XXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings, in order to justify the acts of violence aforesaid to the Court of Directors, did assert certain false facts, known by him to be such, and did draw from them certain false and dangerous inferences, utterly subversive of the rights of the princes and subjects dependent on the British nation in India, contrary to the principles of all just government, and highly dishonorable to that of Great Britain: namely, that the "Rajah of Benares was not a vassal or tributary prince, and that the deeds which passed between him and the board, upon the transfer of the zemindary in 1775, were not to be understood to bear the quality and force of a treaty upon optional conditions between equal states; that the payments to be made by him were not a tribute, but a rent; and that the instruments by which his territories were conveyed to him did not differ from common grants to zemindars who were merely subjects; but that, being nothing more than a common zemindar and mere subject, and the Company holding the acknowledged rights of his former sovereign, held an absolute authority over him; that, in the known relations of zemindar to the sovereign authority, or power delegated by it, he owed a personal allegiance and an implicit and unreserved obedience to that authority, at the forfeiture of his zemindary, and even of his life and property." Whereas the said Hastings did well know, that, whether the payments from the Rajah were called _rent_ or _tribute_, having been frequently by himself called the one and the other, and that of whatever nature the instruments by which he held might have been, he did not consider him as a common zemindar or landholder, but as far independent as a tributary prince could be: for he did assign as a reason for receiving his rent rather within the Company's province than in his own capital, that it would not "frustrate the intention of rendering the Rajah _independent_; that, if a Resident was appointed to receive the money as it became due at Benares, such a Resident would unavoidably acquire an influence over the Rajah, and over his country, which would in effect render him the master of both; that this consequence might not, perhaps, be brought completely to pass without a struggle, and many appeals to the Council, which, in a government constituted like this, cannot fail to terminate against the Rajah, and, by the construction to which his opposition to the agent would be liable, might eventually draw on him severe restrictions, and end _in reducing him to the mean and depraved state of a zemindar_."