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
My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the Company's servants to
be given to him. God forbid arbitrary power should be given into the
hands of any man! At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the
ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate
corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to
prosecute, and punish delinquency by law! But honesty only, and not
arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose. We well know, indeed,
that a government requiring arbitrary power has been the situation in
which this man has attempted to place us.
We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in which the act of the
delinquent may be of consequence, while the example of the criminal,
from the obscurity of his situation, is of little importance: in other
cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no great importance, but the
consequences of the example dreadful. We know that crimes of great
magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and
only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful
prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when
a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and
corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that
are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white,
from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree
of momentary authority, that cannot imitate the acts of such a
Governor-General. Consider, then, what the consequences will be, when it
is laid down as a principle of the service, that no man is to be called
to account according to the existing laws, and that you must either
give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government to be
destroyed.
We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of every farmer of the
revenue did not forbid him from giving any presents to any persons, or
taking any. He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the memory of
this gentleman is very indifferent, though the matter was in his own
particular province,) but he thought it did; and he referred us to the
record of it. I cannot get at the record; and therefore you must take it
as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without a reference to the record,--that
the farmers were forbidden to take or give any money to any person
whatever, beyond their engagements. Now, if a Governor-General comes to
that farmer, and says, "You must give a certain sum beyond your
engagements," he lets him loose to prey upon the landholders and
cultivators; and thus a way is prepared for the final desolation of the
whole country, by the malversation of the Governor, and by the
consequent oppressive conduct of the farmers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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