The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12).

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12).
“without hesitation totally inadmissible,” and did falsely and maliciously insinuate, “that the tone in which the demands of the Nabob were asserted, and the season in which they were made, did give cause for the most alarming suspicions.”  And the said Warren Hastings did, in a letter to the Nabob aforesaid, written in haughty and insolent language, and without taking any notice of the distresses of the said Nabob, alleged and verified as before recited, “require and insist upon your [the Nabob’s] granting tuncaws [assignments] for the full amount of their [the Company’s] demands upon you for the current year, and on your reserving funds sufficient to answer them, even should the deficiencies of your revenues compel you to leave your own troops unprovided for, or to disband a part of them to enable you to effect it.”

VIII.  That, in a letter written at the same time to the Resident, Purling, and intended for his directions in enforcing on the Nabob the unjust demands aforesaid, the said Warren Hastings hath asserted, in direct contradiction to the treaties subsisting between the said Nabob and the Company, “that he [the Nabob] stands engaged to our government to maintain the English armies which at his own request have been formed for the protection of his dominions, and that it is our part, and not his, to judge and determine in what manner and at what time these shall be reduced and withdrawn.”  And in a Minute of Consultation, when the aforesaid measure was proposed by the said Hastings to the Supreme Council, he did affirm and maintain that the troops aforesaid “had now no separate or distinct existence from ours, and may be properly said to consist of our whole military establishment, with the exception only of our European infantry; and that they could not be withdrawn without imposing on the Company the additional burden of them, or disbanding nine battalions of disciplined sepoys and three regiments of horse.”

IX.  That in the Minute of Consultation aforesaid, he, the said Warren Hastings, hath further, in justification of the violent and arbitrary proceedings aforesaid, asserted, “that the arrangement of measures between the British government and their allies, the native powers of India, must, in case of disagreement about the necessity thereof, be decided by the strongest”; and hath thereby advanced a dangerous and most indecently expressed position, subversive of the rights of allies, and tending to breed war and confusion, instead of cordiality and cooeperation amongst them, and to destroy all confidence of the princes of India in the faith and justice of the English nation.  And the said Hastings, having further, in the minute aforesaid, presumed to threaten to “bring to punishment, if my influence” (his, the said Hastings’s, influence) “can produce that effect, those incendiaries who have endeavored to make themselves the instruments of division between

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.