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, we come next to apply these principles to facts which cannot
otherwise be judged, as we have contended and do now contend. I will not
go over facts which have been opened to you by my fellow Managers: if I
did so, I should appear to have a distrust, which I am sure no other man
has, of the greatest abilities displayed in the greatest of all causes.
I should be guilty of a presumption which I hope I shall not dream of,
but leave to those who exercise arbitrary power, in supposing that I
could go over the ground which my fellow Managers have once trodden, and
make anything more clear and forcible than they have done. In my humble
opinion, human ability cannot go farther than they have gone; and if I
ever allude to anything which they have already touched, it will be to
show it in another light,--to mark more particularly its departure from
the principles upon which we contend you ought to judge, or to supply
those parts which through bodily infirmity, and I am sure nothing else,
one of my excellent fellow Managers has left untouched. I am here
alluding to the case of Cheyt Sing.
My honorable fellow Manager, Mr. Grey, has stated to you all the
circumstances requisite to prove two things: first, that the demands
made by Mr. Hastings upon Cheyt Sing were contrary to fundamental
treaties between the Company and that Rajah; and next, that they were
the result and effect of private malice and corruption. This having
been stated and proved to you, I shall take up the subject where it was
left.
My Lords, in the first place, I have to remark to you, that the whole of
the charge originally brought by Mr. Hastings against Cheyt Sing, in
justification of his wicked and tyrannical proceedings, is, that he had
been dilatory, evasive, shuffling, and unwilling to pay that which,
however unwilling, evasive, and shuffling, he did pay; and that, with
regard to the business of furnishing cavalry, the Rajah has asserted,
and his assertion has not been denied, that, when he was desired by the
Council to furnish these troopers, the purpose for which this
application was made was not mentioned or alluded to, nor was there any
place of muster pointed out. We therefore contended, that the demand was
not made for the service of the state, but for the oppression of the
individual that suffered by it.
But admitting the Rajah to have been guilty of delay and unwillingness,
what is the nature of the offence? If you strip it of the epithets by
which it has been disguised, it merely amounts to an unwillingness in
the Rajah to pay more than the sums stipulated by the mutual agreement
existing between him and the Company. This is the whole of it, the whole
front and head of the offence; and for this offence, such as it is, and
admitting that he could be legally fined for it, he was subjected to the
secret punishment of giving a bribe to Mr. Hastings, by which he was to
buy off the fine, and which was consequently a commutation for it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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