[The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) by Edmund Burke]@TWC D-Link bookThe Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) PART I 35/81
That there is just ground to violently presume that not only the letters in the name of the Nabob aforesaid were dictated to him by his minister, Hyder Beg Khan, in whose hands the said Hastings has described his master to be "a mere cipher," &c., but which Hyder Beg was the known instrument of the said Hastings, but that the conduct and letters of complaint of the said Hyder Beg were in effect and substance prescribed and dictated to him by the said Warren Hastings, or his secret agent, Palmer, by his direction: because it is notorious that the powers of the said Hyder Beg were solely supported by him, the said Hastings, who, according to the state of favor or displeasure in which he stood, hath frequently promised him support or threatened him with dismission and punishment, and therefore it is not to be thought that he would take so material a step as to oppose the Company's Resident, acting under the instructions of the Governor-General and Council, and to accuse him with so much confidence, and in a manner so different from the usual style of supplication on all other occasions employed by that court, if he had not been previously well assured that his writing in that manner would be pleasing to the person upon whom he solely depended for his power, his fortune, and perhaps for his life;--secondly, because, when it suited the purposes of the said Hastings on a former occasion, that is, in the year 1784 [1781 ?], to remove the Resident Bristow aforesaid from his office, a letter from the Nabob was laid before the Council Board at Calcutta, proposing, that, in order to prevent the effects of the said Bristow's application to Europe for redress, the said Hastings should send him drafts of letters which he, the said Nabob, would write in his own name and character to the King, to his Majesty's ministers, and to the Court of Directors, expressing himself, in the letter aforesaid, in the words following, viz., "To prevent his [Bristow's] applying to Europe, send me, if _you_ think proper, the drafts of letters which _I_ may write to the King, the Vizier, and the chiefs of the Company";--thirdly, that, though the said Hastings, and his secret agent, Palmer, did pretend and positively assert that they had no share in the letters aforesaid from the Nabob and his minister, there was an original note to the Nabob's letters of accusation, referring to distinct parts and specified numbers of the agent Palmer's secret correspondence with the said Warren Hastings, and the said letter, with the said reference, was, through inadvertence, laid before the board. LXVI.
That the said Warren Hastings, having thrown the government of Oude into great confusion and distress, and thereby prevented the discharge of the debt, or pretended debt, to the Company, did, by all the said intrigues, machinations, and charges, aim at the filling the said office of Resident at Oude with his own dependants or by himself personally; as it appears that he did first propose to place in the said office his secret agent, Palmer, and that afterwards, when he was not able to succeed therein, he did propose nominally to abolish the said office, but in effect to fill it by himself,--proposing to the Council and rendering himself responsible (but not in fortune) for the payment of the Company's debt within a certain given time, if he were permitted and commissioned by the Council to act for the board in that province, and did inform them that he was privately well assured that in a few days he should receive an invitation to that effect; and he did state, (as in the year 1781 he had stated as a reason for his former delegation,) "that the state of the country was so disordered in its revenue and administration, and the credit and influence of the Nabob himself so much shook by _the late usurpation_ of his authority, and the contests which attended it, as to require the accession of an extraneous aid to restore the powers and to reanimate the constitution of his government,"-- although he, the said Hastings, did for a long time before attribute the weakness of his government to an extraneous interference.
And the said Council, on his engagement aforesaid, did consent thereto; and he did accordingly receive a commission, enabling him to act in the affairs of Oude, not only as the Resident might have done, but as largely as the Council-General might legally delegate their own powers. LXVII.
That the said Warren Hastings, in accepting the said commission, did subject his character and the reputation of his office to great imputations and suspicions, by taking upon himself an inferior office, out of which another had upon his intrigues been removed by a perpetual obstruction which rendered it impossible for him to perform his duty or to obey his instructions; and he did increase the said grounded suspicions by exercising that office in a government from whence it was notorious he had himself received an unlawful gift and present from the ministers, and in which he had notoriously suffered many, and had himself actually directed some, acts of peculation, by granting various pensions and emoluments, to the prejudice of the revenue of a distressed country, which he was not authorized to grant. LXVIII.
That the said Warren Hastings did proceed unto the said province of Oude under color of providing a remedy for the disorders described to be existing in the same, and for the recovery of the Company's pretended debt.
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