The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

Hastings, did well know that he himself did consider as a crime, and did make it an article
in a formal accusation against the Resident Middleton, that he did not inform him, the said
Hastings, of the supposed treasons of Almas Ali Khân, and of his design to abandon the
country, when he himself did most laboriously urge the charges against him, and when no
attempt appears to have been made against the life of the said Almas Ali Khân except by
the said Warren Hastings himself.

LXXV. That the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling, or thereabouts, publicly taken by
the said Warren Hastings, as an advance for the use of the Company, if given as a
consideration or fine, on account of the renewal for a long term of civil authority and
military command, and the collection of the revenues to an immense amount, the same
being at least eight hundred thousand pounds sterling yearly, was so totally inadequate to
the interest granted, that it may justly be presumed it was not on that, or on any public
ground or condition, that the said Hastings did delegate, out of all reach of resumption or
correction, a lease of boundless power and enormous profit, for so long a term, to a known
oppressor of the country.

LXXVI. That Warren Hastings, being at Lucknow in consequence of his deputation
aforesaid, did, in his letter from that city, dated 30th of April, 1784, recommend to the
Court of Directors, "as his last and ultimate hope, that their wisdom would put a final
period to the ruinous and disreputable system of interference, whether avowed or secret, in
the affairs of the Nabob of Oude, and withdraw forever the influence by which it is
maintained," and that they ought to confine their views to the sole maintenance of the old
brigade stationed in Oude by virtue of the first treaty with the reigning Nabob, expressing
himself in the following words to the Court of Directors. "If you transgress that line, you

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