The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

That the refusal of the said Warren Hastings to ratify the said resignation, and his disavowal
of the said Lauchlan Macleane, his agent, is not justified by anything contained in his said
letter to the Court of Directors, dated on the 15th of August, 1777,—the said Warren
Hastings nowhere directly and positively asserting that the said Lauchlan Macleane was not
his agent, and had not both full and general powers, and even particular instructions for this
very act, although the said Warren Hastings uses many indirect and circuitous, but
insufficient and inapplicable, insinuations to that effect. And the said letter does, on the
contrary, contain a clear and express avowal that the said Lauchlan Macleane was his
confidential agent, and that in that capacity he acted throughout, and particularly in this
special matter, with zeal and fidelity. And the said letter does further admit in effect the
instructions produced by the said Lauchlan Macleane, Esquire, confirmed by Mr. Vansittart
and Mr. Stewart, and relied on and confided in by the Court of Directors, by which the said
Lauchlan Macleane appeared to be specially empowered to declare the said resignation, the
words of the said instruction being as follows: "That he [Mr. Hastings] will not continue in
the government of Bengal, unless certain conditions therein specified can be obtained"; and
the words of the said letter being as follows: "What I myself know with certainty, or can
recollect at this distance of time, concerning the powers and instructions which were given
to Messieurs Macleane and Graham, when they undertook to be my agents in England, I
will circumstantially relate. I am in possession of two papers which were presented to those
gentlemen at the time of their departure from Bengal, one of which comprises four short
propositions which I required as the conditions of my being confirmed in this government."
And although the said Warren Hastings does here artfully somewhat change the words of
his written instructions (and which having in his possession he might as easily have given
verbatim) to other words which may appear less explicit, yet they are in fact capable of only

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