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.
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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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.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
He has substituted oppression and tyranny in the place of legal government.
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…
In other official systems, the style, in general, is above the function; here it is the reverse.
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.
The fundamental principle of the whole of the East India Company's system is monopoly, in some sense or other.
There is nothing to be in propriety called people, to watch, to inspect, to balance against the power of office.
They are a nation of placemen; they are a commonwealth without a people; they are a state made up wholly of magistrates.
The English in India are nothing but a seminary for the succession of officers.
The Company in India does not exist as a national colony.
The East India Company in India is not properly a branch of the British nation: it is only a deputation of individuals.
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.
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.
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…
Its whole service is a system of public offices in the disguise of a counting-house.
In fact, the East India Company in Asia is a state in the disguise of a merchant.
Indeed, wherever the sovereign powers of peace and war are given, there wants but time and circumstance to make these powers supersede every other.
The constitution of the Company began in commerce and ended in empire.
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.
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