The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

may extend the distribution of patronage, and add to the fortunes of individuals, and to the
nominal riches of Great Britain; but your own interests will suffer by it; and the ruin of a
great and once flourishing nation will he recorded as the work of your administration, with
an everlasting reproach to the British name. To this reasoning I shall join the obligations of
justice and good faith, which cut off every pretext for your exercising any power or
authority in this country, as long as the sovereign of it fulfils the engagements he has
articled with you."

LXXVII. That it appears by the extraordinary recommendation aforesaid, asserted by him,
the said Hastings, to be enforced by the "obligations of justice and good faith," that the said
Warren Hastings, at the time of writing the said letter, had made an agreement to withdraw
the British interference, represented by him as a "ruinous and disreputable system," out of
the dominions of the Nabob of Oude. But the instrument itself, in which the said agreement
is made, (if at all existing,) does not appear; nor hath the said Hastings transmitted any
documents relative to the said treaty, which is a neglect highly criminal,—especially as he
has informed the Company, in his letter from Benares, "that he has promised the Nabob that
he will not abandon him to the chance of any other mode of relation, and most confidently
given him assurance of the ratification and confirmation of that which he [the said
Hastings] had established between his government and the Company": the said confident
assurance being given to an agreement never produced, and made without any sort of
authority from the Court of Directors,—an agreement precluding, on the one hand, the
operation of the discretion of his masters in the conduct of their affairs, or, on the other,
subjecting them to the hazard of an imputation on their faith, by breaking an engagement
confidently made in their name, though without their consent, by the first officer of their
government.

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