The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

dependence,) "the slightest shock from a foreign hand, or even an accidental internal
commotion, might have thrown the whole into confusion, and produced the most fatal
consequences." In this perilous situation he made the above-recited sacrifices to the
ambition of the Mahrattas, and did all along so actively countenance and forward their
proceedings, and with so full a sense of their effect, that in his minute of the 24th
December, 1784, he has declared, "that in the countries which border on the dominions of
the Nabob Vizier, or on that quarter of our own, in effect there is no other power." And he
did further admit, that the presence of the Mahratta chief aforesaid, so near the borders of
the Nabob's dominions, was no cause of suspicion; for "that it is the effect of his own
solicitation, and is so far the effect of an act of that government."

XXI. That, in further pursuit of the same pernicious design, he, the said Warren Hastings,
did enter into an agreement to withdraw a very great body of the British troops out of the
Nabob's dominions,—asserting, however truly, yet in direct contradiction to his own
declarations, that "this government" (meaning the British government) "has not any right to
force defence with its maintenance upon him" (the Nabob); and he did thus not only
avowedly aggrandize the Mahratta state, and weaken the defence upon the frontier, but did
as avowedly detain their captain-general in force on that very frontier, notwithstanding he
was well apprised that they had designs against those dependent territories of Oude, which
they had with great difficulty been persuaded, even in appearance, to include in the treaty of
peace,—and that they have never renounced their claims upon certain large and valuable
portions of them, and have shown evident signs of their intentions, on the first opportunity,
of asserting and enforcing them. And, finally, the said Warren Hastings, in contradiction to
sundry declarations of his own concerning the necessity of curbing the power of the
Mahrattas, and to the principle of sundry measures undertaken by himself professedly for

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