that matters irrelevant to the charge were brought up hither. Was it not
open to him, and has he had no friends in the House of Commons, to call
upon the House, during the whole period of this proceeding, to examine
into the particulars adduced in justification of the preamble of the
charge against him, in justification of the covenants of the Company, in
justification of the act of Parliament? It was in his power to do it; it
is in his power still; and if it be brought before that tribunal, to
which I and my fellow Managers are alone accountable, we will lay before
that tribunal such matters as will sufficiently justify our mode of
proceeding, and the resolution of the House of Commons. I will not,
therefore, enter into the particulars (because they cannot be entered
into by your Lordships) any further than to say, that, if we had ever
been called upon to prove the allegations which we have made, not in the
nature of a charge, but as bound in duty to this Court, and in justice
to ourselves, we should have been ready to enter into proof. We offered
to do so, and we now repeat the offer.
* * * * *
There was another complaint in the prisoner's petition, which did not
apply to the words of the preamble, but to an allegation in the charge
concerning abuses in the revenue, and the ill consequences which arose
from them. I allude to those shocking transactions, which nobody can
mention without horror, in Rampore and Dinagepore, during the government
of Mr. Hastings, and which we attempted to bring home to him. What did
he do in this case? Did he endeavor to meet these charges fairly, as he
might have done? No, my Lords: what he said merely amounted to
this:--"Examination into these charges would vindicate my reputation
before the world; but I, who am the guardian of my own honor and my own
interests, choose to avail myself of the rules and orders of this
House, and I will not suffer you to enter upon that examination."
My Lords, we admit, you are the interpreters of your own rules and
orders. We likewise admit that our own honor may be affected by the
character of the evidence which we produce to you. But, my Lords, they
who withhold their defence, who suffer themselves, as they say, to be
cruelly criminated by unjust accusation, and yet will not permit the
evidence of their guilt or innocence to be produced, are themselves the
causes of the irrelevancy of all these matters. It cannot justly be
charged on us; for we have never offered any matter here which we did
not declare our readiness upon the spot to prove. Your Lordships did not
think fit to receive that proof. We do not now censure your Lordships
for your determination: that is not the business of this day. We refer
to your determination for the purpose of showing the falsehood of the
imputation which the prisoner has cast upon us, of having oppressed him
by delay and irrelevant matter. We refer to it in order to show that the
oppression rests with himself, that it is all his own.
Well, but Mr. Hastings complained also to the House of Commons. Has he
pursued the complaint? No, he has not; and yet this prisoner, and these
gentlemen, his learned counsel, have dared to reiterate their complaints
of us at your Lordships' bar, while we have always been, and still are,
ready to prove both the atrocious nature of the facts, and that they are
_referable_ to the prisoner at your bar. To this, as I have said before,
the prisoner has objected; this we are not permitted to do by your
Lordships: and therefore, without presuming to blame your
determination, I repeat, that we throw the blame directly upon himself,
when he complains that his private character suffers without the means
of defence, since he objects to the use of means of defence which are at
his disposal.
Having gone through this part of the prisoner's recriminatory charge, I
shall close my observations on his demeanor, and defer my remarks on his
complaint of our ingratitude until we come to consider his set-off of
services.
* * * * *
The next subject for your Lordships' consideration is the principle of
the prisoner's defence. And here we must observe, that, either by
confession or conviction, we are possessed of the facts, and perfectly
agreed upon the matter at issue between us. In taking a view of the laws
by which you are to judge, I shall beg leave to state to you upon what
principles of law the House of Commons has criminated him, and upon what
principles of law, or pretended law, he justifies himself: for these are
the matters at issue between us; the matters of fact, as I have just
said, being determined either by confession on his part or by proof on
ours.
My Lords, we acknowledge that Mr. Hastings was invested with
discretionary power; but we assert that he was bound to use that power
according to the established rules of political morality, humanity, and
equity. In all questions relating to foreign powers he was bound to act
under the Law of Nature and under the Law of Nations, as it is
recognized by the wisest authorities in public jurisprudence; in his
relation to this country he was bound to act according to the laws and
statutes of Great Britain, either in their letter or in their spirit;
and we affirm, that in his relation to the people of India he was bound
to act according to the largest and most liberal construction of their
laws, rights, usages, institutions, and good customs; and we furthermore
assert, that he was under an express obligation to yield implicit
obedience to the Court of Directors. It is upon these rules and
principles the Commons contend that Mr. Hastings ought to have regulated
his government; and not only Mr. Hastings, but all other governors. It
is upon these rules that he is responsible; and upon these rules, and
these rules only, your Lordships are to judge.
My Lords, long before the Committee had resolved upon this impeachment,
we had come, as I have told your Lordships, to forty-five resolutions,
every one criminatory of this man, every one of them bottomed upon the
principles which I have stated. We never will nor can we abandon them;
and we therefore do not supplicate your Lordships upon this head, but
claim and demand of right, that you will judge him upon those
principles, and upon no other. If once they are evaded, you can have no
rule for your judgment but your caprices and partialities.
Having thus stated the principles upon which the Commons hold him and
all governors responsible, and upon which we have grounded our
impeachment, and which must be the grounds of your judgment, (and your
Lordships will not suffer any other ground to be mentioned to you,) we
will now tell you what are the grounds of his defence.
He first asserts, that he was possessed of an arbitrary and despotic
power, restrained by no laws but his own will. He next says, that "the
rights of the people he governed in India are nothing, and that the
rights of the government are everything." The people, he asserts, have
no liberty, no laws, no inheritance, no fixed property, no descendable
estate, no subordinations in society, no sense of honor or of shame, and
that they are only affected by punishment so far as punishment is a
corporal infliction, being totally insensible of any difference between
the punishment of man and beast. These are the principles of his Indian
government, which Mr. Hastings has avowed in their full extent. Whenever
precedents are required, he cites and follows the example of avowed
tyrants, of Aliverdy Khân, Cossim Ali Khân, and Sujah Dowlah. With an
avowal of these principles he was pleased first to entertain the House
of Commons, the _active_ assertors and conservators of the rights,
liberties, and laws of his country; and then to insist upon them more
largely and in a fuller detail before this awful tribunal, the _passive_
judicial conservator of the same great interests. He has brought out
these blasphemous doctrines in this great temple of justice, consecrated
to law and equity for a long series of ages. He has brought them forth
in Westminster Hall, in presence of all the Judges of the land, who are
to execute the law, and of the House of Lords, who are bound as its
guardians not to suffer the words "arbitrary power" to be mentioned
before them. For I am not again to tell your Lordships, that arbitrary
power is treason in the law,--that to mention it with law is to commit a
contradiction in terms. They cannot exist in concert; they cannot hold
together for a moment.
Let us now hear what the prisoner says. "The sovereignty which they [the
subahdars, or viceroys of the Mogul empire] assumed, it fell to my lot,
very unexpectedly, to exert; and whether or not such power, or powers of
that nature, were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of
Parliament I confess myself too little of a lawyer to pronounce. I only
know that the acceptance of the sovereignty of Benares, &c., is not
acknowledged or admitted by any act of Parliament; and yet, by the
particular interference of the majority of the Council, the Company is
clearly and indisputably seized of that sovereignty. If, therefore, the
_sovereignty_ of Benares, as ceded to us by the Vizier, have _any rights
whatever_ annexed to it, and be not a mere empty word without meaning,
those rights must be such as are held, countenanced, and established by
the law, custom, and usage of the Mogul empire, and not by the
provisions of any British act of Parliament hitherto enacted. _Those
rights_, and none other, I have been the involuntary instrument of
enforcing. And if any future act of Parliament shall positively or by
implication tend to annihilate those very rights, or their exertion, as
I have exerted them, I much fear that the boasted sovereignty of
Benares, which was held up as an acquisition almost obtruded on the
Company against my consent and opinion, (for I acknowledge that even
then I foresaw many difficulties and inconveniences in its future
exercise,)--I fear, I say, that this sovereignty will be found a burden
instead of a benefit, a heavy clog rather than a precious gem to its
present possessors: I mean, unless the whole of our territory in that
quarter shall be rounded and made an uniform compact body by one grand
and systematic arrangement,--such an arrangement as shall do away all
the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences (both to the governors and
the governed) arising from the variety of tenures, rights, and claims in
all cases of landed property and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the
informality, invalidity, and instability of all engagements in so
divided and unsettled a state of society, and from the unavoidable
anarchy and confusion of different laws, religions, and prejudices,
moral, civil, and political, all jumbled together in one unnatural and
discordant mass. Every part of Hindostan has been constantly exposed to
these and similar disadvantages ever since the Mahometan conquests. The
Hindoos, who never incorporated with their conquerors, were kept in
order only by the strong hand of power. The constant necessity of
similar exertions would increase at once their energy and extent. So
that rebellion itself is the parent and promoter of _despotism_.
Sovereignty in India implies nothing else. For I know not how we can
form an estimate of its powers, but from its visible effects; and those
are everywhere the same from Cabool to Assam. The whole history of Asia
is nothing more than precedents to prove the invariable exercise of
arbitrary power. To all this I strongly alluded in the minutes I
delivered in Council, when the treaty with the new Vizier was on foot in
1775; and I wished to make Cheyt Sing independent, because in India
dependence included a thousand evils, many of which I enumerated at that
time, and they are entered in the ninth clause of the first section of
this charge. I knew the powers with which an Indian sovereignty is
armed, and the dangers to which tributaries are exposed. I knew, that,
from the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, the
subjects of a despotic empire are always vigilant for the moment to
rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious intentions. A
zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the common lot of
his fellows. _The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar_ is
therefore this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic government,
this very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure
to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent
on the political state of Hindostanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he
had been, and Cheyt Sing, as long as he was, a zemindar, stood exactly
in this _mean and depraved state_ by the constitution of his country. I
did not make it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those who
made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and
depraved a tenure. Aliverdy Khân and Cossim Ali fined all their
zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either of
court necessity or court extravagance."
I beseech your Lordships seriously to look upon the whole nature of the
principles upon which the prisoner defends himself. He appeals to the
custom and usage of the Mogul empire; and the constitution of that
empire is, he says, arbitrary power. He says, that he does not know
whether any act of Parliament bound him not to exercise this arbitrary
power, and that, if any such act should in future be made, it would be
mischievous and ruinous to our empire in India. Thus he has at once
repealed all preceding acts, he has annulled by prospect every future
act you can make; and it is not in the power of the Parliament of Great
Britain, without ruining the empire, to hinder his exercising this
despotic authority. All Asia is by him disfranchised at a stroke. Its
inhabitants have no rights, no laws, no liberties; their state is mean
and depraved; they may be fined for any purpose of court extravagance or
prodigality,--or as Cheyt Sing was fined by him, not only upon every
war, but upon every pretence of war.
This is the account he gives of his power, and of the people subject to
the British government in India. We deny that the act of Parliament gave
him any such power; we deny that the India Company gave him any such
power, or that they had ever any such power to give; we even deny that
there exists in all the human race a power to make the government of any
state dependent upon individual will. We disclaim, we reject all such
doctrines with disdain and indignation; and we have brought them up to
your Lordships to be tried at your bar.
What must be the condition of the people of India, governed, as they
have been, by persons who maintain these principles as maxims of
government, and not as occasional deviations caused by the irregular
will of man,--principles by which the whole system of society is to be
controlled, not by law, reason, or justice, but by the will of one man?
Your Lordships will remark, that not only the whole of the laws, rights,
and usages, but the very being of the people, are exposed to ruin: for
Mr. Hastings says, that the people may be fined, that they may be
exiled, that they may be imprisoned, and that even their lives are
dependent upon the mere will of their foreign master; and that he, the
Company's Governor, exercised that will under the authority of this
country. Remark, my Lords, his application of this doctrine. "I would,"
he says, "have kept Cheyt Sing from the consequences of this dependence,
by making him independent, and not in any manner subjecting him to our
government. The moment he came into a state of dependence upon the
British government, all these evils attached upon him.--It is," he adds,
"disagreeable to me to exert such powers; but I know they must be
exerted; and I declare there is no security from this arbitrary power,
but by having nothing to do with the British government."
My Lords, the House of Commons has already well considered what may be
our future moral and political condition, when the persons who come from
that school of pride, insolence, corruption, and tyranny are more
intimately mixed up with us of purer morals. Nothing but contamination
can be the result, nothing but corruption can exist in this country,
unless we expunge this doctrine out of the very hearts and souls of the
people. It is not to the gang of plunderers and robbers of which I say
this man is at the head, that we are only, or indeed principally, to
look. Every man in Great Britain will be contaminated and must be
corrupted, if you let loose among us whole legions of men, generation
after generation, tainted with these abominable vices, and avowing these
detestable principles. It is, therefore, to preserve the integrity and
honor of the Commons of Great Britain, that we have brought this man to
your Lordships' bar.
When these matters were first explained to your Lordships, and strongly
enforced by abilities greater than I can exert, there was something like
compunction shown by the prisoner: but he took the most strange mode to
cover his guilt. Upon the cross-examination of Major Scott, he
discovered all the engines of this Indian corruption. Mr. Hastings got
that witness to swear that this defence of his, from which the passages
I have read to your Lordships are extracted, was not his, but that it
was the work of his whole Council, composed of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Shore,
Mr. Halhed, Mr. Baber,--the whole body of his Indian Cabinet Council;
that this was their work, and not his; and that he disclaimed it, and
therefore that it would be wrong to press it upon him. Good God! my
Lords, what shall we say in this stage of the business? The prisoner put
in an elaborate defence: he now disclaims that defence. He told us that
it was of his own writing, that he had been able to compose it in five
days; and he now gets five persons to contradict his own assertions, and
to disprove on oath his most solemn declarations.
My Lords, this business appears still more alarming, when we find not
only Mr. Hastings, but his whole Council, engaged in it. I pray your
Lordships to observe, that Mr. Halhed, a person concerned with Mr.
Hastings in compiling a code of Gentoo laws, is now found to be one of
the persons to whom this very defence is attributed which contains such
detestable and abominable doctrines. But are we to consider the contents
of this paper as the defence of the prisoner or not? Will any one say,
that, when an answer is sworn to in Chancery, when an answer is given
here to an impeachment of the Commons, or when a plea is made to an
indictment, that it is drawn by the defendant's counsel, and therefore
is not his? Did we not all hear him read this defence in part at our
bar?--did we not see him hand it to his secretary to have it read by his
son?--did he not then hear it read from end to end?--did not he himself
desire it to be printed, (for it was no act of ours,) and did he not
superintend and revise the press?--and has any breath but his own
breathed upon it? No, my Lords, the whole composition is his, by writing
or adoption; and never, till he found it pressed him in this House,
never, till your Lordships began to entertain the same abhorrence of it
that we did, did he disclaim it.
But mark another stage of the propagation of these horrible principles.
After having grounded upon them the defence of his conduct against our
charge, and after he had got a person to forswear them for him, and to
prove him to have told falsehoods of the grossest kind to the House of
Commons, he again adheres to this defence. The dog returned to his
vomit. After having vomited out his vile, bilious stuff of arbitrary
power, and afterwards denied it to be his, he gets his counsel in this
place to resort to the loathsome mess again. They have thought proper,
my Lords, to enter into an extended series of quotations from books of
travellers, for the purpose of showing that despotism was the only
principle of government acknowledged in India,--that the people have no
laws, no rights, no property movable or immovable, no distinction of
ranks, nor any sense of disgrace. After citing a long line of travellers
to this effect, they quote Montesquieu as asserting the same facts,
declaring that the people of India had no sense of honor, and were only
sensible of the whip as far as it produced corporal pain. They then
proceed to state that it was a government of misrule, productive of no
happiness to the people, and that it so continued until subverted by the
free government of Britain,--namely, the government that Mr. Hastings
describes as having himself exercised there.
My Lords, if the prisoner can succeed in persuading us that these people
have no laws, no rights, not even the common sentiments and feeling of
men, he hopes your interest in them will be considerably lessened. He
would persuade you that their sufferings are much assuaged by their
being nothing new,--and that, having no right to property, to liberty,
to honor, or to life, they must be more pleased with the little that is
left to them than grieved for the much that has been ravished from them
by his cruelty and his avarice. This inference makes it very necessary
for me, before I proceed further, to make a few remarks upon this part
of the prisoner's conduct, which your Lordships must have already felt
with astonishment, perhaps with indignation. This man, who passed
twenty-five years in India, who was fourteen years at the head of his
government, master of all the offices, master of all the registers and
records, master of all the lawyers and priests of all this empire, from
the highest to the lowest, instead of producing to you the fruits of so
many years' local and official knowledge upon that subject, has called
out a long line of the rabble of travellers to inform you concerning the
objects of his own government. That his learned counsel should be
ignorant of those things is a matter of course. That, if left to
himself, the person who has produced all this stuff should, in pursuit
of his darling arbitrary power, wander without a guide, or with false
guides, is quite natural. But your Lordships must have heard with
astonishment, that, upon points of law relative to the tenure of lands,
instead of producing any law document or authority on the usages and
local customs of the country, he has referred to officers in the army,
colonels of artillery and engineers, to young gentlemen just come from
school, not above three or four years in the country. Good God! would
not one rather have expected to hear him put all these travellers to
shame by the authority of a man who had resided so long in the supreme
situation of government,--to set aside all these wild, loose, casual,
and silly observations of travellers and theorists? On the contrary, as
if he was ignorant of everything, as if he knew nothing of India, as if
he had dropped from the clouds, he cites the observations of every
stranger who had been hurried in a palanquin through the country,
capable or incapable of observation, to prove to you the nature of the
government, and of the power he had to exercise.