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
XXII. That the said Hastings, in asserting that he was bound to the acts
aforesaid by public duty, and even by national faith, in the very
instance in which that national faith was by him grossly violated, and
in justifying himself by alleging that he was bound to the _complete_
execution by a responsibility to the Company which he immediately
served, and by asserting that these violent and rapacious proceedings,
subjecting all persons concerned in them to obloquy, would be the means
of strengthening the connection of the Nabob with the British United
Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, did disgrace the
authority under which he immediately acted. And that the said Hastings,
in justifying his obligations to the said acts by a responsibility to
the _king_, namely, to the King of Great Britain, did endeavor to throw
upon his Majesty, his lawful sovereign, (whose name and character he was
bound to respect, and to preserve in estimation with all persons, and
particularly with the sovereign princes, the allies of his government,)
the disgrace and odium of the aforesaid acts, in which a sovereign
prince was by him, the said Hastings, made an instrument of perfidy,
wrong, and outrage to two mothers and wives of sovereign princes, and in
which he did exhibit to all Asia (a country remarkable for the utmost
devotion to parental authority) the spectacle of a Christian governor,
representing a Christian sovereign, compelling a son to become the
instrument of such violence and extortion against his own mother.
That the said Warren Hastings, by repeated messages and injunctions, and
under menaces of "a dreadful responsibility," did urge the Resident to a
completion of this barbarous act; and well knowing that such an act
would probably be resisted, did order him, the said Resident, to use the
British troops under his direction for that purpose; and did offer the
assistance of further forces, urging the execution in the following
peremptory terms: "You _yourself_ must be _personally present_; you must
not allow _any_ negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both
services, until the Begums [princesses] are at the entire mercy of the
Nabob."[61]
XXIII. That, in conformity to the said peremptory orders, a party of
British and other troops, with the Nabob in the ostensible, and the
British Resident in the real command, were drawn towards the city of
Fyzabad, in the castle of which city the mother and grandmother of the
Nabob had their residence; and after expending two days in negotiation,
(the particulars of which do not appear,) the Resident not receiving the
satisfaction he looked for, the town was first stormed, and afterwards
the castle; and little or no resistance being made, and no blood being
shed on either side, the British troops occupied all the outer inclosure
of the palace of one of the princesses, and blocked up the other.[62]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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