The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
can be supposed to be the likely consequence of our own trifling
disagreements with them,) as if we stood forth their avowed
opponents. To conclude, instead of regretting, with Mr. Francis,
the occasion which deprives us of so useless and hurtful a
disguise, I should rather rejoice, were it really the case, and
consider it as a crisis which freed the constitution of our
government from one of its greatest defects."
Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no more; the great
arcanum of the state is avowed: it is avowed that the government is
ours,--that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and
the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion,
to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact
and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate
affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his indelicate declarations
upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world
concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.
Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether
his policy was right or wrong. Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we
find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at
first prevented him from producing better recollection and more perfect
policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob,
your Lordships see, is dead,--dead in law, dead in politics, dead in a
court of justice, dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere
animal existence, it is all over with him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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