any man in England. Those of
the next ten years were directed principally to Indian difficulties, in
which he showed the same minuteness of knowledge, the same grasp of
intellect, the same moral wisdom, the same good sense, and the same
regard for justice, that he had shown concerning the colonies. But in
discussing Indian affairs his eloquence takes a loftier flight; he is
less conciliating, more in earnest, more concerned with the principles
of immutable obligations. He abhors the cruelties and tyranny inflicted
on India by Clive and Hastings. He could see no good from an
aggrandizement purchased by injustice and wrong. If it was criminal for
an individual to cheat and steal, it was equally atrocious for a nation
to plunder and oppress another nation, infidel or pagan, white or black.
A righteous anger burned in the breast of Burke as he reflected on the
wrongs and miseries of the natives of India. Why should that ancient
country be ruled for no other purpose than to enrich the younger sons of
a grasping aristocracy and the servants of an insatiable and
unscrupulous Company whose monopoly of spoils was the scandal of the
age? If ever a reform was imperative in the government of a colony, it
was surely in India, where the government was irresponsible. The English
courts of justice there were more terrible to the natives than the very
wrongs they pretended to redress. The customs and laws and moral ideas
of the conquered country were spurned and ignored by the greedy scions
of gentility who were sent to rule a population ten times larger than
that between the Humber and the Thames.

So Burke, after the most careful study of the condition of India, lifted
up his voice against the iniquities which were winked at by Parliament.
But his fierce protest arrayed against him all the parties that indorsed
these wrongs, or who were benefited by them. I need not dwell on his
protracted labors for ten years in behalf of right, without the
sympathies of those who had formerly supported him. No speeches were
ever made in the English House of Commons which equalled, in eloquence
and power, those he made on the Nabob of Arcot's debts and the
impeachment of Warren Hastings. In these famous philippics, he
fearlessly exposed the peculations, the misrule, the oppression, and the
inhuman heartlessness of the Company's servants,--speeches which
extorted admiration, while they humiliated and chastised. I need not
describe the nine years' pros