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
I am almost ashamed to remark upon the tergiversations and
prevarications perpetually ringing the changes in this declaration. He
would not have discovered this hundred thousand pounds, if he could have
concealed it: he would have discovered it, lest malicious persons should
be telling tales of it. He has a system of concealment: he never
discovers anything, but when he thinks it can be forced from him. He
says, indeed, "I could conceal these things forever, but my conscience
would not give me leave": but it is guilt, and not honesty of
conscience, that always prompts him. At one time it is the malice of
people and the fear of misrepresentation which induced him to make the
disclosure; and he values himself on the precaution which this fear had
suggested to him. At another time it is the magnitude of the sum which
produced this effect: nothing but the impossibility of concealing it
could possibly have made him discover it. This hundred thousand pounds
he declares he would have concealed, if he could; and yet he values
himself upon the discovery of it. Oh, my Lords, I am afraid that sums of
much greater magnitude have not been discovered at all! Your Lordships
now see some of the artifices of this letter. You see the variety of
styles he adopts, and how he turns himself into every shape and every
form. But, after all, do you find any clear discovery? do you find any
satisfactory answer to the Directors' letter? does he once tell you from
whom he received the money? does he tell you for what he received it,
what the circumstances of the persons giving it were, or any explanation
whatever of his mode of accounting for it? No: and here, at last, after
so many years' litigation, he is called to account for his
prevaricating, false accounts in Calcutta, and cannot give them to you.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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