The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

That, although the judges did decide that the office of Governor-General, held by the said
Warren Hastings, was not ipso facto and instanter vacated by the arrival of the said
dispatches and documents transmitted by the Court of Directors, and did consider the said
consequences of the resignation as awaiting some future act or event for its complete and
effectual operation, yet the said judges did not declare any opinion on the ultimate
invalidity of the said acts of Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, as not being binding on his
principal, Warren Hastings, Esquire; nor did they declare any opinion that the obligation of
the said resignation was not from the beginning conclusive and effectual, although its
operation was, from the necessity of the case, on account of the distance between England
and India, to take place only in future,—or that the said resignation made by Lauchlan
Macleane, Esquire, was only an offer or proposal of a resignation to be made at some future
and indefinite period, or a mere intimation of the desire of Warren Hastings, Esquire, to
resign at some future and indefinite period, and that the said resignation, notwithstanding
the acceptance thereof by the Court of Directors, and the regular appointment and
confirmation of a successor, was still to remain optional in the said Warren Hastings, to be
ratified or departed from at his future choice or pleasure; nor did the said judges pronounce,
nor do any of their reasonings which accompanied their decision tend to establish it as their
opinion, that even the time for ratifying and completing the said transaction was to be at the
sole discretion of the said Warren Hastings; but they only delivered their opinion as
aforesaid, that his said office "has not yet been vacated, and [therefore] that the actual
assumption of the government by the member of the Council next in succession was [in the
actual circumstances, and rebus sic stantibus] illegal."

That the said Warren Hastings does nowhere himself contend that the said resignation was

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