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
Next to the breach of these positive instructions, your Lordships will
attend to the consequent concealment and mystery by which it was
accompanied. All government must, to preserve its authority, be sincere
in its declarations and authentic in its acts. Whenever in any matter of
policy there is a mystery, you must presume a fraud; whenever in any
matter of money there is concealment, you must presume misconduct: you
must therefore affix your punishment to the breach of the rule;
otherwise the conviction of public delinquents would be unattainable.
I have therefore put before you that rule which he has violated; and we,
the Commons, call upon your Lordships to enforce that rule, and to
avenge the breach of it. You have seen the consequences of breaking the
rule; and we have charged and do charge it as a heavy aggravation of
those consequences, that, instead of consulting the Council, instead of
laying the whole correspondence before them, instead of consulting them
upon his answers, he went himself up into the country, took his
Majesty's chief-justice along with him, and made that person the
instrument of those wrongs, violences, robberies, and concealments
which we call upon your Lordships to punish.
My Lords, an extraordinary circumstance occurred in the course of our
proceedings in another place, which I must state, to show you in what a
horrible manner your laws have been trampled upon and despised. None of
the proceedings which have been last stated to your Lordships respecting
the seizure of the treasures of the Begums appear upon any public record
whatever. From the manner in which they came to our knowledge, your
Lordships will perceive what must have been the prisoner's own opinion
of the horrible nature of proceedings which he thought so necessary to
be concealed.
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