as his failure to perform the said engagement is a breach of faith to the Company, so his performance of such engagement, if he had performed it, and even his offering to pledge himself for the agent, in the first instance, ought to be taken as presumptive evidence of a connection between the said Warren Hastings and the said agent, his private secretary, which ought not to exist between a Governor acting in behalf of the Company and a contractor making terms with such Governor for the execution of a public service. That, before the expiration of the contract hereinbefore mentioned for supplying the army with draught and carriage bullocks, granted by the said Warren Hastings to Ernest Alexander Johnson for three years, the said Warren Hastings did propose and carry it in Council, that a new contract should be made on a new plan, and that an offer thereof should be made to Richard Johnson, brother and executor of the said contractor, without advertising for proposals, for the term of _five years_; that this offer was _voluntarily accepted_ by the said Richard Johnson, who at the same time desired and obtained that the new contracts should be made out in the name of Charles Croftes, the Company's accountant and sub-treasurer at Fort William; that the said Charles Croftes offered the said Richard Johnson as one of his securities for the performance of the said contract, who was accepted as such by the said Warren Hastings; and that, at the request of the said contractor, the contract for victualling the Europeans serving at the Presidency was added to and united with that for furnishing bullocks, and fixed for the same period. That this extension of the periods of the said contracts was not compensated by a diminution in the charge to be incurred by the Company on that account, as it ought to have been, but, on the contrary, the charge was immoderately increased by the new contracts, insomuch that it was proved by statements and computations produced at the board, that the increase on the victualling contract would in five years amount to 40,000_l._, and that the increase on the bullock contract in the same period would amount to above 400,000_l._ That, when this and many other weighty objections against the terms of the said contracts were urged in Council to the said Warren Hastings, he declared that _he should deliver a reply thereto_; but it does not appear that he did ever deliver such reply, or ever enter into a justification of any part of his conduct in this transaction.--That the act of Parliament of 1773, by which the first Governor-General and Council were appointed, did expressly limit the duration of their office to the term of five years, which expired in October, 1779, and that the several contracts hereinbefore mentioned were granted in September, 1779, and were made to continue _five_ years after the expiration of the government by which they were granted. That by this anticipation the discretion and judgment of the succeeding