The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X | Page 3

kingdom, he ought to be called eminently and peculiarly to
account. There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make
them frightful and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of
a great empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people,

this is what makes government itself base, contemptible, and odious in
the eyes of mankind.
My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find some specious
color, and appear as a more severe and rigid execution of justice.
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken
and over-zealous piety. Conquest may cover its baldness with its own
laurels, and the ambition of the conqueror may be hid in the secrets of
his own heart under a veil of benevolence, and make him imagine he is
bringing temporary desolation upon a country only to promote its
ultimate advantage and his own glory. But in the principles of that
governor who makes nothing but money his object there can be nothing
of this. There are here none of those specious delusions that look like
virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor. If you look at Mr.
Hastings's merits, as he calls them, what are they? Did he improve the
internal state of the government by great reforms? No such thing. Or by
a wise and incorrupt administration of justice? No. Has he enlarged the
boundary of our government? No: there are but too strong proofs of his
lessening it. But his pretensions to merit are, that he squeezed more
money out of the inhabitants of the country than other persons could
have done,--money got by oppression, violence, extortion from the
poor, or the heavy hand of power upon the rich and great.
These are his merits. What we charge as his demerits are all of the same
nature; for, though there is undoubtedly oppression, breach of faith,
cruelty, perfidy, charged upon him, yet the great ruling principle of the
whole, and that from which you can never have an act free, is
money,--it is the vice of base avarice, which never is, nor ever appears
even to the prejudices of mankind to be, anything like a virtue. Our
desire of acquiring sovereignty in India undoubtedly originated first in
ideas of safety and necessity; its next step was a step of ambition. That
ambition, as generally happens in conquest, was followed by gains of
money; but afterwards there was no mixture at all; it was, during Mr.
Hastings's time, altogether a business of money. If he has extirpated a
nation, I will not say whether properly or improperly, it is because
(says he) you have all the benefit of conquest without expense; you
have got a large sum of money from the people, and you may leave

them to be governed by whom and as they will. This is directly
contrary to the principles of conquerors. If he has at any time taken any
money from the dependencies of the Company, he does not pretend that
it was obtained from their zeal and affection to our cause, or that it
made their submission more complete: very far from it. He says they
ought to be independent, and all that you have to do is to squeeze
money from them. In short, money is the beginning, the middle, and the
end of every kind of act done by Mr. Hastings: pretendedly for the
Company, but really for himself.
Having said so much about the origin, the first principle, both of that
which he makes his merit and which we charge as his demerit, the next
step is, that I should lay open to your Lordships, as clearly as I can,
what the sense of his employers, the East India Company, and what the
sense of the legislature itself, has been upon those merits and demerits
of money.
My Lords, the Company, knowing that these money transactions were
likely to subvert that empire which was first established upon them, did,
in the year 1765, send out a body of the strongest and most solemn
covenants to their servants, that they should take no presents from the
country powers, under any name or description, except those things
which were publicly and openly taken for the use of the
Company,--namely, territories or sums of money which might be
obtained by treaty. They distinguished such presents as were taken
from any persons privately, and unknown to them, and without their
authority, from subsidies: and that this is the true nature and
construction of their order I shall contend and explain afterwards to
your Lordships. They have said, nothing shall be taken for their private
use; for though in that and in every state there may be subsidiary
treaties by which sums of money may be received, yet they forbid their
servants,