But long as it is, the more material half of the subject has hardly been touched on: that is, the corrupt and destructive system to which this debt has been rendered subservient, and which seems to be pursued with at least as much vigor…
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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In my opinion, we ought not to wait for the fruitless instruction of calamity to inquire into the abuses which bring upon us ruin in the worst of its forms, in the loss of our fame and virtue.
These abuses, full of their own wild native vigor, will grow and flourish under mere neglect.
It is difficult for the most wise and upright government to correct the abuses of remote, delegated power, productive of unmeasured wealth, and protected by the boldness and strength of the same ill-got riches.
Much evil has been done in India under the British authority.
That these oppressions exist is a fact no more denied than it is resented as it ought to be.
I confess, I wish that some more feeling than I have yet observed for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects in that oppressed part of the world had manifested itself in any one quarter of the kingdom, or in any one…
It is therefore no apology for ministers, that they have not been bought by the East India delinquents, but that they have only formed an alliance with them for screening each other from justice, according to the exigence of their several…
But the objects of ambition are for the few; and every person who aims at indirect profit, and therefore wants other protection than innocence and law, instead of its rival, becomes its instrument.
It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring rum on mankind.
For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which legal presumptions and natural indications lead me, without considering what species of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to extenuate the guilt of their conduct.
I know that the ministers will think it little less than acquittal, that they are not charged with having taken to themselves some part of the money of which they have made so liberal a donation to their partisans, though the charge may be…
To reject such combination and comparison is to reject the only means of detecting fraud; it is, indeed, to give it a patent and free license to cheat with impunity.
Clandestine and collusive practice can only be traced by combination and comparison of circumstances.
If this chain of circumstances does not lead you necessarily to conclude that the minister has paid to the avarice of Benfield the services done by Benfield's connections to his ambition, I do not know anything short of the confession of…
An equitable judge would not hear of the claim of a man who had himself thought proper to renounce it.
An honest magistrate compels men to abide by one story.
I believe, after this exposure of facts, no man can entertain a doubt of the collusion of ministers with the corrupt interest of the delinquents in India.
A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by his Majesty's ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an estate which in…
Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution?
This was the golden cup of abominations,--this the chalice of the fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Eastern harlot,--which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land had…
But the public was an indignant witness of the ostentation with which the measure was made his own, and the authority with which he brought up clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the rankness of that corrupt act.
For her, he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House,--to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach, some other houses, but with real…
Not content with this, in order to station a steady phalanx for all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amidst his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor, rotten Constitution of his native country.
Paul Benfield is the grand Parliamentary reformer, the reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow, and to whom even the right honorable gentleman himself must yield the palm: for what region in the empire, what city, what borough…
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