The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

make it impossible for the said board to decide on any questions whatsoever: since it is
expressly provided by the said Warren Hastings, that, if the members of the Committee
differ in opinion, it is not expected that every dissentient opinion should be recorded;
consequently the Supreme Council, on any reference to their board, can see nothing but the
resolutions or reasons of the majority of the Committee, without the arguments on which
the dissentient opinions might be founded: and since it is also expressly provided by the
said Warren Hastings, that the determination of the majority of the Committee should not
therefore be stayed, unless it should be so agreed by the majority,—that is, that,
notwithstanding the reference to the Supreme Council, the measure shall be executed
without waiting for their decision.

That the said Warren Hastings has delivered his opinion, with many arguments to support
the same, in favor of long leases of the lands, in preference to annual settlements: that he
has particularly declared, "that the farmer who holds his farm for one year only, having no
interest in the next, takes what he can with the hand of rigor, which, even in the execution
of legal claims, is often equivalent to violence; he is under the necessity of being rigid, and
even cruel,—for what is left in arrear after the expiration of his power is at best a doubtful
debt, if ever recoverable; he will be tempted to exceed the bounds of right, and to augment
his income by irregular exactions, and by racking the tenants, for which pretences will not
be wanting, where the farms pass annually from one hand to another; that the
discouragements which the tenants feel from being transferred every year to new landlords
are a great objection to such short leases; that they contribute to injure the cultivation and
dispeople the lands; that, on the contrary, from long farms the farmer acquires a permanent
interest in his lands; he will, for his own sake, lay out money in assisting his tenants in

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