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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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

"
XXI. That the said Hastings, after he had given the license aforesaid,
and that in consequence thereof the booty found in the castle, to the
amount of 23,27,813 current rupees, was distributed among the soldiers
employed in its reduction, the said Hastings did retract his declaration
of right, and his permission to the soldiers to appropriate to
themselves the plunder, and endeavored, by various devices and
artifices, to explain the same away, and to recover the spoil aforesaid
for the use of the Company; and wholly failing in his attempts to resume
by a breach of faith with the soldiers what he had unlawfully disposed
of by a breach of duty to his constituents, he attempted to obtain the
same as a loan, in which attempt he also failed; and the aforesaid money
being the only part of the treasures belonging to the Rajah, or any of
his family, that had been found, he was altogether frustrated in the
acquisition of every part of that dishonorable object which alone he
pretended to, and pursued through a long series of acts of injustice,
inhumanity, oppression, violence, and bloodshed, at the hazard of his
person and reputation, and, in his own opinion, at the risk of the total
subversion of the British empire.


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