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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)"

I will not
go over facts which have been opened to you by my fellow Managers: if I
did so, I should appear to have a distrust, which I am sure no other man
has, of the greatest abilities displayed in the greatest of all causes.
I should be guilty of a presumption which I hope I shall not dream of,
but leave to those who exercise arbitrary power, in supposing that I
could go over the ground which my fellow Managers have once trodden, and
make anything more clear and forcible than they have done. In my humble
opinion, human ability cannot go farther than they have gone; and if I
ever allude to anything which they have already touched, it will be to
show it in another light,--to mark more particularly its departure from
the principles upon which we contend you ought to judge, or to supply
those parts which through bodily infirmity, and I am sure nothing else,
one of my excellent fellow Managers has left untouched. I am here
alluding to the case of Cheyt Sing.
My honorable fellow Manager, Mr. Grey, has stated to you all the
circumstances requisite to prove two things: first, that the demands
made by Mr. Hastings upon Cheyt Sing were contrary to fundamental
treaties between the Company and that Rajah; and next, that they were
the result and effect of private malice and corruption.


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