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
That, such appearing to have been the intention of the said Warren
Hastings, General Clavering was justified in immediately assuming the
government, without waiting for any future act of the said Warren
Hastings for the actual surrender of the said government, none such
being likely to happen; and Philip Francis, Esquire, was justified in
supporting General Clavering in the same on the soundest principles of
justice, and on a maxim received in courts of equity, namely, that no
one shall avail himself of his own wrong,--and that, if any one refuse
or neglect to perform that which he is bound to do, the rights of others
shall not be prejudiced thereby, but such acts shall be deemed and
reputed to have been actually performed, and all the consequences shall
be enforced which would have followed from such actual performance. And
therefore the resolutions moved and voted in Council by the said Warren
Hastings, declaring the offices of General Clavering to be vacant, were
not only illegal, inasmuch as the said Warren Hastings had no authority
to warrant such a declaration, even on the supposition of the acts of
General Clavering being contrary to law, but the said resolutions were
further highly culpable and criminal, inasmuch as the said acts done by
General Clavering, which were made the pretence of that proceeding, were
strictly regular and legal.
That the refusal of the said Warren Hastings to ratify the said
resignation, and his disavowal of the said Lauchlan Macleane, his agent,
is not justified by anything contained in his said letter to the Court
of Directors, dated on the 15th of August, 1777,--the said Warren
Hastings nowhere directly and positively asserting that the said
Lauchlan Macleane was not his agent, and had not both full and general
powers, and even particular instructions for this very act, although the
said Warren Hastings uses many indirect and circuitous, but insufficient
and inapplicable, insinuations to that effect. And the said letter does,
on the contrary, contain a clear and express avowal that the said
Lauchlan Macleane was his confidential agent, and that in that capacity
he acted throughout, and particularly in this special matter, with zeal
and fidelity. And the said letter does further admit in effect the
instructions produced by the said Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, confirmed
by Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Stewart, and relied on and confided in by the
Court of Directors, by which the said Lauchlan Macleane appeared to be
specially empowered to declare the said resignation, the words of the
said instruction being as follows: "That he [Mr. Hastings] _will not
continue in the government of Bengal_, unless certain conditions therein
specified can be obtained"; and the words of the said letter being as
follows: "What I myself know with certainty, or can recollect at this
distance of time, concerning the powers and instructions which were
given to Messieurs Macleane and Graham, when they undertook to be my
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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