That the said Warren Hastings, having passed through the province of Benares (Gazipore) in his progress towards Oude, did, in a letter dated from the city of Lucknow, the 2d of April, 1784, give to the Council Board at Calcutta an account, highly dishonorable to the British government, of the effect of the arrangements made by himself in the years 1781 and 1782, in the words following. "Having contrived, by making forced stages, while the troops of my escort marched at the ordinary rate, to make a stay of five days at Benares, I was thereby furnished with the means of acquiring some knowledge of the state of the province, which I am anxious to communicate to you. Indeed, the inquiry, which was _in a great degree obtruded upon me_, affected me with very mortifying reflections on my inability to apply it to any useful purpose. From the confines of Buxar to Benares I was followed and _fatigued_ by the clamors of the discontented inhabitants. It was what I expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of it. The distresses which were produced by the long-continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; _yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration_. Of a multitude of petitions which were presented to me, and of which I took minutes, every one that did not relate to a personal grievance contained the representation of one and the same species of oppression, which is in its nature of an influence most fatal to the future cultivation. The practice to which I allude is this. It is affirmed that the aumils and renters exact from the proprietors of the actual harvest a large increase in kind on their stipulated rent: that is, from those who hold their _pottah_ by the tenure of paying _one half_ of the produce of their crops, either _the whole_ without subterfuge, or a _large_ proportion of it by a _false measurement_ or other pretexts; and from those whose engagements are for a fixed rent _in money_, the half, or a greater proportion, is taken _in kind_. This is in effect a tax upon the industry of the inhabitants: since there is scarce a field of grain in the province, _I might say not one_, which has not been preserved by the incessant labor of the cultivator, by digging wells for their supply, or watering them from the wells of masonry with which their country abounds, or from the neighboring tanks, rivers, and nullahs. The people who imposed on themselves this voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended with expense, did it on the expectation of reaping the profits of it; and it is certain they would not have done it, if they had known that their rulers, _from whom they were entitled to an indemnification_, would take from them what they had so hardly earned. If the same administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a want