These men seemed to be as strange instruments for improving a revenue as ever were chosen, I suppose, since the world began.
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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But I hope and trust your Lordships will consider this idea of a monstrous rise of rent, given by men of desperate fortunes and characters, to be one of the grievances instead of one of the advantages of this system.
On a transient view, bribery is rather a subject of disgust than horror,--the sordid practice of a venal, mean, and abject mind; and the effect of the crime seems to end with the act.
It is bad, however, to live under a power whose violence has no restraint except in its avarice.
But no man ever paid a bribe for a power to charge and tax others, but with a view to oppress them.
No man ever paid a bribe for the handling of the public money, but to peculate from it.
Not only the worst men will be thus chosen, but they will be restrained by no dread whatsoever in the execution of their worst oppressions.
The authority that is to restrain, to control, to punish them is previously engaged; he has his retaining fee for the support of their crimes.
Hastings never dared, because he could not, arrest oppression in its course, without drying up the source of his own corrupt emolument.
Hastings never dared, after the fact, to punish extortion in others, because he could not, without risking the discovery of bribery in himself.
The same corruption, the same oppression, and the same impunity will reign through all the subordinate gradations.
A fair revenue may be collected without the aid of wicked, violent, and unjust instruments.
When we know that men must be well paid (and they ought to be well paid) for the performance of honorable duty, can we think that men will be found to commit wicked, rapacious, and oppressive acts with fidelity and disinterestedness for…
In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.
My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice?
You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.
When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one?
My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise.
We see in that invisible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his Majesty.
We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject,--offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of…
My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here,--those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by…
My Lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits,--by great military services which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun.
We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen with their votes those principles which…
My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions.
These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression,--knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who…
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