The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

and rank, and by the mismanagement of the minister aforesaid, (appointed by the said
Warren Hastings,) for two years together no considerable part of the said inadequate
pension was paid; and not being able to maintain the attendants necessary for their
protection in a city in which all magistracy and justice was abolished, they were not only
liable to suffer the greatest extremities of penury, but their lives were exposed to the
attempts of assassins: the condition of one of the said princes, called the Nabob Bahadur,
being by himself strongly expressed in three letters to the said Resident Bristow,—the first
dated the 28th of December, 1783; the second, the 7th of January, 1784; and the third, the
15th of January, 1784,—which letters were duly transmitted, in the dispatch of the 29th of
the same month, to Warren Hastings, Esquire, and are as follow.

"Your own servant carried you the account of what he himself was an eye-witness to, after
the affair of last night. These are the particulars. About midnight my aunt received twelve
wounds from a ruffian, of which she died. I also received six successive stabs, which
alarmed the people of the house, who set up a shouting: whereupon the assassin run off.
Besides being without food or the means of providing any, this misfortune has befallen me.
I am desirous of sending the coffin to your door. It is your duty, both for the sake of God
and of Christ, to execute justice, and to inquire what harm I have done to the murderer
sufficient to deserve assassination, or even injury. You now stand in the place of his
Excellency the Vizier. I request you will do me justice. What more can I say?

"P.S. I am also desirous to show you my wounds."

From the same, 29th [7th?] January, 1784.

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