The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 571 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12).

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 571 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12).

[This is the person whom the English instruments of the Nabob of Arcot have had the audacity to charge with a corrupt transaction with Lord Macartney, and, in support of that charge, to produce a forged letter from his Lordship’s steward.  The charge and letter the reader may see in this Appendix, under the proper head.  It is asserted by the unfortunate prince above mentioned, that the Company first settled on the coast of Coromandel under the protection of one of his ancestors.  If this be true, (and it is far from unlikely,) the world must judge of the return the descendant has met with.  The case of another of the victims given up by the ministry, though not altogether so striking as the former, is worthy of attention.  It is that of the renter of the Province of Nellore.]

It is, with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection, asserted to you, in proof of the validity of the Nabob’s objections, that this man’s failures had already forced us to remove him:  though in fact he has continued invariably in office; though our greatest supplies have been received from him; and that, in the disappointment of your remittances [the remittances from Bengal] and of other resources, the specie sent us from Nellore alone has sometimes enabled us to carry on the public business; and that the present expedition against the French must, without this assistance from the assignment, have been laid aside, or delayed until it might have become too late.

[This man is by the ministry given over to the mercy of persons capable of making charges on him “with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection.”  What is likely to happen to him and the rest of the victims may appear by the following.]

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Letter to the Governor-General and Council, March 13th, 1782.

The speedy termination, to which the people were taught to look, of the Company’s interference in the revenues, and the vengeance denounced against those who, contrary to the mandate of the Durbar, should be connected with them, as reported by Mr. Sullivan, may, as much as the former exactions and oppressions of the Nabob in the revenue, as reported by the commander-in-chief, have deterred some of the fittest men from offering to be concerned in it.

The timid disposition of the Hindoo natives of this country was not likely to be insensible to the specimen of that vengeance given by his Excellency the Amir, who, upon the mere rumor, that a Bramin, of the name of Appagee Row, had given proposals to the Company for the rentership of Vellore, had the temerity to send for him, and to put him in confinement.

A man thus seized by the Nabob’s sepoys within the walls of Madras gave a general alarm, and government found it necessary to promise the protection of the Company, in order to calm the apprehensions of the people.

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.