Edmund Burke

You, my Lords, are now to determine, not only whether all these labors have been vain and fruitless, but whether we have abused so long the public patience of our country, and so long oppressed merit, instead of avenging crime.

We know that the doctrines of folly are of great use to the professors of vice.

From that moment revenge passes from the private to the public hand; but in being transferred it is far from being extinguished.

Let those who feel with me upon this occasion join with me in this vow: if they will not, I have it all to myself.

He gave himself powers which the act of Parliament did not give him.

Much less has he a right to supersede the law, and the principle of his own delegation and appointment, upon any idea of convenience.

The Rajah had retired to the last refuge of the afflicted, to offer up prayers to his God and our God, when a vile chubdar, or tipstaff, came to interrupt and insult him.

The crime we charge is his having distributed the lands of others at his own pleasure.

They had every penny of his fortune, and I believe, though I cannot with certainty know, that the man died insolvent; and it was not pretended that he had ever applied to his own use any part of the Company's money.

Would you think it possible for a people to suffer more than the inhabitants of Benares have suffered, from the noble possessor of the splendid mansion down to the miserable tenants of the cottage and the hut?

You find the appearance all false and fraudulent; and you see the whole trick at once.

I must carry with me that great excuse for everything, that salve for every sore, that expiation for every crime: let me provide that, all is well.

They gave way; and thus were committed acts of oppression and cruelty unknown, I will venture to say, in the history of India.

We closed at that awful moment when we found the first women of Oude pillaged of all their landed and of all their moneyed property, in short, of all they possessed.

Therefore we fix upon him fraud, deceit, and the production of false evidence, after the woman had desired to have the man who was the evidence against her examined upon the spot.

Major Gilpin's evidence leaves not even the shadow of a pretence for this charge.

This is not an English court of justice, if such a thing is permitted.

As for us, we regard it no more than we should other noise and brawlings of criminals who in irons may be led through the streets, raving at the magistrate that has committed them.

My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood it; you see that we so understood it; and still you have heard the prisoner, after charging us with falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we please, we may go on in our own way.

Hastings against those women as any other than as an aggravation of his offence against them.

These, my Lords, are the state of the distresses in the year 1782, and your Lordships will see that they continued almost, with only occasional reliefs, during the period of that whole year.

These form our second nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society in which Providence has placed us.

This sensibility of our moral nature is far more acute in that sex which, I may say without any compliment, forms the better and more virtuous part of mankind, and which is at the same time the least protected from the insults and outrages…

This is a new source of feelings, that often make corporal distress doubly felt; and it has a whole class of distresses of its own.

We have stated, first, the sufferings of the Begum, and, secondly, the sufferings of the two thousand women (I believe they are not fewer in number) that belong to them, and are dependent upon them, and dependent upon their well-being.