and of the landed property of Benares, we will now trace his further
proceedings and their effects. He found the country most flourishing in
agriculture and in trade; but not satisfied with the experiment he had
made upon the government, upon the revenues, upon the reigning family,
and upon all the landed property, he resolved to make as bold and as
novel an experiment upon the commercial interests of the country.
Accordingly he entirely changed that part of the revenue system which
affects trade and commerce, the life and soul of a state. Without any
advice that we know of, except Mr. Markham's, he sat down to change in
every point the whole commercial system of that country; and he
effected the change upon the same arbitrary principles which he had
before acted upon, namely, his own arbitrary will. We are told, indeed,
that he consulted bankers and merchants; but when your Lordships shall
have learned what has happened from this experiment, you will easily see
whether he did resort to proper sources of information or not. You will
see that the mischief which has happened has proceeded from the exercise
of arbitrary power. Arbitrary power, my Lords, is always a miserable
creature. When a man once adopts it as the principle of his actions, no
one dares to tell him a truth, no one dares to give him any information
that is disagreeable to him; for all know that their life and fortune
depend upon his caprice. Thus the man who lives in the exercise of
arbitrary power condemns himself to eternal ignorance. Of this the
prisoner at your bar affords us a striking example. This man, without
advice, without assistance, and without resource, except in his own
arbitrary power, stupidly ignorant in himself, and puffed up with the
constant companion of ignorance, a blind presumption, alters the system
of commercial imposts, and thereby ruined the whole trade of the
country, leaving no one part of it undestroyed.
Let me now call your Lordships' attention to his assumption of power,
without one word of communication with the Council at Calcutta, where
the whole of these trading regulations might and ought to have been
considered, and where they could have been deliberately examined and
determined upon. By this assumption the Council was placed in the
situation which I have before described: it must either confirm his
acts, or again undo everything which had been done. He had provided not
only against resistance, but almost against any inquiry into his wild
projects. He had by his opium contracts put all vigilance asleep, and by
his bullock and other contracts he had secured a variety of concealed
interests, both abroad and at home. He was sure of the ratification of
his acts by the Council, whenever he should please to inform them of his
measures; and to his secret influence he trusted for impunity in his
career of tyranny and oppression.
In bringing before you his arbitrary mode of imposing duties, I beg to
remind your Lordships, that, when I examined Mr. Markham concerning the
imposing of a duty of five per cent instead of the former duty of two, I
asked him whether that five per cent was not laid on in such a manner as
utterly to extinguish the trade, and whether it was not in effect and
substance five times as much as had been paid before. What was his
answer? Why, that many plans, which, when considered in the closet, look
specious and plausible, will not hold when they come to be tried in
practice, and that this plan was one of them. The additional duties,
said he, have never since been exacted. But, my Lords, the very attempt
to exact them utterly ruined the trade of the country. They were imposed
upon a visionary theory, formed in his own closet, and the result was
exactly what might have been anticipated. Was it not an abominable thing
in Mr. Hastings to withhold from the Council the means of ascertaining
the real operation of his taxes? He had no knowledge of trade himself;
he cannot keep an account; he has no memory. In fact, we find him a man
possessed of no one quality fit for any kind of business whatever. We
find him pursuing his own visionary projects, without knowing anything
of the nature or [of?] the circumstances under which the trade of the
country was carried on. These projects might have looked very plausible:
but when you come to examine the actual state of the trade, it is not
merely a difference between five and two per cent, but it becomes a
different mode of estimating the commodity, and it amounts to five times
as much as was paid before. We bring this as an exemplification of this
cursed mode of arbitrary proceeding, and to show you his total ignorance
of the subject, and his total indifference about the event of the
measure he was pursuing. When he began to perceive his blunders, he
never took any means whatever to put the new regulations which these
blunders had made necessary into execution, but he left all this
mischievous project to rage in its full extent.
I have shown your Lordships how he managed the private property of the
country, how he managed the government, and how he managed the trade. I
am now to call your Lordships' attention to some of the consequences
which have resulted from the instances of management, or rather gross
mismanagement, which have been brought before you. Your Lordships will
recollect that none of these violent and arbitrary measures, either in
their conception or in the progress of their execution, were officially
made known to the Council; and you will observe, as we proved, that the
same criminal concealment existed with respect to the fatal consequences
of these acts.
After the flight of Cheyt Sing, the revenues were punctually paid by the
Naib, Durbege Sing, month by month, kist by kist, until the month of
July, and then, as the country had suffered some distress, the Naib
wished this kist, or instalment, to be thrown on the next month. You
will ask why he wished to burden this month beyond the rest. I reply,
The reason was obvious: the month of August is the last of the year, and
he would, at its expiration, have the advantage of viewing the receipts
of the whole year, and ascertaining the claim of the country to the
remission of a part of the annual tribute which Mr. Hastings had
promised, provided the instalments were paid regularly. It was well
known to everybody that the country had suffered very considerably by
the revolt, and by a drought which prevailed that year. The Rajah,
therefore, expected to avail himself of Mr. Hastings's flattering
promise, and to save by the delay the payment of one of the two kists.
But mark the course that was taken. The two kists were at once demanded
at the end of the year, and no remission of tribute was allowed. By the
promise of remission Mr. Hastings tacitly acknowledged that the Rajah
was overburdened; and he admits that the payment of the July kist was
postponed at the Rajah's own desire. He must have seen the Rajah's
motive for desiring delay, and he ought to have taken care that this
poor man should not be oppressed and ruined by this compliance with
requests founded on such motives.
So passed the year 1781. No complaints of arrears in Durbege Sing's
payments appear on record before the month of April, 1782; and I wish
your Lordships seriously to advert to the circumstances attending the
evidence respecting these arrears, which has been produced for the first
time by the prisoner in his defence here at your bar. This evidence does
not appear in the Company's records; it does not appear in the book of
the Benares correspondence; it does not appear in any documents to which
the Commons could have access; it was unknown to the Directors, unknown
to the Council, unknown to the Residents, Mr. Markham's successors, at
Benares, unknown to the searching and inquisitive eye of the Commons of
Great Britain. This important evidence was drawn out of Mr. Markham's
pocket, in the presence of your Lordships. It consists of a private
correspondence which he carried on with Mr. Hastings, unknown to the
Council, after Durbege Sing had been appointed Naib, after the new
government had been established, after Mr. Hastings had quitted that
province, and had apparently wholly abandoned it, and when there was no
reason whatever why the correspondence should not be public. This
private correspondence of Mr. Markham's, now produced for the first
time, is full of the bitterest complaints against Durbege Sing. These
clandestine complaints, these underhand means of accomplishing the ruin
of a man, without the knowledge of his true and proper judges, we
produce to your Lordships as a heavy aggravation of our charge, and as a
proof of a wicked conspiracy to destroy the man. For if there was any
danger of his falling into arrears when the heavy accumulated kists came
upon him, the Council ought to have known that danger; they ought to
have known every particular of these complaints: for Mr. Hastings had
then carried into effect his own plans.
I ought to have particularly marked for your Lordships' attention this
second era of clandestine correspondence between Mr. Hastings and Mr.
Markham. It commenced after Mr. Hastings had quitted Benares, and had
nothing to do with it but as Governor-General: even after his
extraordinary, and, as we contend, illegal, power had completely
expired, the same clandestine correspondence was carried on. He
apparently considered Benares as his private property; and just as a man
acts with his private steward about his private estate, so he acted with
the Resident at Benares. He receives from him and answers letters
containing a series of complaints against Durbege Sing, which began in
April and continued to the month of November, without making any public
communication of them. He never laid one word of this correspondence
before the Council until the 29th of November, and he had then
completely settled the fate of this Durbege Sing.
This clandestine correspondence we charge against him as an act of
rebellion; for he was bound to lay before the Council the whole of his
correspondence relative to the revenue and all the other affairs of the
country. We charge it not only as rebellion against the orders of the
Company and the laws of the land, but as a wicked plot to destroy this
man, by depriving him of any opportunity of defending himself before the
Council, his lawful judges. I wish to impress it strongly on your
Lordships' minds, that neither the complaints of Mr. Markham nor the
exculpations of Durbege Sing were ever made known till Mr. Markham was
examined in this hall.
The first intimation afforded the Council of what had been going on at
Benares from April, 1782, at which time, Mr. Markham says, the
complaints against Durbege Sing had risen to serious importance, was in
a letter dated the 27th of November following. This letter was sent to
the Council from Nia Serai, in the Ganges, where Mr. Hastings had
retired for the benefit of the air. During the whole time he was in
Calcutta, it does not appear upon the records that he had ever held any
communication with the Council upon the subject. The letter is in the
printed Minutes, page 298, and is as follows.
"_The Governor-General._--I desire the Secretary to lay the accompanying
letters from Mr. Markham before the board, and request that orders may
be immediately sent to him concerning the subjects contained in them. It
may be necessary to inform the board, that, on repeated information from
Mr. Markham, which indeed was confirmed to me beyond a doubt by other
channels, and by private assurances which I could trust, that the
affairs of that province were likely to fall into the greatest confusion
from the misconduct of Baboo Durbege Sing, whom I had appointed the
Naib, fearing the dangerous consequences of a delay, and being at too
great a distance to consult the members of the board, who I knew could
repose that confidence in my local knowledge as to admit of this
occasional exercise of my own separate authority, I wrote to Mr. Markham
the letter to which he alludes, dated the 29th of September last, of
which I now lay before the board a copy. The first of the accompanying
letters from Mr. Markham arrived at a time when a severe return of my
late illness obliged me, by the advice of my physicians, to leave
Calcutta for the benefit of the country air, and prevented me from
bringing it earlier before the notice of the board."
I have to remark upon this part of the letter, that he claims for
himself an exercise of his own authority. He had now no delegation, and
therefore no claim to separate authority. He was only a member of the
board, obliged to do everything according to the decision of the
majority, and yet he speaks of his own separate authority; and after
complimenting himself, he requests its confirmation. The complaints of
Mr. Markham had been increasing, growing, and multiplying upon him, from
the month of April preceding, and he had never given the least
intimation of it to the board until he wrote this letter. This was at so
late a period that he then says, "The time won't wait for a remedy; I am
obliged to use my own separate authority"; although he had had abundant
time for laying the whole matter before the Council.
He next goes on to say,--"It had, indeed, been my intention, but for the
same cause, to have requested the instructions of the board for the
conduct of Mr. Markham in the difficulties which he had to encounter
immediately after the date of my letter to him, and to have recommended
the substance of it for an order to the board." He seems to have
promised Mr. Markham, that, if the violent act which Mr. Markham
proposed, and which he, Mr. Hastings, ordered, was carried into
execution, an authority should be procured from the board. He, however,
did not get Mr. Markham such an authority. Why? Because he was resolved,
as he has told you, to act by his own separate authority; and because,
as he has likewise told you, that he disobeys the orders of the Court of
Directors, and defies the laws of his country, as a signal of his
authority.
Now what does he recommend to the board? That it will be pleased to
confirm the appointment which Mr. Markham made in obedience to his
individual orders, as well as the directions which he had given him to
exact from Baboo Durbege Sing with the utmost rigor every rupee of the
collections, and either to confine him at Benares or send him to Chunar
and imprison him there until the whole of his arrears were paid up.
Here, then, my Lords, you have, what plainly appears in every act of Mr.
Hastings, a feeling of resentment for some personal injury. "I feel
myself," says he, "and may be allowed on such an occasion to acknowledge
it, personally hurt at the ingratitude of this man, and the discredit
which his ill conduct has thrown on my appointment of him. The Rajah
himself, scarcely arrived at the verge of manhood, was in understanding
but little advanced beyond the term of childhood; and it had been the
policy of Cheyt Sing to keep him equally secluded from the world and
from business." This is the character Mr. Hastings gives of a man whom
he appointed to govern the country. He goes on to say of Durbege
Sing,--"As he was allowed a jaghire of a very liberal amount, to enable
him to maintain a state and consequence suitable both to the relation in
which he stood to the Rajah and the high office which had been assigned
to him, and sufficient also to free him from the temptation of little
and mean peculations, it is therefore my opinion, and I recommend, that
Mr. Markham be ordered to divest him of his jaghire, and reunite it to
the _malguzaree_, or the land paying its revenue through the Rajah to
the Company. The opposition made by the Rajah and the old Ranny, both
equally incapable of judging for themselves, do certainly originate from
some secret influence which ought to be checked by a decided and
peremptory declaration of the authority of the board, and a denunciation
of their displeasure at their presumption. If they can be induced to
yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement,
and to adopt it as a measure formed with their participation, it would
be better than that it should be done by a declared act of compulsion;
but at all events it ought to be done." My Lords, it had been already
done: the Naib was dismissed; he was imprisoned; his jaghire was
confiscated: all these things were done by Mr. Hastings's orders. He had
resolved to take the whole upon himself; he had acted upon that
resolution before he addressed this letter to the board.
Thus, my Lords, was this unhappy man punished without any previous
trial, or any charges, except the complaints of Mr. Markham, and some
other private information which Mr. Hastings said he had received.
Before the poor object of these complaints could make up his accounts,
before a single step was taken, judicially or officially, to convict him
of any crime, he was sent to prison, and his private estates
confiscated.
My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain claim from you, that no man shall
be imprisoned till a regular charge is made against him, and the accused
fairly heard in his defence. They claim from you, that no man shall be
imprisoned on a matter of account, until the account is settled between
the parties. And claiming this, we do say that the prisoner's conduct
towards Durbege Sing was illegal, unjust, violent, and oppressive. The
imprisonment of this man was clearly illegal on the part of Mr.
Hastings, as he acted without the authority of the Council, and doubly
oppressive, as the imprisoned man was thereby disabled from settling his
account with the numberless sub-accountants whom he had to deal with in
the collection of the revenue.
Having now done with these wicked, flagitious, abandoned, and abominable
acts, I shall proceed to the extraordinary powers given by Mr. Hastings
to his instrument, Mr. Markham, who was employed in perpetrating these
acts, and to the very extraordinary instructions which he gave this
instrument for his conduct in the execution of the power intrusted to
him. In a letter to Mr. Markham, he says,--
"I need not tell you, my dear Sir, that I possess a very high opinion of
your abilities, and that I repose the utmost confidence in your
integrity." He might have had reason for both, but he scarcely left to
Mr. Markham the use of either. He arbitrarily imposed upon him the tasks
which he wished him to execute, and he engaged to bear out his acts by
his own power. "From your long residence at Benares," says he, "and from
the part you have had in the business of that zemindary, you must
certainly best know the men who are most capable and deserving of public
employment. From among these I authorize you to nominate a Naib to the
Rajah, in the room of Durbege Sing, whom, on account of his ill conduct,
I think it necessary to dismiss from that office. It will be hardly
necessary to except Ussaun Sing from the description of men to whom I
have limited your choice, yet it may not be improper to apprise you that
I will on no terms consent to his being Naib. In forming the
arrangements consequent upon this new appointment, I request you will,
as far as you can with propriety, adopt those which were in use during
the life of Bulwant Sing,--so far, at least, as to have distinct offices
for distinct purposes, independent of each other, and with proper men at
the head of each; so that one office may detect or prevent any abuses
or irregularities in the others, and together form a system of
reciprocal checks. Upon that principle, I desire you will in particular
establish, under whatever names, one office of receipts, and another of
treasury. The officers of both must be responsible for the truth and
regularity of their respective accounts, but not subject in the
statement of them to the control or interference of the Rajah or Naib;
nor should they be removable at pleasure, but for manifest misconduct
only. At the head of one or other of these offices I could wish to see
the late Buckshee, Rogoober Dyall. His conduct in his former office, his
behavior on the revolt of Cheyt Sing, and particularly at the fall of
Bidjegur, together with his general character, prove him worthy of
employment, and of the notice of our government. It is possible that he
may have objections to holding an office under the present Rajah: offer
him one, however, and let him know that you do so by my directions." He
then goes on to say,--"Do not wholly neglect the Rajah; consult with him
in appearance, but in appearance only. His situation requires that you
should do that much; but his youth and inexperience forbid that you
should do more."
You see, my Lords, he has completely put the whole government into the
hands of a man who had no name, character, or official situation, but
that of the Company's Resident at that place. Let us now see what is the
office of a Resident. It is to reside at the court of the native prince,
to give the Council notice of the transactions that are going on there,
and to take care that the tribute be regularly paid, kist by kist. But
we have seen that Mr. Markham, the Resident at Benares, was invested by
Mr. Hastings with supreme authority in this unhappy country. He was to
name whoever he pleased to its government, with the exception of Ussaun
Sing, and to drive out the person who had possessed it under an
authority which could only be revoked by the Council. Thus Mr. Hastings
delegated to Mr. Markham an authority which he himself did not really
possess, and which could only be legally exercised through the medium of
the Council.
With respect to Durbege Sing, he adds,--"He has dishonored my choice of
him." _My_ choice of him! "It now only remains to guard against the ill
effects of his misconduct, to detect and punish it. To this end I desire
that the officers to be appointed in consequence of these instructions
do, with as much accuracy and expedition as possible, make out an
account of the receipts, disbursements, and transactions of Durbege
Sing, during the time he has acted as Naib of the zemindary of Benares;
and I desire you will, in my name, assure him, that, unless he pays at
the limited time every rupee of the revenue due to the Company, his life
shall answer for the default. I need not caution you to provide against
his flight, and the removal of his effects." He here says, my Lords,
that he will detect and punish him; but the first thing he does, without
any detection, even before the accounts he talks of are made up, and
without knowing whether he has got the money or not, he declares that he
will have every rupee paid at the time, or otherwise the Naib's life
shall pay for it.
Is this the language of a British governor,--of a person appointed to
govern _by law_ nations subject to the dominion and under the protection
of this kingdom? Is he to order a man to be first imprisoned and
deprived of his property, then, for an inquiry to be made, and to
declare, during that inquiry, that, if every rupee of a presumed
embezzlement be not paid up, the life of his victim shall answer for it?
And accordingly this man's life did answer for it,--as I have already
had occasion to mention to your Lordships.
I will now read Mr. Markham's letter to the Council, in which he enters
into the charges against Durbege Sing, after this unhappy man had been
imprisoned.
Benares, 24th of October, 1782.--"I am sorry that my duty obliges me to
mention to your Honorable Board my apprehensions of a severe loss
accruing to the Honorable Company, if Baboo Durbege Sing is continued in
the Naibut during the present year. I ground my fears on the knowledge I
have had of his mismanagement, the bad choice he has made of his aumils,
the mistrust which they have of him, and the several complaints which
have been preferred to me by the ryots of almost every purgunnah in the
zemindary. I did not choose to waste the time of your Honorable Board in
listening to my representations of his inattention to the complaints of
oppression which were made to him by his ryots, as I hoped that a letter
he received from the Honorable Governor-General would have had weight
sufficient to have made him more regular in his business, and more
careful of his son's interest."
My Lords, think of the condition of your government in India! Here is a
Resident at Benares exercising power not given to him by virtue of his
office, but given only by the private orders of the prisoner at your
bar. And what is it he does? He says, he did not choose to trouble the
Council with a particular account of his reasons for removing a man who
possessed an high office under their immediate appointment. The Council
was not to know them: he did not choose to waste the time of their
honorable board in listening to the complaints of the people. No: the
honorable board is not to have its time wasted in that improper manner;
therefore, without the least inquiry or inquisition, the man must be
imprisoned, and deprived of his office; he must have all his property
confiscated, and be threatened with the loss of his life.
These are crimes, my Lords, for which the Commons of Great Britain knock
at the breasts of your consciences, and call for justice. They would
think themselves dishonored forever, if they had not brought these
crimes before your Lordships, and with the utmost energy demanded your
vindictive justice, to the fullest extent in which it can be rendered.