The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

that in consequence of the said imputed evasion he indicated a disposition to attach such a
forfeiture as in justice could only have followed from a gross breach of treaty,—though the
said Hastings did not then pretend any actual infringement even of the least among the
conditions to which, in the name of the Company, he, the said Hastings, was the executive
guaranty.

III. That, however "the number of troops stipulated by treaty may have been understood," at
the period of the original demand, "to be five thousand horse," yet the said Warren
Hastings, at the time when he recorded the supposed evasion of Fyzoola Khân's answer to
the said demand, could not be unacquainted with the express words of the stipulation, as a
letter of the Vizier, inserted in the same Consultation, refers the Governor-General to
inclosed copies "of all engagements entered into by the late Vizier and by himself [the
reigning Vizier] with Fyzoola Khân," and that the treaty itself, therefore, was at the very
moment before the said Warren Hastings: which treaty (as the said Hastings observed with
respect to another treaty, in the case of another person) "most assuredly does not contain a
syllable to justify his conduct; but, by the unexampled latitude which he assumes in his
constructions, he may, if he pleases, extort this or any other meaning from any part of
it."[25]

IV. That the Vizier himself appears by no means to have been persuaded of his own right to
five thousand horse under the treaty,—since, in his correspondence on the subject, he, the
Vizier, nowhere mentions the treaty as the ground of his demand, except where he is
recapitulating to the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, the substance of his, the said
Hastings's, own letters; on the contrary, the Vizier hints his apprehensions lest Fyzoola
Khân should appeal to the treaty against the demand, as a breach thereof,—in which case,

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