The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X | Page 2

to-day the root of all these
misdemeanors,--namely, the pecuniary corruption and avarice which

gave rise and primary motion to all the rest of the delinquencies
charged to be committed by the Governor-General.
My Lords, pecuniary corruption forms not only, as your Lordships will
observe in the charges before you, an article of charge by itself, but
likewise so intermixes with the whole, that it is necessary to give, in the
best manner I am able, a history of that corrupt system which brought
on all the subsequent acts of corruption. I will venture to say there is no
one act, in which tyranny, malice, cruelty, and oppression can be
charged, that does not at the same time carry evident marks of
pecuniary corruption.
I stated to your Lordships on Saturday last the principles upon which
Mr. Hastings governed his conduct in India, and upon which he
grounds his defence. These may all be reduced to one short
word,--_arbitrary power_. My Lords, if Mr. Hastings had contended, as
other men have often done, that the system of government which he
patronizes, and on which he acted, was a system tending on the whole
to the blessing and benefit of mankind, possibly something might be
said for him for setting up so wild, absurd, irrational, and wicked a
system,--something might be said to qualify the act from the intention;
but it is singular in this man, that, at the time he tells you he acted on
the principles of arbitrary power, he takes care to inform you that he
was not blind to the consequences. Mr. Hastings foresaw that the
consequences of this system was corruption. An arbitrary system,
indeed, must always be a corrupt one. My Lords, there never was a man
who thought he had no law but his own will, who did not soon find that
he had no end but his own profit. Corruption and arbitrary power are of
natural unequivocal generation, necessarily producing one another. Mr.
Hastings foresees the abusive and corrupt consequences, and then he
justifies his conduct upon the necessities of that system. These are
things which are new in the world; for there never was a man, I believe,
who contended for arbitrary power, (and there have been persons
wicked and foolish enough to contend for it,) that did not pretend,
either that the system was good in itself, or that by their conduct they
had mitigated or had purified it, and that the poison, by passing through
their constitution, had acquired salutary properties. But if you look at

his defence before the House of Commons, you will see that that very
system upon which he governed, and under which he now justifies his
actions, did appear to himself a system pregnant with a thousand evils
and a thousand mischiefs.
The next thing that is remarkable and singular in the principles upon
which the Governor-General acted is, that, when he is engaged in a
vicious system which clearly leads to evil consequences, he thinks
himself bound to realize all the evil consequences involved in that
system. All other men have taken a directly contrary course: they have
said, "I have been engaged in an evil system, that led, indeed, to
mischievous consequences, but I have taken care, by my own virtues,
to prevent the evils of the system under which I acted."
We say, then, not only that he governed arbitrarily, but corruptly,--that
is to say, that he was a giver and receiver of bribes, and formed a
system for the purpose of giving and receiving them. We wish your
Lordships distinctly to consider that he did not only give and receive
bribes accidentally, as it happened, without any system and design,
merely as the opportunity or momentary temptation of profit urged him
to it, but that he has formed plans and systems of government for the
very purpose of accumulating bribes and presents to himself. This
system of Mr. Hastings's government is such a one, I believe, as the
British nation in particular will disown; for I will venture to say, that, if
there is any one thing which distinguishes this nation eminently above
another, it is, that in its offices at home, both judicial and in the state,
there is less suspicion of pecuniary corruption attaching to them than to
any similar offices in any part of the globe, or that have existed at any
time: so that he who would set up a system of corruption, and attempt
to justify it upon the principle of utility, that man is staining not only
the nature and character of office, but that which is the peculiar glory of
the official and judicial character of this country; and therefore, in this
House, which is eminently the guardian of the purity of all the offices
of this