He directly set up an independent right to administer the government according to his pleasure; and he went so far as to bottom his claim to act independently of the Court of Directors on the very statute which commanded his obedience 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.
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An innocent man would take a shorter and easier course.
Nothing is opposed to all this but a paper without signature, and therefore of no authority, attended with a translation of a very extraordinary appearance; and this paper, in apologizing for it, confirms the facts beyond a doubt.
We know not how this assertion is to be made good, unless the most daring and flagrant prostitution in every branch be deemed an honor to his administration.
Now, my Lords, every office of trust, in its very nature, forbids the receipt of bribes.
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices!
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
In my two reports I have set forth in a general manner the oppressions which provoked the ryots to rise.
My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this.
Fear and shame, the great guards to virtue next to conscience, are gone.
Did he owe nothing to the world, as to its opinion, to which every public man owes a reputation?
But there are other circumstances further auxiliary in this business, which, from the very attempts to conceal it, prove beyond doubt the fraudulent and wicked nature of the transaction.
That which he intends to produce as a justification we charge, and your Lordships and the world will think, to be the heaviest aggravation of his crime.
To say that the opinions of learned men, though even thus obtained, may not have weight with this court, or with any court, is a kind of compliment I cannot pay to them at the expense of that common nature in which I and all human beings…
Hastings has received the two lac of rupees, then you will find that he was guilty, without color or pretext of any kind whatever, of acting in violation of his covenant, of acting in violation of the laws, and all the rules of honor and…
The Nabob is astonished at the suspicion, that such a woman as Munny Begum, whose trade in youth had been delusion, should be capable of deluding anybody.
It is my duty to do it; I feel it an obligation nearest to my heart.
Here is a system made for fraud, and producing all the effects of it.
You have a standard, a measure of extortion, and that is all: ex pede Herculem: guess from thence what was extorted from all Bengal.
One witness (and for that reason) is allowed sufficient to convict, in cases of felony, which in other laws is not permitted.
It is necessary to preserve the dignity and respect of all the constitutional authorities.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
