The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

into a most violent fury at this treaty; and as the treaty was made without the concurrence of
the rest of the Council, the Company's servants grew divided: one part were the advocates
of the treaty, the other of the trade. The latter were universally of opinion that the treaty was
bought for a great sum of money. The evidence we have on our records of the sums of
money that are stated to have been paid on this occasion has never been investigated to the
bottom; but we have it on record, that a great sum (70,000l.) was paid to persons concerned
in that negotiation. The rest were exceedingly wroth to see themselves not profiting by the
negotiation, and losing the trade, or likely to be excluded from it; and they were the more
so, because, as we have it upon our journals, during all that time the trade of the negotiators
was not proscribed, but a purwannah was issued by Cossim Ali Khân, that the trade of his
friends Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Hastings should not be subject to the general regulations.
This filled the whole settlement with ill blood; but in the regulation itself (I put the motive
and the secret history out of the case) undoubtedly Mr. Hastings and Mr. Vansittart were on
the right side. They had shown to a demonstration the mischief of this trade. However, as
the other party were strong, and did not readily let go their hold of this great advantage,
first, dissensions, murmurs, various kinds of complaints, and ill blood arose. Cossim Ali
was driven to the wall; and having at the same time made what he thought good
preparations, a war broke out at last. And how did it break out? This Cossim Ali Khân
signalized his first acts of hostility by an atrocity committed against the faith of treaties,
against the rules of war, against every principle of honor. This intended murderer of his
father-in-law, whom Mr. Hastings had assisted to raise to the throne of Bengal, well
knowing his character and his disposition, and well knowing what such a man was capable
of doing,—this man massacred the English wherever he met them. There were two
hundred, or thereabouts, of the Company's servants, or their dependants, slaughtered at
Patna with every circumstance of the most abominable cruelty. Their limbs were cut to

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