The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12).

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12).

LXV.  That there is just ground to violently presume that not only the letters in the name of the Nabob aforesaid were dictated to him by his minister, Hyder Beg Khan, in whose hands the said Hastings has described his master to be “a mere cipher,” &c., but which Hyder Beg was the known instrument of the said Hastings, but that the conduct and letters of complaint of the said Hyder Beg were in effect and substance prescribed and dictated to him by the said Warren Hastings, or his secret agent, Palmer, by his direction:  because it is notorious that the powers of the said Hyder Beg were solely supported by him, the said Hastings, who, according to the state of favor or displeasure in which he stood, hath frequently promised him support or threatened him with dismission and punishment, and therefore it is not to be thought that he would take so material a step as to oppose the Company’s Resident, acting under the instructions of the Governor-General and Council, and to accuse him with so much confidence, and in a manner so different from the usual style of supplication on all other occasions employed by that court, if he had not been previously well assured that his writing in that manner would be pleasing to the person upon whom he solely depended for his power, his fortune, and perhaps for his life;—­secondly, because, when it suited the purposes of the said Hastings on a former occasion, that is, in the year 1784 [1781?], to remove the Resident Bristow aforesaid from his office, a letter from the Nabob was laid before the Council Board at Calcutta, proposing, that, in order to prevent the effects of the said Bristow’s application to Europe for redress, the said Hastings should send him drafts of letters which he, the said Nabob, would write in his own name and character to the King, to his Majesty’s ministers, and to the Court of Directors, expressing himself, in the letter aforesaid, in the words following, viz., “To prevent his [Bristow’s] applying to Europe, send me, if you think proper, the drafts of letters which I may write to the King, the Vizier, and the chiefs of the Company";—­thirdly, that, though the said Hastings, and his secret agent, Palmer, did pretend and positively assert that they had no share in the letters aforesaid from the Nabob and his minister, there was an original note to the Nabob’s letters of accusation, referring to distinct parts and specified numbers of the agent Palmer’s secret correspondence with the said Warren Hastings, and the said letter, with the said reference, was, through inadvertence, laid before the board.

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.