He approves the conduct of his agent without having heard his defence, and leaves him, at his option, to keep his victim a prisoner at Benares, or to imprison him in the fortress of Chunar, the infernal place to which he sends the persons whom he has a mind to extort money from.
Burke condemns the approval of an agent's actions without due process, illustrating a failure of justice.
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More from Edmund Burke
We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on account of those from whom they are descended.
Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable…
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
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