The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
vakeels in every part of the Mahratta empire and in the country of Sujah
Dowlah, when he had in most of those courts English ambassadors and
native spies, did he either from ambassadors or spies receive anything
like authentic intelligence upon this subject? While he was at Benares,
he had in his hands Benaram Pundit, the vakeel of the Rajah of Berar,
his own confidential friend, a person whom he took out of the service of
his master, and to whom he gave a jaghire in this very zemindary of
Benares. This man, so attached to Mr. Hastings, so knowing in all the
transactions of India, neither accused Cheyt Sing of rebellious
intentions, or furnished Mr. Hastings with one single proof that any
conspiracy with any foreign power existed.
In this absence of evidence, My Lords, let us have recourse to
probability. Is it to be believed that the Zemindar of Benares, a person
whom Mr. Hastings describes as being of a timid, weak, irresolute, and
feeble nature, should venture to make war alone with the whole power of
the Company in India, aided by all the powers which Great Britain could
bring to the protection of its Indian empire? Could that poor man, in
his comparatively small district, possibly have formed such an
intention, without giving Mr. Hastings access to the knowledge of the
fact from one or other of the numerous correspondents which he had in
that country?
As to the Rajah's supposed intrigues with the Nabob of Oude: this man
was an actual prisoner of Mr. Hastings, and nothing else,--a mere
vassal, as he says himself, in effect and substance, though not in name.
Can any one believe or think that Mr. Hastings would not have received
from the English Resident, or from some one of that tribe of English
gentlemen and English military collectors who were placed in that
country in the exercise of the most arbitrary powers, some intelligence
which he could trust, if any rebellious designs had really existed
previous to the rebellion which did actually break out upon his
arresting Cheyt Sing?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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