The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
I must now call your Lordships' attention from the vaunted services of
the prisoner, which have been urged to convict us of ingratitude, to
another part of his recriminatory defence. He says, my Lords, that we
have not only oppressed him with unjust charges, (which is a matter for
your Lordships to judge, and is now the point at issue between us,) but
that, instead of attacking him by fair judicial modes of proceeding, by
stating crimes clearly and plainly, and by proving those crimes, and
showing their necessary consequences, we have oppressed him with all
sorts of foul and abusive language,--so much so, that every part of our
proceeding has, in the eye of the world, more the appearance of private
revenge than of public justice.
Against this impudent and calumnious recriminatory accusation, which
your Lordships have thought good to suffer him to utter here, at a time,
too, when all dignity is in danger of being trodden under foot, we will
say nothing by way of defence. The Commons of Great Britain, my Lords,
are a rustic people: a tone of rusticity is therefore the proper accent
of their Managers. We are not acquainted with the urbanity and
politeness of extortion and oppression; nor do we know anything of the
sentimental delicacies of bribery and corruption. We speak the language
of truth, and we speak it in the plain, simple terms in which truth
ought to be spoken. Even if we have anything to answer for on this head,
we can only answer to the body which we represent and to that body which
hears us: to any others we owe no apology whatever.
The prisoner at your bar admits that the crimes which we charge him
with are of that atrocity, that, if brought home to him, he merits
death. Yet, when, in pursuance of our duty, we come to state these
crimes with their proper criminatory epithets, when we state in strong
and direct terms the circumstances which heighten and aggravate them,
when we dwell on the immoral and heinous nature of the acts, and the
terrible effects which such acts produce, and when we offer to prove
both the principal facts and the aggravatory ones by evidence, and to
show their nature and quality by the rules of law, morality, and policy,
then this criminal, then his counsel, then his accomplices and
hirelings, posted in newspapers and dispersed in circles through every
part of the kingdom, represent him as an object of great compassion,
because he is treated, say they, with, nothing but opprobrious names and
scurrilous invectives.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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