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 have now seen this trunk of Mr. Scott's producing the
effects of Aladdin's lamp,--of which your Lordships may read in books
much more worthy of credit than Mr. Hastings's correspondence. I have
given all the credit of this precious discovery to Mr. Scott's trunk;
but, my Lords, I find that I have to ask pardon for a mistake in
supposing the letter of Hyder Beg Khan to be a part of Mr. Hastings's
correspondence. It comes from another quarter, not much less singular,
and equally authentic and unimpeachable. But though it is not from the
trunk, it smells of the trunk, it smells of the leather. I was as proud
of my imaginary discovery as Sancho Panza was that one of his ancestors
had discovered a taste of iron in some wine, and another a taste of
leather in the same wine, and that afterwards there was found in the
cask a little key tied to a thong of leather, which had given to the
wine a taste of both. Now, whether this letter tasted of the leather of
the trunk or of the iron of Mr. Macpherson, I confess I was a little
out in my suggestion and my taste. The letter in question was written by
Hyder Beg Khan, after Mr. Hastings's departure, to Mr. Macpherson, when
he succeeded to the government. That gentleman thus got possession of a
key to the trunk; and it appears to have been his intentions to follow
the steps of his predecessor, to act exactly in the same manner, and in
the same manner to make the Nabob the instrument of his own ruin. This
letter was written by the Nabob's minister to Sir John Macpherson, newly
inaugurated into his government, and who might be supposed not to be
acquainted with all the best of Mr. Hastings's secrets, nor to have had
all the trunk correspondence put into his hands. However, here is a
trunk extraordinary, and its contents are much in the manner of the
other. The Nabob's minister acquaints him with the whole secret of the
system. It is plain that the Nabob considered it as a system not to be
altered: that there was to be nothing true, nothing aboveboard, nothing
open in the government of his affairs. When you thus see that there can
be little doubt of the true nature of the government, I am sure that
hereafter, when we come to consider the effects of that government, it
will clear up and bring home to the prisoner at your bar all we shall
have to say upon this subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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