The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

in one unnatural and discordant mass.

"Every part of Hindostan has been constantly exposed to these and similar disadvantages
ever since the Mahomedan conquests. The Hindoos, who never incorporated with their
conquerors, were kept in order only by the strong hand of power. The constant necessity of
similar exertions would increase at once their energy and extent; so that rebellion itself is
the parent and promoter of despotism. Sovereignty in India implies nothing else. For I know
not how we can form an estimate of its powers, but from its visible effects; and those are
everywhere the same, from Cabool to Assam. The whole history of Asia is nothing more
than precedents to prove the invariable exercise of arbitrary power. To all this I strongly
alluded in the minutes I delivered in Council, when the treaty with the new Vizier was on
foot in 1775; and I wished to make Cheyt Sing independent, because in India dependence
included a thousand evils, many of which I enumerated at that time, and they are entered in
the ninth clause of the first section of this charge. I knew the powers with which an Indian
sovereignty is armed, and the dangers to which tributaries are exposed. I knew, that, from
the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, the subjects of a despotic empire
are always vigilant for the moment to rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious
intentions. A zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the common lot of his
fellows. The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar is therefore this very dependence
above mentioned on a despotic government, this very proneness to shake off his allegiance,
and this very exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are
consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had been,
and Cheyt Sing, as long as he was a zemindar, stood exactly in this mean and depraved
state by the constitution of his country. I did not make it for him, but would have secured
him from it. Those who made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so

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