The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, Volume 9Little, Brown,, 1866 - Great Britain |
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Common terms and phrases
abuse affairs aforesaid agent appear appointed arbitrary power authority banian Benares Bengal Berar Bombay breach Bristow British Calcutta charge Clavering Company's conduct consequence corrupt coun Court of Directors crimes criminal declared defence direct dominions doth duty East India Company empire engage Esquire established expense Fort William Governor Governor-General and Council guaranty Hastings's Hindoos Holwell honor Hyder Ali instructions jaghire justice Khân's kingdom lacs of rupees letter Lords Lordships Lucknow Mahdajee Sindia Mahomed Reza Khân Mahomedan Mahrattas manner means ment Middleton minister Mogul Mogul empire Munny Begum Nabob Fyzoola Khân Nabob of Oude native obliged oppression Palmer peace person Peshwa possession pretended prince principles proceedings proposals province Rajah Ranna received Resident revenues revolution Rohillas rupees servants Sir Eyre Coote Sir John Clavering sovereign sterling Tamerlane thereby thereof tion transactions treaty of Chunar troops Vizier Warren Hastings whole
Popular passages
Page 416 - ... he was a zemindar, stood exactly in this mean and depraved state by the constitution of his country. I did not make it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those who made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and depraved a tenure. Aliverdy Khan and Cossim Ali fined all their zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either of court necessity or court extravagance.
Page 422 - Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power, and 1 will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power.
Page 319 - It is by this tribunal that statesmen who abuse their power are accused by statesmen and tried by statesmen, not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality.
Page 417 - He lays it down as a rule, that despotism is the genuine constitution of India, that a disposition to rebellion in the subject, or dependent, prince is the necessary effect of this despotism, and that jealousy and its consequences naturally arise on the part of...
Page 341 - But those high sovereign powers were given to the East India Company. So that when it had acquired them all, which it did about the end of the reign of Charles the Second, the East India Company did not seem to be merely a company formed for the extension of the British commerce, but in reality a delegation of the whole power and sovereignty of this kingdom sent into the East.
Page 362 - Faults this nation may have ; but God forbid we should pass judgment upon people, who framed their laws and institutions prior to our insect origin of yesterday.
Page 438 - I assert that their morality is equal to ours, in whatever regards the duties of governors, fathers, and superiors ; and I challenge the world to show, in any modern European book, more true morality and wisdom than is to be found in the writings of Asiatic men in high trust, and who have been counsellors to princes.
Page 414 - Those right*, and none other, I have been the involuntary instrument of enforcing. And if any future act of Parliament shall positively or by implication tend to annihilate those very rights, or their exertion as I have exerted them, I much fear that the boasted sovereignty of Benares, which was held up as an acquisition, almost obtruded...
Page 451 - Mahdajee Scindia has made his panegyric too. Mahdajee Scindia has not made his panegyric for nothing ; for, if your lordships will suffer him to enter into such a justification, we shall prove that he has sacrificed the dignity of this country, and the interests of all its allies, to that prince. "We appear here neither with panegyric nor with satire ; it is for substantial crimes we bring him before you, and...
Page 349 - ... boasting of the British power in the East, we are in perhaps more than half our service nothing but the inferior, miserable instruments of the tyranny which the lowest part of the natives of India exercise to the disgrace of the British authority, and to the ruin of all that is respectable among their own countrymen. They have subverted the first houses, totally ruined and undone the country, cheated and defrauded the revenue ; the master a silent, sometimes a melancholy spectator, until some...