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).
Mr. Stables, not on the prayer or appeal of the sufferers, but upon the ill impression which the said Hastings’s own conduct, merely and solely on his own state of it, and on his own evidence in support of it, had made on the Court of Directors, who were his lawful masters, and not suitors in his court.  And his arrogating to himself and his colleagues to be a tribunal, and a tribunal not for the purpose of doing justice, but of refusing inquiry, was an high offence and misdemeanor (particularly as the due obedience to the Company’s orders was eluded on the insolent pretence “that the majesty of justice ought to be approached with solicitation, and that it would debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of redress”) in a Governor, whose business it is, even of himself, and unsolicited, not only to promise, but to afford, redress to all those who should suffer under the power of the Company, even if their ignorance, or want of protection, or the imbecility of their sex, or the fear of irritating persons in rank and station, should prevent them from seeking it by formal solicitation.

LXXX.  That the said Warren Hastings, at the time when he pretended ignorance of all solicitation for justice on the part of the women aforesaid, and on that pretence did refuse the inquiry moved by his colleague, Mr. Stables, had in all probability received from the Resident, Middleton, or, if he had made the slightest inquiry from the said Middleton, then at Calcutta, might immediately receive, an account that they did actually solicit the said Resident, through Major Gilpin, for redress against his, the said Hastings’s, calumnious accusation, and the false testimony by which it was supported, and did send the said complaint to the Resident, Middleton, by the said Gilpin, to be transmitted to him, the said Hastings, and the Council, so early as the 19th of October, 1782; and that she, the mother of the Nabob, did afterwards send the same to the Resident, Bristow, asserting their innocence, and accompanying the same with the copies of letters (the originals of which they asserted were in their hands) from the chief witnesses against them, Hannay and Gordon, which letters did directly overturn the charges or insinuations in the affidavits made by them, and that, instead of any accusation of an attempt upon them and their parties by the instigation of the mother of the Nabob, or by her ministers, they, the said Hannay and Gordon, did attribute their preservation to them and to their services, and did, with strong expressions of gratitude both to the mother of the Nabob and to her ministers, fully acknowledge the same:  which remonstrance of the mother of the Nabob, and the letters of the said Hannay and Gordon, are annexed to this charge; and the said Hastings is highly criminal for not having examined into the facts alleged in the said remonstrance.

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