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The army was drawn out, and in the act of forming column for march, or attack. The Duke was in the centre, nearly a mile from the place where Morton had passed the night. In riding towards the General, he had an opportunity of estimating the force which had been assembled for the suppression of the hasty and ill-concerted insurrection.
Soon after, Mar's ill-concerted rebellion took place, in which I have no doubt your father was an active agent; but I have, since this last letter, lost all trace of him. Your being born in the year '16 would lead me to suppose that he must have married your mother about the time of the Rebellion, either in Scotland or France."
That it was the special duty of the said Warren Hastings, derived from a special trust reposed in him and power committed to him by Parliament, to have restrained, as by law he had authority to do, the subordinate Presidency of Bombay from entering into hostilities with the Mahrattas, or from making engagements the manifest tendency of which was to enter into those hostilities, and to have put a stop to them, if any such had been begun; that he was bound by the duty of his office to preserve the faith of the British government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder, inviolate and sacred, as well as by the special orders and instructions of the East India Company to fix his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India: all which important duties the said Warren Hastings did wilfully violate, in giving the sanction of the Governor-General and Council to the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects of the President and Council of Bombay hereinbefore mentioned, from which the subsequent Mahratta war, with all the expense, distress, and disgraces which have attended it, took their commencement; and that the said Warren Hastings, therefore, is specially and principally answerable for the said war, and for all the consequences thereof.
It was on other accounts also thought by them to be superfluous to guard the wall, there being besides that two other fortifications still remaining, and they being slothful, and their counsels having been ill-concerted on all occasions; so a great many grew lazy and retired.
The first, though precipitated into action by fortunate discoveries on the part of the government, had been anxiously preconcerted for three years. The second was an unpremeditated effort, called forth by a most ill-timed, and also ill-concerted, foreign invasion.
There was great confusion after the assassination of Caius Cæsar, and ill-concerted efforts to recover a freedom which had fled forever, ending, as was to be expected, by military power. Various forms of government were proposed and rejected. While the Senate deliberated, the prætorian guards acted.
I was at first very diffident of this report, but have found that he was right. Such is, at least, the idea I can form of this ill-concerted operation within these two days.
That the said Warren Hastings, having first declared that the measures taken by him were for the support of the engagements made by the Presidency of Bombay in favor of Ragoba, did afterwards, when it appeared that those negotiations were entirely laid aside, declare that his apprehension of the consequence of a pretended intrigue between the Mahrattas and the French was the sole motive of all the late measures taken for the support of the Presidency of Bombay; but that neither of the preceding declarations contained the true motives and objects of the said Hastings, whose real purpose, as it appeared soon after, was, to make use of the superiority of the British power in India to carry on offensive wars, and to pursue schemes of conquest, impolitic and unjust in their design, ill-concerted in the execution, and which, as this House has resolved, have brought great calamities on India, and enormous expenses on the East India Company.
The king was of opinion that those who had attacked her had ill-concerted their measures; for he thought it unnatural that she should neither be tempted by promises, nor gained by importunity: she, especially, who in all probability had not imbibed such severe precepts from the prudence of her mother, who had never tasted any thing more delicious than the plums and apricots of Saint Albans.
In his letters to Governor Fauquier, however, he bears lightly on the error of Col Bouquet. "From all accounts I can collect," says he, "it appears very clear that this was a very ill-concerted, or a very ill-executed plan, perhaps both; but it seems to be generally acknowledged that Major Grant exceeded his orders, and that no disposition was made for engaging."
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