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.
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.
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.
All the relations of life are at once dissolved.
All these varied and successive sales shook the country to pieces.
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…
Half the northern force of India poured down like a torrent on Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our resources.
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.
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…
Such another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the world cannot furnish.
He took strong measures to put an end to a great many of the abuses that prevailed in the country subject to the Company.
So, after some time, and after one of the most rigid conquests that we read of in history, the Normans softened into the English.
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.
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!
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.
He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.
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.
It is putting things into the position of an ugly alternative, into which I hope in God they never will be put.
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 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…
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!
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers.
The first thing, in considering the merits or demerits of any governor, is to have some test by which they are to be tried.
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.
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