The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

approaching campaign. The business soon ended with regard to the campaign; but the
proposal of the morning to Major Calliaud, as might be expected to happen, was in effect
renewed. Indeed, the form was a little different; but the substantial part remained the same.
Your Lordships will see what these alterations were.

In the evening scene the persons were more numerous. On the part of the Company, Major
Calliaud, Mr. Lushington, Mr. Knox, and the ambassador at the Nabob's court, Mr. Warren
Hastings. On the part of the Moorish government, the Nabob himself, his son Meeran, a
Persian secretary, and the Nabob's head spy, an officer well known in that part of the world,
and of some rank. These were the persons of the drama in the evening scene. The Nabob
and his son did not wait for the Prince's committing himself to their faith, which, it seems,
Major Calliaud did not think likely to happen; so that one act of treachery is saved: but
another opened of as extraordinary a nature. Intent and eager on the execution, and the more
certain, of their design, they accepted the plan of a wicked wretch, principal servant of the
then prime-minister to the Mogul, or themselves suggested it to him. A person called
Conery, dewan or principal steward to Camgar Khân, a great chief in the service of the
Shahzada, or Prince, (now the Great Mogul, the sovereign under whom the Company holds
their charter,) had, it seems, made a proposal to the Nabob, that, if a considerable territory
then held by his master was assured to him, and a reward of a lac of rupees (ten or twelve
thousand, pounds) secured to him, he would for that consideration deliver the Prince, the
eldest son of the Mogul, alive into the hands of the Nabob; or if that could not be effected,
he engaged to murder him for the same reward. But as the assassin could not rely on the
Nabob and his son for his reward for this meritorious action, and thought better of English
honor and fidelity in such delicate cases, he required that Major Calliaud should set his seal
to the agreement. This proposition was made to an English commander: what discourse

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