Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums, is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the act.
Edmund Burke: “Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums, is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke describes Hastings' struggle to justify the unjust seizure of the Begums' treasures, illustrating the moral conflict in his actions.
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Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity.
The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,--no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom.
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…





