By this simple, obvious operation, the Company would be relieved and the debt paid, without the charge of a shilling interest to that prince.
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 this case, would not a plain man ask this plain question of the Company: If you know that the Nabob must annually mortgage his territories to your servants to pay his annual arrear to you, why is not the assignment or mortgage made…
Carrying in your mind these two facts, attend to the process with regard to the public and private debt, and with what little appearance of decency they play into each other's hands a game of utter perdition to the unhappy natives of India.
It is robbed in its army; it is robbed in its civil administration; it is robbed in its credit; it is robbed in its investment, which forms the commercial connection between that country and Europe.
In my eye it is no more than the preference of a fiction over a chimera; but I blame the preference given to those fictitious private debts over the standing defence and the standing government.
What is this but to avow a resolution utterly to destroy their own country, and to force the people to pay for their sufferings to a government which has proved unable to protect either the share of the husbandman or their own?
In peace they go the full length, and indeed more than the full length, of what the people can bear for current establishments; then they are absurd enough to consolidate all the calamities of war into debts,--to metamorphose the…
If men were allowed to credit themselves upon such principles, any one might soon grow rich by this mode of accounting.
But I, Sir, who profess to speak to your understanding and to your conscience, and to brush away from this business all false colors, all false appellations, as well as false facts, do positively deny that the Carnatic owes a shilling to…
Never was a more shameful postponing a public demand, which, by the reason of the thing, and the uniform practice of all nations, supersedes every private claim.
Whatever its amount or its validity may be, one thing is clear: it is of the nature and quality of a public debt.
I have stated to you the estimated produce of the territories of the Carnatic in a condition to be farmed in 1782, according to the different managements into which they might fall; and this estimate the ministers have thought proper to…
To crown all, according to their miserable practice, whenever they do anything transcendently absurd, they preface this their abdication of their trust by a solemn declaration that they were not obliged to it by any principle of policy or…
It is with reason, therefore, Lord Macartney invariably, throughout the whole correspondence, qualifies all his views and expectations of revenue, and all his plans for its application, with this indispensable condition, that the…
Hitherto all is well: but follow on to the effective net revenue; there the illusion vanishes; and you will not find nearly so much as half the produce.
The whole revenue of the Carnatic yielded no more, in May, 1782, than four hundred and eighty thousand pounds: nearly the very precise sum which your minister, who is so careful of the public security, has carried from all descriptions of…
It is the authorized, recorded state of a real, recent transaction.
Here is no speculation; here is no inaccurate account clandestinely obtained from those who might wish, and were enabled, to deceive.
Since, then, the ministers will obstinately shut the gates of mercy on themselves, let them add to their crimes what aggravations they please.
No part of his official conduct can be defended on the ground of his Parliamentary information.
If, therefore, the ministers have gone wrong, they were not deceived by Lord Macartney: they were deceived by no man.
A ministry of another kind would have first improved the country, and have thus laid a solid foundation for future opulence and future force.
This is what a wise and virtuous ministry would have done and said.
What, Sir, would a virtuous and enlightened ministry do, on the view of the ruins of such works before them?--on the view of such a chasm of desolation as that which yawned in the midst of those countries, to the north and south, which…
These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people,--testators to a posterity which they embraced as their own.
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