The ruin that has overtaken this country is not to be wondered at, when it is considered that there has been no state, no stable government, for many years.
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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Such being the present deplorable state of Furruckabad and its districts, in the ensuing year it will be in vain to look for revenue, if some regulations equal to the exigency be not adopted.
The whole country will be divided between the neighboring powerful aumils, the refractory zemindars, and banditti of robbers; and the Patans, who might be made useful subjects, will fly from the scene of anarchy.
My Lords, I have to state to-day the root of all these misdemeanors,--namely, the pecuniary corruption and avarice which gave rise and primary motion to all the rest of the delinquencies charged to be committed by the Governor-General.
I will venture to say there is no one act, in which tyranny, malice, cruelty, and oppression can be charged, that does not at the same time carry evident marks of pecuniary corruption.
These may all be reduced to one short word,--arbitrary power.
An arbitrary system, indeed, must always be a corrupt one.
My Lords, there never was a man who thought he had no law but his own will, who did not soon find that he had no end but his own profit.
Corruption and arbitrary power are of natural unequivocal generation, necessarily producing one another.
All other men have taken a directly contrary course: they have said, "I have been engaged in an evil system, that led, indeed, to mischievous consequences, but I have taken care, by my own virtues, to prevent the evils of the system under…
We say, then, not only that he governed arbitrarily, but corruptly,--that is to say, that he was a giver and receiver of bribes, and formed a system for the purpose of giving and receiving them.
There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make them frightful and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of a great empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people, this is what makes government itself…
My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find some specious color, and appear as a more severe and rigid execution of justice.
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Conquest may cover its baldness with its own laurels, and the ambition of the conqueror may be hid in the secrets of his own heart under a veil of benevolence, and make him imagine he is bringing temporary desolation upon a country only to…
There are here none of those specious delusions that look like virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor.
But his pretensions to merit are, that he squeezed more money out of the inhabitants of the country than other persons could have done,--money got by oppression, violence, extortion from the poor, or the heavy hand of power upon the rich…
Our desire of acquiring sovereignty in India undoubtedly originated first in ideas of safety and necessity; its next step was a step of ambition.
In short, money is the beginning, the middle, and the end of every kind of act done by Mr.
This is the substance, the principle, and the spirit of the covenants, and will show your Lordships how radicated an evil this of bribery and presents was judged to be.
They declared at that time, that the whole of their service was totally corrupted by bribes and presents, and by extravagance and luxury, which partly gave rise to them, and these, in their turn, enabled them to pursue those excesses.
But in his defence we have him quite in another character,--no longer the frugal, attentive servant, bred to business, bred to book-keeping, as all the Company's servants are; he now knows nothing of his own affairs, knows not whether he…
He is not like a careful man bred in a counting-house, and by the Directors put into an office of the highest trust on account of the regularity of his affairs; he is like one buried in the contemplation of the stars, and knows nothing of…
These three, the great and only obligations that bind mankind, all united in the focus of this single point,--that they should take no presents.
It is perhaps a much more dangerous way; because it adds to the crime a false, prevaricating mode of concealing it, and makes it much more mischievous by admitting others into the participation of it.
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