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Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797

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

"
Thus, then, my Lords, he has confessed that the era and the only era of
rebellion was when the tumult broke out upon the act of violence offered
by himself to Cheyt Sing; and upon the ground of that tumult, or
rebellion as he calls it, he says he never would suffer him to enjoy any
territory or any right whatever. We have fixed the period of the
rebellion for which he is supposed to have exacted this fine; this
period of rebellion was after the exaction of the fine itself: so that
the fine was not laid for the rebellion, but the rebellion broke out in
consequence of the fine, and the violent measure accompanying it. We
have established this, and the whole human race cannot shake it. He went
up the country through malice, to revenge his own private wrongs, not
those of the Company. He fixed 500,000_l._ as a mulct for an insult
offered to himself, and then a rebellion broke out in consequence of his
violence. This was the rebellion, and the only rebellion; it was Warren
Hastings's rebellion,--a rebellion which arose from his own dreadful
exaction, from his pride, from his malice and insatiable avarice,--a
rebellion which arose from his abominable tyranny, from his lust of
arbitrary power, and from his determination to follow the examples of
Sujah Dowlah, Asoph ul Dowlah, Cossim Ali Khan, Aliverdy Khan, and all
the gang of rebels who are the objects of his imitation.


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