"If any engagement shall actually subsist between them at the time you have charge of the Residency, it must, however exceptionable, be faithfully observed; but if he has been guilty of any criminal offence to the Nabob, his master, for which no immunity is provided in the engagement, or he shall break any one of the conditions of it, I do most strictly enjoin you, and it must be your special care to endeavor, _either by force or surprise_, to secure his person and bring him to justice. By bringing him to justice I mean, that you urge the Nabob, on due conviction, _to punish him with death_, as a necessary example to deter others from the commission of the like crimes; nor must you desist till this is effected. I cannot prescribe the means; but to guard myself against the obloquy to which I may be exposed by a forced misconstruction of this order by those who may hereafter be employed in searching our records for cavils and informations against me, I think it proper to forbid and protest against the use of any _fraudulent artifice or treachery to accomplish the end which I have prescribed_; and as you alone are privy to the order, you will of course observe the greatest secrecy, that it may not transpire: but I repeat my recommendation of it, as one of the first and most essential duties of your office." LXXIII. That, among the reasons assigned for putting to death the said Almas Ali, which the said Hastings did recommend directly and repeatedly to the Resident, "as one of the first and most essential duties of his office," was, in substance, "that, by his extensive trust with regard to the revenues, he had been permitted to acquire independency; that the means thereof had been long seen and the effects thereof foretold by every person acquainted with the state of government, except those immediately interested in it"; and he, the said Warren Hastings, did also charge the said Almas Ali with embezzlement of the revenues and oppression of the people; and nothing appears to disprove the same, but much to give ground to a presumption that the said Almas Ali did grievously abuse the power committed to him, as farmer and collector of the revenue, to the great oppression of the inhabitants of the countries which had been rented to him by Hyder Beg Khan with the knowledge and consent of the said Warren Hastings.