The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX

putations produced at the board, that the increase on the victualling contract would in five years amount to 40,000l., and that the increase on the bullock contract in the same period would amount to above 400,000l. That, when this and many other weighty objections against the terms of the said contracts were urged in Council to the said Warren Hastings, he declared that _he should deliver a reply thereto_; but it does not appear that he did ever deliver such reply, or ever enter into a justification of any part of his conduct in this transaction.--That the act of Parliament of 1773, by which the first Governor-General and Council were appointed, did expressly limit the duration of their office to the term of five years, which expired in October, 1779, and that the several contracts hereinbefore mentioned were granted in September, 1779, and were made to continue five years after the expiration of the government by which they were granted. That by this anticipation the discretion an