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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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

And the
said Warren Hastings, by presuming to employ the said chief-justice, a
person particularly unfit for an agent, in the transaction of affairs
_prima facie_ at least unjust, violent, and oppressive, contrary to
public faith, and to the sentiments and law of Nature, and which he, the
said Hastings, was sensible "could not fail to draw obloquy on himself
by his participation," did disgrace the king's commission, and render
odious to the natives of Hindostan the justice of the crown of Great
Britain.
XIX. That, although the said Warren Hastings was from the beginning duly
informed of the violence offered to the personal inclinations of the
Nabob, and the "apparent assumption of the reins of his government," for
the purposes aforesaid, yet more than two years after he did write to
his private agent, Major Palmer, that is to say, in his letter of the
6th of May, 1783, "that it has been a matter of _equal surprise and
concern_ to him to learn from the letters of the Resident that the Nabob
Vizier was with difficulty and almost unconquerable reluctance induced
to give his consent to the attachment of the treasure deposited by his
father under the charge of the Begum, his mother, and to the resumption
of her jaghire, and the other jaghires of the individuals of his
family": which pretence of ignorance of the Nabob's inclinations is
fictitious and groundless.


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