The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

said Resident Bristow, and to throw upon him the responsibility of the conduct of the said
Almas Ali Khân, if he should continue at large contrary to his orders, or to subject him, the
said Resident, to the shame and scandal of apprehending and putting him to death by means
which, in the circumstances, must necessarily be such as would be construed into treachery,
and he, the said Almas Ali Khân, being from nature and situation suspicious and watchful,
and being at that very time in the collection, or farmer of the most important part of the
revenues, with an extensive jurisdiction annexed, and at the head of fourteen thousand of
his own troops, and having been recently accepted by the Resident Middleton as security
for large sums of money advanced by the bankers of Benares to the use of the East India
Company; which orders (if the said Resident would or could have executed them) must
have raised an universal alarm among all the considerable men of the country concerned in
the government, and would have been a means of subverting the public credit of the
Company, by the murder of a person engaged for very great sums of money that had been
advanced for their use. And the said instruction is as followeth.

"If any engagement shall actually subsist between them at the time you have charge of the
Residency, it must, however exceptionable, be faithfully observed; but if he has been guilty
of any criminal offence to the Nabob, his master, for which no immunity is provided in the
engagement, or he shall break any one of the conditions of it, I do most strictly enjoin you,
and it must be your special care to endeavor, either by force or surprise, to secure his
person and bring him to justice. By bringing him to justice I mean, that you urge the Nabob,
on due conviction, to punish him with death, as a necessary example to deter others from
the commission of the like crimes; nor must you desist till this is effected. I cannot
prescribe the means; but to guard myself against the obloquy to which I may be exposed by
a forced misconstruction of this order by those who may hereafter be employed in searching

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