The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

correspondent conduct would reflect great dishonor on the Company.

VII. That, in answer to the decent and humble representation aforesaid of the Nabob of
Oude, the allegations of which, so far as they relate to the distressed state of the Nabob's
finances, and his total inability to discharge the demands made on him, were confirmed by
the testimony of the English Resident at Oude, and which the said Hastings did not deny in
the whole or in any part thereof, he, the said Warren Hastings, did, on pretence of certain
political dangers, declare the relief desired to be "without hesitation totally inadmissible,"
and did falsely and maliciously insinuate, "that the tone in which the demands of the Nabob
were asserted, and the season in which they were made, did give cause for the most
alarming suspicions." And the said Warren Hastings did, in a letter to the Nabob aforesaid,
written in haughty and insolent language, and without taking any notice of the distresses of
the said Nabob, alleged and verified as before recited, "require and insist upon your [the
Nabob's] granting tuncaws [assignments] for the full amount of their [the Company's]
demands upon you for the current year, and on your reserving funds sufficient to answer
them, even should the deficiencies of your revenues compel you to leave your own troops
unprovided for, or to disband a part of them to enable you to effect it."

VIII. That, in a letter written at the same time to the Resident, Purling, and intended for his
directions in enforcing on the Nabob the unjust demands aforesaid, the said Warren
Hastings hath asserted, in direct contradiction to the treaties subsisting between the said
Nabob and the Company, "that he [the Nabob] stands engaged to our government to
maintain the English armies which at his own request have been formed for the protection
of his dominions, and that it is our part, and not his, to judge and determine in what
manner and at what time these shall be reduced and withdrawn." And in a Minute of

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