Shall your servants, unchecked, unrestrained, and unpunished, gratify their private views and ambition at the expense of my honor, my peace, and my happiness, and to the ruin of my country, as well as of all your affairs?
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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When I speak of one who has so deeply stabbed my honor, my wounds bleed afresh, and I must be allowed that freedom of expression which the galling reflection of my injuries and my misfortunes naturally draws from me.
Fatally for me, and for the public interest, the Company's favor and my unbounded confidence have been lavished on a man totally unfit for the exalted station in which he has been placed, and unworthy of the trusts that have been reposed…
It is as necessary to protect the honest fame of virtuous governors as it is to punish the corrupt and tyrannical.
If they should be found (as in all probability they would be found) false and calumnious, and supported by forgery, then the censure would fall on the accuser; at the same time the necessity would be manifest for proper measures towards…
We have also the strongest grounds to believe that the debts will be in other respects considerably less than they are now computed by you; and consequently, the Company's annual proportion of the twelve lacs will be larger than it appears…
If we concurred with you in this opinion, we should certainly feel our hopes of advantage to all the parties from this arrangement considerably diminished.
Until our debt shall be discharged, we can by no means consent to give up any part of the seven lacs to the private creditors; and we humbly apprehend that in this declaration we do not exceed the limits of the authority and rights vested…
We declared that our faith stood pledged by the treaty of 1762 to obtain payment of the Rajah's tribute to the Nabob, and that for the insuring such payment the fort of Tanjore should be garrisoned by our troops.
Benfield would now again argue from his former observations, that, under his Highness's management, his country declined, his people emigrated, his revenues decreased, and his country was rapidly approaching to a state of political…
Gratitude and humanity require that provision should be made by you, before you set the Nabob's ministers loose on the country, for the protection of the victims devoted to their vengeance.
Such a stretch and abuse of power would, indeed, not only savor of the assumption of sovereignty, but of arbitrary and oppressive despotism.
Nothing but their previous breach of a part could justify our breach of the whole.
This measure will not only relieve the country of a heavy burden, but tend greatly to fix in the Company that kind of authority which is requisite for the due collection of the revenues.
In other districts the charges were not in so high a proportion, but still rated on a most extravagant scale; and we saw, by every account that was brought before us, the absolute necessity of retrenching considerably in all the articles…
Whoever, therefore, shall at any time bring before you anything towards the relief of our distressed fellow-citizens in India, and towards a subversion of the present most corrupt and oppressive system for its government, in me shall find…
Baffled, discountenanced, subdued, discredited, as the cause of justice and humanity is, it will be only the dearer to me.
Let who will shrink back, I shall be found at my post.
For one, the worst event of this day, though it may deject, shall not break or subdue me.
But if the scene on the other side of the globe, which tempts, invites, almost compels, to tyranny and rapine, be not inspected with the eye of a severe and unremitting vigilance, shame and destruction must ensue.
Without this check, what is our government at home, even awed, as every European government is, by an audience formed of the other states of Europe, by the applause or condemnation of the discerning and critical company before which it…
But if it had been otherwise constituted, had it been constituted even as I wished, and as the mover of this question had planned, the better part of the proposed establishment was in the publicity of its proceedings, in its perpetual…
Unfortunately, the basis of this new government has been laid on old, condemned delinquents, and its superstructure is raised out of prosecutors turned into protectors.
Our attempts to banish this importunate duty will only make it return upon us again and again, and every time in a shape more unpleasant than the former.
But let us do what we please to put India from our thoughts, we can do nothing to separate it from our public interest and our national reputation.
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