the princes and states of the country no solid ground on which they can or ought to contract with the Company, to the utter destruction of all public confidence, and to the equal disgrace of the national candor, integrity, and wisdom. X. That in a letter dated from the same place, Lucknow, the 16th of the following June, 1784, the said Warren Hastings informs the Court of Directors, that Major Browne, their agent to the Mogul, had arrived there in the character also of agent from the Mogul, with two sets of instructions from two opposite parties in his ministry, which instructions were directly contrary to each other: the first, which were the ostensible instructions, being to engage the said Hastings, in the Mogul's name, to enter into a treaty of mutual alliance with a chief of the country, then minister to the said Mogul, called Afrasaib Khan; the second were from another principal person, called Mudjed ul Dowlah, also a minister of the said Mogul, (but styled in the said letter _confidential_, for distinction,) which were directly destructive of the former; and the said latter instructions, to which it seems credence was to be given, were sent "under the most solemn adjurations of secrecy." The purpose of these latter and secret instructions was to require the Company's aid in freeing the Mogul from the oppressions of his servants, namely, from the oppressions of the said Afrasaib, between whom and the Company Major Browne (at once agent to that Company, and to two opposite factions in the Mogul's court) accepted a power to make a treaty of mutual alliance under the sanction of his sovereign. And it does not appear that he, Warren Hastings, did discountenance the double-dealing and fraudulent agencies of his and the Company's minister at that court, or did disavow any particular in the letter from him, the said Browne, of the 30th of December, 1783, stating the offers made on his part to the Mogul, so contradictory to his late declarations to the heir-apparent of that monarch, or did give any reprimand to the said Browne, or did show any mark of displeasure against him, as having acted without orders, but did again send him, with renewed confidence, to the court aforesaid.