The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

not absolute, but optional, according to the true meaning and understanding of the parties in
England, and so far as the acts of Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, and the Court of Directors,
were binding on him; but, on the contrary, he grounds his refusal to complete the same, not
on any interpretation of the words in which the said resignation, and the other instruments
aforesaid, were conceived, but rather on a disavowal (not direct, indeed, but implied) of his
said agent, and of the powers under which the said agent had claimed to act in his behalf.
Neither did the said Warren Hastings ground his said refusal on any objection to the
particular day or period or circumstances in which the requisition of General Clavering was
made, nor accompany the said refusal with any qualification in that respect, or with any
intimation that he would at any future or more convenient season comply with the same,—
although such an intimation might probably have induced General Clavering to waive an
instant and immediate claim to the chair, and might therefore have prevented the
distractions which happened, and the greater evils which impended, in consequence of the
said claim of General Clavering, and the said refusal of Warren Hastings, Esquire; but the
said Warren Hastings did, on the contrary, express his said refusal in such general and
unqualified terms as intimated an intention to resist absolutely and altogether, both then and
at any future time, the said requisition of General Clavering. And the subsequent
proceedings of the said Warren Hastings do all concur in proving that such was his
intention; for he did afterwards, in conformity to the advice of the judges, move a resolution
in Council, "that all parties be placed in the same situation in which they stood before the
receipt of the last advices from England, reserving and submitting to a decision in England
the respective claims that each party may conceive they have a right to make, but not acting
upon those claims till such decision shall arrive in Bengal": thereby clearly and explicitly
declaring that it was not his intention to surrender the government until such decision
should arrive in Bengal, which could not be expected in less time than a year and a half

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