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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) by Edmund Burke

E >> Edmund Burke >> The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12)




Resolved, That this resolution be copied out, and signed by the
chairman, and be by him presented to Mr. Burke, as the fullest
expression of the respectful and grateful sense we entertain of his
merits and services, public and private, to the citizens of Bristol, as
a man and a representative.

Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting be given to the Right
Worshipful the Mayor, who so ably and worthily presided in this meeting.

Resolved, That it is the earnest request of this meeting to Mr. Burke,
that he should again offer himself a candidate to represent this city in
Parliament; assuring him of that full and strenuous support which is due
to the merits of so excellent a representative.

* * * * *

This business being over, Mr. Burke went to the Exchange, and offered
himself as a candidate in the usual manner. He was accompanied to the
Council-House, and from thence to the Exchange, by a large body of most
respectable gentlemen, amongst whom were the following members of the
corporation, viz.: Mr. Mayor, Mr. Alderman Smith, Mr. Alderman Deane,
Mr. Alderman Gordon, William Weare, Samuel Munckley, John Merlott, John
Crofts, Levy Ames, John Fisher Weare, Benjamin Loscombe, Philip
Protheroe, Samuel Span, Joseph Smith, Richard Bright and John Noble,
Esquires.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Irish Perpetual Mutiny Act.

[49] Mr. Williams.

[50] The Chancellor.




SPEECH AT BRISTOL,

ON

DECLINING THE POLL

1780.




BRISTOL, Saturday, 9th Sept, 1780.

This morning the sheriff and candidates assembled as usual at the
Council-House, and from thence proceeded to Guildhall. Proclamation
being made for the electors to appear and give their votes, Mr.
BURKE stood forward on the hustings, surrounded by a great number
of the corporation and other principal citizens, and addressed
himself to the whole assembly as follows.


Gentlemen,--I decline the election. It has ever been my rule through
life to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have
never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of
advantages that are personal to myself.

I have not canvassed the whole of this city in form, but I have taken
such a view of it as satisfies my own mind that your choice will not
ultimately fall upon me. Your city, Gentlemen, is in a state of
miserable distraction, and I am resolved to withdraw whatever share my
pretensions may have had in its unhappy divisions. I have not been in
haste; I have tried all prudent means; I have waited for the effect of
all contingencies. If I were fond of a contest, by the partiality of my
numerous friends (whom you know to be among the most weighty and
respectable people of the city) I have the means of a sharp one in my
hands. But I thought it far better, with my strength unspent, and my
reputation unimpaired, to do, early and from foresight, that which I
might be obliged to do from necessity at last.

I am not in the least surprised nor in the least angry at this view of
things. I have read the book of life for a long time, and I have read
other books a little. Nothing has happened to me, but what has happened
to men much better than me, and in times and in nations full as good as
the age and country that we live in. To say that I am no way concerned
would be neither decent nor true. The representation of _Bristol_ was an
object on many accounts dear to me; and I certainly should very far
prefer it to any other in the kingdom. My habits are made to it; and it
is in general more unpleasant to be rejected after long trial than not
to be chosen at all.

But, Gentlemen, I will see nothing except your former kindness, and I
will give way to no other sentiments than those of gratitude. From the
bottom of my heart I thank you for what you have done for me. You have
given me a long term, which is now expired. I have performed the
conditions, and enjoyed all the profits to the full; and I now surrender
your estate into your hands, without being in a single tile or a single
stone impaired or wasted by my use. I have served the public for fifteen
years. I have served you in particular for six. What is past is well
stored; it is safe, and out of the power of fortune. What is to come is
in wiser hands than ours; and He in whose hands it is best knows whether
it is best for you and me that I should be in Parliament, or even in the
world.

Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us an awful
lesson against being too much troubled about any of the objects of
ordinary ambition. The worthy gentleman[51] who has been snatched from
us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest,
whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has
feelingly told us what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue.

It has been usual for a candidate who declines to take his leave by a
letter to the sheriffs: but I received your trust in the face of day,
and in the face of day I accept your dismission. I am not--I am not at
all ashamed to look upon you; nor can my presence discompose the order
of business here. I humbly and respectfully take my leave of the
sheriffs, the candidates, and the electors, wishing heartily that the
choice may be for the best, at a time which calls, if ever time did
call, for service that is not nominal. It is no plaything you are about.
I tremble, when I consider the trust I have presumed to ask. I confided,
perhaps, too much in my intentions. They were really fair and upright;
and I am bold to say that I ask no ill thing for you, when, on parting
from this place, I pray, that, whomever you choose to succeed me, he may
resemble me exactly in all things, except in my abilities to serve, and
my fortune to please you.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Mr. Coombe.




SPEECH

(DECEMBER 1, 1783)

UPON

THE QUESTION FOR THE SPEAKER'S LEAVING THE CHAIR IN ORDER FOR THE HOUSE
TO RESOLVE ITSELF INTO A COMMITTEE

ON

MR. FOX'S EAST INDIA BILL.




Mr. Speaker,--I thank you for pointing to me. I really wished much to
engage your attention in an early stage of the debate. I have been long
very deeply, though perhaps ineffectually, engaged in the preliminary
inquiries, which have continued without intermission for some years.
Though I have felt, with some degree of sensibility, the natural and
inevitable impressions of the several matters of fact, as they have been
successively disclosed, I have not at any time attempted to trouble you
on the merits of the subject, and very little on any of the points which
incidentally arose in the course of our proceedings. But I should be
sorry to be found totally silent upon this day. Our inquiries are now
come to their final issue. It is now to be determined whether the three
years of laborious Parliamentary research, whether the twenty years of
patient Indian suffering, are to produce a substantial reform in our
Eastern administration; or whether our knowledge of the grievances has
abated our zeal for the correction of them, and our very inquiry into
the evil was only a pretext to elude the remedy which is demanded from
us by humanity, by justice, and by every principle of true policy.
Depend upon it, this business cannot be indifferent to our fame. It will
turn out a matter of great disgrace or great glory to the whole British
nation. We are on a conspicuous stage, and the world marks our demeanor.

I am therefore a little concerned to perceive the spirit and temper in
which the debate has been all along pursued upon one side of the House.
The declamation of the gentlemen who oppose the bill has been abundant
and vehement; but they have been reserved and even silent about the
fitness or unfitness of the plan to attain the direct object it has in
view. By some gentlemen it is taken up (by way of exercise, I presume)
as a point of law, on a question of private property and corporate
franchise; by others it is regarded as the petty intrigue of a faction
at court, and argued merely as it tends to set this man a little higher
or that a little lower in situation and power. All the void has been
filled up with invectives against coalition, with allusions to the loss
of America, with the activity and inactivity of ministers. The total
silence of these gentlemen concerning the interest and well-being of the
people of India, and concerning the interest which this nation has in
the commerce and revenues of that country, is a strong indication of the
value which they set upon these objects.

It has been a little painful to me to observe the intrusion into this
important debate of such company as _quo warranto_, and _mandamus_, and
_certiorari_: as if we were on a trial about mayors and aldermen and
capital burgesses, or engaged in a suit concerning the borough of
Penryn, or Saltash, or St. Ives, or St. Mawes. Gentlemen have argued
with as much heat and passion as if the first things in the world were
at stake; and their topics are such as belong only to matter of the
lowest and meanest litigation. It is not right, it is not worthy of us,
in this manner to depreciate the value, to degrade the majesty, of this
grave deliberation of policy and empire.

For my part, I have thought myself hound, when a matter of this
extraordinary weight came before me, not to consider (as some gentlemen
are so fond of doing) whether the bill originated from a Secretary of
State for the Home Department or from a Secretary for the Foreign, from
a minister of influence or a minister of the people, from Jacob or from
Esau.[52] I asked myself, and I asked myself nothing else, what part it
was fit for a member of Parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of
talents by the extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged
by the research of years to wind himself into the inmost recesses and
labyrinths of the Indian detail,--what part, I say, it became such a
member of Parliament to take, when a minister of state, in conformity to
a recommendation from the throne, has brought before us a system for the
better government of the territory and commerce of the East. In this
light, and in this only, I will trouble you with my sentiments.

It is not only agreed, but demanded, by the right honorable
gentleman,[53] and by those who act with him, that a _whole_ system
ought to be produced; that it ought not to be an _half-measure_; that it
ought to be no _palliative_, but a legislative provision, vigorous,
substantial, and effective.--I believe that no man who understands the
subject can doubt for a moment that those must be the conditions of
anything deserving the name of a reform in the Indian government; that
anything short of them would not only be delusive, but, in this matter,
which admits no medium, noxious in the extreme.

To all the conditions proposed by his adversaries the mover of the bill
perfectly agrees; and on his performance of them he rests his cause. On
the other hand, not the least objection has been taken with regard to
the efficiency, the vigor, or the completeness of the scheme. I am
therefore warranted to assume, as a thing admitted, that the bills
accomplish what both sides of the House demand as essential. The end is
completely answered, so for as the direct and immediate object is
concerned.

But though there are no direct, yet there are various collateral
objections made: objections from the effects which this plan of reform
for Indian administration may have on the privileges of great public
bodies in England; from its probable influence on the constitutional
rights, or on the freedom and integrity, of the several branches of the
legislature.

Before I answer these objections, I must beg leave to observe, that, if
we are not able to contrive some method of governing India _well_, which
will not of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain _ill_,
a ground is laid for their eternal separation, but none for sacrificing
the people of that country to our Constitution. I am, however, far from
being persuaded that any such incompatibility of interest does at all
exist. On the contrary, I am certain that every means effectual to
preserve India from oppression is a guard to preserve the British
Constitution from its worst corruption. To show this, I will consider
the objections, which, I think, are four.

1st, That the bill is an attack on the chartered rights of men.

2ndly, That it increases the influence of the crown.

3rdly, That it does _not_ increase, but diminishes, the influence of the
crown, in order to promote the interests of certain ministers and their
party.

4thly, That it deeply affects the national credit.

As to the first of these objections, I must observe that the phrase of
"the chartered rights _of men_" is full of affectation, and very unusual
in the discussion of privileges conferred by charters of the present
description. But it is not difficult to discover what end that ambiguous
mode of expression, so often reiterated, is meant to answer.

The rights of _men_--that is to say, the natural rights of mankind--are
indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously
to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if
no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights
are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are
clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power and
authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in
a still better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the
object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself which secures
an object of such importance. Indeed, this formal recognition, by the
sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be
subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of
government, and even of society itself. The charters which we call by
distinction _great_ are public instruments of this nature: I mean the
charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by
these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly
called _the chartered rights of men_.

These charters have made the very name of a charter dear to the heart of
every Englishman. But, Sir, there may be, and there are, charters, not
only different in nature, but formed on principles _the very reverse_ of
those of the Great Charter. Of this kind is the charter of the East
India Company. _Magnet Charta_ is a charter to restrain power and to
destroy monopoly. The East India charter is a charter to establish
monopoly and to create power. Political power and commercial monopoly
are _not_ the rights of men; and the rights to them derived from
charters it is fallacious and sophistical to call "the chartered rights
of men." These chartered rights (to speak of such charters and of their
effects in terms of the greatest possible moderation) do at least
suspend the natural rights of mankind at large, and in their very frame
and constitution are liable to fall into a direct violation of them.


It is a charter of this latter description (that is to say, a charter of
power and monopoly) which is affected by the bill before you. The bill,
Sir, does without question affect it: it does affect it essentially and
substantially. But, having stated to you of what description the
chartered rights are which this bill touches, I feel no difficulty at
all in acknowledging the existence of those chartered rights in their
fullest extent. They belong to the Company in the surest manner, and
they are secured to that body by every sort of public sanction. They are
stamped by the faith of the king; they are stamped by the faith of
Parliament: they have been bought for money, for money honestly and
fairly paid; they have been bought for valuable consideration, over and
over again.

I therefore freely admit to the East India Company their claim to
exclude their fellow-subjects from the commerce of half the globe. I
admit their claim to administer an annual territorial revenue of seven
millions sterling, to command an army of sixty thousand men, and to
dispose (under the control of a sovereign, imperial discretion, and with
the due observance of the natural and local law) of the lives and
fortunes of thirty millions of their fellow-creatures. All this they
possess by charter, and by Acts of Parliament, (in my opinion,) without
a shadow of controversy.

Those who carry the rights and claims of the Company the furthest do not
contend for more than this; and all this I freely grant. But, granting
all this, they must grant to me, in my turn, that all political power
which is set over men, and that all privilege claimed or exercised in
exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much a derogation
from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way or
other exercised ultimately for their benefit.

If this is true with regard to every species of political dominion and
every description of commercial privilege, none of which can be
original, self-derived rights, or grants for the mere private benefit of
the holders, then such rights, or privileges, or whatever else you
choose to call them, are all in the strictest sense _a trust_: and it is
of the very essence of every trust to be rendered _accountable_,--and
even totally to _cease_, when it substantially varies from the purposes
for which alone it could have a lawful existence.

This I conceive, Sir, to be true of trusts of power vested in the
highest hands, and of such, as seem to hold of no human creature. But
about the application of this principle to subordinate _derivative_
trusts I do not see how a controversy can be maintained. To whom, then,
would I make the East India Company accountable? Why, to Parliament, to
be sure,--to Parliament, from whom their trust was derived,--to
Parliament, which alone is capable of comprehending the magnitude of its
object, and its abuse, and alone capable of an effectual legislative
remedy. The very charter, which is held out to exclude Parliament from
correcting malversation with regard to the high trust vested in the
Company, is the very thing which at once gives a title and imposes a
duty on us to interfere with effect, wherever power and authority
originating from ourselves are perverted from their purposes, and become
instruments of wrong and violence.

If Parliament, Sir, had nothing to do with this charter, we might have
some sort of Epicurean excuse to stand aloof, indifferent spectators of
what passes in the Company's name in India and in London. But if we are
the very cause of the evil, we are in a special manner engaged to the
redress; and for us passively to bear with oppressions committed under
the sanction of our own authority is in truth and reason for this House
to be an active accomplice in the abuse.

That the power, notoriously grossly abused, has been bought from us is
very certain. But this circumstance, which is urged against the bill,
becomes an additional motive for our interference, lest we should be
thought to have sold the blood of millions of men for the base
consideration of money. We sold, I admit, all that we had to sell,--that
is, our authority, not our control. We had not a right to make a market
of our duties.

I ground myself, therefore, on this principle:--that, if the abuse is
proved, the contract is broken, and we reenter into all our rights, that
is, into the exercise of all our duties. Our own authority is, indeed,
as much a trust originally as the Company's authority is a trust
derivatively; and it is the use we make of the resumed power that must
justify or condemn us in the resumption of it. When we have perfected
the plan laid before us by the right honorable mover, the world will
then see what it is we destroy, and what it is we create. By that test
we stand or fall; and by that test I trust that it will be found, in the
issue, that we are going to supersede a charter abused to the full
extent of all the powers which it could abuse, and exercised in the
plenitude of despotism, tyranny, and corruption,--and that in one and
the same plan we provide a real chartered security for _the rights of
men_, cruelly violated under that charter.

This bill, and those connected with it, are intended to form the _Magna
Charta_ of Hindostan. Whatever the Treaty of Westphalia is to the
liberty of the princes and free cities of the Empire, and to the three
religions there professed,--whatever the Great Charter, the Statute of
Tallage, the Petition of Right, and the Declaration of Right are to
Great Britain, these bills are to the people of India. Of this benefit I
am certain their condition is capable: and when I know that they are
capable of more, my vote shall most assuredly be for our giving to the
full extent of their capacity of receiving; and no charter of dominion
shall stand as a bar in my way to their charter of safety and
protection.

The strong admission I have made of the Company's rights (I am conscious
of it) binds me to do a great deal. I do not presume to condemn those
who argue _a priori_ against the propriety of leaving such extensive
political powers in the hands of a company of merchants. I know much is,
and much more may be, said against such a system. But, with my
particular ideas and sentiments, I cannot go that way to work. I feel an
insuperable reluctance in giving my hand to destroy any established
institution of government, upon a theory, however plausible it may be.
My experience in life teaches me nothing clear upon the subject. I have
known merchants with the sentiments and the abilities of great
statesmen, and I have seen persons in the rank of statesmen with the
conceptions and character of peddlers. Indeed, my observation has
furnished me with nothing that is to be found in any habits of life or
education, which tends wholly to disqualify men for the functions of
government, but that by which the power of exercising those functions is
very frequently obtained: I mean a spirit and habits of low cabal and
intrigue; which I have never, in one instance, seen united with a
capacity for sound and manly policy.

To justify us in taking the administration of their affairs out of the
hands of the East India Company, on my principles, I must see several
conditions. 1st, The object affected by the abuse should be great and
important. 2nd, The abuse affecting this great object ought to be a
great abuse. 3d, It ought to be habitual, and not accidental. 4th, It
ought to be utterly incurable in the body as it now stands constituted.
All this ought to be made as visible to me as the light of the sun,
before I should strike off an atom of their charter. A right honorable
gentleman[54] has said, and said, I think, but once, and that very
slightly, (whatever his original demand for a plan might seem to
require,) that "there are abuses in the Company's government." If that
were all, the scheme of the mover of this bill, the scheme of his
learned friend, and his own scheme of reformation, (if he has any,) are
all equally needless. There are, and must be, abuses in all governments.
It amounts to no more than a nugatory proposition. But before I consider
of what nature these abuses are, of which the gentleman speaks so very
lightly, permit me to recall to your recollection the map of the country
which this abused chartered right affects. This I shall do, that you may
judge whether in that map I can discover anything like the first of my
conditions: that is, whether the object affected by the abuse of the
East India Company's power be of importance sufficient to justify the
measure and means of reform applied to it in this bill.

With very few, and those inconsiderable intervals, the British dominion,
either in the Company's name, or in the names of princes absolutely
dependent upon the Company, extends from the mountains that separate
India from Tartary to Cape Comorin, that is, one-and-twenty degrees of
latitude!

In the northern parts it is a solid mass of land, about eight hundred
miles in length, and four or five hundred broad. As you go southward, it
becomes narrower for a space. It afterwards dilates; but, narrower or
broader, you possess the whole eastern and northeastern coast of that
vast country, quite from the borders of Pegu.--Bengal, Bahar, and
Orissa, with Benares, (now unfortunately in our immediate possession,)
measure 161,978 square English miles: a territory considerably larger
than the whole kingdom of France. Oude, with its dependent provinces, is
53,286 square miles: not a great deal less than England. The Carnatic,
with Tanjore and the Circars, is 65,948 square miles: very considerably
larger than England. And the whole of the Company's dominions,
comprehending Bombay and Salsette, amounts to 281,412 square miles:
which forms a territory larger than any European dominion, Russia and
Turkey excepted. Through all that vast extent of country there is not a
man who eats a mouthful of rice but by permission of the East India
Company.

So far with regard to the extent. The population of this great empire is
not easy to be calculated. When the countries of which it is composed
came into our possession, they were all eminently peopled, and eminently
productive,--though at that time considerably declined from their
ancient prosperity. But since they are come into our hands!----!
However, if we make the period of our estimate immediately before the
utter desolation of the Carnatic, and if we allow for the havoc which
our government had even then made in these regions, we cannot, in my
opinion, rate the population at much less than thirty millions of souls:
more than four times the number of persons in the island of Great
Britain.

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