The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

thereby the general claims and pretensions of the enemy. That, while Dalhousie
Watherston, Esquire, was treating at Poonah, and David Anderson, Esquire, in Sindia's
camp, with separate powers applied to the same object, the minister at Poonah informed the
said Watherston, that he had received proposals for peace from the Nabob of Arcot with the
approbation of Sir Eyre Coote; that he had returned other proposals to the said Nabob of
Arcot, who had assured him, the minister, that those proposals would be acceded to, and
that Mr. Macpherson would set out for Bengal, after which orders should be immediately
dispatched from the Honorable the Governor-General and Council to the effect he wished;
that the said Nabob "had promised to obtain and forward to him the expected orders from
Bengal in fifteen days, and that he was therefore every instant in expectation of their arrival,
—and observed, that, when General Goddard proposed to send a confidential person to
Poonah, he conceived that those orders must have actually reached him": that therefore the
treaty formally concluded by David Anderson was in effect and substance the same with
that offered and in reality concluded by the Nabob of Arcot, with the exception only of
Salsette, which the Nabob of Arcot had agreed to restore to the Mahrattas.

That the intention of the said Warren Hastings, in pressing for a peace with the Mahrattas
on terms so dishonorable and by measures so rash and ill-concerted, was not to restore and
establish a general peace throughout India, but to engage the India Company in a new war
against Hyder Ali, and to make the Mahrattas parties therein. That the eagerness and
passion with which the said Hastings pursued this object laid him open to the Mahrattas,
who depended thereon for obtaining whatever they should demand from us. That, in order
to carry the point of an offensive alliance against Hyder Ali, the said Hastings exposed the
negotiation for peace with the Mahrattas to many difficulties and delays. That the Mahrattas
were bound by a clear and recent engagement, which Hyder had never violated in any

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