although he was obliged to confess, in his letter aforesaid of the 16th June, 1784, that the exception which he contended to be implied in the orders of the Court of Directors forbidding the intermeddling in the disputes of "the country powers," namely, "powers not permanent," did by no means apply to the Mahrattas; and he informs the Court of Directors that he did, on the very first advice he received of the flight of the Mogul's son, write to Mr.James Anderson to apprise the Mahratta chief, Sindia, of that event,--"for which as he was unprepared, he desired his [the said Sindia's] advice for his conduct on the occasion of it." Which method of calling for the advice of a foreign power to regulate his political conduct, instead of being regulated therein by the advice of the British Council and the standing orders of the Court of Directors, was a procedure highly criminal; and the crime is aggravated by his not communicating the said correspondence to the Council-General, as by his duty he was bound to do; but it does abundantly prove his concert with the Mahrattas in all that related to his negotiations in the Mogul court, which were carried on agreeably to their advice, and in subserviency to their views and purposes.
XVIII.

That, in consequence of the cabal begun with the Mahrattas, the said chief, Sindia, did send his "familiar and confidential ministers" to him, the said Hastings, being at Lucknow, with whom the said Hastings did hold several secret conferences, without any secretary or other assistant: and the said Hastings hath not conveyed to the Court of Directors any minutes thereof, but hath purposely involved even the general effect and tendency of these conferences in such obscurity that it is no otherwise possible to perceive the drift and tendency of the same, but by the general scope of councils and acts relative to the politics of the Mogul and of the Mahrattas together, and by the final event of the whole, which is sufficiently visible.