Edmund Burke

The first thing, in considering the merits or demerits of any governor, is to have some test by which they are to be tried.

I have stated them, I trust, with perspicuity,--stated the grounds and principles upon which they were made,--stated the abuses that grew upon them,--and that every revolution produced its abuse.

Happy had it been for them, happy for India and for England, if his conduct had been such as to spare your Lordships and the Commons the exhibition of this day!

If ever this nation stood in a situation of glory throughout Asia, it was in that moment.

The Company exercised their power over the revenue in the first instance through the natives, but the British Resident was in reality the great mover.

The dewanny, or high-stewardship, gave to the Company the collection and management of the revenue; and in this modest and civil character they appeared, not the oppressors, but the protectors of the people.

It gave to the settlement of Bengal a fixed constitutional form, with a legal title, acknowledged and recognized now for the first time by all the natural powers of the country, because it arose from the charter of the undoubted sovereign.

This is the great act of the constitutional entrance of the Company into the body politic of India.

And this act of politic generosity did more towards quieting the minds of the people of Asia than all the terror, great as it was, of the English arms.

With a generosity that astonished all Asia, he reinstated this expelled enemy of his nation peaceably upon his throne.

On this solid plan he fixed every prince that was concerned in the preceding wars, on the one side and on the other, in an happy and easy settlement.

He put a bound to the aspiring spirit of the Company's servants; he limited its conquests; he prescribed bounds to its ambition.

He took strong measures to put an end to a great many of the abuses that prevailed in the country subject to the Company.

For, in the first place, he composed all the neighboring countries torn to pieces by the wars of Cossim Ali, and quieted the apprehensions raised by the opinion of the boundless ambition of England.

Perhaps in some of his measures he was mistaken, and in some of his acts reprehensible; but justice obliges me to say, that the plan which he formed and the course which he pursued were in general great and well imagined,--that he laid…

However, he fought his way like a retiring lion, turning his face to his pursuers.

Half the northern force of India poured down like a torrent on Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our resources.

As if those miserable exhausted provinces were to be cured of inanition by phlebotomy, while Cossim Ali was racking it above, the Company were drawing off all its nutriment below.

All these varied and successive sales shook the country to pieces.

In the year 1775 he was hanged by those incorrupt English judges who were sent to India by Parliament to protect the natives from oppression.

Every succession was sold; and between venal successions and venal revolutions, in a very few years seven princes and six sales were seen successively in Bengal.

Another son of the same prostitute succeeded to the same unhappy throne, and followed to the same untimely grave.

This miserable succession was sold, and the eldest of the issue of Munny Begum, an harlot, brought in to pollute the harem of the seraglio, of whom you will hear much hereafter, was chosen.

But a more doubtful title was preferred, as better adapted to the purposes of extortion and peculation.

Revolutions were no longer necessary; succession supplied their places: and well the object agreed with the policy.