The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

and in others great oppressions committed on the native inhabitants, they thought it unjust
to suffer the delinquents to pass wholly unpunished, and therefore they directed the
Governor-General and Council forthwith to commence a prosecution against the persons
who composed the Committee of Circuit, and their representatives, and against all other
proper parties"; but that the prosecutions so ordered by the Court of Directors in the year
1778 have never been brought to trial; and that the said Warren Hastings did, on the 23d of
December, 1783, propose and carry it in Council, that orders should be given for
withdrawing the said prosecutions,—declaring, that he was clearly of opinion that there was
no ground to maintain them, and that they would only be productive of expense to the
Company and unmerited vexation to the parties.

REVENUES.
PART II.

That the said Warren Hastings has on sundry occasions declared his deliberate opinion
generally against all innovations, and particularly in the collection and management of the
revenues of Bengal: that "he was well aware of the expense and inconvenience which ever
attends innovations of all kinds, on, their first institution;[9]—that innovations are always
attended with difficulties and inconveniences, and innovations in the revenue with a
suspension of the collections;!!⁰]—that the continual variations in the mode of collecting
the revenue, and the continual usurpation on the rights of the people, have fixed in the
minds of the ryots a rooted distrust of the ordinances of government."!!!] That the Court of
Directors have repeatedly declared their apprehensions "that a sudden transition from one
mode to another, in the investigation and collection of their revenue, might have alarmed
the inhabitants, lessened their confidence in the Company's proceedings, and been attended
with other evils."!²!

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