The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 475 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12).

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 475 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12).

VIII.  That, these violent and insulting measures failing to provoke the Rajah, and he having paid up the whole demand, the said Warren Hastings, being resolved to drive him to extremities, did make on the said Rajah a sudden demand, over and above the ordinary tribute or subsidy of 260,000_l._ per annum, and over and above the 50,000_l._ extraordinary, to provide a body of cavalry for the service of the Bengal government.

IX.  The demand, as expressed in the Minute of Consultation, and in the public instructions of the board to the Resident to make the requisition, is “for such part of the cavalry entertained in his service as he can spare”; and the demand is in this and in no other manner described by the Governor-General and Council in their letter to the Court of Directors.  But in a Narrative of the said Warren Hastings’s, addressed to Edward Wheler, Esquire, it appears, that, upon the Rajah’s making difficulties, according to the representation of the said Hastings, relative to the said requisition, the correspondence concerning which the said Hastings hath fraudulently suppressed, he, the said Hastings, instead of adhering to the requisition of such cavalry as the Rajah could spare, and which was all that by the order of Council he was authorized to make, did, of his own private and arbitrary authority, in some letter which he hath suppressed, instruct the Resident, Markham, to make a peremptory demand for two thousand cavalry, which he well knew to be more than the Rajah’s finances could support, estimating the provision for the same at 96,000_l._ a year at the lowest, though the expense of the same would probably have been much more:  which extravagant demand the said Hastings could only have made in hopes of provoking the Rajah to some imprudent measure or passionate remonstrance.  And this arbitrary demand of cavalry was made, and peremptorily insisted on, although in the original treaty with the said Rajah it was left entirely optional whether or not he should keep up any cavalry at all, and in the Minute of Consultation it was expressly mentioned to be thus optional, and that for whatsoever cavalry he, the said Rajah, should furnish, he should be paid fifteen rupees per month for each private, and so in proportion for officers:  yet the demand aforesaid was made without any offer whatsoever of providing the said payment according to treaty.

X. That the said Hastings did soon after, but upon what grounds does not appear by any Minute of Council, or from any correspondence contained in his Narrative, reduce the demand to fifteen hundred, and afterwards to one thousand:  by which he showed himself to be sensible of the extravagance of his first requisition.

XI.  That, in consequence of these requisitions, as he asserts in his Narrative aforesaid, the Rajah “did offer two hundred and fifty horse, but sent none.”  But the said Hastings doth not accompany his said Narrative with any voucher or document whatever; and therefore the account given by the Rajah, and delivered to the said Warren Hastings himself, inserted by the said Warren Hastings himself in his Narrative, and in no part thereof attempted to be impeached, is more worthy of credit:  that is to say,—­

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.