Edmund Burke

It would hardly be believed, I imagine, unless strong proof appeared, that any man could be so daring as to hold up such a resource to a regular government, which had three million of known, avowed, a great part of it territorial, revenue.

My Lords, if we are straitened in this, then our vigor will be redoubled in the rest, and we shall use it with double force.

He wants you to discredit a man for forgery upon no evidence under heaven but that of his own, who thinks proper, without any sort of authority, without any sort of reference, without any sort of collateral evidence, to charge a man with…

The consequence of that inquiry was, that we began to conceive a very bad opinion both of the complainant and defendant in that business,--that we found the English justice to be, as we thought it, and reported it to the House, a…

I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime.

I owe it to your Lordships, I owe it to this great auditory, I owe it to the present times and to posterity, to make some apology for a proceeding which has drawn upon me the disavowal of the House which I represent.

We ought to be fully convinced of guilt, before we come to you.

I know and am satisfied, that, in the nobleness of your judgment, you will always make a distinction between the person that gives the order and the organ that is to execute it.

This prosecution, if weakly conceived, ill digested, or intemperately pursued, ought never to have been brought to your Lordships' bar: but being brought to your Lordships' bar, the nation is committed to it, and the least appearance of…

For, my Lords, if any circumstance of weakness, if any feebleness of nerve, if any yielding to weak and popular opinions and delusions were to shake us, consider what the situation of this country would be.

I shall feel animated and encouraged by so noble a reward as I shall always consider the confidence of the Commons to be: the only reward, but a rich reward, which I have received for the toils and labors of a long life.

My Lords, the situation is new and awful: the situation is such as, I believe, and I am sure, has nothing like it on the records of Parliament, nor, probably, in the history of mankind.

There is, indeed, no doubt either of his guilt, or of the consequences of it, by which he has extinguished the last expiring hope and glimpse that remained of procuring a remedy for India of the evils that exist in it.

Was there ever, since the world began, any man who would dare to avow such sentiments, until driven to the wall?

Here is a direct avowal of his refusing to examine into the conduct of persons in the Council, even in the highest departments of government, and the best paid, for fear he should dissatisfy them, and should lose their votes, by…

Whether that be a truth or not I cannot tell; but this I know, that it is the most horrible picture that ever was made of any country.

Nay, he tells you, that, if corruption did not exist, if it was not connived at, that the India Company could not exist.

Here you find him corrupt, and you find, in consequence of that corruption, that he screens the whole body of corruption in India, and states an absolute despair of any possibility, by any art or address, of putting an end to it.

His duty was to put an end to corruption in every channel of government.

Now was there ever an instance of a man so basely deserting a duty, and giving so base a reason for it?

My Lords, this is the first man, I believe, that ever took credit for his sincerity from his breach of his promises.

He is charmed with their approbation; he promises the greatest things; but I believe your Lordships will see, from the manner in which he proceeds at that very instant, that a more deliberate system, for not only being corrupt himself, but…

I will show that he did not,--that he knowingly and willingly connived at it,--and that that connivance was the principal cause of all the disorders that have hitherto prevailed in that country.

Hastings's taking of bribes is not only his own corruption, but the incurable corruption of the whole service.

Therefore the Commons stand before the face of the world, and say, We have brought a cause, a great cause, a cause worthy the Commons of England to prosecute, and worthy the Lords to judge and determine upon.