The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
frauds, and peculations, and then you do me justice,"--what country are
we in, where these ideas are ideas of generosity and justice?
It might naturally be expected that in this letter he would have given
some account of the person from whom he had taken this bribe. But here,
as in the other cases, he had a most effectual oblivion; the Ganges,
like Lethe, causes a drowsiness, as you saw in Mr. Middleton; they
recollect nothing, they know nothing. He has not stated, from that day
to this, from whom he took that money. But we have made the discovery.
And such is the use of Parliamentary inquiries, such, too, both to the
present age and posterity, will be their use, that, if we pursue them
with the vigor which the great trust justly imposed upon us demands, and
if your Lordships do firmly administer justice upon this man's frauds,
you will at once put an end to those frauds and prevarications forever.
Your Lordships will see, that, in this inquiry, it is the diligence of
the House of Commons, which he has the audacity to call _malice_, that
has discovered and brought to light the frauds which we shall be able to
prove against him.
I will now read to your Lordships an extract from that stuff, called a
defence, which he has either written himself or somebody else has
written for him, and which he owns or disclaims, just as he pleases,
when, under the slow tortures of a Parliamentary impeachment, he
discovered at length from whom he got this last bribe.
"The last part of the charge states, that, in my letter to the Court of
Directors of the 21st February, 1784, I have confessed to have received
another sum of money, the amount of which is not declared, but which,
from the application of it, could not be less than thirty-four thousand
pounds sterling, &c. In the year 1783, when I was actually in want of a
sum of money for my private expenses, owing to the Company not having at
that time sufficient cash in their treasury to pay my salary, I borrowed
three lacs of rupees of Rajah Nobkissin, an inhabitant of Calcutta, whom
I desired to call upon me with a bond properly filled up. He did so; but
at the time I was going to execute it he entreated I would rather
accept the money than execute the bond. I neither accepted the offer nor
refused it; and my determination upon it remained suspended between the
alternative of keeping the money, as a loan to be repaid, and of taking
it, and applying it, as I had done other sums, to the Company's use. And
there the matter rested till I undertook my journey to Lucknow, when I
determined to accept the money for the Company's use; and these were my
motives. Having made disbursements from my own cash for services, which,
though required to enable me to execute the duties of my station, I had
hitherto omitted to enter into my public accounts, I resolved to
reimburse myself in a mode most suitable to the situation of the
Company's affairs, by charging these disbursements in my durbar accounts
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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