Edmund Burke

But when we are reading documents given in evidence, and are commenting upon them, the use of this kind of language really deserves your Lordships' consideration.

This is not an English court of justice, if such a thing is permitted.

This man, whom we have described as the scourge and terror of India, this man gets up, and charges us, not with a mistake, an error, a wrong construction, but a direct falsehood,--and adds, that his patience is worn out with the falsehood…

Judge you, my Lords, what the insolence, audacity, and cruelty of this man must have been, from his want of patience in his present situation, and when he dares to hold this language here.

When wrong is to be done, we have then an interest in the country to justify our acting in it; but when the question is of redressing wrongs, when the question is of doing justice, when the question is of inquiry, when the question is of…

The Begums did not dare to murmur; they did not dare to ask for redress, God knows the poor creatures were, at or about the time, his prisoners,--robbed,--stripped of everything,--without hope and without resource.

All her landed estates he knew were confiscated; he knew all her money was in his own possession; he knew she had not the means, if she had been disposed, to create intrigues and cabals;--what disturbance, then, could be created by his…

You see, my Lords, this man is constantly thrusting this peaceable Nabob before him; goading and pushing him on, as if with a bayonet behind, to the commission of everything that is base and dishonorable.

It is a green wound; don't uncover it; do nothing to irritate.

It will be to little purpose to tell them that their conduct has, in our estimation of it, been very wrong, and at the same time to announce to them the orders of our superiors, which more than indicate the reverse.

Whatever obedience may be due to the clear ascertained spirit of the orders of the Court of Directors, this obligation cannot extend to points to which neither the letter nor evident spirit of their orders apply.

If, therefore, the disaffection of the Begums was not a matter of public notoriety, we cannot but be alarmed for the effects which these subsequent transactions must have had on the minds of the natives of India.

All this he was forced to do: he was made the reluctant instrument of punishing his mother and grandmother for a plot of which even their accusers do not pretend to say that the parties accused had ever received any intimation.

Yes, my Lords, this poor, miserable victim was forced to violate all the laws of Nature, all decency, all property, to rob his own mother, for the benefit of Mr.

You have here a proof of their practice of producing such evidence only as they thought most favorable to their wicked purposes, in the destruction of this great and ancient family.

Hastings, but they conceal the information obtained from him: a silence more damning than any positive evidence could be.

As to the Begum, he positively acquits her of any rebellion.

That cool, deliberate inquiry was the conversations I had with the ministers and the people of Fyzabad, and the letters from herself expressing her innocence; and it appeared to me from those letters that she really was our friend and ally.

Major Gilpin's evidence leaves not even the shadow of a pretence for this charge.

But it is also remarkable, that even this Hyder Beg Khan never mentions by name the rebellion of the Begums, nor says that he ever heard a word about it: a strong proof that he did not dare, in the face of his country, to give countenance…

Is it to be credited that any man would trust a mother who, contrary to all the rules of Nature and policy, had conspired to destroy her own son?

Is it to be credited, my Lords, that a prince would act thus who believed that a conspiracy was formed against him by his own mother?

Not a word from him of any rebellion, actual or suspected.

But to blow away and to put an end to all their false pretences, their hearsays, and talk of nudjeeves, and wounds, and the like, I ask, Who is the first witness that we have produced upon this occasion?

Besides, he forgets that he himself carried the order to confiscate these people's property without any trial whatever.