In limpid prose, especially for the 18th century, Burke polemicizes against the rape and plunder committed in India by the braying East India Company boys under the direction of pirate and criminal Warren Hastings. You can wish Burke more progressive, of course, less supportive of the transcendent good of British presence and even of the EIC's being the appropriate vehicle through which to deliver prosperity to the natives. But I get the feeling he's only committed to that because he has to be, you know? You can also criticize his figuring of the Indians in terms of their leaders, and his drawing-room concern that treating foreign nobles this way will do little for English nobles' reputation, saying less of the destruction of the livelihood and lives of millions of regular folk, their "subjects". But overall it's hard not to agree that Burke makes a very principled argument by the standards and in the "empire acquired in a fit of absence of mind" terms of his time--soon to be swamped by the vainglorious and racist imperial discourse of the 19th century. ( )