XV. That the said Hastings did persevere in his resolutions not to listen to any submission or offer of accommodation whatsoever, though several were afterwards made through almost every person who might be supposed to have influence with him, but did cause the Rajah's troops to be attacked and fallen upon, though they only acted on the defensive, (as the Rajah has without contradiction asserted,) and thereby, and by his preceding refusal of propositions of the same nature, and by other his perfidious, unjust, and tyrannical acts by him perpetrated and done, and by his total improvidence in not taking any one rational security whatsoever against the inevitable consequences of those acts, did make himself guilty of all the mutual slaughter and devastation which ensued, as well as, in his opinion, of the imminent danger of the total subversion of the British power in India by the risk of his own person, which he asserts that it did run,--as also "that it ought not to be thought that he attributed too much consequence to his personal safety, when he supposed _the fate of the British empire in India connected with it_, and that, mean as its substance may be, its accidental qualities were equivalent to those which, like the characters of a talisman in the Arabian mythology, formed the _essence_ of the state itself, representation, title, and the _estimate_ of the public opinion; that, had he fallen, such a stroke would be universally considered as decisive of the national fate; every state round it would have started into arms against it, and _every subject of its own dominion would, according to their several abilities, have become its enemy_": and that he knew and has declared, that, though the said stroke was not struck, that great convulsions did actually ensue from his proceedings, "that half the province of Oude was in a state of as complete rebellion as that of Benares," and that invasions, tumults, and insurrections were occasioned thereby in various other parts. XVI. That the said Warren Hastings, after he had collected his forces from all parts, did, with little difficulty or bloodshed, subsequent to that time, on the part of his troops, and in a few days, entirely reduce the said province of Benares; and did, after the said short and little resisted hostility, in cold blood, issue an order for burning a certain town, in which he accused the people at large of having killed, "upon what provocation he knows not," certain wounded sepoys, who were prisoners: which order, being _generally_ given, when it was his duty to have made some inquiry concerning the particular offenders, but which he did never make, or cause to be made, was cruel, inhuman, and tended to the destruction of the revenues of the Company; and that this, and other acts of devastation, did cause the loss of two months of the collections.