The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

by the Governor and Council, all the inquiries pointed out to them by the Company's
instructions might stop or be defeated. That no valid reason was or could be assigned why
the said Phousdar should not be examined on oath; that the charge was not against himself;
and that, if any questions had been put to him, tending to make him accuse himself, he
might have declined to answer them. That, if he could have safely sworn to the innocence
of the said Warren Hastings, from whom he received his employment, he was bound in
gratitude as well as justice to the said Warren Hastings to have consented to be examined
on oath; that, not having done so, and having been supported and abetted in his refusal by
the said Warren Hastings himself, whose character and honor, were immediately at stake,
the whole of the evidence for the truth of the charge remains unanswered, and in full force
against the said Warren Hastings, who on this occasion recurred to the declaration he had
before made to the Directors, viz., "that he would most fully and liberally explain every
circumstance of his conduct," but has never since that time given the Directors any
explanation whatsoever of his said conduct. And finally, that, when the Court of Directors,
in January, 1776, referred the question (concerning the legality of the power assumed and
repeatedly exercised by the said Warren Hastings, of dissolving the Council at his pleasure)
to the late Charles Sayer, then standing counsel of the East India Company, the said Charles
Sayer declared his opinion in favor of the power, but concerning the use and exercise of it
in the cases stated did declare his opinion in the following words: "I believe he, Warren
Hastings, is the first governor that ever dissolved a council inquiring into his behavior,
when he was innocent." Before he could summon three councils, and dissolve them, he had
time fully to consider what would be the result of such conduct, to convince everybody
beyond a doubt of his conscious guilt.—That, by a resolution of a majority of the Council,
constituting a lawful act of the Governor-General and Council, the said Khân Jehan Khân

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