The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

succession to the rauje, as also the mode of accommodating the demand of chout, the
establishment of which was apparently the great aim of Moodajee's political manoeuvres,
while the Governor-General's wish to defeat it was avowedly more intent on the removal of
a nominal disgrace than on the anxiety or resolution to be freed from an expensive, if an
unavoidable incumbrance."

That, while the said Warren Hastings was endeavoring to persuade the Rajah of Berar to
engage with him in a scheme to place the said Rajah at the head of the Mahratta empire, the
Presidency of Bombay, by virtue of the powers specially vested in them for that purpose by
the said Hastings, did really engage with Ragonaut Row, the other competitor for the same
object, and sent a great part of their military force, established for the defence of Bombay,
on an expedition with Ragonaut Row, to invade the dominions of the Peshwa, and to take
Poonah, the capital thereof; that this army, being surrounded and overpowered by the
Mahrattas, was obliged to capitulate; and then, through the moderation of the Mahrattas,
was permitted to return quietly, but very disgracefully, to Bombay. That, supposing the said
Warren Hastings could have been justified in abandoning the project of reinstating
Ragonaut Row, which he at first authorized and promised to support, and in preferring a
scheme to place the Rajah of Berar at the head of the Mahratta empire, he was bound by his
duty, as well as injustice to the Presidency of Bombay, to give that Presidency timely notice
of such his intention, and to have restrained them positively from resuming their own
project; that, on the contrary, the said Warren Hastings did, on the 17th of August, 1778,
again authorize the said Presidency "to assist Ragoba with a military force to conduct him
to Poonah, and to establish him in the regency there," and, so far from communicating his
change of plan to Bombay, did keep it concealed from that Presidency, insomuch that, even
so late as the 19th of February, 1779, William Hornby, then Governor of Bombay, declared

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