The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III | Page 7

a broadcast swing of his arm he squanders over his
Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the whole
hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland.[4]
Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with
all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted
order. Those who are bountiful to crimes will be rigid to merit and
penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover
to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is to furnish resources for
the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great
crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of
little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to
whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of every small
offender.
It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order, it is to
animadvert on offences of a far different description, that my honorable
friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to perpetuate
the abuses which are subverting the fabric of your empire, that the
motion is opposed. It is, therefore, with reason (and if he has power to
carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right
honorable gentleman makes his stand at the very outset, and boldly
refuses all Parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step

towards inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot
be safe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal
night shall veil our Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to
avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and
inquisitive times to demonstrate out of this single act of the present
minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest
concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and
exempted even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body
of your revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important
commerce, the richest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every
idea of the known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being
converted into a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the
globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English
gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and
mark the circumstances. In most of the capital changes that are
recorded in the principles and system of any government, a public
benefit of some kind or other has been pretended. The revolution
commenced in something plausible, in something which carried the
appearance at least of punishment of delinquency or correction of abuse.
But here, in the very moment of the conversion of a department of
British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in which
the change commences, a corrupt private interest is set up in direct
opposition to the necessities of the nation. A diversion is made of
millions of the public money from the public treasury to a private purse.
It is not into secret negotiations for war, peace, or alliance that the
House of Commons is forbidden to inquire. It is a matter of account; it
is a pecuniary transaction; it is the demand of a suspected steward upon
ruined tenants and an embarrassed master that the Commons of Great
Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenor of the right
honorable gentleman's argument is consonant to the nature of his policy.
The system of concealment is fostered by a system of falsehood. False
facts, false colors, false names of persons and things, are its whole
support.
Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gentleman over that field of
deception, clearing what he has purposely obscured, and fairly stating
what it was necessary for him to misrepresent. For this purpose, it is
necessary you should know, with some degree of distinctness, a little of

the locality, the nature, the circumstances, the magnitude of the
pretended debts on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well
as of the persons from whom and by whom it is claimed.
Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval,
the second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that
city, and of the adjacent territory, was not very long ago among the
most flourishing in Asia. But since the establishment of the British
power it has wasted away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch
that in the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in
the whole country.[5] During this period of decay, about six hundred
thousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by