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
Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circumstance in
this transaction. You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for
his redemption. "I will give you," he says, "40,000_l._ a year to have
the management of my own affairs." Good heavens! Here is a man, who,
according to Mr. Hastings's assertion, had an indisputable right to the
management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so
little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some
corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own
revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the
disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and
peculation which here stare you in the face. Judge of the nature and
character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out
of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the
supreme authority of the country. This offer shows that at this time the
Nabob had it not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is brought
forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.
Munny Begum had the management before. But, whether it be an Englishman,
a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman,
it is all Warren Hastings.
With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets Sir John D'Oyly, in the
narrative that he makes before the House of Commons, positively to deny
in the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would give oath of it,
that the Nabob never gave a commission to any one to make such an
offer. That such an offer was made had been long published and long in
print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it in the Ninth Report
of the Select Committee; that the Committee had so done was well known
to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the part of Mr.
Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyly was said to
contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of
Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this
transaction. It is this,--that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings is
the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who
could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon
his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may
answer his purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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