The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

letters to all the provincial councils and military stations, directing them to publish the same
in general orders"; and they resolved, "that all military returns be made to the Governor-
General and Council in their military department, until a commander-in-chief shall be
appointed by the Company."

That on the day following, that is to say, on the 24th of June, the said Warren Hastings did
again omit to summon General Clavering to Council, and did again, together with Richard
Barwell, Esquire, who concurred therein, adhere to and confirm the said illegal resolutions
come to on the two former days, declaring "that they could not be retracted but by the
present authority of the law or by future orders from home," and aggravating the guilt of the
said unjustifiable acts by declaring, as the said Warren Hastings did, "that they were not the
precipitate effects of an instant and passionate impulse, but the fruits of long and most
temperate deliberations, of inevitable necessity, of the strictest sense of public duty, and of
a conviction equal in its impression on his mind to absolute certainty."

That the said Warren Hastings was the less excusable in this obstinate adherence to his
former unjust proceedings, as the said declarations were made in answer to a motion made
by Philip Francis, Esquire, for the reversal of the said proceedings, and to a minute
introducing the said motion, in which Mr. Francis set forth in a clear and forcible manner,
and in terms with which the Court of Directors have since declared their entire concurrence,
both the extreme danger and the illegality and invalidity of the said proceedings of Warren
Hastings and Richard Barwell, Esquire, concluding the said minute by the following
conciliatory declaration: "And that this salutary motion may not be impeded by any idea or
suspicion that General Clavering may do any act inconsistent with the acquiescence which
both he and I have avowed in the decision of the judges, I will undertake to answer for him

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