following instruction to the Governor-General and Council, a majority of whom, viz., Sir John Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, had disapproved of the plan of Provincial Councils: "If you are fully convinced that the establishment of Provincial Councils has not answered nor is not capable of answering the purposes intended by such institutions, we hereby direct you to form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit the same to _us for our consideration_."--That the said Warren Hastings, in contradiction to his own sentiments repeatedly declared, and to his own advice repeatedly and deliberately given, and in defiance of the orders of the Directors, to whom he transmitted no previous communication whatever of his intention to abolish the said Provincial Councils, did, in the beginning of the year 1781, again change the whole system of the collections of the public revenue of Bengal, as also the administration of civil and criminal justice throughout the provinces. That the said Warren Hastings, in a letter dated 5th of May, 1781, advising the Court of Directors of the said changes, has falsely affirmed, "that the plan of superintending and collecting the public revenue of the provinces through the agency of Provincial Councils had been instituted for the temporary and declared purpose of introducing another more permanent mode _by an easy and gradual change_"; that, on the contrary, the said Warren Hastings, from the year 1773 to the year 1781, has constantly and uniformly insisted on the wisdom of that institution, and on the necessity of never departing from it; that he has in that time repeatedly advised that the said institution should be confirmed _in perpetuity_ by an act of Parliament; that the said total dissolution of the Provincial Councils was not introduced by any easy and gradual change, nor by any gradations whatever, but was sudden and unprepared, and instantly accomplished by a single act of power; and that the said Warren Hastings, in the place of the said Councils, has substituted a Committee of Revenue, consisting of four covenanted servants, on principles opposite to those which he had himself professed, and with exclusive powers, tending to deprive the members of the Supreme Council of a due knowledge of and inspection into the management of the territorial revenues, specially and unalienably vested by the legislature in the Governor-General and Council, and to vest the same solely and entirely in the said Warren Hastings. That the reasons assigned by the said Warren Hastings for constituting the said Committee of Revenue are incompatible with those which he professed when he abolished the subordinate Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad: that he has invested the said Committee _in the fullest manner with all the powers and authority of the Governor-General and Council_; that he has thereby contracted the whole power and office of the Provincial Councils