The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

than advantage, as it must necessarily occasion considerable expense, must require troops
for its defence, and might probably in the end lead, as Sindia apprehended, to a renewal of
war."

That the said Warren Hastings, having in this manner put an end to a war commenced by
him without provocation, and continued by him without necessity, and having for that
purpose made so many sacrifices to the Mahrattas in points of essential interest to the India
Company, did consent and agree to other articles utterly dishonorable to the British name
and character, having sacrificed or abandoned every one of the native princes who by his
solicitations and promises had been engaged to take part with us in the war,—and that he
did so without necessity: since it appears that Sindia, the Mahratta chief who concluded the
treaty, in every part of his conduct manifested a hearty desire of establishing a peace with
us; and that this was the disposition of all the parties in the Mahratta confederacy, who were
only kept together by a general dread of their common enemy, the English, and who only
waited for a cessation of hostilities with us to return to their habitual and permanent enmity
against each other. That the Governor-General and Council, in their letter of 31st August,
1781, made the following declaration to the Court of Directors. "The Mahrattas have
demanded the sacrifice of the person of Ragonaut Row, the surrender of the fort and
territories of Ahmedabad, and of the fortress of Gualior, which are not ours to give, and
which we could not wrest from the proprietors without the greatest violation of public faith.
No state of affairs, in our opinions, could warrant our acquiescence to such requisition; and
we are morally certain, that, had we yielded to them, such a consciousness of the state of
our affairs would have been implied as would have produced an effect the very reverse
from that for which it was intended, by raising the presumption of the enemy to exact yet
more ignominious terms, or perhaps their refusal to accept of any; nor, in our opinion,

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