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

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, their governors, whatever application they might pretend to make of them, to receive, under any other name or pretence, more than a certain, marked, simple sum of money, and this not without the consent and permission of the Presidency to which they belong. This is the substance,