The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III | Page 4

more into the detail
of the subject.

SPEECH.
The times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by
extraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon
combinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects
anything more surprising than the spectacle of this day. The right
honorable gentleman[1] whose conduct is now in question formerly
stood forth in this House, the prosecutor of the worthy baronet[2] who
spoke after him. He charged him with several grievous acts of
malversation in office, with abuses of a public trust of a great and
heinous nature. In less than two years we see the situation of the parties
reversed; and a singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair
way of returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and
penalties, grounded on a breach of public trust relative to the
government of the very same part of India. If he should undertake a bill
of that kind, he will find no difficulty in conducting it with a degree of
skill and vigor fully equal to all that have been exerted against him.
But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so
striking as the total difference of their deportment under the same
unhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baronet's
defence might have been, he did not shrink from the charge. He met it
with manliness of spirit and decency of behavior. What would have
been thought of him, if he had held the present language of his old
accuser? When articles were exhibited against him by that right
honorable gentleman, he did not think proper to tell the House that we
ought to institute no inquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witness.
He did not tell us (what at that time he might have told us with some
show of reason) that our concerns in India were matters of delicacy,
that to divulge anything relative to them would be mischievous to the
state. He did not tell us that those who would inquire into his
proceedings were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not the
presumption to say, that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian
presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was
concerned in executing with integrity the trust which had been legally
committed to his charge: that others, not having been so fortunate,

could not be so disinterested; and therefore their accusations could
spring from no other source than faction, and envy to his fortune.
Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain, vaporing language in
the face of a grave, a detailed, a specified matter of accusation, whilst
he violently resisted everything which could bring the merits of his
cause to the test,--had he been wild enough to anticipate the absurdities
of this day,--that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser has thought
proper to do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation in
office, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been in office,--had
he argued the impossibility of his abusing his power on this sole
principle, that he had power to abuse,--he would have left but one
impression on the mind of every man who heard him, and who believed
him in his senses: that in the utmost extent he was guilty of the charge.
But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate as criminal and
accuser upon what principles they think expedient, it is for us to
consider whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasurer of
the Navy, acting as a Board of Control, are justified by law or policy in
suspending the legal arrangements made by the Court of Directors, in
order to transfer the public revenues to the private emolument of certain
servants of the East India Company, without the inquiry into the origin
and justice of their claims prescribed by an act of Parliament.
It is not contended that the act of Parliament did not expressly ordain
an inquiry. It is not asserted that this inquiry was not, with equal
precision of terms, specially committed, under particular regulations, to
the Court of Directors. I conceive, therefore, the Board of Control had
no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is nothing
certain in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be not undeniably true,
that when, a special authority is given to any persons by name to do
some particular act, that no others, by virtue of general powers, can
obtain a legal title to intrude themselves into that trust, and to exercise
those special functions in their place. I therefore consider the
intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright usurpation. But
if the strained construction by which they have forced themselves into a
suspicious office