Hastings's great refuge,--he was driven to say, "The government in this country has arbitrary power; the power of government is everything, the right of the subject nothing; they have at all times separated zemindaries from their lawful proprietors.
Burke critiques the arbitrary power of government over individual rights in India.
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More from Edmund Burke
Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?
Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy.
If all the absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
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?
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