=Source.=--_Speech in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, Esq._ Edmund
Burke. Vol. vii. of his Collected Works. London: G. Bell and Sons. 1911.
I must however remark, before I go further, that there is something
in the representation of the East-India Company, in their oriental
territory, different from that, perhaps, of any other nation that has
ever transported any part of its power from one country to another. The
East-India Company, in India, is not properly a branch of the British
nation, it is only a deputation of individuals. When the Tartars
entered into China, when the Arabs and Tartars successively entered
into Hindostan, when the Goths and Vandals penetrated into Europe, when
the Normans forced their way into England, indeed in all conquests,
migrations, settlements, and colonizations, the new people came as the
offset of a nation. The Company in India does not exist as a national
colony. In effect and substance, nobody can go thither that does not
go in its service. The English in India are nothing but a seminary
for the succession of officers. They are a nation of placemen;--they
are a commonwealth without a people; they are a state made up wholly
of magistrates. There is nothing to be in propriety called people, to
watch, to inspect, to balance against the power of office. The power of
office, so far as the English nation is concerned, is the sole power
in the country. The consequence of which is, that being a kingdom of
magistrates, what is commonly called the _esprit du corps_ is strong
in it. This spirit of the body predominates equally in all parts; by
which the members must consider themselves as having a common interest,
and that common interest separated both from that of the country which
sent them out, and from that of the country in which they act. No
control upon them exists; none, I mean, in persons who understand their
language, who understood their manners, or can apply their conduct to
the laws. Therefore, in a body so constituted confederacy is easy, and
has been general. Your lordships are not to expect that that should
happen in such a body which never happened in any body or corporation,
that is, that they should in any instance be a proper check and control
upon themselves. It is not in the nature of things. The fundamental
principle of the whole of the East-India Company’s system is monopoly
in some sense or other. The same principle predominates in the service
abroad and the service at home; and both systems are united into one,
animated with the same spirit, that is, with the corporate spirit. The
whole, taken together, is such as has not been seen in the examples of
the Moors, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Romans; in no old, in no
recent examples. The Dutch may resemble it, but they have not an empire
properly so denominated. By means of this peculiar circumstance it has
not been difficult for Mr. Hastings to embody abuse, and to put himself
at the head of a regular system of corruption.
Another circumstance in that service is deserving of notice. Except
in the highest parts of all, the emoluments of office do not in
any degree correspond with the trust, nor the nature of the office
with its name. In other official systems the style, in general, is
above the function; here is it the reverse. Under the name of junior
merchant, senior merchant, writer, and other petty appellations of
the counting-house, you have magistrates of high dignity, you have
administrators of revenues truly royal;--you have judges civil, and in
some respects criminal, who pass judgment upon the greatest properties
of a great country. The legal public emoluments that belong to them are
very often so inadequate to the real dignity of the character, that
it is impossible, almost absolutely impossible, for the subordinate
parts of it, which though subordinate are stations of power, to exist
as Englishmen who look at a fortune to be enjoyed at home as their
ultimate object, and to exist in a state of perfect incorruption in
that service.
In some parts of Europe it is true that the greatest situations are
often attended with but little emolument; yet still they are filled.
Why? Because reputation, glory, fame, the esteem, the love, the tears
of joy which flow from happy sensibility, the honest applauses of a
grateful country, sometimes pay the cares, anxieties, and toils which
wait on great situations in the commonwealth: and in these, they pay in
money what cannot be paid in fame and reputation. It is the reverse in
the service of the India Company. Glory is not the lot of subordinated
merit; and all the subordinate parts of the gradation are officers
who, in comparison with the offices and duties intrusted with them,
are miserably provided for; whereas the chief of each great presidency
has emoluments securing him against every mode of temptation. But if
this has not secured the head, we may easily judge how the members
are to be coerced. Mr. Hastings at the head of the service, with high
legal emoluments, has fouled his hands and sullied his government with
bribes. He has substituted oppression and tyranny in the place of
legal government. With all that unbounded, licentious power which he
has assumed over the public revenues, instead of endeavouring to find
a series of gradual, progressive, honourable, and adequate rewards
for the persons who serve the public in the subordinate but powerful
situations, he has left them to prey upon the people without the
smallest degree of control. In default of honest emolument, there is
the unbounded license of power; and (as one of the honestest and ablest
servants of the Company said to me in conversation) the civil service
of the Company resembled the military service of the Mahrattas--little
pay, but unbounded license to plunder. I do not say that some of
the salaries given in India would not sound well here; but when you
consider the nature of the trusts, the dignity of the situation,
whatever the name of them may be, the powers that are granted, the
hopes that every man has of establishing himself at home,--I repeat, it
is a source of infinite grievance--of infinite abuse: of which source
of corrupt power we charge Mr. Hastings with having availed himself in
filling up the void of direct pay, by finding out and countenancing
every kind of oblique and unjust emolument; though it must be confessed
that he is far from being solely guilty of this offence.
Another circumstance which distinguishes the East-India Company is the
youth of the persons who are employed in the system of that service.
The servants have almost universally been sent out to begin their
progress and career in active occupation, and in the exercise of
high authority, at that period of life which in all other places has
been employed in the course of a rigid education. To put the matter
in a few words, they are transferred from slippery youth to perilous
independence, from perilous independence to inordinate expectations,
from inordinate expectations to boundless power. School-boys without
tutors, minors without guardians, the world is let loose upon them,
with all its temptations; and they are let loose upon the world, with
all the powers that despotism involves.