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
There is, my Lords, always a close connection between vices of every
description. The man who is a tyrant would, under some other
circumstances, be a rebel; and he that is a rebel would become a tyrant.
They are things which originally proceed from the same source. They owe
their birth to the wild, unbridled lewdness of arbitrary power. They
arise from a contempt of public order, and of the laws and institutions
which curb mankind. They arise from a harsh, cruel, and ferocious
disposition, impatient of the rules of law, order, and morality: and
accordingly, as their relation varies, the man is a tyrant, if a
superior, a rebel, if an inferior. But this man, standing in a middle
point between the two relations, the superior and inferior, declares
himself at once both a rebel and a tyrant. We therefore naturally
expect, that, when he has thrown off the laws of his country, he will
throw off all other authority. Accordingly, in defiance of that
authority to which he owes his situation, he nominates Mr. Markham to
the Residency at Benares, and therefore every act of Mr. Markham is his.
He is responsible,--doubly responsible to what he would have been, if in
the ordinary course of office he had named this agent. Every governor is
responsible for the misdemeanors committed under his legal authority for
which he does not punish the delinquent; but the prisoner is doubly
responsible in this case, because he assumed an illegal authority, which
can be justified only, if at all, by the good resulting from the
assumption.
Having now chosen his principal instrument and his confidential and sole
counsellor, having the country entirely in his hand, and every obstacle
that could impede his course swept out of the arena, what does he do
under these auspicious circumstances? You would imagine, that, in the
first place, he would have sent down to the Council at Calcutta a
general view of his proceedings, and of their consequences, together
with a complete statement of the revenue; that he would have recommended
the fittest persons for public trusts, with such other measures as he
might judge to be most essential to the interest and honor of his
employers. One would have imagined he would have done this, in order
that the Council and the Court of Directors might have a clear view of
the whole existing system, before he attempted to make a permanent
arrangement for the administration of the country. But, on the contrary,
the whole of his proceedings is clandestinely conducted; there is not
the slightest communication with the Council upon the business, till he
had determined and settled the whole. Thus the Council was placed in a
complete dilemma,--either to confirm all his wicked and arbitrary acts,
(for such we have proved them to be,) or to derange the whole
administration of the country again, and to make another revolution as
complete and dreadful as that which he had made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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