neither this nor any other part of the said charge has been at any time directly denied or
disputed by the said Warren Hastings, though made to his face, and though he was
repeatedly accused by his colleagues, who were appointed by Parliament at the same time
with himself, of peculation of every sort. That, instead of promoting a strict inquiry into his
conduct for the clearance of his innocence and honor, he did repeatedly endeavor to elude
and stifle all inquiry by attempting to dissolve the meetings of the Council at which such
charges were produced, and by other means, and has not since taken any steps to disprove
or refute the same. That the said Warren Hastings, so long ago as September, 1775, assured
the Court of Directors, "that it was his fixed determination most fully and liberally to
explain every circumstance of his conduct on the points on which he had been injuriously
arraigned, and to afford them the clearest conviction of his own integrity, and of the
propriety of his motives for declining a present defence of it"; and having never since given
to the Court of Directors any explanation whatever, much less the full and liberal
explanation he had promised so repeatedly, has thereby abandoned even that late and
protracted defence which he himself must have thought necessary to be made at some time
or other, and which he would be thought to have deferred to a period more suitable and
convenient than that in which the facts were recent, and the impression of these and other
charges of the same nature against him was fresh and unimpaired in the minds of men.
That on the 30th of March, 1775, a member of the Council produced and laid before the
board a petition from Mir Zein Abul Deen, (formerly farmer of a district, and who had been
in creditable stations,) setting forth, that Khân Jehan Khân, then Phousdar of Hoogly, had
obtained that office from the said Warren Hastings, with a salary of seventy-two thousand
sicca rupees a year, and that the said Phousdar had given a receipt of bribe to the patron of