The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

fail therein, as he was supposed to be substantially invested with all the powers of
government.

LIX. That, instead of the said support or instruction, he, the said Hastings, did countenance,
or more probably cause or direct, a representation to be made to him by the acting minister
of the Nabob of Oude, complaining grievously of the proceedings of the Resident aforesaid,
as usurpations on the Nabob's authority and indignities on his person. And although he, the
said Hastings, did instruct the Resident, Bristow, to inform the said Hyder Beg Khân that he
would not receive from the Nabob, as his, letters directed by the spirit of opposition, but
should consider every such attempt as his, the minister's, as an insult on our government,
yet he did receive as his the Nabob's own letters, and as written from the impressions on his
own mind, and as the suggestions of his own judgment, letters to the same effect as those
written by the minister, although he had declared upon record that the said "Nabob was a
mere cipher in his, the said minister's, hands," and "that he had dared to use both the
Nabob's name, and even his seal, affixed to letters either directed to the Nabob or written as
from him without his knowledge," and although he did assert or record as aforesaid, that, in
a letter which he had lately received from the Nabob, the minister had the presumption to
make the Nabob declare that which was true to be false, and that "his making use of the
Nabob in such a manner did show how thin the veil was by which he covered his own acts,
and that such artifices would only tend to make them the more criminal from the falsehood
and duplicity with which they were associated."

LX. That the said Hastings did act upon the letters pretended to be written by the Nabob, as
well as on those actually written by the minister, without previously communicating the
matter of the said complaint to the said Resident, and did give credit to the same, and

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