Edmund Burke, 1730-1797, one of the most able and brilliant of England's
essayists, orators, and statesmen, was born in Dublin, and was the son of
an able lawyer. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1748. As a
student, he was distinguished for ability and industry. From 1750 to 1766
he was in London writing for periodicals, publishing books, or serving as
private secretary. His work on "The Sublime and Beautiful" appeared in
1756. From 1766 to 1794 he was a member of Parliament, representing at
different times different constituencies. On the first day of his
appearance in the House of Commons he made a successful speech. "In the
three principal questions which excited his interest, and called forth the
most splendid displays of his eloquence--the contest with the American
Colonies, the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and the French
Revolution--we see displayed a philanthropy the most pure, illustrated by
a genius the most resplendent." Mr. Burke's foresight, uprightness,
integrity, learning, magnanimity, and eloquence made him one of the most
conspicuous men of his time; and his writings stand among the noblest
contributions to English literature.
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When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either would
sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who
were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to
make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated
criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy
recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole Carnatic
an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a
barrier between him and those against whom the faith which holds the moral
elements of the world together was no protection.
He became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might,
that he made no secret whatsoever of his dreadful resolution. Having
terminated his disputes with every enemy and every rival, who buried their
mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of
the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity
could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding
all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he
hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains.
Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on
this menacing meteor which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst,
and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic.
Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart
conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war
before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of
universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every
temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in
part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the
respect of rank, or sacredness of function,--fathers torn from children,
husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and, amidst the
goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses,--were
swept into captivity, in an unknown and hostile land.
Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the walled cities; but
escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.
The alms of the settlement of Madras, in this dreadful exigency, were
certainly liberal, and all was done by charity that private charity could
do; but it was a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out
its hands for food.
For months together these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and
luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance of
our austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or
disturbance, almost without complaint, perished by a hundred a day in the
streets of Madras; every day seventy at least laid their bodies in the
streets, or on the glacis of Tanjore, and expired of famine in the granary
of India.
I was going to wake your justice toward this unhappy part of our
fellow-citizens, by bringing before you some of the circumstances of this
plague of hunger. Of all the calamities which beset and waylay the life of
man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest
of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is.
But I find myself unable to manage it with decorum. These details are of a
species of horror so nauseous and disgusting; they are so degrading to the
sufferers and to the hearers; they are so humiliating to human nature
itself, that, on better thoughts, I find it more advisable to throw a pall
over this hideous object, and to leave it to your general conceptions.
For eighteen months, without intermission, this destruction raged from the
gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these
masters in their art, Hyder Ali, and his more ferocious son, absolve
themselves of their impious vow, that when the British armies traversed,
as they did, the Carnatic, for hundreds of miles in all directions,
through the whole line of their march they did not see one man--not one
woman--not one child--not one four-footed beast of any description
whatever! One dead, uniform silence reigned over the whole region.
With the inconsiderable exceptions of the narrow vicinage of some few
forts, I wish to be understood as speaking literally;--I mean to produce
to you more than three witnesses, who will support this assertion in its
full extent. That hurricane of war passed through every part of the
central provinces of the Carnatic. Six or seven districts to the north and
to the south (and these not wholly untouched) escaped the general ravage.
NOTES.--This selection is an extract from Burke's celebrated speech in
Parliament, in 1785, on the Nabob of Arcot's debts; it bore upon the
maladministration of Hastings.
Arcot, a district in India, had been ceded to the British on condition
that they should pay the former ruler's debts. These were found to be
enormous, and the creditors proved to be individuals in the East India
Company's employ. The creditors, for their private gain, induced the Nabob
to attempt the subjugation of other native princes, among whom was Hyder
Ali. The latter at first made successful resistance, and compelled the
Nabob and his allies to sign a treaty. The treaty was not kept, and the
destruction above recounted took place.
The Carnatic is a province in British India, on the eastern side of the
peninsula; it contains about 50,000 square miles. Madras is a city, and
Tanjore a town, in this province.