Edmund Burke

It has been said that private vices are public benefits.

He goes the full length of that position, and turns his private peculation into a public good.

When he can himself give no account of his motives, and even declares that he cannot assign any cause, I am authorized and required to find motives for him,--corrupt motives for a corrupt act.

There is no one capital act of his administration that did not strongly imply corruption.

When a man is known to be free from all imputation of taking money, and it becomes an established part of his character, the errors or even crimes of his administration ought to be, and are in general, traced to other sources.

But once convict a man of bribery in any instance, and once by direct evidence, and you are furnished with a rule of irresistible presumption that every other irregular act by which unlawful gain may arise is done upon the same corrupt…

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

But, thank God, guilt was never a rational thing: it distorts all the faculties of the mind; it perverts them; it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason; it puts him into confusion.

He has recourse to such miserable and absurd expedients for covering his guilt as all those who are used to sit in the seat of judgment know have been the cause of detection of half the villanies in the world.

To argue that these could not be his reasons, because they were not wise, sound, and substantial, would be to suppose, what is not true, that bad men were always discreet and able.

For God forbid that guilt should ever leave a man the free, undisturbed use of his faculties!

For as guilt never rose from a true use of our rational faculties, so it is very frequently subversive of them.

No: it takes the lead, and is never found where justice does not accompany it; and if ever it is attempted to bring it into the service of the vices, it immediately subverts their cause.

It tends to their discovery, and, I hope and trust, finally to their utter ruin and destruction.

Therefore he was resolved,--your Lordships will remark the whole of this most daring and systematic plan of bribery and peculation,--he resolved to put it out of the power of his Council in future to check or control him in any of his evil…

Hastings: a name that you will often hear of; a name at the sound of which all India turns pale; the most wicked, the most atrocious, the boldest, the most dexterous villain that ever the rank servitude of that country has produced.

It is little advantage to restrain the Committee themselves from bribery or corruption, when their executive officer has the power of practising both undetected.

He discovers the secret resources of the zemindars and renters, their enemies and competitors; and by the engines of hope and fear, raised upon these foundations, he can work them to his purpose.

You see it was made for the purpose of being a tool in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; that integrity, ability, and vigilance could avail nothing; that the whole country might be laid under contribution by this man, and that he could thus…

The screen, the veil, spread before this transaction, is torn open by the very people themselves who are the tools in it.

Hastings uses his name and authority to make them such in the hands of the basest, the wickedest, the corruptest, the most audacious and atrocious villain ever heard of.

It is to him all the English authority is sacrificed, and four gentlemen are appointed to be his tools and instruments.

I do, then, declare my conviction, and wish it may stand recorded to posterity, that there never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

It is not in the nature of such men; their minds are so distorted to selfish purposes, to knavish, artificial, and crafty means of accomplishing those selfish ends, that, if put to any good service, they are poor, dull, helpless.

No man ever knowingly employed a bad man on account of his abilities, but for evil ends.