What reason can be given for not taking bribes also from Burdwan, from Bissunpore, in short, from all the sixty-eight collections which comprise the revenues of Bengal, and for selecting only three?
Burke questions the selective nature of bribery in colonial governance.
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More from Edmund Burke
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.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus?
This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions.
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