The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

by a collusive clan abroad, or by the Directors at home, who had required the parties to
inquire of themselves, and to take the testimony of the judges at second-hand, as to the
conscience of the party accused, respecting acts which neither they nor any man living can
look upon but with horror.

I have troubled your Lordships with the story of the Three Seals, as a specimen of the then
state of the service, and the politics of the servants, civil and military, in the horrid abuses
which then prevailed, and which render at length the most rigorous reformation necessary. I
close this episode to resume the proceedings at the second revolution.

This affair of the three seals was, we have seen, to quiet the fears of the Nabob. His fears it
was indeed necessary to quiet; for your Lordships will see that the man whose fears were to
be set asleep by Major Calliaud's offering him, in a scheme for murdering his sovereign, an
odd sort of opiate, made up of blood and treason, was now in a fair way of being murdered
himself by the machinations of him whose seal was set to his murderous security of peace,
and by those his accomplices, Holwell and Hastings: at least they resolved to put him in a
situation in which his murder was in a manner inevitable, as you will see in the sequel of
the transaction. Now the plan proceeds. The parties continued in the camp; but there was
another remora. To remove a nabob and to create a revolution is not easy: houses are strong
who have sons grown up with vigor and fitness for the command of armies. They are not
easily overturned by removing the principal, unless the secondary is got rid of: and if this
remora could be removed, everything was going on in a happy way in the business. This
plan, which now (that is, about the month of July) began to get into great ripeness and
forwardness, Mr. Holwell urged forward, Mr. Vansittart being hourly expected.

I do not know whether I am going to state a thing, though it is upon the records, which will

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