The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

late rains, and the torrents thereby occasioned, to justify the expense of the first year, yet, as
they were all considered and included in the estimate for that year, there could be no
pretence for allowing and continuing so large and burdensome a payment as 80,000 rupees
per annum for the four succeeding years.

That the said Warren Hastings did, in his minutes of the 13th of February, 1778, himself
support that opinion, in the comparison to be made between Mr. Thomson's proposals, of
undertaking the same service for 60,000 rupees a year for nine years, and the terms of Mr.
Frazer's contracts: preferring the latter, because these were "to effect a complete repair,
which could hardly be concluded in one season, and the subsequent expense would be but
trifling."

Notwithstanding which, the said Warren Hastings urged and prevailed upon the Council to
allow in the first year the full amount proposed by Mr. Kinlock in his estimate of the
necessary repairs, and did burden the Company with what he must have deemed to be, for
the greater part, an unnecessary expense of 80,000 rupees per annum for four years.

That the permission granted to Mr. Frazer to make dobunds, or new and additional
embankments in aid of the old ones, whenever he should judge them necessary, at the
charge of government, (the said charge to be verified by the oath of the said Frazer, without
any voucher,) was a power very much to be suspected, and very improper to be intrusted to
a contractor who had already covenanted to keep the old pools in perfect repair, and to
construct new ones wherever the old pools had been broken down and washed away, or
where the course of the rivers might have rendered new ones necessary, in consideration of
the great sums stipulated to be paid to him by the government.

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