The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

them by a sum privately received, and appropriated to your service in the same manner with
other sums received on account of the Honorable Company, and already carried to their
account." That at the time of writing this letter the said Warren Hastings had been in
possession of the government of Fort William about twelve years, with a clear salary, or
avowed emoluments, at no time less than twenty-five thousand pounds sterling a year,
exclusive of which all the principal expenses of his residence were paid for by the
Company. That, if the services mentioned by him were required to enable him to execute
the duties of his station, he ought not to have omitted to enter them in his public accounts at
the times when the expenses were incurred. That, if it was true, as he affirms, that, when he
first engaged in these expenses, he had no intention to carry them to the account of the
Company, there was no subsequent change in his situation which could justify his departing
from that intention. That, if his own fortune in the year 1784 was unequal to so heavy a
charge, the state of his fortune at any earlier period must have been still more unequal to so
heavy a charge. That the fact so asserted by the said Warren Hastings leads directly to an
inference palpably false and absurd, viz., that, the longer a Governor-General holds that
lucrative office, the poorer he must become. That neither would the assertion, if it were
true, nor the inference, if it were admitted, justify the conduct avowed by the said Warren
Hastings in resolving to reimburse himself out of the Company's property without their
consent or knowledge.—That the account transmitted in this letter is styled by himself an
aggregate of a contingent account of twelve years; that all contingent accounts should be
submitted to those who ought to have an official control over them, at annual or other
shorter periods, in order that the expense already incurred may be checked and examined,
and similar expenses, if disapproved of, may be prohibited in time; that, after a very long
period is elapsed, all check and control over such expenses is impracticable, and, if it were

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