The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

authority, which was specially provided for in the regulations, as no expense could be
incurred but by his own personal warrant under his sign manual; nor doth there appear
therein anything but what is of absolute necessity to prevent embezzlement to his prejudice.
And the said Hastings hath declared, in the fifth article of the instructions to the said
Resident, that no administration can be properly conducted without regular offices; and that
in the whole province of Oude "there was not one, the whole being engrossed by the
minister": of which minister, in the fourteenth article, he declares his suspicion that the
Nabob did not receive the whole and punctual payment of the sum assigned for the purpose
of the household, but that some part had been by him withheld from the Nabob; and that,
from private information he had lately received, he had reason to believe that this was
actually the case. And the said Hastings well knew that the Nabob's household had been ill
conducted, that the allowances of his servants had not been paid, that his distress was
scandalous, and that his nearest relations were in a famishing condition; and the said
Hastings did also well know that the household of the Nabob was provided for or neglected,
not at his own discretion, but at that of the said Hyder Beg Khân; and he did, in the
fourteenth article aforesaid, instruct the Resident, Bristow, to show every ostensible and
external mark of respect to the Nabob, in order to induce him to become himself the mover
of every act necessary for the advancing of his own interests and the discharge of his debts
to the Company,—declaring, "that they never could be effected while the minister retained
that ascendency over him which he at present holds by the means of a nearer and more
private intercourse, and by affecting to be the mediator of his rights against the claims of
our government." And the said Hastings did further well know that there was no way of
ascertaining the payment of the assignments for the Nabob's household, either for the
general purposes of their destination or to the particular objects to which they ought to be

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