Whereas you have done many generous acts, be pleased so to show us your favor, that by some means we may receive our allowances from the Company's treasury, and not be obliged to depend upon and solicit others for it.
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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Its foundation is laid in Regicide, in Jacobinism, and in Atheism; and it has joined to those principles a body of systematic manners which secures their operation.
In such a state of calamity and disgrace, I can no longer remain a passive spectator; nor would it be becoming to conceal my sentiments, or qualify the expression of them.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
By bringing him to justice I mean, that you urge the Nabob, on due conviction, to punish him with death, as a necessary example to deter others from the commission of the like crimes; nor must you desist till this is effected.
Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great politic communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their republic on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which the communities of Europe are…
It is very much my desire to impress the Nabob with a thorough confidence in the faith and justice of our government,--that is to say, in my own, while I am at the head of it: I cannot be answerable for the acts of others independent of me.
On this head the parent law is express and clear, and has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of ownership by the right of vicinage.
The reason they assigned was as infamous as the act: declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands.
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
Much less can I agree, that, with such superior advantages as we possess over every power which can oppose us, we should act merely on the defensive.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
We have the means in our power, and, if they are not frustrated by our own dissensions, I trust that the event of this expedition will yield every advantage for the attainment of which it was undertaken.
God forbid that prudence, the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all, should ever be employed in the service of any of the vices!
The petty sovereign of a country estimated at six or eight lacs ought not for a moment to prove an impediment to any of our measures, or to affect the consistency of our conduct.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
That, by the vague and indefinite term of evasion, the said Warren Hastings did introduce a loose and arbitrary principle of interpreting formal engagements, which ought to be regarded, more especially by guaranties, ill a sense the most…
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them.
The tenderness of the executive power is the natural asylum of those upon whom the laws have declared war; and to complain that men are inclined to favor the means of their own safety is so absurd, that one forgets the injustice in the…
They will be disappointed in all the rest of their expectations which they have formed upon everything, except the merits of their cause.
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
For we are men, my Lords; and men are so made, that it is not only the greatness of danger, but the value of the adventure, which measures the degree of our concern in every undertaking.
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
Politicians like Edmund Burke
