It was certainly in my power to have continued the payment of it, and to have made my terms with the king for any part of it which I might have chosen to reserve for my own use.
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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Hastings, or in any situation like it, so ready in knowing all the resources by which sinister emolument may be made and concealed, and which, under pretences of public good, may be transferred into the pocket of him who uses those…
He is resolved, if he is innocent, that his innocence shall not proceed from ignorance.
Can you, then, have a doubt, after all these false pretences, after all this fraud, fabrication, and suppression which he made use of, that that 90,000l., of which he kept no account and transmitted no account, was money given to himself…
When your Lordships see all this in proof, your Lordships will justify me in saying that there never was (taking every part of the arrangement) such a direct, open violation of any trust.--I shall say no more with regard to the appointment…
My Lords, the next scene that I am to bring before you is the positive proof of corruption in this transaction, in which I am sure you already see that corruption must exist.
They, on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate every benevolent and noble propensity in the mind of men.
General accusations may be treated as calumnies; but particular accusations, like these, afford the defendant, if innocent, every possible means for making his defence: therefore the very making no defence at all would prove, beyond all…
But the rule of caste has, with them, given one power more to fortune than the manners of any other nation were ever known to do.
Tyranny is therefore armed against them with a greater variety of weapons than are found in its ordinary stores.
The second consideration in the Gentoo institutions is their beneficial effects, moral and civil.
It is now left for us to repair our former errors.
The law of this country recognizes that well-known crime called misconduct in office; it is a head of the law of England, and, so far as inferior courts are competent to try it, may be tried in them.
Nor can any sovereign have it by succession; for no man can succeed to fraud, rapine, and violence.
It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken off.
No man, therefore, has a right to arbitrary power.
There is no book in the world, I believe, which contains nobler, more just, more manly, more pious principles of government than this book, called the Institutions of Tamerlane.
Here, Sir, is a canonical boot of ministerial scripture: the general epistle to the Americans.
Here a repeal is promised,--promised without condition,--and while your authority was actually resisted.
She had, except the commercial restraint, every characteristic mark of a free people in all her internal concerns.
Interested timidity disgraces as much in the cabinet as personal timidity does in the field.
But timidity with regard to the well-being of our country is heroic virtue.
After this experience, nobody shall persuade me, when an whole people are concerned, that acts of lenity are not means of conciliation.
If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure something to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice.
Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity; try it; I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
