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
oppression they were sinking under, and leave all the rest untouched?
You will judge of what is concealed from us by what we have discovered
through various means that have occurred, in consequence both of the
guilty conscience of the person who confesses the fact with respect to
these provinces, and of the vigor, perseverance and sagacity of those
who have forced from him that discovery. It is not, therefore, for me to
say that the 100,000_l._ and 95,000_l._ only were taken. Where the
circumstances entitle me to go on, I must not be stopped, but at the
boundary where human nature has fixed a barrier.
You have now before you the true reason why he did not choose that this
affair should come before a court of justice. Rather than this exposure
should be made, he to-day would call for the mountains to cover him: he
would prefer an inquiry into the business of the three seals, into
anything foreign to the subject I am now discussing, in order to keep
you from the discovery of that gross bribery, that shameful peculation,
that abandoned prostitution and corruption, which he has practised with
indemnity and impunity to this day, from one end of India to the other.
At the head of the only account we have of these transactions stands
Dinagepore; and it now only remains for me to make some observations
upon Mr. Hastings's proceedings in that province. Its name, then, and
that money was taken from it, is all that appears; but from whom, by
what hands, by what means, under what pretence it was taken, he has not
told you, he has not told his employers. I believe, however, I can tell
from whom it was taken, and I believe it will appear to your Lordships
that it must have been taken from the unhappy Rajah of Dinagepore; and I
shall in a very few words state the circumstances attending, and the
service performed for it: from these you will be able to form a just
opinion concerning this bribe.
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