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

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 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