The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

thought fit to recall the Company's Resident, appointed to that office by the Court of
Directors, and to suspend his office, did, notwithstanding, of his own choice and selection,
and on his own mere authority, take with him in his progress a large retinue, "and a
numerous society of English gentlemen to compose his family," which he represents as
necessary, although, in a letter from that very place to which he took that very numerous
society, he informs the Court of Directors "that his own consequence and that of the nation
he represents are independent of show." And after his arrival there, he, the said Warren
Hastings, did write from Lucknow, the capital of that province, a letter, dated the 30th of
April, 1784, to the Court of Directors, in which are several particulars to the following
purport or tenor, and which he points out to the Directors "to be circumstances of no trivial
information," namely,—"that he had found that the lands in that province, as well as in
some parts more immediately under the Company, have suffered in a grievous manner,
being completely exhausted of their natural moisture by the total failure of one entire
season of the periodical rains," with a few exceptions, which were produced only "by the
uncommon labor of the husbandman." And in a letter to Edward Wheler, Esquire, a
member of the Council-General, from Benares, the 20th of September, 1784, he says, that
"the public revenues had declined with the failure of the cultivation in three successive
years; and all the stores of grain which the providence of the husbandmen, (as he was
informed is their custom,) in defiance of the vigilance of the aumils [collectors],
clandestinely reserved for their own use, were of course exhausted, in which state no person
would accept of the charge of the collections on a positive engagement; nor did the rain fall
till the 10th of July." And in another letter, dated from Benares, the 1st of October
following, he repeats the same accounts, and that the "country could not bear further
additions of expense: that it had no inlets of trade to supply the issues that were made from
it" (the exceptions stated there being inconsiderable); "therefore every rupee which is drawn

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