The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

the said Hastings was then in possession of a letter from the Court of Directors, dated the
4th of July, 1777, containing a positive order to the Presidency of Bombay in the following
words. "Though that treaty" (meaning the treaty of Poorunder) "is not, upon the whole, so
agreeable to us as we could wish, still we are resolved strictly to adhere to it on our parts.
You must therefore be particularly vigilant, while Ragoba is with you, to prevent him from
forming any plan against what is called the ministerial party at Poonah; and we hereby
positively order you not to engage with him in any scheme whatever in retrieving his
affairs, without the consent of the Governor-General and Council, or the Court of
Directors." That the said Ragoba neither did or could form any plan for his restoration but
what was and must be against the ministerial party at Poonah, who held and exercised the
regency of that state in the infancy of the Peshwa; and that, supposing him to have formed
any other scheme, in conjunction with Bombay, for retrieving his affairs, the said Hastings,
in giving a previous general authority to the Presidency of Bombay to engage with Ragoba
in any scheme for that purpose, without knowing what such scheme might be, and thereby
relinquishing and transferring to the discretion of a subordinate government that
superintendence and control over all measures tending to create or provoke a war which the
law had exclusively vested in the Governor-General and Council, was guilty of a high
crime and misdemeanor.

That the said Warren Hastings, having first declared that the measures taken by him were
for the support of the engagements made by the Presidency of Bombay in favor of Ragoba,
did afterwards, when it appeared that those negotiations were entirely laid aside, declare
that his apprehension of the consequence of a pretended intrigue between the Mahrattas and
the French was the sole motive of all the late measures taken for the support of the
Presidency of Bombay; but that neither of the preceding declarations contained the true

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