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
(given upon occasion of a crime of the same nature committed by the said
Hastings,) and was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.
That the said Warren Hastings, having taken the measures hereinbefore
described for supporting those of the Presidency of Bombay, did, on the
23d of March, 1778, "invest the said Presidency with authority to form
a new alliance with Ragoba, and to engage with him in _any_ scheme which
they should deem expedient and safe for retrieving his affairs." That
the said Hastings was then in possession of a letter from the Court of
Directors, dated the 4th of July, 1777, containing a positive order to
the Presidency of Bombay in the following words. "Though that treaty"
(meaning the treaty of Poorunder) "is not, upon the whole, so agreeable
to us as we could wish, still we are resolved strictly to adhere to it
on our parts. You must therefore be particularly vigilant, while Ragoba
is with you, to prevent him from forming any plan against what is called
the ministerial party at Poonah; and we hereby positively order you not
to engage with him in any scheme whatever in retrieving his affairs,
without the consent of the Governor-General and Council, or the Court of
Directors." That the said Ragoba neither did or could form any plan for
his restoration but what was and must be against the ministerial party
at Poonah, who held and exercised the regency of that state in the
infancy of the Peshwa; and that, supposing him to have formed any other
_scheme_, in conjunction with Bombay, _for retrieving his affairs_, the
said Hastings, in giving a previous _general_ authority to the
Presidency of Bombay to engage with Ragoba in _any_ scheme for that
purpose, without knowing what such scheme might be, and thereby
relinquishing and transferring to the discretion of a subordinate
government that superintendence and control over all measures tending to
create or provoke a war which the law had exclusively vested in the
Governor-General and Council, was guilty of a high crime and
misdemeanor.
That the said Warren Hastings, having first declared that the measures
taken by him were for the support of the engagements made by the
Presidency of Bombay in favor of Ragoba, did afterwards, when it
appeared that those negotiations were _entirely laid aside_, declare
that his apprehension of the consequence of a pretended _intrigue_
between the Mahrattas and the French _was the sole motive of all the
late measures taken for the support of the Presidency of Bombay_; but
that neither of the preceding declarations contained the true motives
and objects of the said Hastings, whose real purpose, as it appeared
soon after, was, to make use of the superiority of the British power in
India to carry on offensive wars, and to pursue schemes of conquest,
impolitic and unjust in their design, ill-concerted in the execution,
and which, as this House has resolved, _have brought great calamities on
India, and enormous expenses on the East India Company_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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