VII. That the said Hastings, being well aware that his own declarations did contain the clearest condemnation of his own conduct from his own pen, did in the said libel attempt to overturn, frustrate, and render of none effect all the proofs to be given of prevarication, contradiction, and of opposition of action to principle, which can be used against men in public trust, and did contend that the same could not be used against him; and as if false assertions could be justified by factious motives, he did endeavor to do away the authority of his own _deliberate, recorded_ declarations, entered by him _in writing_ on the Council-Books of the Presidency; for, after asserting, _but not attempting to prove_, that his declarations were consistent with his conduct, he writes in the said libel as follows: For "were it otherwise, they were not to be made the rules of my conduct; and God forbid that every expression dictated by the impulse of present emergency, and unpremeditatedly uttered in the heat of party contention, should impose upon me the obligation of a fixed principle, and be applied to every variable occasion!" VIII. That the said Hastings, in order to draw the lawful dependence of the servants of the Company from the Court of Directors to a factious dependence on himself, did, in the libel aforesaid, treat the acts and appointments of their undoubted authority, when exercised in opposition to his arbitrary will, as ruinous to their affairs, in the following terms. "It is as well known to the Indian world as to the Court of English Proprietors, that the first declaratory instruments of the dissolution of my influence, in the year 1774, were Mr. John Bristow and Mr. Francis Fowke. By your ancient and known constitution the Governor has been ever held forth and understood to possess the ostensible powers of government; all the correspondence with foreign princes is conducted in his name; and every person resident with them for the management of your political concerns is understood to be _more especially his_ representative, and of _his_ choice: and such ought to be the rule; for how otherwise can they trust an agent nominated against the will of _his_ principal? When the state of this administration was such as seemed to _admit of_ the appointment of Mr. Bristow to the Residency of Lucknow without _much_ diminution of _my own_ influence, I gladly seized the occasion to show my readiness to submit to your commands; I proposed his nomination; he was nominated, and declared to _be the agent of my own choice_. Even this effect of my caution _is defeated by your absolute command for his reappointment independent of me, and with the supposition that I should be adverse to it_.--I am now wholly deprived of my official powers, both in the province of Oude, and in the zemindary of Benares."