The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
XXI. That the said Hastings, after he had given the license aforesaid,
and that in consequence thereof the booty found in the castle, to the
amount of 23,27,813 current rupees, was distributed among the soldiers
employed in its reduction, the said Hastings did retract his declaration
of right, and his permission to the soldiers to appropriate to
themselves the plunder, and endeavored, by various devices and
artifices, to explain the same away, and to recover the spoil aforesaid
for the use of the Company; and wholly failing in his attempts to resume
by a breach of faith with the soldiers what he had unlawfully disposed
of by a breach of duty to his constituents, he attempted to obtain the
same as a loan, in which attempt he also failed; and the aforesaid money
being the only part of the treasures belonging to the Rajah, or any of
his family, that had been found, he was altogether frustrated in the
acquisition of every part of that dishonorable object which alone he
pretended to, and pursued through a long series of acts of injustice,
inhumanity, oppression, violence, and bloodshed, at the hazard of his
person and reputation, and, in his own opinion, at the risk of the total
subversion of the British empire.
XXI. That the said Warren Hastings, after the commission of the
offences aforesaid, being well aware that he should be called to an
account for the same, did, by the evil counsel and agency of Sir Elijah
Impey, Knight, his Majesty's chief-justice, who was then out of the
limits of his jurisdiction, cause to be taken at Benares, before or by
the said Sir Elijah Impey, and through the intervention, not of the
Company's interpreter, but of a certain private interpreter of his, the
said Hastings's, own appointment, and a dependant on him, called Major
Davy, several declarations and depositions by natives of Hindostan,--and
did also cause to be taken before the said Sir Elijah Impey several
attestations in English, made by British subjects, and which were
afterwards transmitted to Calcutta, and laid before the
Council-General,--some of which depositions were upon oath, some upon
honor, and others neither upon _oath_ nor _honor_, but all or most of
which were of an irregular and irrelevant nature, and not fit or decent
to be taken by a British magistrate, or to be transmitted to a British
government.
XXIII. That one of the said attestations (but not on oath) was made by a
principal minister of the Nabob of Oude, to whom the said Hastings had
some time before proposed to sell the sovereignty of that very territory
of Benares; and that one other attestation (not upon oath) was made by a
native woman of distinction, whose son he, the said Hastings, did
actually promote to the government of Benares, vacated by the unjust
expulsion of the Rajah aforesaid, and who in her deposition did declare
that she considered the expelled Rajah as her enemy, and that he never
did confer with her, or suffer her to be acquainted with any of his
designs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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