The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

cogent arguments of policy and prudence in favor of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, did
conclude by "wishing for nothing so much as for the adoption of some measure that might
strike all the powers of the East with admiration of our justice, in contrast to the conduct of
the Vizier."

VIII. That, in answer to such laudable wish of the said commander-in-chief, the President,
Warren Hastings, preferring his own prohibited plans of extended dominion to the mild,
equitable, and wise policy inculcated in the standing orders of his superiors, and now
enforced by the recommendation of the commander-in-chief, did instruct and "desire" him,
the said commander-in-chief, "instead of soliciting the Vizier to relinquish his conquest to
Fyzoola Khân, to discourage it as much as was in his power"; although the said Hastings
did not once express, or even intimate, any doubt whatever of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân's
innocence as to the origin of the war, or of his hereditary right to the territories which he
claimed, but to the said pleas of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, as well as to the arguments both
of policy and justice advanced by the commander-in-chief, he, the said Hastings, did solely
oppose certain speculative objects of imagined expediency, summing up his decided
rejection of the proposals made by the Nabob Fyzoola Khân in the following remarkable
words. "With respect to Fyzoola Khân, he appears not to merit our consideration. The petty
sovereign of a country estimated at six or eight lacs ought not for a moment to prove an
impediment to any of our measures, or to affect the consistency of our conduct."

IX. That, in the aforesaid violent and arbitrary position, the said Warren Hastings did avow
it to be a public principle of his government, that no right, however manifest, and no
innocence, however unimpeached, could entitle the weak to our protection against others,
or save them from our own active endeavors for their oppression, and even extirpation,

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