Consider Burkes’ Speech on the East India Bill as a Specimen of Classical Oratory.

Burkes’ Speech on the East India Bill as a Specimen of Classical Oratory

Edmund Burke is an extraordinary Irish orator, political thinker, a great humanitarian of 18^th century England. He represents the finest of the oratorical qualities of English Language. His ‘Speech on the East India Bill’ is a formal piece of oration with classical rhetoric and his speeches are remarkable for their political wisdom and insight.

Burke waged a practically life-long campaign against the injustices of British rule in India. In his speech he launches passionate assaults on the arbitrary abuse of power by the East India Company to the ruination of the people of India. Though he never visited India, he

had thorough knowledge of India and the East India Company. He told the parliament that the geographical existence of India would cast light upon whether the object affected by the abuse of the East India Company’s power be of importance sufficient to justify the measure and means of reform applied to it in this bill. To draw the attention towards the right and duty of the members of parliament, Burkes’ rhetorical power is displayed in the following comments:

‘We sold, I admit, all that we had to sell; that is our authority, not our control. We had not a right to make a market of our duties’.

Poetry is life force, the moving force of Burke's speech. In fact, he is the poet in prose. His eloquence is remarkable and his wisdom is profound and contemplative. He speaks in figures, images, symbols. The musical cadence of his sentences reflects the influence of his wide reading of poetry. His passions and feelings, his personal agony and anxiety towards the tyranny of the East India Company finds a spontaneous expression in his speech.

Burke is an orator of his own class. As an orator he skillfully uses various rhetorical devices to adorn his speech. The devices like rhythm, alliteration, assonance, consonance, repetition etc. characterize his great capacity of oration. By attacking Hastings Burke attacks the whole East India Company with his eloquent rhetoric.

Skillful use of ironies and sarcasm is one of the important features of a great orator and Burke is unique in this regard. His ‘Speech on the East India Bill’ is replete with ironies uttered in sarcastic tone. For example when he says that the East India Company has 60,000 armed men, it runs the commerce of ‘half the globe’, he actually means that it is not supposed to have say so very subtle irony. Following example reflect Burke's’ use of sharp irony and sarcasm:

‘The natives had, however, one consolation in the ruin of their judicature: they soon saw that it fared no better with the English government itself.’

Simile, metaphor and imagery are also dexterously employed by Burke in his Speech on the East India Bill. He compares Hastings with a ‘wolf’, a remarkable predatory.

In fine, Burke is a great orator by any standard. Burke is the greatest master in English of the rhetoric of political wisdom.