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
My Lords, the Managers for the Commons have not used any _inapplicable_
language. We have indeed used, and will again use, such expressions as
are proper to portray guilt. After describing the magnitude of the
crime, we describe the magnitude of the criminal. We have declared him
to be not only a public robber himself, but the head of a system of
robbery, the captain-general of the gang, the chief under whom a whole
predatory band was arrayed, disciplined, and paid. This, my Lords, is
what we offered to prove fully to you, what in part we have proved, and
the whole of which I believe we could prove. In developing such a mass
of criminality and in describing a criminal of such magnitude as we
have now brought before you, we could not use lenient epithets without
compromising with crime. We therefore shall not relax in our pursuits
nor in our language. No, my Lords, no! we shall not fail to feel
indignation, wherever our moral nature has taught us to feel it; nor
shall we hesitate to speak the language which is dictated by that
indignation. Whenever men are oppressed where they ought to be
protected, we called [call?] it tyranny, and we call the actor a tyrant.
Whenever goods are taken by violence from the possessor, we call it a
robbery, and the person who takes it we call a robber. Money
clandestinely taken from the proprietor we call theft, and the person
who takes it we call a thief. When a false paper is made out to obtain
money, we call the act a forgery. That steward who takes bribes from his
master's tenants, and then, pretending the money to be his own, lends it
to that master and takes bonds for it to himself, we consider guilty of
a breach of trust; and the person who commits such crimes we call a
cheat, a swindler, and a forger of bonds. All these offences, without
the least softening, under all these names, we charge upon this man. We
have so charged in our record, we have so charged in our speeches; and
we are sorry that our language does not furnish terms of sufficient
force and compass to mark the multitude, the magnitude, and the atrocity
of his crimes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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