The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

that purpose, and to the sense of the House of Commons, expressed in their resolution of
28th May, 1782, against any measures that tended to unite the dangerous powers of the
Mahratta empire under one active command, has endeavored to persuade the Company,
that, "while Sindia lives, every accession of territory obtained by him will be an advantage
to this [the British] government"; which if it was true as respecting the personal dispositions
of Sindia, which there is no reason to believe, yet it was highly criminal to establish a
power in the Mahrattas which must survive the man in confidence of whose personal
dispositions a power more than personal was given, and which may hereafter fall into hands
disposed to make a more hostile use of it.

XXII. That, in consequence of all the before-recited intrigues, the Mogul emperor being in
the hands of the Mahrattas, he, the said Mogul, has been obliged to declare the head of the
Mahratta state to be vicegerent of the Mogul empire, an authority which supersedes that of
Vizier, and has thereby consolidated in the Mahratta state all the powers acknowledged to
be of legal authority in India; in consequence of which, they have acquired, and have
actually already attempted to use, the said claims of general superiority against the
Company itself,—the Mahrattas claiming a right in themselves to a fourth part of the
revenues of all the provinces in the Company's possession, and claiming, in right of the
Mogul, the tribute due to him: by which actings and doings the said Hastings has to the best
of his power brought the British provinces in India into a dependence on the Mahratta state:
and in order to add to the aforesaid enormous claims a proportioned force, he did never
cease, during his stay in India, to contrive the means for its increase; for it is of public
notoriety, that one great object of the Mahratta policy is to unite under their dominion the
nation or religious sect of the Seiks, who, being a people abounding with soldiers, and
possessing large territories, would extend the Mahratta power over the whole of the vast

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