The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
The Carnatic is a country not much inferior in extent to England. Figure
to yourself, Mr. Speaker, the land in whose representative chair you
sit; figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful
country from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the
German Sea, east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the
omen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your
imagination a little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a
survey of this scene of waste and desolation. What would be your
thoughts, if you should be informed that they were computing how much
had been the amount of the excises, how much the customs, how much the
land and malt tax, in order that they should charge (take it in the most
favorable light) for public service, upon the relics of the satiated
vengeance of relentless enemies, the whole of what England had yielded
in the most exuberant seasons of peace and abundance? What would you
call it? To call it tyranny sublimed into madness would be too faint an
image; yet this very madness is the principle upon which the ministers
at your right hand have proceeded in their estimate of the revenues of
the Carnatic, when they were providing, not supply for the
establishments of its protection, but rewards for the authors of its
ruin.
Every day you are fatigued and disgusted with this cant, "The Carnatic
is a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous
as ever." They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe,
that, by sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready
armed. They who will give themselves the trouble of considering (for it
requires no great reach of thought, no very profound knowledge) the
manner in which mankind are increased, and countries cultivated, will
regard all this raving as it ought to be regarded. In order that the
people, after a long period of vexation and plunder, may be in a
condition to maintain government, government must begin by maintaining
them. Here the road to economy lies not through receipt, but through
expense; and in that country Nature has given no short cut to your
object. Men must propagate, like other animals, by the mouth. Never did
oppression light the nuptial torch; never did extortion and usury spread
out the genial bed. Does any of you think that England, so wasted,
would, under such a nursing attendance, so rapidly and cheaply recover?
But he is meanly acquainted with either England or India who does not
know that England would a thousand times sooner resume population,
fertility, and what ought to be the ultimate secretion from both,
revenue, than such a country as the Carnatic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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