The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

That from the preceding facts, as well as from sundry other circumstances of restrictions
taken off (particularly by abolishing the office of inspector into the quality of the opium)
and of beneficial clauses introduced, it appears that the said Warren Hastings gave this
contract to the said Stephen Sulivan in contradiction to the orders of the Court of Directors,
and without any regard to the interests of the India Company, for the sole purpose of
creating an instant fortune for the said Sulivan at the expense of the India Company,
without any claim of service or pretence of merit on his part, and without any apparent
motive whatever, except that of securing or rewarding the attachment and support of his
father, Lawrence Sulivan, a person of great authority and influence in the direction of the
Company's affairs, and notoriously attached to and connected with the said Warren
Hastings.

That the said Stephen Sulivan neither possessed nor pretended to possess any skill in the
business of his contract; that he exerted no industry, nor showed or could show any
exactness, in the performance of it, since he immediately sold the contract for a sum of
money to another person, (for the sole purpose of which sale it must be presumed the same
was given,) by which person another profit was to be made; and by that person the same
was again sold to a third, by whom a third profit was to be made.

That the said Warren Hastings, at the very time when he engaged the Company in a
contract for engrossing the whole of the opium produced in Bengal and Bahar in the
ensuing four years on terms of such exorbitant profit to the contractor, affirmed, that "there
was little prospect of selling the opium in Bengal at a reasonable price, and that it was but
natural to suppose that the price of opium would fall, from the demand being lessened"; that

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