Like all the rest of the great personages whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult and oppression, he betook himself to the usual destructive resources of unprincipled misery,--sensuality, opium, and wine.
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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Then, under the name of compensation for sufferings to the people concerned in the trade, and in the name of donation to an army and a navy which had little to do in this affair, they tax him--what sum do you think?
This very man they take up again, to place on the throne from which they had about two years before removed him, and for the effecting of which they had committed so many iniquities.
That war sets the whole country in a blaze; and then other parties begin to appear upon the scene, whose transactions you will find yourselves deeply concerned in hereafter.
Hastings set up cut and hacked the limbs of British subjects in the most cruel and perfidious manner, threw them into wells, and polluted the waters of the country with British blood.
There were two hundred, or thereabouts, of the Company's servants, or their dependants, slaughtered at Patna with every circumstance of the most abominable cruelty.
Hastings had assisted to raise to the throne of Bengal, well knowing his character and his disposition, and well knowing what such a man was capable of doing,--this man massacred the English wherever he met them.
This Cossim Ali Khân signalized his first acts of hostility by an atrocity committed against the faith of treaties, against the rules of war, against every principle of honor.
Thus this miserable country was torn to pieces by the horrible rapaciousness of a double tyranny.
The trade they carried on, and which more resembled robbery than commerce, anticipated the resources of the tyrant, and threatened to leave him no materials for imposition or confiscation.
This English army of traders in their march ravaged worse than a Tartarian conqueror.
It appeared more like an army going to pillage the people, under pretence of commerce, than anything else.
These traders appeared everywhere; they sold at their own prices, and forced the people to sell to them at their own prices also.
The servants of the Company made use of this dustuck for their own private trade, which, while it was used with moderation, the native government winked at in some degree; but when it got wholly into private hands, it was more like robbery…
Commerce, which enriches every other country in the world, was bringing Bengal to total ruin.
He had scarcely got upon the throne, procured for him by our public spirit and his own iniquities, than he began directly and instantly to fortify himself, and to bend all his politics against those who were or could be the donors of such…
But if he gave the Nabob over to an intended murderer, and delivered his person, treasure, and everything into his hands, Cossim Ali Khân might have had no great reason to complain of being left to the execution of his own projects in his…
I verily believe he was a man of good intentions, and rather debauched by that amazing flood of iniquity which prevailed at that time, or hurried and carried away with it.
This man, who was probably guilty in his conscience as well as in act, thus fell by that most lucky, providential, and most useful flash of lightning.
To remove a nabob and to create a revolution is not easy: houses are strong who have sons grown up with vigor and fitness for the command of armies.
The extenuation was the purity of his heart, and the bad situation of the Company's affairs,--the perpetual plea, which your Lordships will hear of forever, and which if it will justify evil actions, they will take good care that the most…
Here I come upon the principle which I wish most strongly to mark to your Lordships: I mean collusive trials and collusive acquittals.
Without a prosecutor, without an impartial director of the inquiry, they left it substantially to those persons to try one another for their common acts.
Between these litigant parties for power I shall not determine on the merits,--thinking of nothing but the use that was made of the power, to whomsoever it belonged.
Warren Hastings was the pledge in his hands for the honor of the British nation, and their fidelity to their engagements.
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