Edmund Burke

If a Resident was appointed to receive the money, as it became due, at Benares, such a Resident would unavoidably acquire an influence over the Rajah, and over his country, which would in effect render him the master of both.

My enemies, with a view to my ruin, have made false representations to you.

I have never swerved in the smallest degree from my duty to you.

This answer you will perceive to be not only unsatisfactory in substance, but offensive in style, and less a vindication of himself than a recrimination on me.

It expresses no concern for the causes of complaint contained in my letter, or desire to atone for them, nor the smallest intention to pursue a different line of conduct.

It depends on you alone to take away or not to take away the country out of my hands.

In case my honor is not left to me, how shall I be equal to the business of the government?

Whoever, with his hands in a supplicating posture, is ready with his life and property, what necessity can there be for him to be dealt with in this way?

I think every demand she has made to you, except that of safety and respect for her person, is unreasonable.

But should she refuse to execute the promise she has made, or delay it beyond the term of twenty-four hours, it is my positive injunction that you immediately put a stop to any further intercourse or negotiation with her, and on no pretext…

It was what I expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of it.

The distresses which were produced by the long-continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive…

If the same administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a want of rain, every field will be abandoned, the revenue fail, and thousands perish through want of subsistence: for who will labor for the sole benefit of…

That her situation was truly pitiable,--her estate sequestered, her treasury ransacked, her cojahs prisoners, and her servants deserting daily from want of subsistence.

That she had solicited the loan of money, to satisfy the demands of the Company, from every person that she imagined would or could assist her with any; but that the opulent would not listen to her adversity.

She had hoped that the wardrobe sent to Lucknow might have sold for at least one half of the Company's demands on her; but even jewelry and goods, she finds from woful experience, lose their value the moment it is known they come from her.

The severities which have been increased towards the Begums were most justly merited by the advantage which they took of the troubles in which I was personally involved last year, to create a rebellion in the Nabob's government, and to…

They beg most piteously for liberty, that they may earn their daily bread by laborious servitude, or to be relieved from their misery by immediate death.

The quivering lips, with the tears of joy stealing down the poor men's cheeks, was a scene truly affecting.

It would ill become this government to interpose its influence by any act which might tend to revive their animosities,--and a very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it.

As my inability to pay so vast a sum was manifest, I produced the treaty you signed and gave me, but to no effect: their hearts were determined upon violence.

To be brief, those who have loaded me with accusations are now clearly convicted of falsehood.

But is it not extraordinary, notwithstanding the justness of my cause, that nobody relieves my misfortunes?

The miseries which have fallen upon my country, and the poverty and distress which have been heaped upon me by the reappointment of the sezauwil, are such, that a relation of them would, I am convinced, excite the strongest feelings of…

Our distress is great: we have neither clothes nor food.