School-boys without tutors, minors without guardians, the world is let loose upon them with all its temptations, and they are let loose upon the world with all the powers that despotism involves.
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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It is further remarkable, these servants exercise what your Lordships are now exercising, high judicial powers, and they exercise them without the smallest study of any law, either general or municipal.
They are the situations of great statesmen, which, according to the practice of the world, require, to fill properly, rather a large converse with men and much intercourse in life than deep study of books,--though that, too, has its…
We know that in the habits of civilized life, in cultivated society, there is imbibed by men a good deal of the solid practice of government, of the true maxims of state, and everything that enables a man to serve his country.
But these men are sent over to exercise functions at which a statesman here would tremble, without any theoretical study, and without any of that sort of experience which, in mixed societies of business and converse, form men gradually and…
Low cunning, intrigue, and stratagem are soon acquired; but manly, durable policy, which never sacrifices the general interest to a partial or momentary advantage, is not so cheaply formed in the human understanding.
The laws that we have made, the covenants which the Company has obliged its servants to enter into, the occasional orders that have been given, at least ostensibly good, all have proved noxious to the country, instead of beneficial.
The consequence is this: he who has deviated but an inch from the straight line, he who has taken but one penny of unlawful emolument, (and all have taken many pennies of unlawful emolument,) does not dare to complain of the most abandoned…
He who has taken a trifle, perhaps as the reward of a good action, is obliged to be silent, when he sees whole nations desolated around him.
The great criminal at the head of the service has the laws in his hand; he is always able to prove the small offence, and crush the person who has committed it.
The whole service is irregular: nobody is free from small offences; and, as I have said, the great offender can always crush the small one.
From that moment forward it is not the Englishman, it is the black banian, that is the master.
He has him under his power: first, from the necessity of employing such a man; and next, (and this is the more important of the two,) he has that dreadful power over his master which every creditor has over his debtor.
Actions the most abhorrent to his nature he must see done before his face, and thousands and thousands worse are done in his absence, and he dare not complain.
But whoever they are, or of whatever birth, they have equally prostituted their integrity, they have equally lost their character; and, once entered into that course of life, there is no difference between the best castes and the worst.
Hastings confirmed, established, increased, and made the instrument of the most austere tyranny, of the basest peculations, and the most scandalous and iniquitous extortions.
He who has dominion over the caste has an absolute power over something more than life and fortune.
Hastings has exercised oppressions which, I will venture to say, in his own name, in his own character, daring as he is, (and he is the most daring criminal that ever existed,) he never would dare to practise.
The active, awakened, and enlightened principle of self-interest will provide a better system for the guard of that interest than the cold, drowsy wisdom of those who provide for a good out of themselves ever contrived for the public.
The plans sketched by private prudence for private interest, the regulations by mercantile men for their mercantile purposes, when they can be applied to the discipline and order of the state, produce a discipline and order which no state…
But the Company has proceeded much further, and done much more wisely, because they proceeded upon mercantile principles; and they have provided, either by orders or course of office, that all shall be written,--the proposition, the…
If well employed, and but a little improved, the East India Company possessed an advantage unknown before to the chief of a remote government.
Innocence is plain, direct, and simple: guilt is a crooked, intricate, inconstant, and various thing.
The iniquitous job of to-day may be covered by specious reasons; but when the job of iniquity of to-morrow succeeds, the reasons that have colored the first crime may expose the second malversation.
The man of fraud falls into contradiction, prevarication, confusion.
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