The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

year of 1779) upwards of 80,000l. sterling above the estimate, and the expense of the
country troops under British officers in the same period increased upwards of 40,000l.
sterling; and in addition to the aforesaid ruinous expenses, a large civil establishment was
gradually, secretly, and without any authority from the Court of Directors, or record in the
books of the Council-General concerning the same, formed for the Resident, and another
under Mr. Wombwell, an agent for the Company; as also several pensions and allowances,
in the same secret and clandestine manner, were charged on the revenues of the said Nabob
for the benefit of British subjects, besides large occasional gifts to persons in the
Company's service.

V. That in the month of November, 1779, the said Nabob did represent to Mr. Purling, the
Company's Resident aforesaid, the distressed state of his revenues in the following terms.
"During three years past, the expense occasioned by the troops in brigade, and others
commanded by European officers, has much distressed the support of my household,
insomuch that the allowances made to the seraglio and children of the deceased Nabob have
been reduced to one fourth of what it had been, upon which they have subsisted in a very
distressed manner for two years past. The attendants, writers, and servants, &c., of my
court, have received no pay for two years past; and there is at present no part of the country
that can be allotted to the payment of my father's private creditors, whose applications are
daily pressing upon me. All these difficulties I have for these three years past struggled
through, and found this consolation therein, that it was complying with the pleasure of the
Honorable Company, and in the hope that the Supreme Council would make inquiry from
impartial persons into my distressed situation; but I am now forced to a representation.
From the great increase of expense, the revenues were necessarily farmed out at a high
rate; and deficiencies followed yearly. The country and cultivation is abandoned; and this

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