The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

after the date of the said resolution; and thereby clearly and explicitly declaring that he did
not consider his resignation as binding for the present. And the said intention was
manifested, if possible, still more directly and expressly in a letter written by the said
Warren Hastings to the Court of Directors, dated the 15th of August, 1777, being almost
two months after the receipt of the said dispatches, in which the said Warren Hastings
declares that "he did not hold himself bound by the notification made by Mr. Macleane, nor
by any of the acts consequent of it."

That, such appearing to have been the intention of the said Warren Hastings, General
Clavering was justified in immediately assuming the government, without waiting for any
future act of the said Warren Hastings for the actual surrender of the said government, none
such being likely to happen; and Philip Francis, Esquire, was justified in supporting
General Clavering in the same on the soundest principles of justice, and on a maxim
received in courts of equity, namely, that no one shall avail himself of his own wrong,—and
that, if any one refuse or neglect to perform that which he is bound to do, the rights of
others shall not be prejudiced thereby, but such acts shall be deemed and reputed to have
been actually performed, and all the consequences shall be enforced which would have
followed from such actual performance. And therefore the resolutions moved and voted in
Council by the said Warren Hastings, declaring the offices of General Clavering to be
vacant, were not only illegal, inasmuch as the said Warren Hastings had no authority to
warrant such a declaration, even on the supposition of the acts of General Clavering being
contrary to law, but the said resolutions were further highly culpable and criminal,
inasmuch as the said acts done by General Clavering, which were made the pretence of that
proceeding, were strictly regular and legal.

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