Edmund Burke

My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find some specious color, and appear as a more severe and rigid execution of justice.

There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make them frightful and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of a great empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people, this is what makes government itself…

We say, then, not only that he governed arbitrarily, but corruptly,--that is to say, that he was a giver and receiver of bribes, and formed a system for the purpose of giving and receiving them.

All other men have taken a directly contrary course: they have said, "I have been engaged in an evil system, that led, indeed, to mischievous consequences, but I have taken care, by my own virtues, to prevent the evils of the system under…

Corruption and arbitrary power are of natural unequivocal generation, necessarily producing one another.

My Lords, there never was a man who thought he had no law but his own will, who did not soon find that he had no end but his own profit.

An arbitrary system, indeed, must always be a corrupt one.

These may all be reduced to one short word,--arbitrary power.

I will venture to say there is no one act, in which tyranny, malice, cruelty, and oppression can be charged, that does not at the same time carry evident marks of pecuniary corruption.

My Lords, I have to state to-day the root of all these misdemeanors,--namely, the pecuniary corruption and avarice which gave rise and primary motion to all the rest of the delinquencies charged to be committed by the Governor-General.

The whole country will be divided between the neighboring powerful aumils, the refractory zemindars, and banditti of robbers; and the Patans, who might be made useful subjects, will fly from the scene of anarchy.

Such being the present deplorable state of Furruckabad and its districts, in the ensuing year it will be in vain to look for revenue, if some regulations equal to the exigency be not adopted.

The ruin that has overtaken this country is not to be wondered at, when it is considered that there has been no state, no stable government, for many years.

Our distress is great: we have neither clothes nor food.

The miseries which have fallen upon my country, and the poverty and distress which have been heaped upon me by the reappointment of the sezauwil, are such, that a relation of them would, I am convinced, excite the strongest feelings of…

But is it not extraordinary, notwithstanding the justness of my cause, that nobody relieves my misfortunes?

To be brief, those who have loaded me with accusations are now clearly convicted of falsehood.

As my inability to pay so vast a sum was manifest, I produced the treaty you signed and gave me, but to no effect: their hearts were determined upon violence.

It would ill become this government to interpose its influence by any act which might tend to revive their animosities,--and a very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it.

The quivering lips, with the tears of joy stealing down the poor men's cheeks, was a scene truly affecting.

They beg most piteously for liberty, that they may earn their daily bread by laborious servitude, or to be relieved from their misery by immediate death.

The severities which have been increased towards the Begums were most justly merited by the advantage which they took of the troubles in which I was personally involved last year, to create a rebellion in the Nabob's government, and to…

She had hoped that the wardrobe sent to Lucknow might have sold for at least one half of the Company's demands on her; but even jewelry and goods, she finds from woful experience, lose their value the moment it is known they come from her.

That she had solicited the loan of money, to satisfy the demands of the Company, from every person that she imagined would or could assist her with any; but that the opulent would not listen to her adversity.

That her situation was truly pitiable,--her estate sequestered, her treasury ransacked, her cojahs prisoners, and her servants deserting daily from want of subsistence.