While the late Edmund Burke was making preparation for the indictment
before the House of Lords, of Warren Hastings, Governor-general of
India, he was told that a person who had long resided in the East
Indies, but who was then an inmate of Bedlam, could supply him with much
useful information. Burke went accordingly to Bedlam, was taken to the
cell of the maniac, and received from him, in a long, rational, and
well-conducted conversation, the results of much and various knowledge
and experience in Indian affairs, and much instruction for the process
then intended. On leaving the cell, Burke told the keeper who attended
him, that the poor man whom he had just visited, was most iniquitously
practised upon; for that he was as much in his senses as man could be.
The keeper assured him that there was sufficient warranty and very good
cause for his confinement. Burke, with what a man in office once called
"Irish impetuosity," known to be one of Burke's characteristics,
insisted that it was an infamous affair, threatened to make the matter
public, or even bring it before parliament. The keeper then said, "Sir,
I should be sorry for you to leave this house under a false impression:
before you do so, be pleased to step back to the poor gentleman's cell,
and ask him what he had for breakfast.
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