Who stated, regarding the East India Company, "The Company is an anomaly but it is part of a system where everything is an anomaly"?

Key Fact(s)

The remark “The Company is an anomaly but it is part of a system where everything is an anomaly” was made by Edmund Burke, not by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Edmund Burke, a British parliamentarian and political thinker, made this observation while criticizing the English East India Company for exercising sovereign powers without adequate accountability.

His critique formed an important part of his speeches during the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Burke viewed the Company as a product of a deeply flawed colonial system, where commercial interests were fused with political authority. Thomas Babington Macaulay, on the other hand, is associated with educational reforms and the Minute on Indian Education (1835), not with this critique of the Company.