Edmund Burke's Speech on The East India Bill

Q: Give a brief sketch of the sociopolitical style of the subcontinent during the time of Edmund Burke.

East India Bill is proposed in the British parliament, in the section of “House of Common”, to the British Queen about the misjudgments of the East India Company and the cruelty of them towards the people of Indian-subcontinent in 1783. The bill is considered as the ‘second magna-carta” of England. This bill is the milestone in the whole corpus of English written about the Indian, where a British has written in the favor of Indian subcontinent.

The British East India Company started their business in India from 1540 onwards. About a hundred years they were in India. At first it was a small company. From 1600 the company explored their business. In1757, the East India Company defeated the Nawab Siraj Ud Dula in the Battle of Plassey, which created the foundation of colonialism of East India Company over Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Within hundred years they gradually expanded their reign all over India. In 1774 they had murdered Bahadur Shah, the last Mughal emperor and started to control the whole Indian subcontinent in the reign of their rule.

The ruling pattern over India of the British was unforgettable. During the rule time of the British the miseries of the common subcontinental people was increasing day by day. The brutality and cruelty of the East India Company made the life of Indians a complete hell. Warren Hastings introduced a lot new ways of exploiting the Indian people. East India Company was getting richer by exploiting the people. Some of the brutalities of the British upon the Indian are as follows-

The British established the law of sunset for feudal tax. The feudal class of the subcontinent had to give tax for their own land. And if someone missed the timeline to give tax, then his land would be confiscated by the East India Company. And also, if anyone from the feudal class had died and left any orphan of him who is not enough mature, then all his land would be confiscated. To save their own land, the feudal class wanted a high tax from the farmers.

Our farmers could not grow their own food, but they were bound to harvest blue. The Indian people forgot the minimum liberty of life. After the death of the last Mughal emperor the Indians lost the complete political freedom of their own life. During the range of East India Company, the law and order were totally collapsed. All the Indian wealth was taken to England. We had to buy our own food by paying an abnormal price. 

The educational condition of the India was not so high. The British took no step to educate the Indian people. 

The condition of women was also no so safe. The British took the widows in any restricted area where they made sexual relationship with that girl. Thus, the girls became mistress of the British. 

Edmund Burke never visited India. Nevertheless, he felt a strong emotion for the Indian. The British rule in the subcontinent created a deep negative impact on the thought of Edmund Burke. Being a British parliamentarian, he raised his political voice in favor of the Indian people. All these issues; political, social, economical and law and order were raised in the East India Bill. He could very well understand that the brutal India Company destroyed the glamour and fame of the queen Victoria. The people of the subcontinent used to hate the British from the core of their heart. He wanted to introduce an executive British power rather than a despotic mercantile empowerment. He totally rejected the activities of Warren Hastings. His intention was also to make the queen understand about the importance of the India as the biggest colony. Because, 75% of the national income of the British comes from India. So, Edmund Burke requested the Queen to change Warren Hasting and to employee a new vice-roy by her serve. So, the new vice-roy would rule over India according to the rule of the British royal family.

Burke’s speech served two purposes for the well-being of the Indian people-

 

i)     To get a good government for them

 

ii)   To make the Indian people understand that British imperialism is not affiliated with the despotism done to the Indian people. 

This bill is spoken for the liberty, fraternity and equality. We believe that somehow this bill influenced hundred years later on the mind of the patriotic Indians like Mahatma Gandhi, Shuvas Boshu etc. It created the spirit of liberation to the Indian people.

 

 

 

Speech On The East India Bill By Edmund Burke Summary

 

Edmund Burke’s Speech on East India Bill: Summary

 

Burke believed that Eighteenth-century India had declined sadly from the height of Mughal power. But still, in the Speech on East India Bill, he compared the rulers of the successor states of the empire to the kings, electors, princes, dukes, and other ruling nobility of contemporary Germany. Burke compares India with contemporary Europe to present the territorial vastness of India and at the same time, its importance as a nation. He at the end of the comparison shows what an abject land the company rule has turned India into: “Thorough all that vast extent of the country there is not a man who eats a mouthful of rice but by permission of the East India Company.”

Burke has presented India as a nation that was declining from its past glory and dignity. India was “eminently, peopled and eminently productive.” But they declined from their “ancient prosperity.” India at that time, according to Burke, was inhabited by almost thirty million people. Burke points out in his speech that the populace of India during his time was no abject and detestable creatures. India is a nation that once was culturally, economically, commercially, ethnically rich, and affluent. Burke nourished a very high notion about India, it’s past, culture, and its diversified population. But under the despotic and tyrannical rule of East India Company, this nation rich in all aspects was turning into a “grand waste.” Corruption, avarice, lawlessness, fraud, evasion, and arbitrariness characterized the British rule in India and the British rule turned this “once opulent and flourishing country” into “waste with fire and sword.” The agents of the East India Company were rendering the whole territory into barren land.

In the Speech on East India Bill, Burke left no stone unturned to show that India once famous for its riches and wealth was heavily declining under the despotic and atrocious British rule. Burke’s skillful narrative convinced his audience that India, in reality, was bleeding under the East India Company’s sway. This led Burke to advocate for the East India Bill. He believed that this bill would save “thirty million of my fellow-creatures and fellow subjects” from utter ruin. The primary objective of Burke was to achieve political success. But in depicting India in the speech, Burke did not exaggerate. He assimilated emotion and rhetoric with reality and factual details. As an orator, Burke was highly skillful in presenting India and its people with all their sufferings and grievances.

 

Life of Cowley: Summary

Johnson’s description of [metaphysical wit] begins with introducing Metaphysical poets; he accuses them of being a bunch of showing off versifiers instead of true poets whose verses are a mere celebration of their extreme knowledge of the planet and scientific studies. In fact, Johnson and his contemporaries didn’t use the term “metaphysical” adequate to “spiritual” or con to “physical”; it rather connotes the philosophical and scientific aspect of the poetry rich with strange conceits like compasses, ether, etc. only at hand for a scholar, not a poet. Johnson condemns these poets of being an excessive amount of concerned with rhyme. Poetry, he believes, is what engages men’s hearts and exposes their eyes to the “softness of love” as within the poetry of Shakespeare and Milton.

Johnson then attacks the poetry from two different angles: mimetic and pragmatic. The Metaphysicals’ first failure, consistent with Johnson, might be acknowledged through Aristotle’s criteria for true poetry – as imitative art: Metaphysical poetry is way from the truth by copying neither “nature” nor “life”. He then approaches the poetry from another angle which is its failure to affect the reader the way true poetry does. In other words, Johnson attempts to prove that Metaphysical poetry, though admirable, isn’t ready to please the reader as a harmonious, unified, and delightful piece of poetry, soothing the minds of the readers. so as to prove so, he questions the central anchor of Metaphysical poetry, namely “wit”:

He first confirms that the truth value of their poetry only lies within the merit and extent of their wit. Even Dryden admitted that he and his contemporaries “fall below Donne in wit, but surpass in poetry”. But so as to attack this anchor, he wittily provides two different definitions of ‘wit’. consistent with Pope, wit is what “has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed”. supported this definition, Metaphysical poets have did not such wit, since they “just tried to urge singular thought, and were careless of diction”, and language. Here Johnson wittily and boldly questions even Pope’s definition, and provides a replacement concept of ‘wit’, as being “at once natural and new”. Thus Metaphysical thoughts “are often new, but seldom natural”. actually the unnaturalness of their poetry is what makes them unpleasing to the mind of the reader.

Having put the 2 previous definitions of ‘wit’ aside as not working within the case of metaphysical poets, Johnson then takes a step further to define their wit as an example of Discordia concurs; “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike”. He decries their roughness and violation of decorum, the deliberate mixture of various styles, this type of wit they need “more than enough”.

Johnson could seem to condemn the pragmatic failure of metaphysical poetry as “not successful in representing or moving the affections”, but is really leaving the bottom for the values of their poetry but providing subjective definitions for pragmatic and mimetic values of true poetry:

If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as wit which is directly natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it’s that which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this type the metaphysical poets have seldom risen.

Johnson here knowingly emphasizes the importance of the reader in producing the ultimate poem, and if by any chance Metaphysical conceits fail to prove “natural”, “just” or “obvious”, they’ll address be so in once more and place, because it really happened within the 20th century and therefore the strange conceits and fragmentation of images seemed so natural to the shattered subjects (readers) of the post-war time. As Goethe remarks, “the unnatural, that too is natural,” and therefore the metaphysical poets still be studied and revered for his or her intricacy and originality due to the very naturalness of images found in their once supposed far-fetched conceits. Such evaluations totally depend upon the context, the understanding of the reader, and therefore the time it’s being read.

Johnson’s other criteria for wit was being “new” to the reader, but how could a conceit prove new if over-used? actually , if a conceit or thought becomes a frozen metaphor, it’ll lose all its magic and wit; and this factor is additionally contingent the time and era during which it’s read.

His ending, however, is that of good judgment and sometimes admiration instead of condemnation: “if they often threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far fetched, they were often well worth the carriage”. aside from finding a sort of ‘truth’ in their poetry, he also confirms a variety of valuable features in their poetry like “acuteness”, “powers of reflection and comparison”, “genuine wit”, “useful knowledge”, and eventually “more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment”.

Johnson’s view of Metaphysical poets, though not totally confirming, proved to be fair and influenced by his own era’s literary canon – which valued imitativeness and unity over fragmentation and metaphysical expressions. we should always confine mind that metaphysical poetry was a reaction against the deliberately smooth and sweet tones of much 16th-century verse, a courageous act even against the literary canon of their own time. which is why the metaphysical poets adopted a method that seems so energetic, uneven, and rigorous and far appealing to the uninterested 20th-century reader.

 

 

Sir Richard Steele (bap. 12 March 1672 – 1 September 1729) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator.

The character of the Clergyman depicted by Steele

Question: How does Steele portray the character of the Clergyman?

Introduction

Richard Steele (1672- 1729) is the is the literary collaborator of the daily magazine” The Spectator” that lasted in 1711-1712 in England. The Clergyman was one of the important spokesmen of contemporary England and the final member of Spectator’s Club. If we evaluate the character of the Clergyman, we can get some features of the Clergyman.

The features of the Clergyman

The feature is the outer appearance by which a person or an object is evaluated.

An anonymous person

The Clergyman was the final member of Steele’s ”Spectator’s Club”. He was an anonymous person. Steele did not want to express the name of the Clergyman.

Religious person

Steele’s character, the Clergyman, was a religious person and a learned person. Although the Clergyman was a religious person, he hardly discussed the religious topic. He had a large number of devoted followers for his character.  He was not a regular member of the Spectator’s Club.

Philosophic person

The Clergyman was a philosophic person. Sometimes he discussed some philosophic matter. The subject of his discussion was more philosophic than the other member of the club.

Interested in worldly affairs

The Clergyman is usually a religious person. But the Clergyman is a little bit different in his character. Sometimes he has shown his interest in worldly matters. so, we can say that the clergyman wanted to connect with the earthly world.

A devoted aspirant to the next world

If we minutely observe the character of the clergyman, we can notice that he had a great attraction to overcome the world hereafter. Steele has upheld the clergyman by representing the contemporary young clergyman.

Conclusion

From the light of the above discussion, we may conclude that Richard Steele has beautifully portrayed the character of the clergyman as a spokesman of the contemporary young clergyman.

 

Edmund Burke

Prose style of Edmund Burke

 Question: Discuss Edmund Burke’s prose style. The prose style of Edmund Burke

Introduction

Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) was an Irish statesman and philosopher, historian, and political writer. He served as a member of parliament between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party after moving to London in 1750. His prose style is characterized by proportion, dignity, and harmony.

Characteristics of Edmund Burke’s prose style

After scanning his prose, we get sundry features which are given below:

Oratory style

Burk’s prose style is oratory. Oratory style means words are written as drafts of an oratory. If we read his writing, we will get his words as a powerful oratory. His writing is life-like at that time, now, and will be attractive and acceptable in the future. That means his writing is like an encounter between writer and reader though he has died in 1797. This will be clear from the given line:

“My second assertion is, that the Company has never made a treaty,

which they have not broken.’’

The writer of romantic prose

He is an identified writer of romantic prose. In his writing, we get sundry features that refer to romantic prose. Major romantic features are given below:

High imagination: High imagination is a leading feature of a romantic composer. In the writing of ‘‘Speech on the East India Bill’’, we get its touch. He speaks about Indian people and the geography of India but he never came to India.

Subjectivity: Subjectivity is another leading feature of being a romantic one. In the ‘‘Speech on the East India Bill’’, we get its touch as well. He speaks for the Indian people in parliament from the first-person point of view. This will be clear from the given line:

“The strong admission I have made of the Company’s rights (I am conscious of it) binds me to do a great deal.”

Common people: Passion and compassion for common people is also a romantic feature. In ‘‘Speech on the East India Bill’’, we come to know that he speaks for the Indian common people. So, from this point of view, he is a romantic prose writer.

Choice of language: Edmund Burke uses colloquial language for his writing, ‘‘Speech on the East India Bill’’. His choice of language is like William Wordsworth and Scott as well. From the language-using perspective, he is a romantic prose writer.

Use of figures of speech

Burke is called the poet of prose but in his ‘‘Speech on the East India Bill’’, he uses some figures of speech like poetry. After scanning his writing, we get sarcasm, oxymoron, simile, irony, and so on. Thus, Burke becomes a high orator.

Use of rhetorical question

The rhetorical question means asking questions instead of providing answers in a literary work. This is also a feature of Burke’s prose style. While speaking of Hastings’ treatment of Cheit Sing, he puts a number of rhetorical questions. For example:

“Did he cite this culprit before his tribunal? Did he make a charge? Did he produce a witness?”

Use of classical and historical allusion

Edmund Burke was a learned person which is why he has been able to rife his literary works with classical and rhetorical allusions. ‘‘Speech on the East India Bill’’ uses classical or historical allusion. He studies a lot of books as a result we get the standard quality writing with reference to historical personality or incident.

Lack of humor as a demerit

After scanning Burke’s writing, we get his defect that he has a lack of humor. In his prose writing, there are no entertaining elements like other prose writers. Though it is a fault, it is unique because his essays have not lost their attraction and acceptance.

Conclusion

From the light of the above discussion, we can say that Burke is a great prose writer and orator as well. He is the greatest master in English rhetorical and political wisdom. He opens the new door for a newcomer prose writer.

  

Samuel Johnson | Life of Cowley

 

Abraham Cowley
(1618-1667)

Samuel Johnson as a biographer and critic with reference to Life of Cowley

Question: Discuss Samuel Johnson as a biographer and critic with reference to “Life of Cowley”.

Introduction

Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784) is an English writer who has made lasting contributions to English literature as a literary critic and biographer. He had once told a Scottish biographer James Boswell, “The biographical part of literature is what I love most.” Here Samuel Johnson is presented as a biographer and critic with reference to his essay “Life of Cowley.”

Samuel Johnson as a biographer

A biography is a story of a person’s life written by someone else. It has long been one of the most popular forms of prose writing. Writing a good biography is one of the most challenging tasks. It follows some basic rules.

Maintenance of objectivity and balance

Dr. Samuel Johnson has always attempted to be objective and balanced while writing a biography. His tactful narrative skill satisfies the reader’s curiosity and creates a thirst for reading to gain further understanding. “Life of Cowley” follows a three-part plan such as Johnson’s accounts, Cowley’s suggestive and evocative biography, and a summary of the main features of his writings. Thus, Johnson maintains objectivity and balance as a landmark biographer.

Representation of facts

A good biographer presents facts about a person’s life. This information includes how the writer influenced his literary period that is why Johnson mentions that Cowley was influenced by John Donne and influenced his period with the metaphysical concepts though the biographer does not hesitate to find faults. As Abraham Cowley is a real character of English literature, Johnson’s presentation of facts about the life and writings of Cowley out and out bears the sign of the best biographer.

Interpretative nature

Most biographies are interpretative, and Dr. Johnson’s life of Cowley is no exception. Johnson not only presents facts but also explains what those facts mean. In his essay on Cowley, Johnson has defended Cowley’s neutrality as a captive. But in defending Cowley, Johnson never loses his objectivity and balance although there was a scarcity of research material.

Narrative force

The narrative force along with psychological reality provides a lively flavor. Johnson’s “Life of Cowley” has the magical narrative force of a good novel. Critics have categorized Johnson as a classical biographer. At the very outset of the essay, Johnson defines genius and describes the process of how Cowley became “irrecoverably a poet”. Such aphoristic expressions provide a classical status to this piece of biography.

Reference of other writers

Johnson’s essay “Life of Cowley” is a part of the great volume “The lives of the Poets” which comprises forty-two lives. “The Lives of the Poets” exhibits Johnson’s critical power and prejudices. In his essay, Johnson mentions Milton, Dryden, and Pope who are the most substantial poets of English literature. He closely considers the poems of Donne too. So, as a biographer, Johnson is not only perfect but also influential.

Johnson as a critic

Literary criticism is the discussion of literature including description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of literary works. To put it differently, Literary criticism means the art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of literary works. In the essay “Life of Cowley”, Johnson talks about the metaphysical poets followed by an examination of Cowley’s major works.

Cowley as a metaphysical poet

Johnson first tries to categorize Cowley as a metaphysical poet because Cowley in his poems has used simile, metaphor, conceit, and other styles which are like the metaphysical poets.

“Wit like other things, subject by their nature to the choice of man,

has its changes and fashions, and, at different times, takes different forms.”

Finding faults

Finding faults for evaluation and judgment is an important aspect of literary criticism. Johnson as a critic has not given a discount to William Shakespeare let alone Cowley. He defines metaphysical poetry with fault.

“The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together”.

Besides, Johnson asserts that the metaphysical poets have failed to attain the sublimity of art. According to Johnson, the metaphysical poets never tried to understand the greatness of thought. The conceit used by them is packed up with drawbacks. In the modern age, Johnson is vehemently opposed by T. S. Eliot.

Positive sides

Literary criticism does not discover only the negative sides of the literary works. Positive sides are equally asserted. Johnson praises Cowley as a love poet and compares him with Petrarch, an Italian poet, and sonneteer. A love poet Cowley is able to play the role of psychologist.

Conclusion

Now we can conclude that Johnson as a biographer and critic has enhanced the potential of English literature. As a critic, Johnson is such a genius that nobody can reject his opinions completely. Even T. S. Eliot has shown respect for Johnson’s evaluation of the metaphysical poets.