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
Your Lordships will mark his progress in the establishment of that new
system, which, he says, he had been obliged to adopt by the evil system
of his predecessors. First, he annihilates the Council, formed by an act
of Parliament, and by order of the Court of Directors. In the second
place, he defies the order of the Court, who had the undoubted
nomination of all their own servants, and who ordered him, under the
severest injunction, to appoint Mr. Bristow to the office of Resident in
Oude. He for some time refused to nominate Mr. Bristow to that office;
and even when he was forced, against his will, to permit him for a while
to be there, he sent Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, who annihilated Mr.
Bristow's authority so completely that no one public act passed through
his hands.
After he had ended this conflict with the Directors, and had entirely
shook off their authority, he resolved that the native powers should
know that they were not to look to the Court of Directors, but to look
to his arbitrary will in all things; and therefore, to the astonishment
of the world, and as if it were designedly to expose the nakedness of
the Parliament of Great Britain, to expose the nakedness of the laws of
Great Britain, and the nakedness of the authority of the Court of
Directors to the country powers, he wrote a letter, which your Lordships
will find in page 795 of the printed Minutes. In this letter the secret
of his government is discovered to the country powers. They are given to
understand, that, whatever exaction, whatever oppression or ruin they
may suffer, they are to look nowhere for relief but to him: not to the
Council, not to the Court of Directors, not to the sovereign authority
of Great Britain, but to him, and him only.
Before we proceed to this letter, we will first read to you the Minute
of Council by which he dismissed Mr. Bristow upon a former occasion, (it
is in page 507 of the printed Minutes,) that your Lordships may see his
audacious defiance of the laws of the country. We wish, I say, before we
show you the horrible and fatal effects of this his defiance, to impress
continually upon your Lordships' minds that this man is to be tried by
the laws of the country, and that it is not in his power to annihilate
their authority and the authority of his masters. We insist upon it,
that every man under the authority of this country is bound to obey its
laws. This minute relates to his first removal of Mr. Bristow: I read it
in order to show that he dared to defy the Court of Directors so early
as the year 1776.
"Resolved, That Mr. John Bristow be recalled to the Presidency from the
court of the Nabob of Oude, and that Mr. Nathaniel Middleton be restored
to the appointment of Resident at that court, subject to the orders and
authority of the Governor-General and Council, conformably to the motion
of the Governor-General."
I will next read to your Lordships the orders of the Directors for his
reinstatement, on the 4th of July, 1777.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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