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
We have therefore in our charge strongly reprobated Sir Elijah Impey's
going to take such affidavits. "Oh! but," they say, "a judge may take an
affidavit in his chamber privately; and he may take an affidavit, though
not exactly in the place of his jurisdiction, to authenticate a bond, or
the like."--We are not to be cheated by words. It is not dirty shreds of
worn-out parchments, the sweepings of Westminster Hall, that shall serve
us in place of that justice upon, which the world stands. Affidavits! We
know that in the language of our courts affidavits do not signify a body
of evidence to sustain a criminal charge, but are generally relative to
matter [matters?] in process collateral to the charge, which, not coming
before the jury, are made known to the judge by way of affidavit.
But was it ever heard, or will it be borne, that a person exercising a
judicial office under his Majesty should walk beyond the sphere of his
jurisdiction,--that he should desert the station in which he was placed
for the protection of the natives, and should march to such a place as
Lucknow in order to take depositions for criminating persons in that
country, without so much as letting these poor victims know one article
in the depositions so taken? These depositions, my Lords, were made to
criminate, they were meant to justify a forfeiture, and are not in the
nature of those voluntary affidavits which, whether made within
jurisdiction or without, whether made publicly or privately, signify
comparatively nothing to the cause. I do not mean, to say that any
process of any court has not its weight, when the matter is within it in
the ordinary course of proceedings: it is the extraordinary course, the
extrajudicial conduct, which divests it of that just weight it otherwise
would have.
This chief-justice goes to Lucknow, where he holds his court, such as it
was. He is ready to authenticate any process by the signature of the
English chief-justice, in a court which he holds by night, in a court
which he holds in darkness and secrecy. He holds his court in Fyzabad;
he holds it, unknown to the Nabob of Oude, in his own capital, and
without giving him the least knowledge of or any notice of what he was
proceeding to do. He holds it at the lodgings of Colonel Morgan, a
pensioner of the Nabob; and the person assisting him is Mr. Middleton,
who is likewise, as we have proved to you, one of the Nabob's
pensioners, a monopolizer of trade in the country, and a person who
received much the major part of his emoluments from the Nabob's hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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