The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

judges who were sent to India by Parliament to protect the natives from oppression.

Your Lordships will observe that this new sale of the office of ministers succeeded to the
sale of that of nabobs. All these varied and successive sales shook the country to pieces. As
if those miserable exhausted provinces were to be cured of inanition by phlebotomy, while
Cossim Ali was racking it above, the Company were drawing off all its nutriment below. A
dreadful, an extensive, and most chargeable war followed. Half the northern force of India
poured down like a torrent on Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our
resources. The war was the fruit of Mr. Hastings's cabals. Its termination, as usual, was the
result of the military merit and the fortune of this nation. Cossim Ali, after having been
defeated toy the military genius and spirit of England, (for the Adamses, Monroes, and
others of that period, I believe, showed as much skill and bravery as any of their
predecessors,) in his flight swept away above three millions in money, jewels, or effects,
out of a country which he had plundered and exhausted by his unheard-of exactions.
However, he fought his way like a retiring lion, turning his face to his pursuers. He still
fought along his frontier. His ability and his money drew to his cause the Subahdar of
Oude, the famous Sujah ul Dowlah. The Mogul entered into these wars, and penetrated into
the lower provinces on one side, whilst Bulwant Sing, the Rajah of Benares, entered them
on another. After various changes of party and changes of fortune, the loss which began in
the treachery of the civil service was, as I have before remarked, redeemed by military
merit. Many examples of the same sort have since been seen.

Whilst these things were transacted in India, the Court of Directors in London, hearing of
so many changes, hearing of such an incredible mass of perfidy and venality, knowing that
there was a general market made of the country and of the Company, that the flame of war

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