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
We therefore come here and declare to you that he is not borne out by
these Institutes, either in their general spirit or in any particular
passage to which he has had the impudence to appeal, in the assumption
of the arbitrary power which he has exercised. We claim, that, as our
own government and every person exercising authority in Great Britain is
bound by the laws of Great Britain, so every person exercising authority
in another country shall be subject to the laws of that country; since
otherwise they break the very covenant by which we hold our power there.
Even if these Institutes had been arbitrary, which they are not, they
might have been excused as the acts of conquerors. But, my Lords, he is
no conqueror, nor anything but what you see him,--a bad scribbler of
absurd papers, in which he can put no two sentences together without
contradiction. We know him in no other character than that of having
been a bullock-contractor for some years, of having acted fraudulently
in that capacity, and afterwards giving fraudulent contracts to others;
and yet I will maintain that the first conquerors of the world would
have been base and abandoned, if they had assumed such a right as he
dares to claim. It is the glory of all such great men to have for their
motto, _Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos_. These were men that
said they would recompense the countries which they had obtained through
torrents of blood, through carnage and violence, by the justice of their
institutions, the mildness of their laws, and the equity of their
government. Even if these conquerors had promulgated arbitrary
institutes instead of disclaiming them in every point, you, my Lords,
would never suffer such principles of defence to be urged here; still
less will you suffer the examples of men acting by violence, of men
acting by wrong, the example of a man who has become a rebel to his
sovereign in order that he should become the tyrant of his people, to be
examples for a British governor, or for any governor. We here
confidently protest against this mode of justification, and we maintain
that his pretending to follow these examples is in itself a crime. The
prisoner has ransacked all Asia for principles of despotism; he has
ransacked all the bad and corrupted part of it for tyrannical examples
to justify himself: and certainly in no other way can he be justified.
Having established the falsehood of the first principle of the
prisoner's defence, that sovereignty, wherever it exists in India,
implies in its nature and essence a power of exacting anything from the
subject, and disposing of his person and property, we now come to his
second assertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative
of that sovereignty in India.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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