THE WORKS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
EDMUND BURKE
IN TWELVE VOLUMES
VOLUME THE THIRD
[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
MDCCCLXXXVII
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS, February 28, 1785;
with an Appendix 1
SUBSTANCE OF SPEECH ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES, February 9, 1790 211
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 231
SPEECH
ON THE
MOTION MADE FOR PAPERS
RELATIVE TO THE
DIRECTIONS FOR CHARGING THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S PRIVATE DEBTS TO EUROPEANS
ON THE REVENUES OF THE CARNATIC,
FEBRUARY 28, 1785.
WITH AN APPENDIX,
CONTAINING SEVERAL DOCUMENTS.
Ἐνταῦθα τί πράττειν ἐχρῆν ἄνδρα τῶν Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους ζηλωτὴν
δογμάτων; ἆρα περιορᾶν ἀνθρώπους ἀθλίους τοῖς κλέπταις ἐκδιδομένους, ἢ
κατὰ δύναμιν αὐτοῖς ἀμύνειν, οἶμαι ὡς ἤδη τὸ κύκνειον; ἐξᾴδουσι διὰ τὸ
θεμισές ἐργαστήριον τῶν τοιούτων; Ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν αἰσχρὸν εἶναι δοκεῖ τοὺς
μὲν χιλιάρχους, ὅταν λείπωσι τὴν τάξιν, καταδικάζειν' ... τὴν δὲ ὑπέρ
ἀθλίων ἀνθρώπων ἀπολείπειν τάξιν, ὅταν δὲῃ πρὸς κλέπτας ἀγωνίζεσθαι
τοιούτους, καὶ ταῦτα τοῦ θεοῦ συμμαχοῦντος ἡμῖν, ὅσπερ οὖν ἔταξεν.
JULIANI Epist. 17.
ADVERTISEMENT.
That the least informed reader of this speech may be enabled to enter
fully into the spirit of the transaction on occasion of which it was
delivered, it may be proper to acquaint him, that, among the princes
dependent on this nation in the southern part of India, the most
considerable at present is commonly known by the title of the Nabob of
Arcot.
This prince owed the establishment of his government, against the claims
of his elder brother, as well as those of other competitors, to the arms
and influence of the British East India Company. Being thus established
in a considerable part of the dominions he now possesses, he began,
about the year 1765, to form, at the instigation (as he asserts) of the
servants of the East India Company, a variety of designs for the further
extension of his territories. Some years after, he carried his views to
certain objects of interior arrangement, of a very pernicious nature.
None of these designs could be compassed without the aid of the
Company's arms; nor could those arms be employed consistently with an
obedience to the Company's orders. He was therefore advised to form a
more secret, but an equally powerful, interest among the servants of
that Company, and among others both at home and abroad. By engaging them
in his interests, the use of the Company's power might be obtained
without their ostensible authority; the power might even be employed in
defiance of the authority, if the case should require, as in truth it
often did require, a proceeding of that degree of boldness.
The Company had put him into possession of several great cities and
magnificent castles. The good order of his affairs, his sense of
personal dignity, his ideas of Oriental splendor, and the habits of an
Asiatic life, (to which, being a native of India, and a Mahometan, he
had from his infancy been inured,) would naturally have led him to fix
the seat of his government within his own dominions. Instead of this, he
totally sequestered himself from his country, and, abandoning all
appearance of state, he took up his residence in an ordinary house,
which he purchased in the suburbs of the Company's factory at Madras. In
that place he has lived, without removing one day from thence, for
several years past. He has there continued a constant cabal with the
Company's servants, from the highest to the lowest,--creating, out of
the ruins of the country, brilliant fortunes for those who will, and
entirely destroying those who will not, be subservient to his purposes.
An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by several passages in his own
letters, as well as by a combination of circumstances forming a body of
evidence which cannot be resisted, that very great sums have been by him
distributed, through a long course of years, to some of the Company's
servants. Besides these presumed payments in ready money, (of which,
from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very difficult,) debts
have at several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to an
immense amount,--that is, to some millions of sterling money. There is
strong reason to suspect that the body of these debts is wholly
fictitious, and was never created by money _bonâ fide_ lent. But even on
a supposition that this vast sum was really advanced, it was impossible
that the very reality of such an astonishing transaction should not
cause some degree of alarm and incite to some sort of inquiry.
It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the Company itself was so
distressed as to require a suspension, by act of Parliament, of the
payment of bills drawn on them from India,--and also a direct tax upon
every house in England, in order to facilitate the vent of their goods,
and to avoid instant insolvency,--at that very moment, that their
servants should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides ten
millions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim a
debt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of one
of their dependent princes.
The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the Nabob of Arcot with very
private persons are so enormous, that they evidently set aside every
pretence of policy which might induce a prudent government in some
instances to wink at ordinary loose practice in ill-managed departments.
No caution could be too great in handling this matter, no scrutiny too
exact. It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least in the
power, of the creditors, by admitting secret participation in this dark
and undefined concern, to spread corruption to the greatest and the most
alarming extent.
These facts relative to the debts were so notorious, the opinion of
their being a principal source of the disorders of the British
government in India was so undisputed and universal, that there was no
party, no description of men in Parliament, who did not think themselves
bound, if not in honor and conscience, at least in common decency, to
institute a vigorous inquiry into the very bottom of the business,
before they admitted any part of that vast and suspicious charge to be
laid upon an exhausted country. Every plan concurred in directing such
an inquiry, in order that whatever was discovered to be corrupt,
fraudulent, or oppressive should lead to a due animadversion on the
offenders, and, if anything fair and equitable in its origin should be
found, (nobody suspected that much, comparatively speaking, would be so
found,) it might be provided for,--in due subordination, however, to the
ease of the subject and the service of the state.
These were the alleged grounds for an inquiry, settled in all the bills
brought into Parliament relative to India,--and there were, I think, no
less than four of them. By the bill commonly called Mr. Pitt's bill, the
inquiry was specially, and by express words, committed to the Court of
Directors, without any reserve for the interference of any other person
or persons whatsoever. It was ordered that _they_ should make the
inquiry into the origin and justice of these debts, as far as the
materials in _their_ possession enabled them to proceed; and where
_they_ found those materials deficient, _they_ should order the
Presidency of Fort St. George (Madras) to complete the inquiry.
The Court of Directors applied themselves to the execution of the trust
reposed in them. They first examined into the amount of the debt, which
they computed, at compound interest, to be 2,945,600_l._ sterling.
Whether their mode of computation, either of the original sums or the
amount on compound interest, was exact, that is, whether they took the
interest too high or the several capitals too low, is not material. On
whatever principle any of the calculations were made up, none of them
found the debt to differ from the recital of the act, which asserted
that the sums claimed were "_very_ large." The last head of these debts
the Directors compute at 2,465,680_l._ sterling. Of the existence of
this debt the Directors heard nothing until 1776, and they say, that,
"although they had _repeatedly_ written to the Nabob of Arcot, and to
their servants, respecting the debt, yet they _had never been able to
trace the origin thereof, or to obtain any satisfactory information on
the subject_."
The Court of Directors, after stating the circumstances under which the
debts appeared to them to have been contracted, add as follows:--"For
these reasons we should have thought it our duty to inquire _very
minutely_ into those debts, even if the act of Parliament had been
silent on the subject, before we concurred in any measure for their
payment. But with the positive injunctions of the act before us to
examine into their nature and origin, we are indispensably bound to
direct such an inquiry to be instituted." They then order the President
and Council of Madras to enter into a full examination, &c., &c.
The Directors, having drawn up their order to the Presidency on these
principles, communicated the draught of the general letter in which
those orders were contained to the board of his Majesty's ministers, and
other servants lately constituted by Mr. Pitt's East India Act. These
ministers, who had just carried through Parliament the bill ordering a
specific inquiry, immediately drew up another letter, on a principle
directly opposite to that which was prescribed by the act of Parliament
and followed by the Directors. In these second orders, all idea of an
inquiry into the justice and origin of the pretended debts, particularly
of the last, the greatest, and the most obnoxious to suspicion, is
abandoned. They are all admitted and established without any
investigation whatsoever, (except some private conference with the
agents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation,) and a fund for
their discharge is assigned and set apart out of the revenues of the
Carnatic. To this arrangement in favor of their servants, servants
suspected of corruption and convicted of disobedience, the Directors of
the East India Company were ordered to set their hands, asserting it to
arise from their own conviction and opinion, in flat contradiction to
their recorded sentiments, their strong remonstrance, and their declared
sense of their duty, as well under their general trust and their oath as
Directors, as under the express injunctions of an act of Parliament.
The principles upon which this summary proceeding was adopted by the
ministerial board are stated by themselves in a number in the appendix
to this speech.
By another section of the same act, the same Court of Directors were
ordered to take into consideration and to decide on the indeterminate
rights of the Rajah of Tanjore and the Nabob of Arcot; and in this, as
in the former case, no power of appeal, revision, or alteration was
reserved to any other. It was a jurisdiction, in a cause between party
and party, given to the Court of Directors specifically. It was known
that the territories of the former of these princes had been twice
invaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed and imprisoned, by the
Company's servants, influenced by the intrigues of the latter, and for
the purpose of paying his pretended debts. The Company had, in the year
1775, ordered a restoration of the Rajah to his government, under
certain conditions. The Rajah complained, that his territories had not
been completely restored to him, and that no part of his goods, money,
revenues, or records, unjustly taken and withheld from him, were ever
returned. The Nabob, on the other hand, never ceased to claim the
country itself, and carried on a continued train of negotiation, that it
should again be given up to him, in violation of the Company's public
faith.
The Directors, in obedience to this part of the act, ordered an inquiry,
and came to a determination to restore certain of his territories to the
Rajah. The ministers, proceeding as in the former case, without hearing
any party, rescinded the decision of the Directors, refused the
restitution of the territory, and, without regard to the condition of
the country of Tanjore, which had been within a few years four times
plundered, (twice by the Nabob of Arcot, and twice by enemies brought
upon it solely by the politics of the same Nabob, the declared enemy of
that people,) and without discounting a shilling for their sufferings,
they accumulate an arrear of about four hundred thousand pounds of
pretended tribute to this enemy; and then they order the Directors to
put their hands to a new adjudication, directly contrary to a judgment
in a judicial character and trust solemnly given by them and entered on
their records.
These proceedings naturally called for some inquiry. On the 28th of
February, 1785, Mr. Fox made the following motion in the House of
Commons, after moving that the clauses of the act should be read:--"That
the proper officer do lay before this House copies or extracts of all
letters and orders of the Court of Directors of the United East India
Company, in pursuance of the injunctions contained in the 37th and 38th
clauses of the said act"; and the question being put, it passed in the
negative by a very great majority.
The last speech in the debate was the following; which is given to the
public, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some of
which were of consummate ability,) but as entering more into the detail
of the subject.
SPEECH.
The times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by
extraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon
combinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects anything
more surprising than the spectacle of this day. The right honorable
gentleman[1] whose conduct is now in question formerly stood forth in
this House, the prosecutor of the worthy baronet[2] who spoke after him.
He charged him with several grievous acts of malversation in office,
with abuses of a public trust of a great and heinous nature. In less
than two years we see the situation of the parties reversed; and a
singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way of returning
the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and penalties, grounded
on a breach of public trust relative to the government of the very same
part of India. If he should undertake a bill of that kind, he will find
no difficulty in conducting it with a degree of skill and vigor fully
equal to all that have been exerted against him.
But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so
striking as the total difference of their deportment under the same
unhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baronet's
defence might have been, he did not shrink from the charge. He met it
with manliness of spirit and decency of behavior. What would have been
thought of him, if he had held the present language of his old accuser?
When articles were exhibited against him by that right honorable
gentleman, he did not think proper to tell the House that we ought to
institute no inquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witness. He did
not tell us (what at that time he might have told us with some show of
reason) that our concerns in India were matters of delicacy, that to
divulge anything relative to them would be mischievous to the state. He
did not tell us that those who would inquire into his proceedings were
disposed to dismember the empire. He had not the presumption to say,
that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian presidency, the
ultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in executing
with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge:
that others, not having been so fortunate, could not be so
disinterested; and therefore their accusations could spring from no
other source than faction, and envy to his fortune.
Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain, vaporing language in the
face of a grave, a detailed, a specified matter of accusation, whilst he
violently resisted everything which could bring the merits of his cause
to the test,--had he been wild enough to anticipate the absurdities of
this day,--that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser has thought
proper to do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation in
office, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been in
office,--had he argued the impossibility of his abusing his power on
this sole principle, that he had power to abuse,--he would have left
but one impression on the mind of every man who heard him, and who
believed him in his senses: that in the utmost extent he was guilty of
the charge.
But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate as criminal and
accuser upon what principles they think expedient, it is for us to
consider whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasurer of
the Navy, acting as a Board of Control, are justified by law or policy
in suspending the legal arrangements made by the Court of Directors, in
order to transfer the public revenues to the private emolument of
certain servants of the East India Company, without the inquiry into the
origin and justice of their claims prescribed by an act of Parliament.
It is not contended that the act of Parliament did not expressly ordain
an inquiry. It is not asserted that this inquiry was not, with equal
precision of terms, specially committed, under particular regulations,
to the Court of Directors. I conceive, therefore, the Board of Control
had no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There is
nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be not
undeniably true, that when, a special authority is given to any persons
by name to do some particular act, that no others, by virtue of general
powers, can obtain a legal title to intrude themselves into that trust,
and to exercise those special functions in their place. I therefore
consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright
usurpation. But if the strained construction by which they have forced
themselves into a suspicious office (which every man delicate with
regard to character would rather have sought constructions to avoid)
were perfectly sound and perfectly legal, of this I am certain, that
they cannot be justified in declining the inquiry which had been
prescribed to the Court of Directors. If the Board of Control did
lawfully possess the right of executing the special trust given to that
court, they must take it as they found it, subject to the very same
regulations which bound the Court of Directors. It will be allowed that
the Court of Directors had no authority to dispense with either the
substance or the mode of inquiry prescribed by the act of Parliament. If
they had not, where in the act did the Board of Control acquire that
capacity? Indeed, it was impossible they should acquire it. What must we
think of the fabric and texture of an act of Parliament which should
find it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition, that should descend
into minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition, that should
commit this trust to a particular description of men, and in the very
same breath should enable another body, at their own pleasure, to
supersede all the provisions the legislature had made, and to defeat the
whole purpose, end, and object of the law? This cannot be supposed even
of an act of Parliament conceived by the ministers themselves, and
brought forth during the delirium of the last session.
My honorable friend has told you in the speech which introduced his
motion, that fortunately this question is not a great deal involved in
the labyrinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But if it were, I beg
leave to assure you that there is nothing in the Indian detail which is
more difficult than in the detail of any other business. I admit,
because I have some experience of the fact, that for the interior
regulation of India a minute knowledge of India is requisite. But on
any specific matter of delinquency in its government you are as capable
of judging as if the same thing were done at your door. Fraud,
injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of
the same blood, family, and cast with those that are born and bred in
England. To go no farther than the case before us: you are just as
competent to judge whether the sum of four millions sterling ought or
ought not to be passed from the public treasury into a private pocket
without any title except the claim of the parties, when the issue of
fact is laid in Madras, as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art,
indeed, are different in different places; but they are generally
understood in none. The technical style of an Indian treasury is not one
jot more remote than the jargon of our own Exchequer from the train of
our ordinary ideas or the idiom of our common language. The difference,
therefore, in the two cases is not in the comparative difficulty or
facility of the two subjects, but in our attention to the one and our
total neglect of the other. Had this attention and neglect been
regulated by the value of the several objects, there would be nothing to
complain of. But the reverse of that supposition is true. The scene of
the Indian abuse is distant, indeed; but we must not infer that the
value of our interest in it is decreased in proportion as it recedes
from our view. In our politics, as in our common conduct, we shall be
worse than infants, if we do not put our senses under the tuition of our
judgment, and effectually cure ourselves of that optical illusion which
makes a brier at our nose of greater magnitude than an oak at five
hundred yards' distance.
I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single
source of our not having had steadily before our eyes a general,
comprehensive, well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the whole
of our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations.
After all its reductions, the British empire is still vast and various.
After all the reductions of the House of Commons, (stripped as we are of
our brightest ornaments and of our most important privileges,) enough
are yet left to furnish us, if we please, with means of showing to the
world that we deserve the superintendence of as large an empire as this
kingdom ever held, and the continuance of as ample privileges as the
House of Commons, in the plenitude of its power, had been habituated to
assert. But if we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty,
if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our minds to the
compass of their object, be well assured that everything about us will
dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the
dimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid,
home-bred cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimation
of our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a great
empire must fall by mean reparations upon mighty ruins.
I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading to despair, at the
manner in which we are acting in the great exigencies of our country.
There is now a bill in this House appointing a rigid inquisition into
the minutest detail of our offices at home. The collection of sixteen
millions annually, a collection on which the public greatness, safety,
and credit have their reliance, the whole order of criminal
jurisprudence, which holds together society itself, have at no time
obliged us to call forth such powers,--no, nor anything like them. There
is not a principle of the law and Constitution of this country that is
not subverted to favor the execution of that project.[3] And for what is
all this apparatus of bustle and terror? Is it because anything
substantial is expected from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the
end proposed. The eye-servants of a short-sighted master will employ
themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what is
nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to
economy; and our minister of the day must be an economist, whatever it
may cost us. But where is he to exert his talents? At home, to be sure;
for where else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? It
is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be
promising or not. If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may make
regulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation,
whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other
times and other men. On these principles, he chooses to suppose (for he
does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility that he shall
draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury;
that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance of
revenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want of
bread,--by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to
batter the Treasury with what breaks through stone walls for an
_increase_ of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these
skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and of
every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and
rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of
health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation.
Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he
has not leisure to inquire into those abuses in India that are drawing
off money by millions from the treasures of this country, which are
exhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the public
inanition is far more sorely felt than in the local exchequer of
England. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilst he attempts to
squeeze the laborious, ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes,
in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served the
public in any honest occupation at all, an annual income equal to two
thirds of the whole collection of the revenues of this kingdom.
Actuated by the same principle of choice, he has now on the anvil
another scheme, full of difficulty and desperate hazard, which totally
alters the commercial relation of two kingdoms, and, what end soever it
shall have, may bequeath a legacy of heartburning and discontent to one
of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latest
posterity. This project is also undertaken on the hope of profit. It is
provided, that, out of some (I know not what) remains of the Irish
hereditary revenue, a fund, at some time, and of some sort, should be
applied to the protection of the Irish trade. Here we are commanded
again to task our faith, and to persuade ourselves, that, out of the
surplus of deficiency, out of the savings of habitual and systematic
prodigality, the minister of wonders will provide support for this
nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty
millions of debt. But whilst we look with pain at his desperate and
laborious trifling, whilst we are apprehensive that he will break his
back in stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an
elastic bound, and with a broadcast swing of his arm he squanders over
his Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the whole
hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland.[4]
Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with
all just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own
perverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes will be rigid to
merit and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blind
and cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is to furnish
resources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protection
to great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltry
frailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with a
rigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back of
every small offender.
It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order, it is to
animadvert on offences of a far different description, that my honorable
friend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is to
perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric of your empire,
that the motion is opposed. It is, therefore, with reason (and if he has
power to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right
honorable gentleman makes his stand at the very outset, and boldly
refuses all Parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step
towards inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot be
safe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal
night shall veil our Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, to
avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and
inquisitive times to demonstrate out of this single act of the present
minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest
concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted
even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of your
revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the
richest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every idea of the
known, settled policy of England,) are on the point of being converted
into a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the globe hid
even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a
grand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances.
In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles and
system of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other has
been pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible, in
something which carried the appearance at least of punishment of
delinquency or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of the
conversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery,
and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt private
interest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of the
nation. A diversion is made of millions of the public money from the
public treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negotiations
for war, peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is forbidden to
inquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it is
the demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassed
master that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect.
The whole tenor of the right honorable gentleman's argument is consonant
to the nature of his policy. The system of concealment is fostered by a
system of falsehood. False facts, false colors, false names of persons
and things, are its whole support.
Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gentleman over that field of
deception, clearing what he has purposely obscured, and fairly stating
what it was necessary for him to misrepresent. For this purpose, it is
necessary you should know, with some degree of distinctness, a little of
the locality, the nature, the circumstances, the magnitude of the
pretended debts on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well as
of the persons from whom and by whom it is claimed.
Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval,
the second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of that
city, and of the adjacent territory, was not very long ago among the
most flourishing in Asia. But since the establishment of the British
power it has wasted away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch that
in the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in the
whole country.[5] During this period of decay, about six hundred
thousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemen
on their private account, by the way of China alone.[6] If we add four
hundred thousand, as probably remitted through other channels, and in
other mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought to
Europe, and in bills upon the British and foreign companies, you will
scarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the commencement of this
extraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no earlier than the
year 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not amount to
a great deal less than twenty millions of money.
During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream of wealth which set
from India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequate
observation; but happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks that
checked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted more notice. The
pecuniary discussions caused by an accumulation of part of the fortunes
of their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot was the first thing
which very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention of
the Court of Directors. This debt amounted to eight hundred and eighty
thousand pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part, by
English gentlemen residing at Madras. This grand capital, settled at
length by order at ten per cent, afforded an annuity of eighty-eight
thousand pounds.[7]
Whilst the Directors were digesting their astonishment at this
information, a memorial was presented to them from three gentlemen,
informing them that their friends had lent, likewise, to merchants of
Canton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In this
memorial they called upon the Company for their assistance and
interposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt.
This sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twenty-four per cent, which
would yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousand
pounds.[8]
Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive,
Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by being
made acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a new
reserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into a
second debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions four
hundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. This
is known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of the
Nabob's debts was by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this was
added, in a separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry Debt,
of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. The
whole of these four capitals, amounting to four millions four hundred
and forty thousand pounds, produced at their several rates, annuities
amounting to six hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds a year: a good
deal more than one third of the clear land-tax of England, at four
shillings in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annual
dividend of the East India Company, the nominal masters to the
proprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three hundred and
eighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year stood chargeable on the
public revenues of the Carnatic.
Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the various
operations which the capital and interest of this debt have successively
undergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly to
answer the right honorable gentleman on each of the heads, as he has
thought proper to divide them. But this was the exact view in which
these debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to the world.
It varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a most
questionable shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appeared
before a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degree
of doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any common
man with superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, nameless
form, and by everything sacred would have adjured it to tell by what
means a small number of slight individuals, of no consequence or
situation, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command of
armies or the known administration of revenues, without profession of
any kind, without any sort of trade sufficient to employ a peddler,
could have, in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months,) amassed
treasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it not
enough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate of their administration,
on their guard, and to call upon them for a strict inquiry, (if not to
justify them in a reprobation of those demands without any inquiry at
all,) that, when all England, Scotland, and Ireland had for years been
witness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the Company in
stocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying and
building of houses, in the securing quiet seats in Parliament or in the
tumultuous riot of contested elections, in wandering throughout the
whole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality which
sometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation,
that, after all, India was four millions still in debt to _them_? India
in debt to _them_! For what? Every debt, for which an equivalent of some
kind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is the
equivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What are
the articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which those
gentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences they
beamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheer
and to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutions
they have taught among that people, as a guide to life, or as a
consolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, a
debt "still paying, still to owe," which must be bound on the present
generation in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever?
A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose names, with few
exceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin and
talents or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes!
In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part of
the transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather the right
honorable gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes upon the
subject. The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so numerous
as the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in order
to frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes, such as they are,
the minister must have found a full authority for a suspicion (at the
very least) of everything relative to the great fortunes made at Madras.
What is that authority? Why, no other than the standing authority for
all the claims which the ministry has thought fit to provide for,--the
grand debtor,--the Nabob of Arcot himself. Hear that prince, in the
letter written to the Court of Directors, at the precise period whilst
the main body of these debts were contracting. In his letter he states
himself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a most competent witness to this
point. After speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768 and 1769, and of
other measures which he censures, (whether right or wrong it signifies
nothing,) and into which he says he had been led by the Company's
servants, he proceeds in this manner:--"If all these things were against
the real interests of the Company, they are ten thousand times more
against mine, and against the prosperity of my country and the happiness
of my people; for your interests and mine are the same. _What were they
owing to, then? To the private views of a few individuals, who have
enriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my country:
for your servants HAVE NO TRADE IN THIS COUNTRY, neither do you pay them
high wages; yet in a few years they return to England with many lacs of
pagodas. How can you or I account for such immense fortunes acquired in
so short a time, without any visible means of getting them?_"
When he asked this question, which involves its answer, it is
extraordinary that curiosity did not prompt the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to him by
his own act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in so
many words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sent
by the Company's servants to England? And do you imagine that there was
or could be more honesty and good faith in the demands for what remained
behind in India? Of what nature were the transactions with himself? If
you follow the train of his information, you must see, that, if these
great sums were at all lent, it was not property, but spoil, that was
lent; if not lent, the transaction was not a contract, but a fraud.
Either way, if light enough could not be furnished to authorize a full
condemnation of these demands, they ought to have been left to the
parties, who best knew and understood each other's proceedings. It was
not necessary that the authority of government should interpose in favor
of claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, and
whose object and end was its entire subversion.
It may be said that this letter was written by the Nabob of Arcot in a
moody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; but
it is in such humors that truth comes out. And when he tells you, from
his own knowledge, what every one must presume, from the extreme
probability of the thing, whether he told it or not, one such testimony
is worth a thousand that contradict that probability, when the parties
have a better understanding with each other, and when they have a point
to carry that may unite them in a common deceit.
If this body of private claims of debt, real or devised, were a
question, as it is falsely pretended, between the Nabob of Arcot, as
debtor, and Paul Benfield and his associates, as creditors, I am sure I
should give myself but little trouble about it. If the hoards of
oppression were the fund for satisfying the claims of bribery and
peculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If the
demands were confined to what might be drawn from the treasures which
the Company's records uniformly assert that the Nabob is in possession
of, or if he had mines of gold or silver or diamonds, (as we know that
he has none,) these gentlemen might break open his hoards or dig in his
mines without any disturbance from me. But the gentlemen on the other
side of the House know as well as I do, and they dare not contradict me,
that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but
collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color
and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their
rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them
combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and
the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are
the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a
shilling from his hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabob
of Arcot is always ready, nay, he earnestly, and with eagerness and
passion, contends for delivering up to these pretended creditors his
territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and
mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld
from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of
men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the
false names of debtors and creditors of state.
The great patron of these creditors, (to whose honor they ought to erect
statues,) the right honorable gentleman,[9] in stating the merits which
recommended them to his favor, has ranked them under three grand
divisions. The first, the creditors of 1767; then the creditors of the
cavalry loan; and lastly, the creditors of the loan in 1777. Let us
examine them, one by one, as they pass in review before us.
The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists, has an indisputable
claim upon the public justice. The creditors, he affirms, lent their
money publicly; they advanced it with the express knowledge and
approbation of the Company; and it was contracted at the moderate
interest of ten per cent. In this loan, the demand is, according to him,
not only just, but meritorious in a very high degree: and one would be
inclined to believe he thought so, because he has put it last in the
provision he has made for these claims.
I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the whole; for,
whatever may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict it
of nothing worse than the most enormous usury. But I can convict, upon
the spot, the right honorable gentleman of the most daring
misrepresentation in every one fact, without any exception, that he has
alleged in defence of this loan, and of his own conduct with regard to
it. I will show you that this debt was never contracted with the
knowledge of the Company; that it had not their approbation; that they
received the first intelligence of it with the utmost possible surprise,
indignation, and alarm.
So for from being previously apprised of the transaction from its
origin, it was two years before the Court of Directors obtained any
official intelligence of it. "The dealings of the servants with the
Nabob were concealed from the first, until they were found out" (says
Mr. Sayer, the Company's counsel) "by the report of the country." The
Presidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official account.
On this the Directors tell them, "To your great reproach, it has been
_concealed from us_. We cannot but suspect this debt to have had its
weight in _your proposed aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali_ [the Nabob of
Arcot]; but whether it has or has not, certain it is you are guilty of
an high breach of duty in _concealing_ it from us."
These expressions, concerning the ground of the transaction, its effect,
and its clandestine nature, are in the letters bearing date March 17,
1769. After receiving a more full account, on the 23d March, 1770, they
state, that "Messrs. John Pybus, John Call, and James Bourchier, as
trustees for themselves and others of the Nabob's private creditors, had
proved a deed of assignment upon the Nabob and his son of FIFTEEN
districts of the Nabob's country, the revenues of which yielded, in time
of peace, eight lacs of pagodas [320,000_l._ sterling] annually; and
likewise an assignment of the yearly tribute paid the Nabob from the
Rajah of Tanjore, amounting to four lacs of rupees [40,000_l._]." The
territorial revenue at that time possessed by these gentlemen, without
the knowledge or consent of their masters, amounted to three hundred and
sixty thousand pounds sterling annually. They were making rapid strides
to the entire possession of the country, when the Directors, whom the
right honorable gentleman states as having authorized these
proceedings, were kept in such profound ignorance of this royal
acquisition of territorial revenue by their servants, that in the same
letter they say, "This assignment was obtained by _three of the members
of your board_ in January, 1767; yet we do not find the _least trace_ of
it upon your Consultations until August, 1768, nor do any of your
letters to us afford any information relative to such transactions till
the 1st of November, 1768. By your last letters of the 8th of May, 1769,
you bring the whole proceedings to light in one view."