WHIG HISTORY AND WHIG MORALITY —The historian Piers Brendon asserts that Burke

WHIG HISTORY AND WHIG MORALITY

—The historian Piers Brendon asserts that Burke laid the moral foundations for the British Empire, epitomized in the trial of Warren Hastings, that was ultimately to be its undoing: when Burke stated that “The British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other”, this was “…an ideological bacillus that would prove fatal. It was Edmund Burke’s paternalistic doctrine that colonial government was a trust. Colonial Government was to be so exercised for the benefit of subject people that they would eventually attain their birthright—freedom”. As a consequence of this opinion, Burke objected to the opium trade, which he called a “smuggling adventure” and condemned “the great Disgrace of the British character in India”.—