The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
treaty of Poorunder_ to join in a plan for conducting Ragonaut Row to
Poonah on the application of the ruling part of the Mahratta state":
whereas the main object of the said treaty on the part of the Mahrattas,
and to obtain which they made many important concessions to the India
Company, was, that the English should withdraw their forces, and give no
assistance to Ragoba, and that he should be excluded forever from any
share in their government, being a person _universally held in
abhorrence_ in the Mahratta empire; and if it had been true (instead of
being, as it was, notoriously false) that _the ruling part_ of the
administration of the Mahratta state solicited the return of Ragonaut
Row to Poonah, his return in that case might have been effected by acts
of their own, without the interposition of the English power, and
without our interference in their affairs. 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. That in a letter dated the 20th of
January, 1778, the President and Council of Bombay informed the
Governor-General and Council, that, in consequence of later intelligence
received from Poonah, they had _immediately resolved that nothing
further could be done, unless Saccaram Baboo, the principal in the late
treaty_ (of Poorunder) _joined in making a formal application to them_.
That no such application was ever made by that person. That the said
Warren Hastings, finding that all this pretended ground for engaging in
an invasion of the Mahratta government had totally failed, did then
pretend to give credit to, and to be greatly alarmed by, the suggestions
of the President and Council of Bombay, that the Mahrattas were
negotiating with the French, and had agreed to give them the port of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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