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
I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the
power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art
of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them? Your
Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto
pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks
in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with
flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor. My Lords, I am about
to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was
never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to
the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of
Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the
Court of Directors but declare in favor of his own system and his own
positions, and that very moment, merely for the purpose of declaring his
right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them.
Then these dead bones arise,--or, to use a language more suitable to
the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are these men
dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get up
and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous view of Mr. Hastings's
conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You
cannot have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better
develops the principles of the man, that more fully develops all the
sources of his conduct, and of all the frauds and iniquities which he
has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to
the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and
to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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