The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

Company, namely, to deprive them of the security of the said Cantoo Baboo's engagement
for farms which on trial he had found not beneficial, or not likely to continue beneficial, to
himself; and that, if it was improper that he, the said Warren Hastings, should be the judge
of any disputes in which his servant might be involved on account of his farms, that reason
ought to have obliged him to prevent his servant from being engaged in any farms
whatever, or to have advised his said servant to relinquish the remainder of his farms, as
well as those which the said Warren Hastings affirms he quitted by his advice. That on the
subject of the said charge the Court of Directors of the East India Company have come to
the following resolution: "Resolved, That it appears that the conduct of the late President
and Council of Fort William in Bengal, in suffering Cantoo Baboo, the present Governor-
General's banian, to hold farms in different purgunnahs to a large amount, or to be security
for such farms, contrary to the tenor and spirit of the 17th regulation of the Committee of
Revenue at Fort William, of the 14th May, 1772, and afterwards relinquishing that security
without satisfaction made to the Company, was highly improper, and has been attended
with considerable loss to the Company"; and that in the whole of this transaction the said
Warren Hastings has been guilty of gross collusion with his servant, and manifest breach of
trust to his employers.

That, whereas it was acknowledged by the said Warren Hastings, that the country, in the
years 1770 and 1771, had suffered great depopulation and decay, and that the collections of
those years, having been violently kept up to their former standard, had added to the
distress of the country, the settlement of the revenues made by him for five years,
commencing the 1st May, 1772, instead of offering any abatement or relief to the
inhabitants who had survived the famine, held out to the East India Company a promise of

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