The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

He began with the natives who were in their interest, and cruelly put to death, under the eye
of Mr. Hastings and his clan, all those who, by their moneyed wealth or landed
consideration, could give any effect to their dispositions in favor of those ambitious
strangers. He removed from Moorshedabad higher up into the country, to Monghir, in order
to be more out of our view. He kept his word pretty well, but not altogether faithfully, with
the gentlemen; and though he had no money, for his treasury was empty, he gave
obligations which are known by the name of jeeps—(the Indian vocabulary will by degrees
become familiar to your Lordships, as we develop the modes and customs of the country).
As soon as he had done this, he began to rack and tear the provinces that were left to him, to
get as much from them as should compensate him for the revenues of those great provinces
he had lost; and accordingly he began a scene of extortion, horrible, nefarious, without
precedent or example, upon almost all the landed interest of that country. I mention this,
because he is one of those persons whose governments Mr. Hastings, in a paper called his
Defence, delivered in to the House of Commons, has produced as precedents and examples
which he has thought fit to follow, and which he thought would justify him in the conduct
he has pursued. This Cossim Ali Khân, after he had acted the tyrant on the landed interest,
fell upon the moneyed interest. In that country there was a person called Juggut Seit. There
were several of the family, who were bankers to such a magnitude as was never heard of in
the world. Receivers of the public revenue, their correspondence extended all over Asia;
and there are those who are of opinion that the house of Juggut Seit, including all its
branches, was not worth less than six or seven millions sterling. This house became the
prey of Cossim Ali Khân; but Mr. Holwell had predicted that it should be delivered over to
Satan to be buffeted (his own pious expression). He predicted the misfortunes that should
befall them; and we chose a Satan to buffet them, and who did so buffet them, by the
murder of the principal persons of the house, and by robbing them of great sums of their

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