necessity for curbing the overgrown power of a great member of their dominion, and to make it contribute to the relief of their pressing exigencies, that his error would be excusable, as prompted by an excess of zeal for their [the Company’s] interest, operating with too strong a bias on his judgment; but that much stronger is the presumption, that such acts are founded on just principles than that they are the result of a misguided judgment.”  That the said doctrines are, in both the members thereof, subversive of all the principles of just government, by empowering a governor with delegated authority, in the first case, on his own private belief concerning the necessities of the state, not to levy an impartial and equal rate of taxation suitable to the circumstances of the several members of the community, but to select any individual from the same as an object of arbitrary and unmeasured imposition,—­and, in the second case, enabling the same governor, on the same arbitrary principles, to determine whose property should be considered as overgrown, and to reduce the same at his pleasure.

PART IV.

SECOND REVOLUTION IN BENARES.

That the said Warren Hastings, after he had, in the manner aforesaid, unjustly and violently expelled the Rajah Cheyt Sing, the lord or zemindar of Benares, from his said lordship or zemindary, did, of his own mere usurped authority, and without any communication with the other members of the Council of Calcutta, appoint another person, of the name of Mehip Narrain, a descendant by the mother from the late Rajah, Bulwant Sing, to the government of Benares; and on account or pretence of his youth and inexperience (the said Mehip Narrain not being above twenty years old) did appoint his father, Durbege Sing, to act as his representative or administrator of his affairs; but did give a controlling authority to the British Resident over both, notwithstanding his declarations before mentioned of the mischiefs likely to happen to the said country from the establishment of a Resident, and his opinion since declared in a letter to the Court of Directors, dated from this very place (Benares) the 1st of October, 1784, to the same or stronger effect, in case “agents are sent into the country, and armed with authority for the purposes of vengeance and corruption,—­for to no other will they be applied.”

That the said Warren Hastings did, by the same usurped authority, entirely set aside all the agreements made between the late Rajah and the Company (which were real agreements with the state of Benares, in the person of the lord or prince thereof, and his heirs); and without any form of trial, inquisition, or other legal process, for forfeiture of the privileges of the people to be governed by magistrates of their own, and according to their natural laws, customs, and usages, did, contrary to the said agreement, separate