circumstances, and _rebus sic stantibus_] illegal." That the said Warren Hastings does nowhere himself contend that the said resignation was not absolute, but optional, according to the true meaning and understanding of the parties in England, and so far as the acts of Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, and the Court of Directors, were binding on him; but, on the contrary, he grounds his refusal to complete the same, not on any interpretation of the words in which the said resignation, and the other instruments aforesaid, were conceived, but rather on a disavowal (not direct, indeed, but implied) of his said agent, and of the powers under which the said agent had claimed to act in his behalf. Neither did the said Warren Hastings ground his said refusal on any objection to the particular day or period or circumstances in which the requisition of General Clavering was made, nor accompany the said refusal with any qualification in that respect, or with any intimation that he would at any future or more convenient season comply with the same,--although such an intimation might probably have induced General Clavering to waive an instant and immediate claim to the chair, and might therefore have prevented the distractions which happened, and the greater evils which impended, in consequence of the said claim of General Clavering, and the said refusal of Warren Hastings, Esquire; but the said Warren Hastings did, on the contrary, express his said refusal in such general and unqualified terms as intimated an intention to resist absolutely and altogether, both then and at any future time, the said requisition of General Clavering. And the subsequent proceedings of the said Warren Hastings do all concur in proving that such was his intention; for he did afterwards, in conformity to the advice of the judges, move a resolution in Council, "that all parties be placed in the same situation in which they stood before the receipt of the last advices from England, reserving and submitting to a decision in England the respective claims that each party may conceive they have a right to make, but not acting upon those claims till such decision shall arrive in Bengal": thereby clearly and explicitly declaring that it was not his intention to surrender the government until such decision should arrive in Bengal, which could not be expected in less time than a year and a half after the date of the said resolution; and thereby clearly and explicitly declaring that he did not consider his resignation as binding for the present. And the said intention was manifested, if possible, still more directly and expressly in a letter written by the said Warren Hastings to the Court of Directors, dated the 15th of August, 1777, being almost two months after the receipt of the said dispatches, in which the said Warren Hastings declares that "he did not hold himself bound by the notification made by Mr. Macleane, nor by any of the acts consequent of it."