The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

motives and objects of the said Hastings, whose real purpose, as it appeared soon after, was,
to make use of the superiority of the British power in India to carry on offensive wars, and
to pursue schemes of conquest, impolitic and unjust in their design, ill-concerted in the
execution, and which, as this House has resolved, have brought great calamities on India,
and enormous expenses on the East India Company.

That the said Warren Hastings, on the 22d of June, 1778, made the following declaration in
Council. "Much less can I agree, that, with such superior advantages as we possess over
every power which can oppose us, we should act merely on the defensive. On the contrary,
if it be really true that the British arms and influence have suffered so severe a check in the
Western world, it is more incumbent on those who are charged with the interests of Great
Britain in the East to exert themselves for the retrieval of the national loss. We have the
means in our power, and, if they are not frustrated by our own dissensions, I trust that the
event of this expedition will yield every advantage for the attainment of which it was
undertaken."

That, in pursuance of the principles avowed in the preceding declaration, the said Warren
Hastings, on the 9th of July, 1778, did propose and carry it in Council, that an embassy
should be sent from Bengal to Moodajee Boosla, the Rajah of Berar,—falsely asserting that
the said Rajah "was, by interest and inclination, likely to join in an alliance with the British
government, and suggesting that two advantages might be offered to him as the
inducements to it: first, the support of his pretensions to the sovereign power" (viz., of the
Mahratta empire); "second, the recovery of the captures made on his dominions by Nizam
Ali." That the said Hastings, having already given full authority to the Presidency of
Bombay to engage the British faith to Ragonaut Row to support him in his pretensions to

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