The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 08 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
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page 11 of 445 (02%)
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the Company's servants have ever since covered over the worst
oppressions of the people under their government, and the most cruel and wanton ravages of all the neighboring countries, by holding out, and for a time actually realizing, additions of revenue to the territorial funds of the Company, and great quantities of valuable goods to their investment. [Sidenote: Proprietors.] But this consideration of mere income, whatever weight it might have, could not be the first object of a proprietor, in a body so circumstanced. The East India Company is not, like the Bank of England, a mere moneyed society for the sole purpose of the preservation or improvement of their capital; and therefore every attempt to regulate it upon the same principles must inevitably fail. When it is considered that a certain share in the stock gives a share in the government of so vast an empire, with such a boundless patronage, civil, military, marine, commercial, and financial, in every department of which such fortunes have been made as could be made nowhere else, it is impossible not to perceive that capitals far superior to any qualifications appointed to proprietors, or even to Directors, would readily be laid out for a participation in that power. The India proprietor, therefore, will always be, in the first instance, a politician; and the bolder his enterprise, and the more corrupt his views, the less will be his consideration of the price to be paid for compassing them. The new regulations did not reduce the number so low as not to leave the assembly still liable to all the disorder which might be supposed to arise from multitude. But if the principle had been well established and well executed, a much greater inconveniency grew out of the reform than that which had attended the old abuse: for if tumult and disorder be |
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