The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

the Company's authority and influence to the Nabob, did write, "that the Nabob, though
most gentle in his manners, and endued with an understanding much above the common
level, has been unfortunately bred up in habits that draw his attention too much from his
own affairs, and often subject him to the guidance of insidious and unworthy confidants";
which, though more decently expressed with regard to the Nabob than in his former
minutes, substantially agrees with them. And the said Warren Hastings did inform the Court
of Directors, after he had solemnly covenanted to withdraw all the Company's influence on
the assurances and promises of a person so by himself described, that, for reasons grounded
on his knowledge of the imbecility of the character of the Nabob, he waited in a frontier
town, "that he might be at hand to counteract any attempt to defeat the effect of his
proceedings at Lucknow"; and in his letter to Mr. Wheler from the same place he did write
in the following words: "I am still near enough to attend to the first effects of the execution,
and to interfere with my influence for the removal of any obstructions to which they are or
may be liable." He therefore found that there was none or but an insufficient security to the
effect of his treaty, but in his own direct personal violation of it. What otherwise was
wanting in the security for the Nabob's engagements was to be supplied as follows: "The
most respectable persons of his family will be employed to counteract every other which
may tend to warp him from it; and I am sorry to say that such assistance was wanting." And
in another letter, "that he had equal ground to expect every degree of support which could
be given it by the first characters of his family, who are warmly and zealously interested in
it": the principal male character of the family, and of the most influence in that family,
being Salar Jung, uncle to the Nabob; and the first female characters of the family being the
mother and grandmother of the reigning sovereign: all of whom, male and female, he, the
said Warren Hastings, in sundry letters of his own, in the transmission of various official

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