I hope on this occasion your Lordships will show that this nation never did give a power without annexing to it a proportionable degree of responsibility.
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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Great Britain entered into a virtual act of union with that country, by which we bound ourselves as securities to preserve the people in all the rights, laws, and liberties which their natural, original sovereign was bound to support, if…
The people of India, therefore, come in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, but in their own right, to the bar of this House, before the supreme royal justice of this kingdom, from whence originally all the powers under which they…
At that time the Company was constituted with extensive powers for increasing the commerce and the honor of this country; because increasing its commerce, without increasing its honor and reputation, would have been thought at that time…
By degrees, as the theatre of operation was distant, as its intercourse was with many great, some barbarous, and all of them armed nations, nations in which not only the sovereign, but the subjects, were armed, it was found necessary to…
Those high and almost incommunicable prerogatives of sovereignty, which were hardly ever known before to be parted with to any subjects, and which in several states were not wholly intrusted to the prince or head of the commonwealth…
From this time, the East India Company was no longer merely a mercantile company, formed for the extension of the British commerce: it more nearly resembled a delegation of the whole power and sovereignty of this kingdom sent into the East.
The constitution of the Company began in commerce and ended in empire.
Indeed, wherever the sovereign powers of peace and war are given, there wants but time and circumstance to make these powers supersede every other.
In fact, the East India Company in Asia is a state in the disguise of a merchant.
Its whole service is a system of public offices in the disguise of a counting-house.
Though I will not deny that that order, or that any order in a state, may be superseded by the ruling power, when great talents, upon pressing exigencies, are to be called forth, yet I must say the order itself was formed upon wise…
On the expectants of office it imposed the necessity of acquiring a character in proportion to their standing, in order that all which they had gained by the good behavior of years should not be lost by the misconduct of an hour.
The consequence has been, that persons in the most immature stages of life have been appointed to conduct affairs which required the greatest maturity of judgment, the greatest possible temper and moderation.
The East India Company in India is not properly a branch of the British nation: it is only a deputation of individuals.
The Company in India does not exist as a national colony.
The English in India are nothing but a seminary for the succession of officers.
They are a nation of placemen; they are a commonwealth without a people; they are a state made up wholly of magistrates.
There is nothing to be in propriety called people, to watch, to inspect, to balance against the power of office.
The fundamental principle of the whole of the East India Company's system is monopoly, in some sense or other.
Except in the highest parts of all, the emoluments of office do not in any degree correspond with the trust, nor the nature of the office with its name.
In other official systems, the style, in general, is above the function; here it is the reverse.
It is not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the other.
Glory is not the lot of subordinated merit,--and all the subordinate parts of the gradation are officers who, in comparison with the offices and duties intrusted to them, are miserably provided for; whereas the chief of each great…
He has substituted oppression and tyranny in the place of legal government.
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