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
It was at this crisis of aggravated insult and brutality that the
indignation which these proceedings had occasioned in the breasts of the
Rajah's subjects burst out into an open flame. The Rajah had retired to
the last refuge of the afflicted, to offer up prayers to his God and our
God, when a vile _chubdar_, or tipstaff, came to interrupt and insult
him. His alarmed and loyal subjects felt for a beloved sovereign that
deep interest which we should all feel, if our sovereign were so
treated. What man with a spark of loyalty in his breast, what man
regardful of the honor of his country, when he saw his sovereign
imprisoned, and so notorious a wretch appointed his deputy, could be a
patient witness of such wrongs? The subjects of this unfortunate prince
did what we should have done,--what all who love their country, who love
their liberty, who love their laws, who love their property, who love
their sovereign, would have done on such an occasion. They looked upon
him as their sovereign, although degraded. They were unacquainted with
any authority superior to his, and the phantom of tyranny which
performed these oppressive acts was unaccompanied by that force which
justifies submission by affording the plea of necessity. An unseen
tyrant and four miserable companies of sepoys executed all the horrible
things that we have mentioned. The spirit of the Rajah's subjects was
roused by their wrongs, and encouraged by the contemptible weakness of
their oppressors. The whole country rose up in rebellion, and surely in
justifiable rebellion. Every writer on the Law of Nations, every man
that has written, thought, or felt upon the affairs of government, must
write, know, think, and feel, that a people so cruelly scourged and
oppressed, both in the person of their chief and in their own persons,
were justified in their resistance. They were roused to vengeance, and a
short, but most bloody war followed.
We charge the prisoner at your bar with all the consequences of this
war. We charge him with the murder of our sepoys, whom he sent unarmed
to such a dangerous enterprise. We charge him with the blood of every
man that was shed in that place; and we call him, as we have called him,
a tyrant, an oppressor, and a murderer. We call him murderer in the
largest and fullest sense of the word; because he was the cause of the
murder of our English officers and sepoys, whom he kept unarmed, and
unacquainted with the danger to which they would be exposed by the
violence of his transactions. He sacrificed to his own nefarious views
every one of those lives, as well as the lives of the innocent natives
of Benares, whom he designedly drove to resistance by the weakness of
the force opposed to them, after inciting them by tyranny and insult to
that display of affection towards their sovereign which is the duty of
all good subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account