The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

recorded proceedings of the Governor-General and Council of Fort William, that sundry
charges have been brought against the said Warren Hastings for gifts or presents corruptly
taken by him before the promulgation of the act of 1773 in India, and that these charges
were produced at the Council Board in the presence of the said Warren Hastings. That, in
March, 1775, the late Rajah Nundcomar, a native Hindoo, of the highest caste in his
religion, and of the highest rank in society, by the offices which he had held under the
country government, did lay before the Council an account of various sums of money paid
by him to the said Warren Hastings, amounting to forty thousand pounds and upwards, for
offices and employments corruptly disposed of by the said Warren Hastings, and did offer
and engage to prove and establish the same by sufficient evidence. That this account is
stated with a minute particularity and precision; the date of each payment, down to that of
small sums, is specified; the various coins in which such payments were severally made are
distinguished; and the different persons through whose hands the money passed into those
of the said Warren Hastings are named. That such particularity on the face of such a charge,
supposing it false, is favorable to the party wrongfully accused, and exposes the accuser to
an instant and easy detection: for, though, as the said Warren Hastings himself has observed
on another occasion, "papers may be forged, and evidences may appear in numbers to attest
them, yet it must always be an easy matter to detect the falsity of any forged paper
produced by examining the witnesses separately, and subjecting them to a subsequent cross-
examination, in which case, if false, they will not be able to persevere in one regular,
consistent story "; whereas, if no advantage be taken of such particularity in the charge to
detect the falsehood thereof, and if no attempt to disprove it, and no defence whatever be
made, a presumption justly and reasonably arises in favor of the truth of such charge. That
the said Warren Hastings, instead of offering anything in his defence, declared that he

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