The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

correspondence with the different princes in India, whatever may commit, or be strained
into an interpretation of committing the Company, either as to their army or treasure,"—
observing, "that the Company's orders are positive against their interference in the objects
of dispute between the country powers."

XII. That, in order to subvert the plain and natural interpretation given by the Council to the
orders of the Court of Directors, and to justify his dangerous intrigues, the said Warren
Hastings, in his letter of the 16th June, 1784, to the said Court, did, in a most insolent and
contemptuous manner, endeavor to persuade them of their ignorance of the true sense of
their own orders, and to limit their prohibition of interference with the disputes of the
country powers to such country powers as are permanent,—expressing himself as follows:
"The faction which now surrounds the throne [the Mogul's throne] is widely different from
the idea which your commands are intended to convey by the expressions to which you
have generally applied them, of country powers, to which that of permanency is a necessary
adjunct, and which may be more properly compared to a splendid bubble, which the
slightest breath of opposition may dissipate with every trace of its existence." By which
construction the said Hastings did endeavor to persuade the Court of Directors that they
meant to confine their prohibition of sinister intrigues to those powers only who could not
be easily hurt by them, and whose strength was such that their resentment of such
clandestine interference was to be dreaded; but that, where the powers were weak and
fragile, such intrigues might be allowed.

XIII. That the said Hastings, further to persuade the Court of Directors to involve
themselves in the affairs of the Mogul, and to reconcile this measure with his former
conduct and declared opinions, did write to them to the following effect: That "at that

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