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

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 478 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12).

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

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 478 pages of information about The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12).
jaghires, like other fees and like other feods, were given in land, as a maintenance:  some with the condition of service, some without any condition; some were annexed to an office, some were granted as the support of a dignity, and none were granted for a less term than life, except those that were immediately annexed to a lease.  We have shown your Lordships (and in this we have followed the example of Mr. Hastings) that some of them are fees granted actually in perpetuity; and in fact many of them are so granted.  We are farther to tell your Lordships, that by the custom of the empire they are almost all grown, as the feods in Europe are grown, by use, into something which is at least virtually an inheritance.  This is the state of the jaghires and jaghiredars.

Among these jaghires we find, what your Lordships would expect to find, an ample provision for all the nobility of that illustrious family of which the Nabob is the head:  a prince whose family, both by father and mother, notwithstanding the slander of the prisoner against his benefactor, was undoubtedly of the first and most distinguished nobility of the Mahometan empire.  Accordingly, his uncles, all his near relations, his mother, grandmother, all possessed jaghires, some of very long standing, and most of them not given by the Nabob.

I take some pains in explaining this business, because I trust your Lordships will have a strong feeling against any confiscation for the purpose of revenue.  Believe me, my Lords, if there is anything which will root the present order of things out of Europe, it will begin, as we see it has already begun in a neighboring country, by confiscating, for the purposes of the state, grants made to classes of men, let them be held by what names or be supposed susceptible of what abuses soever.  I will venture to say that Jacobinism never can strike a more deadly blow against property, rank, and dignity than your Lordships, if you were to acquit this man, would strike against your own dignity, and the very being of the society in which we live.

Your Lordships will find in your printed Minutes who the jaghiredars were, and what was the amount of their estates.  The jaghires of which Mr. Hastings authorized the confiscation, or what he calls a resumption, appear from Mr. Purling’s account, when first the forced loan was levied upon them under his Residentship, to amount to 285,000_l._ sterling per annum; which 285,000_l._, if rated and valued according to the different value of provisions and other necessaries of life in that country and in England, will amount, as near as may be, to about 600,000_l._ a year.  I am within compass.  Everybody conversant with India will say it is equivalent at least to 600,000_l._ a year in England; and what a blow such a confiscation as this would be on the fortunes of the peers of Great Britain your Lordships will judge.  I like to see your estates as great as they are; I wish they were greater than they are; but whatever they are,

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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.