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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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


As usual, the Court of Directors appear in their proper order in the
procession. After this third act of disobedience with regard to the
same person and the same office, and after calling the proceedings
unwarrantable, "_in order to vindicate and uphold their own authority,
and thinking it a duty incumbent on them to maintain the authority of
the Court of Directors_," they again order Mr. Bristow to be reinstated,
and Mr. Middleton to be recalled: in this circle the whole moves with
great regularity.
The extraordinary operations of Mr. Hastings, that soon after followed
in every department which was the subject of all these acts of
disobedience, have made them appear in a light peculiarly unpropitious
to his cause. It is but too probable, from his own accounts, that he
meditated some strong measure, both at Benares and at Oude, at the very
time of the removal of those officers. He declares he knew that his
conduct in those places was such as to lie very open to malicious
representations; he must have been sensible that he was open to such
representations from the beginning; he was therefore impelled by every
motive which ought to influence a man of sense by no means to disturb
the order which he had last established.


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