The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

XIX. That the said Hastings had declared, in his said letter of the 16th June, 1784, that the
Mogul's right to our assistance had been constantly acknowledged, that the Mogul had been
oppressed by the lesser Mahomedan princes in the character of his officers of state and
military commanders, and he did plainly intimate that the said Mogul ought to be relieved
from that servitude. And he did, in giving an account to the Court of Directors of the
conferences aforesaid, assure them that "his inclinations [the inclinations of the Mahratta
chief aforesaid] were not very dissimilar from his own"; and that "neither in this nor in any
other instance would he suffer himself to be drawn into measures which shall tend to
weaken their connection, nor in this even to oppose his [the said chiefs] inclinations": the
said Hastings well knowing, as in his letter to Colonel Muir of the —— he has confessed,
that the inclinations of the said Sindia were to seize on the Mogul's territories, and that he
himself did secretly concur therein, though he did not formally insert his concurrence in the
treaty with the said Mahratta chief. It is plain, therefore, that he did all along concur with
the Mahrattas in their designs against the said king and his ministers, under the treacherous
pretence of supporting the authority of the former against the latter, and did contrive and
effect the ruin of them all. For, first, he did give evil and fraudulent counsel to the heir-
apparent of the Mogul "to make advances to the Mahrattas," when he well knew, and had
expressly concurred in, the designs of that state against his father's, the Mogul's, dominions;
and further to engage and entrap the said prince, did assert that "our government" (meaning
the British government) "was in intimate and sworn connection with Mahdajee Sindia,"
when no alliance, offensive or defensive, appears to exist between the said Sindia and the
East India Company, nor can exist, otherwise than in virtue of some secret agreement
between him, the said Sindia, and Warren Hastings, entered into by the latter without the
knowledge of his colleagues and the government, and never communicated to the Court of
Directors. And, secondly, he did, in order to further the designs of the Mahrattas, contrive

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