Now do you believe, in the first place, that men will long have abilities, will long have good intentions, and will long, above all, have steady application, when they know they are but tools in the hands of another,--when they know they…
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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But when both practice and theory concur, there can be no doubt that a system of private bribery for a revenue, and of private agency for a constitutional government, must ruin the country where it prevails, must disgrace the country that…
The best way of showing that a theoretical system is bad is to show the practical mischiefs that it produces: because a thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in its…
Hastings has not only reduced bribery to a system of government practically, but theoretically.
My Lords, I charge him, as chief governor, with destroying the institutions of the country, which were designed to be, and ought to have been, controls upon such a person as Debi Sing.
I therefore charge him with putting in situations in which any evil may be committed persons of known evil characters.
Hastings as responsible for the characters of the people he employed,--doubly responsible, if he knew them to be bad.
To do the man justice, he bore the whole of this persecution like an hero.
Paterson wrote one of the most pathetic memorials that ever was penned to the Council of Calcutta, submitting to his hard fate, but standing inflexibly to his virtue that brought it upon him.
No longer the sneaking tone of apology; no longer the modest allegations that the commissioner was misinformed;--he boldly accuses the representative of English government of forgery in order to destroy him; he criminates and recriminates…
In short, there was nothing wanting to his power but an honest support.
Let the mind of man be ever so much inured to servitude, still there is a point where oppressions will rouse it to resistance.
It was not collection, but real robbery, aggravated by corporal punishment and every insult of disgrace,--and this not confined to a few, but extended over every individual.
The wonder would have been, if they had not risen.
Every day of my inquiry serves but to confirm the facts.
In my two reports I have set forth in a general manner the oppressions which provoked the ryots to rise.
Pity, my Lords, the condition of an honest servant in Bengal.
He laid the letter before him, and there was enjoined such a line of integrity, incorruptness, of bearing every degree of persecution rather than disguising truth, that he went up into the country in a proper frame of mind for doing his…
But this general insurrection, which at every moment threatened to blaze out afresh, and to involve all the provinces in its flames, rent in pieces that veil of fraud and mystery that covers all the miseries of all the provinces.
In our Indian government, whatever grievance is borne is denied to exist, and all mute despair and sullen patience is construed into content and satisfaction.
I spare you those of a cruel and inhuman war, and of the executions which, without law or process, or even the shadow of authority, were ordered by the English Revenue Chief in that province.
Contagion, leprosy, plague, are not so much shunned.
It is a pollution even to touch him; and if he touches any of his old caste, they are justified in putting him to death.
It is something far worse than complete outlawry, complete attainder, and universal excommunication.
His parents are no longer his parents; his wife is no longer his wife; his children, no longer his, are no longer to regard him as their father.
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