My Lords and Gentlemen,
“A plan has been formed, by my direction, for transporting a number of convicts, in order to remove the inconvenience which arose from the crowded state of the gaols in different parts of the kingdom; and you will, I doubt not, take such further measures as may be necessary for this purpose.
“I trust you will be able this session to carry into effect regulations for the ease of the merchants, and for simplifying the public accounts in the various branches of the revenue; and rely upon the uniform continuance of your exertions in pursuit of such objects as may tend still further to improve the national resources, and to promote and confirm the welfare and happiness of my people.”
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY (1788).
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.
CORN IMPORTS AND EXPORTS (1789).
Source.—Annual Register, 1789, pp. 279 et seq.
An Account of the Quantities of all Corn and Grain exported from, and imported into, England and Scotland, with the Bounties and Drawbacks paid, and the Duties received, thereon, for one Year, ended the 5th of January, 1790.