The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

both of injustice and impolicy, he, the said Hastings, doth urge in his defence, that he did at
the same time insert words "reserving the execution of the said agreement to an indefinite
term," with an intent that it might in truth be never executed at all,—but that "our
government might always interpose," without right, by means of an indirect and undue
influence, to prevent the ill effects following from a collusive surrender of a clear and
authorized right to interpose; and the said Hastings doth thereby declare himself to have
introduced a principle of duplicity, deceit, and double-dealing into a public engagement,
which ought in its essence to be clear, open, and explicit; that such a declaration tends to
shake and overthrow the confidence of all in the most solemn instruments of any person so
declaring, and is therefore an high crime and misdemeanor in the first executive member of
government, by whom all treaties and other engagements of the state are principally to be
conducted.

V. That, by the explanatory minute aforesaid, the said Warren Hastings doth further, in the
most direct manner, contradict his own assertions in the very letter which inclosed the said
minute to his colleagues; for that one of the articles to which he there gave "an instant and
unqualified assent, as no less to our interest than to the Vizier's" he doth here declare
unequivocally to be neither to our interests nor the Vizier's; and the "unqualified assent"
given to the said article is now so qualified as wholly to defeat itself. That by such
irreconcilable contradictions the said Hastings doth incur the suspicion of much criminal
misrepresentation in other like cases of unwitnessed conferences; and in the present
instance (as far as it extends) the said Hastings doth prove himself to have given an account
both of his actions and motives by his own confession untrue, for the purpose of deceiving
his employers, which is an high crime and misdemeanor in a servant of so great trust.

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