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.
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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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.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
Indeed, wherever the sovereign powers of peace and war are given, there wants but time and circumstance to make these powers supersede every other.
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…
Its whole service is a system of public offices in the disguise of a counting-house.
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.
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.
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
The East India Company in India is not properly a branch of the British nation: it is only a deputation of individuals.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
The English in India are nothing but a seminary for the succession of officers.
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!
There is nothing to be in propriety called people, to watch, to inspect, to balance against the power of office.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
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.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
It is not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the other.
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…
He has substituted oppression and tyranny in the place of legal government.
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
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.
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.
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.
A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
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