Hastings is his having avowedly looked to such a tyrant and such a usurper as his model, and followed that pernicious example with a servile fidelity.
Edmund Burke: “Hastings is his having avowedly looked to such a tyrant and such a usurper as his model, and followed that pernicious…”
Editor's note · Context
Burke criticizes Hastings for emulating a tyrant, highlighting the moral implications of leadership.
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A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed.
Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their situation, their duty, and their obligations.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force.
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.





