The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII | Page 8

under any circumstances whatever, to provide funds for the payment of the troops you now propose to send him.
"The wresting Furruckabad, Kyraghur, and Fyzoola Khan's country from his government, (for in that light, my dear Sir, I can faithfully assure you, he views the measures adopted in respect to those countries,) together with the resumption of all the jaghires, so much against his inclination, have already brought the Nabob to a persuasion that nothing less than his destruction, or the annihilation of every shadow of his power, is meant; and all my labors to convince him to the contrary have proved abortive. A settled melancholy has seized him, and his health is reduced beyond conception; and I do most humbly believe that the march of four regiments of sepoys towards Lucknow, under whatever circumstances it might be represented, would be considered by him as a force ultimately to be used in securing his person. In short, my dear Sir, it is a matter of such immediate moment, and involving, apparently, such very serious and important consequences, that I have not only taken upon me to suspend the communication of it to the Nabob until I should be honored with your further commands, but have also ventured to write the inclosed letter to Colonel Morgan: liberties which I confidently trust you will excuse, when you consider that I can be actuated by no other motive than a zeal for the public service, and that, if, after all, you determine that the measure shall be insisted on, it will be only the loss of six or at most eight days in proposing it. But in the last event, I earnestly entreat your orders may be explicit and positive, that I may clearly know what lengths you would wish me to proceed in carrying them into execution. I again declare it is my firm belief, and assure yourself, my dear Mr. Hastings, I am not influenced in this declaration by any considerations but my public duty and my personal attachment to you, that the enforcing the measure you have proposed would be productive of an open rupture between us and the Nabob; nay, that the first necessary step towards carrying it into effect must be, on our part, a declaration of hostility."
Your Lordships have now before your eyes proofs, furnished by Mr. Hastings himself from his correspondence with Mr. Middleton, irrefragable proofs, that this Nabob, who is stated to have made the proposition himself, was dragged to the signature of it; and that the troops which are supposed, and fraudulently stated, (and I wish your Lordships particularly to observe this,) to have been sent to assist him in this measure, were considered by him as a body of troops sent to imprison him, and to free him from all the troubles and pains of government.
When Mr. Hastings sent the troops for the purpose, as he pretended, of assisting the Nabob in the execution of a measure which was really adopted in direct opposition to the wishes of that prince, what other conclusion could be drawn, but that they were sent to overawe, not to assist him? The march of alien troops into a country upon that occasion could have no object but hostility; they could have been sent with no other design but that of bringing disgrace upon the Nabob, by making him the instrument of his family's ruin, and of the destruction of his nobility. Your Lordships, therefore, will not wonder that this miserable man should have sunk into despair, and that he should have felt the weight of his oppression doubly aggravated by its coming from such a man as Mr. Hastings, and by its being enforced by such a man as Mr. Middleton.
And here I must press one observation upon your Lordships: I do not know a greater insult that can be offered to a man born to command than to find himself made the tool of a set of obscure men, come from an unknown country, without anything to distinguish them but an usurped power. Never shall I, out of compliment to any persons, because they happen to be my own countrymen, disguise my feelings, or renounce the dictates of Nature and of humanity. If we send out obscure people, unknowing and unknown, to exercise such acts as these, I must say it is a bitter aggravation of the victim's suffering. Oppression and robbery are at all times evils; but they are more bearable, when exercised by persons whom we have been habituated to regard with awe, and to whom mankind for ages have been accustomed to bow.
Now does the history of tyranny furnish, does the history of popular violence deposing kings furnish, anything like the dreadful deposition of this prince, and the cruel and abominable tyranny that has