The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

pieces. The tyrant whom Mr. Hastings set up cut and hacked the limbs of British subjects in
the most cruel and perfidious manner, threw them into wells, and polluted the waters of the
country with British blood. Immediately war is declared against him in form. That war sets
the whole country in a blaze; and then other parties begin to appear upon the scene, whose
transactions you will find yourselves deeply concerned in hereafter.

As soon as war was declared against Cossim, it was necessary to resolve to put up another
Nabob, and to have another revolution: and where do they resort, but to the man whom, for
his alleged tyranny, for his incapacity, for the numberless iniquities he was said to have
committed, and for his total unfitness and disinclination to all the duties of government,
they had dethroned? This very man they take up again, to place on the throne from which
they had about two years before removed him, and for the effecting of which they had
committed so many iniquities. Even this revolution was not made without being paid for.
According to the usual order of procession, in which the youngest walk first, first comes the
Company; and the Company had secured to it in perpetuity those provinces which Cossim
Ali Khân had ceded, as it was thought, rather in the way of mortgage than anything else.
Then, under the name of compensation for sufferings to the people concerned in the trade,
and in the name of donation to an army and a navy which had little to do in this affair, they
tax him—what sum do you think? They tax that empty and undone treasury of that
miserable and undone country 500,000l. for a private emolument to themselves,—for the
compensation for this iniquitous trade,—for the compensation for abuses of which he was
neither the author nor the abettor, they tax this miserable prince 500,000l. That sum was
given to individuals. Now comes the Company at home, which, on hearing this news, was
all inflamed. The Directors were on fire. They were shocked at it, and particularly at this
donation to the army and navy. They resolved they would give it no countenance and

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