The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

detriment to the Company instead of a benefit, circumstances (if they are true) which he
might and ought to have well known, was guilty of an high crime and misdemeanor in
carrying on the imposture and delusion aforesaid, and in continuing an insupportable
burden and grievance upon the Nabob for several years, without attending to his repeated
supplications to be relieved therefrom, to the utter ruin of his country, and to the destruction
of the discipline of the British troops, by diffusing among them a general spirit of
peculation; and the said Hastings hath committed a grievous offence in upholding the same
pernicious system, until, by his own confession and declaration, in his minute of the 21st of
May, 1781, "the evils had grown to so great an height, that exertions will be required more
powerful than can be made through the delegated authority of the servants of the Company
now in the province, and that he was far from sanguine in his expectations that even his own
endeavors would be attended with much success."

XXVI. That, at the time of making the said treaty, and at the time when, under color of the
distress of the Nabob of Oude, and the failure of all other means for his relief, he, the said
Hastings, broke the Company's faith with the parents of the Nabob, and first encouraged
and afterwards compelled him to despoil them of their landed estates, money, jewels, and
household goods, and while the said Nabob continued heavily in debt to the Company, he,
the said Warren Hastings, did, "without hesitation," accept of and receive from the Nabob
of Oude and his ministers (who are notoriously known to be not only under his influence,
but under his absolute command) a bribe, or unlawful gift or present, of one hundred
thousand pounds sterling, and upwards. That, even if the said pretended gift could be
supposed to be voluntary, it was contrary to the express provision of the Regulating Act of
the 13th year of his Majesty's reign, prohibiting the receipt of all presents upon any pretence
whatsoever, and contrary to his own sense of the true intent and meaning of the said act,

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