Hastings was, at the very time of his receiving this gift, in the course of making on the Rajah of Benares a series of demands, unfounded and unjustifiable, and constantly growing in proportion as they were submitted to.
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.
gutenberg.org
Presents from persons who hold up poverty as a shield against extortion can scarcely in any case be considered as gratuitous, whether the plea of poverty be true or false.
Hastings; for to give much voluntarily, when it is known that much will be taken away forcibly, is a thing absurd and impossible.
Hastings must have pledged a tacit faith for some degree of indulgence towards the donor: if it was a free gift, gratitude, if it was a bargain, justice obliged him to do it.
The complication of fraud and cruelty in the transaction admits of few parallels.
Words cannot be devised of a stronger import or studied with more care.
It is, indeed, very much to be feared that the people of India find it sometimes turn more to their account to give presents to the English in authority than to pay their debts to the public; and this is a matter of a very serious…
If once a presumption is admitted, that, wherever something is divulged, nothing is hid, the discovering of one offence may become the certain means of concealing a multitude of others.
The contrivance is easy and trivial, and lies open to the meanest proficient in this kind of art; it will not only become an effectual cover to such practices, but will tend infinitely to increase them.
The legislature, in declaring all presents to be the property of the Company, could not consider corruption, extortion, and fraud as any part of their resources.
The property in such presents was declared to be theirs, not as a fund for their benefit, but in order to found a legal title to a civil suit.
It was declared theirs, to facilitate the recovery out of corrupt and oppressive hands of money illegally taken; but this legal fiction of property could not nor ought by the legislature to be considered in any other light than as a trust…
This prohibition and permission of presents, with this declaration of property in the Company, would leave no property to any man in India.
If such construction prevails, the provision made as their screen from oppression will become the means of increasing and aggravating it without bounds and beyond remedy.
If presents, which when they are given were unlawful, can afterwards be legalized by an application of them to the Company's service, no sufferer can even resort to a remedial process at law for his own relief.
The moment he attempts to sue, the money may be paid into the Company's treasury; it is then lawfully taken, and the party is non-suited.
These principles are the more necessary to be inquired into, because, if admitted, they will serve to justify every species of improper conduct.
If the transaction was fair and honest, every native must have been desirous of making merit with the great governing power.
If he gave his money as a free gift, he might value himself upon very honorable and very acceptable service; if he lent it on the Company's bonds, it would still have been of service, and he might also receive eight per cent for his money.
A dispute may always be raised in council in order to cover oppression and peculation elsewhere.
Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient members.
Hastings had no right, in order to clear himself of peculation, to criminate the majority with faction.
No member of any body, outvoted on a question, has, or can have, a right to direct any part of his public conduct by that principle.
Hastings has been charged with various acts of peculation, perpetrated at a time he could not excuse himself by the plea of any public purpose to be carried on, or of any faction in council by which it was traversed.
Much was necessarily to depend upon a person who was to preserve the moderation of a sovereign not supported by intrinsic power, and yet to maintain the dignity necessary to carry on the representation of political government, as well as…
Politicians like Edmund Burke
