The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

in a letter dated the 5th of May, 1781, he informed the Directors, "that, owing to the
indifferent state of the markets last season to the Eastward, and the very enhanced rates of
insurance which the war had occasioned, they had not been able to dispose of the opium of
the present year to so great an advantage as they expected, and that more than one half of it
remained still in their warehouses." That the said Warren Hastings was guilty of a manifest
breach of trust to his constituents and his employers in monopolizing, for their pretended
use, an article of commerce for which he declared no purchasers had offered, and that there
was little prospect of any offering, and the price of which, he said, it was but natural to
suppose would fall.

That the said Warren Hastings, having, by his own act, loaded the Company with a
commodity for which, either in the ordinary and regular course of public auction, or even
by private contract, there was, as he affirmed, no sale, did, under pretence of finding a
market for the same, engage the Company in an enterprise of great and certain expense,
subject to a manifest risk, and full of disgrace to the East India Company, not only in their
political character, as a great sovereign power in India, but in their commercial character, as
an eminent and respectable body of merchants; and that the execution of this enterprise was
accompanied with sundry other engagements with other persons, in all of which the
Company's interest was constantly sacrificed to that of individuals favored by the said
Warren Hastings.

That the said Warren Hastings first engaged in a scheme to export one thousand four
hundred and sixty chests of opium, on the Company's account, on board a ship belonging to
Cudbert Thornhill, half of which was to be disposed of in a coasting voyage, and the
remainder in Canton. That, besides the freight and commission payable to the said
Thornhill on this adventure, twelve pieces of cannon belonging to the Company were lent

<<   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   >>

More intriguing information