It is not reasonably to be expected that a public rapacious and improvident should be served by any of its subordinates with disinterestedness or foresight.
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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It will be worse: they will support the injuries done to the natives for their selfish ends by new injuries done in favor of those before whom they are to account.
For as long as a system prevails which regards the transmission of great wealth to this country, either for the Company or the state, as its principal end, so long will it be impossible that those who are the instruments of that scheme…
The prosperity of the natives must be previously secured, before any profit from them whatsoever is attempted.
Before any remedial law can have its just operation, the affairs of India must be restored to their natural order.
Indeed, it required an unbroken attention, and much comparison of facts and reasonings, to form a true judgment on that difficult and complicated system of politics, revenue, and commerce, whilst affairs were only in their progress to that…
In all this time the true state of the several Presidencies, and the real conduct of the British government towards the natives, was not at all known to Parliament: it seems to have been very imperfectly known even to ministers.
Wars contrary to policy and contrary to public faith were carrying on in various parts of India.
They might know something, but that very imperfectly and unsystematically, of the state of affairs; but they were neither authorized to advance nor to retard any measure taken by the Directors in consequence of that state: they were not…
The second object, in this part of the plan, of the act of 1773, namely, that of inspection by the ministers of the crown, appears not to have been provided for, so as to draw the timely and productive attention of the state on the…
Directors can never properly govern those for whose employments they are or may be themselves candidates; they can neither protect nor coerce them with due impartiality or due authority.
It might, therefore, be proper for the House to consider whether it is fit that those who are, or have been within some given time, Directors of the Company, should be capable of an appointment to any offices in India.
It affords means and opportunities for an examination into character; and among the servants it secures a strong motive to preserve a fair reputation.
The order itself is wisely established, and tends to provide a natural guard against partiality, precipitancy, and corruption in patronage.
The above gradation of the service, your Committee conceive, ought never to be superseded by the Court of Directors, without evident reason, in persons or circumstances, to justify the breach of an ancient order.
On these appointments, your Committee thought it proper to make those inquiries which the Court of Directors thought proper to omit.
It appears an offence of the highest order in the Directors concerned in this business, when, not satisfied with leaving such charges so long unexamined, they should venture to present to the king's servants the object of them for the…
But by the description of the persons a judgment may be formed of the principles on which this power is likely to be exercised.
And if the exercise of this power should happen in its outset to fall into bad hands, the ordinary chances for mending an ill choice upon death or resignation are cut off.
In many cases the instant removal of an offender from his power of doing mischief is the only mode of preventing the utter and perhaps irretrievable ruin of public affairs.
If such rules were settled, candidates qualified from ability, knowledge, and service would not be discouraged by finding that everything was open to every man, and that favor alone stood in the place of civil or military experience.
This evil, growing out of the abuse of the principle of subordination, can only be corrected by a very strict enforcement of authority over that part of the chain of dependence which is next to the original power.
But one evil may possibly have arisen from an attempt to produce an union, which, though undoubtedly to be aimed at, is opposed in some degree by the unalterable nature of their situation,--that it has taught the servants rather to look to…
India is, indeed, so vast a country, and the settlements are so divided, that their intercourse with each other is liable to as many delays and difficulties as the intercourse between distant and separate states.
The cry against the abuses was strong and vehement throughout the whole nation, and the practice of presents was represented to be as general as it was mischievous.
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