tainly be put where the merit will lie in breaking them. But, if they are made, they ought to be kept; and the maker ought to have looked into the propriety of making, and the possibility of keeping them, when he made such declarations. Such professors ought to be held tight to their promises, if it answered no other end than to make them cautious in deceiving the people. When, in the issue, it may prove that some part of the deceit falls upon themselves, it is proper to give them no sort of dispensation, and to allow them no kind of evasion. Our friend is perhaps too young to remember the origin of all this professing, promising, and testing; but he would laugh if he knew that the wolf is now howling in the snare which he had originally laid for honest men. This traitor raised an outcry among that mob who have now surrendered him over to his and their enemies, against all the honest part of the opposition, because they would not join him and his associates, in disclaiming the fair objects of ambition or accommodation, whenever private honour or public principles admitted of them. We were put out of the question as patriots, stripped of all support from the multitude, and the alternative wildly and wickedly put between those who disclaimed all employments, and the mere creatures of the court. They would hear of nobody else. So that nothing has happened, but what they have chosen and prepared. Whenever they fail, the court must profit. I remember that the Shelburne faction acted just in the same manner; until, having overloaded the stomachs of their adherents, they were vomited up with loathing and disgust. It was but a few months after Lord Shelburne had told me gratis, (for nothing led to it,) that the people (always meaning the common people of London) were never in the wrong, that he and all his friends were driven with scorn out of that city. However, I admit, with our worthy friend, that the baseness and corruptness of Mr. Oliver and the livery is not much the less for the villany of him whom they have abandoned the first moment he could hope to derive, from their protection, ease and comfort for his age. Let me wish my young friend, at his entrance into life, to draw a useful lesson from the unprincipled behaviour of a corrupt and licentious people:that is, never to sacrifice his principles to the hope of obtain ing their affections; to regard and wish them well, as a part of his fellow-creatures, whom his best instincts and his highest duties lead him to love and serve, but to put as little trust in them as in princes. For what inward resource has he, when turned out of courts or hissed out of town-halls, who has made their opinions the only standard of what is right, and their favour the sole means of his happiness? I have heard as yet nothing about our future engagement. Possibly the servant I have sent to Lord Rockingham may arrive before the post goes out. He is arrived, and I have no answer. Lord Rockingham was not in town. I am, with the best regards of all here, Dear Bourke, Ever affectionately yours, EDM. BURKE. Our love to the occasionalist, but not server of occasions. 1 TO THE EARL OF HILLSBOROUGH, AND LORD VISCOUNT STORMONT, TWO OF HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE. MY LORDS, Charles Street, St. James's Square, I think it the right and the duty of every subject of this kingdom to communicate to his Majesty's ministers intelligence of every matter, by which the king's interest and honour, and that of the nation, are likely to be affected. The chairman and deputy-chairman of the East India Company have come to a resolution of seizing upon, and delivering over to the discretion of their servants at Madras, the revenues of the king of Tanjore,—an ally of the Company, and, therefore, of the crown and nation of Great Britain,in direct violation of a solemn treaty, by which the Company The Earl of Hillsborough, born about 1718, died Oct. 1793. At the accession of George the Third he was continued a Privy Councillor in both kingdoms; in 1763 was made first Commissioner of Trade and Plantations; in 1766 Joint Postmaster-General; in 1768 Secretary of State to the Colonies; and from 1779 to 1782 again Secretary of State. He appears to have been the private and confidential friend and adviser of the king; and Adolphus says that "when no longer Secretary of State to the Colonies, he continued to give his advice and assistance to the ministry, to whom his experience was of effectual service." has engaged that none of their servants shall intermeddle in the internal government of that prince. This very extraordinary and dangerous design, leading to a general waste and robbery of the only yet remaining native government, and the only flourishing country within the reach of our power in India, was carried through a very thin court of directors. It was carried through the very day after the sitting of a general court of the East India Company, without the least communication to the body they act for; and although that very general court had come to a resolution to take the whole of their affairs into consideration on so early a day as the sixth of November next. It was carried through in the absence of Lord North and both secretaries of the treasury,-though, upon representations to his lordship, this business had been formerly stopped, and at a time when he is at so great a distance from town, as to make his interposition, or even any immediate application to him, utterly impracticable. It was carried through immediately after Mr. William Burke, one of the king of Tanjore's agents, had set off on a journey over-land, with a letter from Lord North, written by the order of his Majesty, to whom the king of Tanjore had submitted his cause, and all his grievances; and in the absence also of the Honourable Mr. Waldegrave, joined in agency with Mr. Burke, who had before protested to the directors against that very predatory resolution, and desired to be heard against it; the king of Tanjore himself having then a regular complaint of grievances, and of extorting money in particular, before the Company. It was carried through in the recess of parliament, to which the said agents, in the last session, had prepared a petition; which petition was consented to be withheld, solely on the directors putting a stop to their ungrateful design. It was carried through at a time when the very servants of the Company, to whom the kingdom of Tanjore is to be delivered, are under an inquiry of the court of the very directors who deliver it to them, on but too just a suspicion of peculation and other evil practices. And in order that no time should be allowed for the dissenting directors, proprietors, or agents, or even for the king's ministers to interfere, they resolved not to wait for the ships which are to depart, but have prepared a person suddenly to go off over-land; so that if this design had not been providentially discovered, it was very possible that on the evening of the day on which the king of Tanjore was rejoicing on the receipt of a gracious letter from the king's minister, written by his Majesty's order, he might find his revenues forcibly seized on, in violation of the treaty, by an order of the directors, to the infinite scandal of the honour, justice, and policy of the British nation. It is necessary to lay a matter of this high and criminal nature, pursued in this extraordinary manner, before his Majesty's servants; the crown claiming on the part of the public a right in the possessions and territorial revenues of the Company, and the time for renewal of the charter now approaching. I humbly venture to suggest, that it is incumbent on his Majesty's ministers that so material a revolution, involving the public faith and the obligation of treaties, together with the welfare of so great a part of the strength of Great Britain, should not be made but on the fullest and most impartial consideration; or that kings and kingdoms, and the lives and properties of millions of innocent people, should not be passed away, by obscure and collusive practices, between any confederacies of men for their private interest and emolument, with much less ceremony than the family settlement of a cottage is made or altered. I make no apology for troubling your lordships with the notification of so dangerous a proceeding, knowing your desire of obtaining information from every quarter, in any matter that relates to his Majesty's service. On this well grounded assurance, I am ready to wait on your lordships at any time you may be pleased to appoint, to lay before you, on the most authentic grounds, the futility and fraud of the pretence on which a violence of this extent is attempted by the Company's servants in India, and thus privately, without hearing or notice, consented to by their servants here. I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, my lords, Your lordships' most obedient and most humble Servant, EDM. BURKE. DEAR SIR, TO DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. August, 1781. I feel as an honest man and as a good citizen ought to feel, the calamities of the present unhappy war. The only part, however, of those calamities which personally affects myself is, that I have been obliged to discontinue my intercourse with you; but that one misfortune I must consider as equivalent to many. I may, indeed, with great truth, assure you, that your friendship has always been an object of my ambition; and that, if a high and very sincere esteem for your talents and virtues could give me a title to it, I am not wholly unworthy of that honour. I flatter myself that your belief in the reality of these sentiments will excuse the liberty I take, of laying before you a matter in which I have no small concern. The application I make originates wholly from myself, and has not been suggested to me by any person whatsoever. I have lately been informed with great certainty, and with no less surprise, that the congress have made an application for the return of my friend General Burgoyne to captivity in America, at a time when the exchange of almost all the rest of the convention officers has been completed. It is true that this requisition has been for the present withdrawn; but then, it may be renewed at every instant; and no arrangement has been made or proposed, which may prevent a thing on all accounts so very disagreeable, as to see the most opposite interests conspiring in the persecution of a man, formed, by the unparalleled candour and moderation of his mind, to unite the most discordant parties in his favour. I own this proceeding of the congress fills me with astonishment. I am persuaded that some unusually artful management, or very unexampled delusion, has operated to produce an effect which cannot be accounted for on any of the ordinary principles of nature or of policy. I shall not enter into the particulars of the convention under which this claim is made, nor into the construction of it, nor the execution. I am not, perhaps, capable of doing justice to the merits of the cause; and if I were, I am not disposed to put them upon any ground of argument, because (whatever others might and possibly ought to do) I am not |