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
Govind Sing: _amantium irae amoris integratio est_. For Gunga Govind
Sing, without having paid him one shilling of this money, attended him
to the Ganges; and one of the last acts of Mr. Hastings's government was
to represent this man, who was unfaithful even to fraud, who did not
keep the common faith of thieves and robbers, this very man he
recommends to the Company as a person who ought to be rewarded, as one
of their best and most faithful servants. And how does he recommend him
to be rewarded? By giving him the estate of another person,--the way in
which Mr. Hastings desires to be always rewarded himself: for, in
calling upon the Company's justice to give him some money for expenses
with which he never charged them, he desires them to assign him the
money upon some person of the country. So here Mr. Hastings recommends
Gunga Govind Sing not only to trust, confidence, and employment, which
he does very fully, but to a reward taken out of the substance of other
people. This is what Mr. Hastings has done with Gunga Govind Sing; and
if such are the effects of his anger, what must be the effect of his
pleasure and satisfaction? Now I say that Mr. Hastings, who, in fact,
saw this man amongst the very last with whom he had any communication in
India, could not have so recommended him after this known fraud, in one
business only, of 20,000_l._,--he could not so have supported him, he
could not so have caressed him, he could not so have employed him, he
could not have done all this, unless he had paid to Mr. Hastings
privately that sum of money which never was brought into any even of
these miserable accounts, without some payment or other with which Mr.
Hastings was and ought to be satisfied, or unless Gunga Govind Sing had
some dishonorable secret to tell of him which he did not dare to provoke
him to give a just account of, or, lastly, unless the original agreement
was that half or a third of the bribe should go to Gunga Govind Sing.
Such is this patriotic scheme of bribery, this public-spirited
corruption which Mr. Hastings has invented upon this occasion, and by
which he thinks out of the vices of mankind to draw a better revenue
than out of any legal source whatever; and therefore he has resolved to
become the most corrupt of all Governors-General, in order to be the
most useful servant to the finances of the Company.
So much as to the first article of Dinagepore peshcush. All you have is,
that G.G.S is Gunga Govind Sing; that he has cheated the public of half
of it; that Mr. Hastings was angry with him, and yet went away from
Bengal, rewarding, praising, and caressing him. Are these things to pass
as matters of course? They cannot so pass with your Lordships' sagacity:
I will venture to say that no court, even of _pie-poudre_, could help
finding him guilty upon such a matter, if such a court had to inquire
into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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