The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

follows. "That the actual disbursements to those troops had fallen upon our own funds, and
that we support a body of troops, established solely for the defence of the Nabob's
possessions, at our own expense. It is true, we charge the Nabob with this expense; but the
large balance already due from him shows too justly the little prospect there was of
disengaging ourselves from a burden which was daily adding to our distresses and must
soon become insupportable, although it were granted that the Nabob's debt, then suffered to
accumulate, might at some future period be liquidated, and that this measure would
substantially effect an instant relief to the pecuniary distresses of the Company."

XXII. That Nathaniel Middleton, the Resident, did also declare that he would at all times
testify, "that, upon the plan of the foregoing years, the receipts from the Nabob were only a
deception, and not an advantage, but an injury to the Company," and "that a remission to
the Nabob of this insufferable burden was a profit to the Company." And the said Hastings
did assert that the force of the Company was not lessened by withdrawing the temporary
troops; although, when it suited the purpose of the said Hastings, in denying just relief to
the distresses of the said Nabob of Oude, he had not scrupled to assert the direct contrary of
the positions by him maintained in justification of the treaty of Chunar,—having in his
minute aforesaid, of the 15th of December, 1779, asserted, "that these troops" (the troops
maintained by the Nabob of Oude) "had no separate or distinct existence, and may be
properly said to consist of our whole military establishment, with the exception only of our
European infantry, and that they could not be withdrawn, without imposing on the Company
the additional burden of their expense, or disbanding nine battalions of disciplined sepoys
and three regiments of horse."

XXIII. That he, the said Warren Hastings, in justification of his agreement to withdraw the

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