The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

purpose of introducing another more permanent mode by an easy and gradual change";
that, on the contrary, the said Warren Hastings, from the year 1773 to the year 1781, has
constantly and uniformly insisted on the wisdom of that institution, and on the necessity of
never departing from it; that he has in that time repeatedly advised that the said institution
should be confirmed in perpetuity by an act of Parliament; that the said total dissolution of
the Provincial Councils was not introduced by any easy and gradual change, nor by any
gradations whatever, but was sudden and unprepared, and instantly accomplished by a
single act of power; and that the said Warren Hastings, in the place of the said Councils, has
substituted a Committee of Revenue, consisting of four covenanted servants, on principles
opposite to those which he had himself professed, and with exclusive powers, tending to
deprive the members of the Supreme Council of a due knowledge of and inspection into the
management of the territorial revenues, specially and unalienably vested by the legislature
in the Governor-General and Council, and to vest the same solely and entirely in the said
Warren Hastings. That the reasons assigned by the said Warren Hastings for constituting
the said Committee of Revenue are incompatible with those which he professed when he
abolished the subordinate Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad: that he has invested the
said Committee in the fullest manner with all the powers and authority of the Governor-
General and Council; that he has thereby contracted the whole power and office of the
Provincial Councils into a small compass, and vested the same in four persons appointed by
himself; that he has thereby taken the general transaction and cognizance of revenue
business out of the Supreme Council; that the said Committee are empowered to conduct
the current business of the revenue department without reference to the Supreme Council,
and only report to the board such extraordinary occurrences, claims, and proposals as may
require the special orders of the board; that even the instruction to report to the board in
extraordinary cases is nugatory and fallacious, being accompanied with limitations which

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