That in defence of these resolutions the said Warren Hastings did falsely pretend and affirm, "that the resolution of the Presidency of Bombay was formed on such a case of _imminent necessity_ as would have rendered it dangerous to postpone the execution of it until the orders from the Governor-General and Council might arrive; and that the said Presidency of Bombay _were warranted by the treaty of Poorunder_ to join in a plan for conducting Ragonaut Row to Poonah on the application of the ruling part of the Mahratta state": whereas the main object of the said treaty on the part of the Mahrattas, and to obtain which they made many important concessions to the India Company, was, that the English should withdraw their forces, and give no assistance to Ragoba, and that he should be excluded forever from any share in their government, being a person _universally held in abhorrence_ in the Mahratta empire; and if it had been true (instead of being, as it was, notoriously false) that _the ruling part_ of the administration of the Mahratta state solicited the return of Ragonaut Row to Poonah, his return in that case might have been effected by acts of their own, without the interposition of the English power, and without our interference in their affairs.

That it was the special duty of the said Warren Hastings, derived from a special trust reposed in him and power committed to him by Parliament, to have restrained, as by law he had authority to do, the subordinate Presidency of Bombay from entering into hostilities with the Mahrattas, or from making engagements the manifest tendency of which was to enter into those hostilities, and to have put a stop to them, if any such had been begun; that he was bound by the duty of his office to preserve the faith of the British government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder, inviolate and sacred, as well as by the special orders and instructions of the East India Company _to fix his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India_: all which important duties the said Warren Hastings did wilfully violate, in giving the _sanction_ of the Governor-General and Council to the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects of the President and Council of Bombay hereinbefore mentioned, from which the subsequent Mahratta war, with all the expense, distress, and disgraces which have attended it, took their commencement; and that the said Warren Hastings, therefore, is specially and principally answerable for the said war, and for all the consequences thereof.

That in a letter dated the 20th of January, 1778, the President and Council of Bombay informed the Governor-General and Council, that, in consequence of later intelligence received from Poonah, they had _immediately resolved that nothing further could be done, unless Saccaram Baboo, the principal in the late treaty_ (of Poorunder) _joined in making a formal application to them_.
That no such application was ever made by that person.

That the said Warren Hastings, finding that all this pretended ground for engaging in an invasion of the Mahratta government had totally failed, did then pretend to give credit to, and to be greatly alarmed by, the suggestions of the President and Council of Bombay, that the Mahrattas were negotiating with the French, and had agreed to give them the port of Choul, on the Malabar coast, and did affirm that the French _had obtained possession of that port_.

That all these suggestions and assertions were false, and, if they had been true, would have furnished no just occasion for attacking either the Mahrattas or the French, with both of whom the British nation was then at peace.