the Company are the perfect representative of any sovereign power
whatever. They have certain rights by their charter, and by acts of
Parliament, but they have no other. They have their legal rights only,
and these do not imply any such thing as sovereign power. The
sovereignty of Great Britain is in the King; he is the sovereign of the
Lords and the sovereign of the Commons, individually and collectively;
and as he has his prerogative established by law, he must exercise it,
and all persons claiming and deriving under him, whether by act of
Parliament, whether by charter of the Crown, or by any other mode
whatever, all are alike bound by law, and responsible to it. No one can
assume or receive any power of sovereignty, because the sovereignty is
in the Crown, and cannot be delegated away from the Crown; no such
delegation ever took place, or ever was intended, as any one may see in
the act by which Mr. Hastings was nominated Governor. He cannot,
therefore, exercise that high supreme sovereignty which is vested by the
law, with the consent of both Houses of Parliament, in the King, and in
the King only. It is a violent, rebellious assumption of power, when Mr.
Hastings pretends fully, perfectly, and entirely to represent the
sovereign of this country, and to exercise legislative, executive, and
judicial authority, with as large and broad a sway as his Majesty,
acting with the consent of the two Houses of Parliament, and agreeably
to the laws of this kingdom. I say, my Lords, this is a traitorous and
rebellious assumption, which he has no right to make, and which we
charge against him, and therefore it cannot be urged in justification of
his conduct in any respect.
He next alleges, with reference to one particular case, that he received
this sovereignty from the Vizier Sujah Dowlah, who he pretends was
sovereign, with an unlimited power over the life, goods, and property of
Cheyt Sing. This we positively deny. Whatever power the supreme
sovereign of the empire had, we deny that it was delegated to Sujah
Dowlah. He never was in possession of it. He was a vizier of the empire;
he had a grant of certain lands for the support of that dignity: and we
refer you to the Institutes of Timour, to the Institutes of Akbar, to
the institutes of the Mahometan law, for the powers of delegated
governors and viceroys. You will find that there is not a trace of
sovereignty in them, but that they are, to all intents and purposes,
mere subjects; and consequently, as Sujah Dowlah had not these powers,
he could not transfer them to the India Company. His master, the Mogul
emperor, had them not. I defy any man to show an instance of that
emperor's claiming any such thing as arbitrary power; much less can it
be claimed by a rebellious viceroy who had broken loose from his
sovereign's authority, just as this man broke loose from the authority
of Parliament. The one had not a right to give, nor the other to receive
such powers. But whatever rights were vested in the Mogul, they cannot
belong either to Sujah Dowlah, to Mr. Hastings, or to the Company. These
latter are expressly bound by their compact to take care of the subjects
of the empire, and to govern them according to law, reason, and equity;
and when they do otherwise, they are guilty of tyranny, of a violation
of the rights of the people, and of rebellion against their sovereign.
We have taken these pains to ascertain and fix principles, because your
Lordships are not called upon to judge of facts. A jury may find facts,
but no jury can form a judgment of law; it is an application of the law
to the fact that makes the act criminal or laudable. You must find a
fixed standard of some kind or other; for if there is no standard but
the immediate momentary purpose of the day, guided and governed by the
man who uses it, fixed not only for the disposition of all the wealth
and strength of the state, but for the life, fortune, and property of
every individual, your Lordships are left without a principle to direct
your judgment. This high court, this supreme court of appeal from all
the courts of the kingdom, this highest court of criminal jurisdiction,
exercised upon the requisition of the House of Commons, if left without
a rule, would be as lawless as the wild savage, and as unprincipled as
the prisoner that stands at your bar. Our whole issue is upon
principles, and what I shall say to you will be in perpetual reference
to them; because it is better to have no principles at all than to have
false principles of government and of morality. Leave a man to his
passions, and you leave a wild beast to a savage and capricious nature.
A wild beast, indeed, when its stomach is full, will caress you, and may
lick your hands; in like manner, when a tyrant is pleased or his passion
satiated, you may have a happy and serene day under an arbitrary
government. But when the principle founded on solid reason, which ought
to restrain passion, is perverted from its proper end, the false
principle will be substituted for it, and then man becomes ten times
worse than a wild beast. The evil principle, grown solid and perennial,
goads him on and takes entire possession of his mind; and then perhaps
the best refuge that you can have from that diabolical principle is in
the natural wild passions and unbridled appetites of mankind. This is a
dreadful state of things; and therefore we have thought it necessary to
say a great deal upon his principles.
* * * * *
My Lords, we come next to apply these principles to facts which cannot
otherwise be judged, as we have contended and do now contend. I will not
go over facts which have been opened to you by my fellow Managers: if I
did so, I should appear to have a distrust, which I am sure no other man
has, of the greatest abilities displayed in the greatest of all causes.
I should be guilty of a presumption which I hope I shall not dream of,
but leave to those who exercise arbitrary power, in supposing that I
could go over the ground which my fellow Managers have once trodden, and
make anything more clear and forcible than they have done. In my humble
opinion, human ability cannot go farther than they have gone; and if I
ever allude to anything which they have already touched, it will be to
show it in another light,--to mark more particularly its departure from
the principles upon which we contend you ought to judge, or to supply
those parts which through bodily infirmity, and I am sure nothing else,
one of my excellent fellow Managers has left untouched. I am here
alluding to the case of Cheyt Sing.
My honorable fellow Manager, Mr. Grey, has stated to you all the
circumstances requisite to prove two things: first, that the demands
made by Mr. Hastings upon Cheyt Sing were contrary to fundamental
treaties between the Company and that Rajah; and next, that they were
the result and effect of private malice and corruption. This having
been stated and proved to you, I shall take up the subject where it was
left.
My Lords, in the first place, I have to remark to you, that the whole of
the charge originally brought by Mr. Hastings against Cheyt Sing, in
justification of his wicked and tyrannical proceedings, is, that he had
been dilatory, evasive, shuffling, and unwilling to pay that which,
however unwilling, evasive, and shuffling, he did pay; and that, with
regard to the business of furnishing cavalry, the Rajah has asserted,
and his assertion has not been denied, that, when he was desired by the
Council to furnish these troopers, the purpose for which this
application was made was not mentioned or alluded to, nor was there any
place of muster pointed out. We therefore contended, that the demand was
not made for the service of the state, but for the oppression of the
individual that suffered by it.
But admitting the Rajah to have been guilty of delay and unwillingness,
what is the nature of the offence? If you strip it of the epithets by
which it has been disguised, it merely amounts to an unwillingness in
the Rajah to pay more than the sums stipulated by the mutual agreement
existing between him and the Company. This is the whole of it, the whole
front and head of the offence; and for this offence, such as it is, and
admitting that he could be legally fined for it, he was subjected to the
secret punishment of giving a bribe to Mr. Hastings, by which he was to
buy off the fine, and which was consequently a commutation for it.
That your Lordships may be enabled to judge more fully of the nature of
this offence, let us see in what relation Cheyt Sing stood with the
Company. He was, my Lords, a person clothed with every one of the
attributes of sovereignty, under a direct stipulation that the Company
should not interfere in his internal government. The military and civil
authority, the power of life and death, the whole revenue, and the whole
administration of the law, rested in him. Such was the sovereignty he
possessed within Benares: but he was a subordinate sovereign dependent
upon a superior, according to the tenor of his compact, expressed or
implied. Now, having contended, as we still contend, that the Law of
Nations is the law of India as well as of Europe, because it is the law
of reason and the law of Nature, drawn from the pure sources of
morality, of public good, and of natural equity, and recognized and
digested into order by the labor of learned men, I will refer your
Lordships to Vattel, Book I. Cap. 16, where he treats of the breach of
such agreements, by the protector refusing to give protection, or the
protected refusing to perform his part of the engagement. My design in
referring you to this author is to prove that Cheyt Sing, so far from
being blamable in raising objections to the unauthorized demand made
upon him by Mr. Hastings, was absolutely bound to do so; nor could he
have done otherwise, without hazarding the whole benefit of the
agreement upon which his subjection and protection were founded. The law
is the same with respect to both contracting parties: if the protected
or protector does not fulfil with fidelity _each his separate
stipulation_, the protected may resist the unauthorized demand of the
protector, or the protector is discharged from his engagement; he may
refuse protection, and declare the treaty broken.
We contend in favor of Cheyt Sing, in support of the principles of
natural equity, and of the Law of Nations, which is the birthright of us
all,--we contend, I say, that Cheyt Sing would have established, in the
opinions of the best writers on the Law of Nations, a precedent against
himself for any future violation of the engagement, if he submitted to
any new demand, without what our laws call a continual claim or
perpetual remonstrance against the imposition. Instead, therefore, of
doing that which was criminal, he did that which his safety and his duty
bound him to do; and for doing this he was considered by Mr. Hastings as
being guilty of a great crime. In a paper which was published by the
prisoner in justification of this act, he considers the Rajah to have
been guilty of rebellious intentions; and he represents these acts of
contumacy, as he calls them, not as proofs of contumacy merely, but as
proofs of a settled design to rebel, and to throw off the authority of
that nation by which he was protected. This belief he declares on oath
to be the ground of his conduct towards Cheyt Sing.
Now, my Lords, we do contend, that, if any subject, under any name, or
of any description, be not engaged in public, open rebellion, but
continues to acknowledge the authority of his sovereign, and, if
tributary, to pay tribute conformably to agreement, such a subject, in
case of being suspected of having formed traitorous designs, ought to be
treated in a manner totally different from that which was adopted by Mr.
Hastings. If the Rajah of Benares had formed a secret conspiracy, Mr.
Hastings had a state duty and a judicial duty to perform. He was bound,
as Governor, knowing of such a conspiracy, to provide for the public
safety; and as a judge, he was bound to convene a criminal court, and to
lay before it a detailed accusation of the offence. He was bound to
proceed publicly and legally against the accused, and to convict him of
his crime, previous to his inflicting, or forming any intention of
inflicting, punishment. I say, my Lords, that Mr. Hastings, as a
magistrate, was bound to proceed against the Rajah either by English
law, by Mahometan law, or by the Gentoo law; and that, by all or any of
these laws, he was bound to make the accused acquainted with the crime
alleged, to hear his answer to the charge, and to produce evidence
against him, in an open, clear, and judicial manner. And here, my Lords,
we have again to remark, that the Mahometan law is a great discriminator
of persons, and that it prescribes the mode of proceeding against those
who are accused of any delinquency requiring punishment, with a
reference to the distinction and rank which the accused held in society.
The proceedings are exceedingly sober, regular, and respectful, even to
criminals charged with the highest crimes; and every magistrate is
required to exercise his office in the prescribed manner. In the Hedaya,
after declaring and discussing the propriety of the Kâzi's sitting
openly in the execution of his office, it is added, that there is no
impropriety in the Kâzi sitting in his own house to pass judgment, but
it is requisite that he give orders for a free access to the people. It
then proceeds thus:--"It is requisite that such people sit along with
the Kâzi as were used to sit with him, prior to his appointment to the
office; because, if he were to sit alone in his house, he would thereby
give rise to suspicion."[98]
My Lords, having thus seen what the duty of a judge is in such a case,
let us examine whether Mr. Hastings observed any part of the prescribed
rules. First, with regard to the publicity of the matter. Did he ever
give any notice to the Supreme Council of the charges which he says he
had received against Cheyt Sing? Did he accuse the Rajah in the Council,
even when it was reduced to himself and his poor, worn, down, cowed, and
I am afraid bribed colleague, Mr. Wheler? Did he even then, I ask,
produce any one charge against this man? He sat in Council as a
judge,--as an English judge,--as a Mahometan judge,--as a judge by the
Gentoo law, and by the Law of Nature. He should have summoned the party
to appear in person, or by his attorney, before him, and should have
there informed him of the charge against him. But, my Lords, he did not
act thus. He kept the accusation secret in his own bosom. And why?
Because he did not believe it to be true. This may at least be inferred
from his having never informed the Council of the matter. He never
informed the Rajah of Benares of the suspicions entertained against him,
during the discussions which took place respecting the multiplied
demands that were made upon him. He never told this victim, as he has
had the audacity to tell us and all this kingdom in the paper that is
before your Lordships, that he looked upon these refusals to comply with
his demands to be overt acts of rebellion; nor did he ever call upon him
to answer or to justify himself with regard to that imputed conspiracy
or rebellion. Did he tell Sadanund, the Rajah's agent, when that agent
was giving him a bribe or a present in secret, and was thus endeavoring
to deprecate his wrath, that he accepted that bribe because his master
was in rebellion? Never, my Lords; nor did he, when he first reached
Benares, and had the Rajah in his power, suggest one word concerning
this rebellion. Did he, when he met Mr. Markham at Boglipore, where they
consulted about the destruction of this unhappy man, did he tell Mr.
Markham, or did Mr. Markham insinuate to him, any one thing about this
conspiracy and rebellion? No, not a word there, or in his whole progress
up the country. While at Boglipore, he wrote a letter to Lord Macartney
upon the state of the empire, giving him much and various advice. Did he
insinuate in that letter that he was going up to Benares to suppress a
rebellion of the Rajah Cheyt Sing or to punish him? No, not a word. Did
he, my Lords, at the eve of his departure from Calcutta, when he
communicated his intention of taking 500,000_l._, which he calls a fine
or penalty, from the Rajah, did he inform Mr. Wheler of it? No, not a
word of his rebellion, nor anything like it. Did he inform his secret
confidants, Mr. Anderson and Major Palmer, upon that subject? Not a
word, there was not a word dropped from him of any such rebellion, or of
any intention in the Rajah Cheyt Sing to rebel. Did he, when he had
vakeels in every part of the Mahratta empire and in the country of Sujah
Dowlah, when he had in most of those courts English ambassadors and
native spies, did he either from ambassadors or spies receive anything
like authentic intelligence upon this subject? While he was at Benares,
he had in his hands Benaram Pundit, the vakeel of the Rajah of Berar,
his own confidential friend, a person whom he took out of the service of
his master, and to whom he gave a jaghire in this very zemindary of
Benares. This man, so attached to Mr. Hastings, so knowing in all the
transactions of India, neither accused Cheyt Sing of rebellious
intentions, or furnished Mr. Hastings with one single proof that any
conspiracy with any foreign power existed.
In this absence of evidence, My Lords, let us have recourse to
probability. Is it to be believed that the Zemindar of Benares, a person
whom Mr. Hastings describes as being of a timid, weak, irresolute, and
feeble nature, should venture to make war alone with the whole power of
the Company in India, aided by all the powers which Great Britain could
bring to the protection of its Indian empire? Could that poor man, in
his comparatively small district, possibly have formed such an
intention, without giving Mr. Hastings access to the knowledge of the
fact from one or other of the numerous correspondents which he had in
that country?
As to the Rajah's supposed intrigues with the Nabob of Oude: this man
was an actual prisoner of Mr. Hastings, and nothing else,--a mere
vassal, as he says himself, in effect and substance, though not in name.
Can any one believe or think that Mr. Hastings would not have received
from the English Resident, or from some one of that tribe of English
gentlemen and English military collectors who were placed in that
country in the exercise of the most arbitrary powers, some intelligence
which he could trust, if any rebellious designs had really existed
previous to the rebellion which did actually break out upon his
arresting Cheyt Sing?
There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman
jurisprudence, whom they called _Cui Bono_, from his having first
introduced into juridical proceedings the argument, _What end or object
could the party have had in the art with which he is accused?_ Surely it
may be here asked, Why should Cheyt Sing wish to rebel, who held on easy
and moderate terms (for such I admit they were) a very considerable
territory, with every attribute of royalty attached? The tribute was
paid for protection, which he had a right to claim, and which he
actually received. What reason under heaven could he have to go and seek
another master, to place himself under the protection of Sujah Dowlah,
in whose hands Mr. Hastings tells you, in so many direct and plain
words, that neither the Rajah's property, his honor, or his life could
be safe? Was he to seek refuge with the Mahrattas, who, though Gentoos
like himself, had reduced every nation which they subdued, except those
who were originally of their own empire, to a severe servitude? Can any
one believe that he wished either for the one or the other of these
charges [changes?], or that he was desirous to quit the happy
independent situation in which he stood under the protection of the
British empire, from any loose, wild, improbable notion of mending his
condition? My Lords, it is impossible. There is not one particle of
evidence, not one word of this charge on record, prior to the
publication of Mr. Hastings's Narrative; and all the presumptive
evidence in the world would scarcely be sufficient to prove the fact,
because it is almost impossible that it should be true.
But, my Lords, although Mr. Hastings swore to the truth of this charge,
when he came before the House of Commons, yet in his Narrative he thus
fairly and candidly avowed that he entertained no such opinion at the
time. "Every step," says he, "which I had taken before that fatal
moment, namely, the flight of Cheyt Sing, is an incontrovertible proof
that I had formed no design of seizing upon the Rajah's treasures or of
deposing him. And certainly, at the time when I did form the design of
making the punishment that his former ill conduct deserved subservient
to the exigencies of the state by a large fine, I did not believe him
guilty of that premeditated project for driving the English out of India
with which I afterwards charged him." Thus, then, he declares upon oath
that the Rajah's contumacy was the ground of his suspecting him of
rebellion, and yet, when he comes to make his defence before the House
of Commons, he simply and candidly declares, that, long after these
alleged acts of contumacy had taken place, he did not believe him to be
guilty of any such thing as rebellion, and that the fine imposed upon
him was for another reason and another purpose.
In page 28 of your printed Minutes he thus declares the purpose for
which the fine was imposed:--"I can answer only to this formidable
dilemma, that, so long as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and
contumacy to have me rather than the Company for its object, at least to
be merely the effect of pernicious advice or misguided folly, without
any formal design of openly resisting our authority or disclaiming our
sovereignty, I looked upon a considerable fine as sufficient both for
his immediate punishment and for binding him to future good behavior."
Here, my Lords, the secret comes out. He declares it was not for a
rebellion or a suspicion of rebellion that he resolved, over and above
all his exorbitant demands, to take from the Rajah 500,000_l._, (a good
stout sum to be taken from a tributary power!)--that it was not for
misconduct of this kind that he took this sum, but for personal ill
behavior towards himself. I must again beg your Lordships to note that
he then considered the Rajah's contumacy as having for its object, not
the Company, but Warren Hastings, and that he afterwards declared
publicly to the House of Commons, and now before your Lordships he
declares finally and conclusively, that he did believe Cheyt Sing to
have had the criminal intention imputed to him.
"So long," says he, "as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and
contumacy to have _me_" (in Italics, as he ordered it to be printed,)
"rather than the Company, for its object, so long I was satisfied with a
fine: I therefore entertained no serious thoughts of expelling him, or
proceeding otherwise to violence. But when he and his people broke out
into the most atrocious acts of rebellion and murder, when the _jus
fortioris et lex ultima regum_ were appealed to on his part, and without
any sufficient plea afforded him on mine, I from that moment considered
him as the traitor and criminal described in the charge, and no
concessions, no humiliations, could ever after induce me to settle on
him the zemindary of Benares, or any other territory, upon any footing
whatever."
Thus, then, my Lords, he has confessed that the era and the only era of
rebellion was when the tumult broke out upon the act of violence offered
by himself to Cheyt Sing; and upon the ground of that tumult, or
rebellion as he calls it, he says he never would suffer him to enjoy any
territory or any right whatever. We have fixed the period of the
rebellion for which he is supposed to have exacted this fine; this
period of rebellion was after the exaction of the fine itself: so that
the fine was not laid for the rebellion, but the rebellion broke out in
consequence of the fine, and the violent measure accompanying it. We
have established this, and the whole human race cannot shake it. He went
up the country through malice, to revenge his own private wrongs, not
those of the Company. He fixed 500,000_l._ as a mulct for an insult
offered to himself, and then a rebellion broke out in consequence of his
violence. This was the rebellion, and the only rebellion; it was Warren
Hastings's rebellion,--a rebellion which arose from his own dreadful
exaction, from his pride, from his malice and insatiable avarice,--a
rebellion which arose from his abominable tyranny, from his lust of
arbitrary power, and from his determination to follow the examples of
Sujah Dowlah, Asoph ul Dowlah, Cossim Ali Khân, Aliverdy Khân, and all
the gang of rebels who are the objects of his imitation.