have not yet stated. It appears that this unhappy and injured man was,
without any solicitation of his own, placed in a situation the duties of
which even Mr. Hastings considered it impossible for him to execute.
Instead of supporting him with the countenance of the supreme
government, Mr. Hastings did everything to lessen his weight, his
consequence, and authority. And when the business of the collection
became embarrassed, without any fault of his, that has ever yet been
proved, Mr. Markham instituted an inquiry. What kind of inquiry it was
that would or could be made your Lordships will judge. While this was
going on, Mr. Markham tells you, that, in consequence of orders which
he had received, he first put him into a gentle confinement. Your
Lordships know what that confinement was; and you know what it is for a
man of his rank to be put into any confinement. We have shown he was
thereby incapable of transacting business. His life had been threatened,
if he should not pay in the balance of his accounts within a short
limited time; still he was subjected to confinement, while he had money
accounts to settle with the whole country. Could a man in gaol,
dishonored and reprobated, take effectual means to recover the arrears
which he was called upon to pay? Could he, in such a situation, recover
the money which was unpaid to him, in such an extensive district as
Benares? Yet Mr. Markham tells the Council he thought proper "that
Durbege Sing should be put under a gentle confinement, until I shall
receive your Honorable Board's orders for any future measures." Thus Mr.
Markham, without any orders from the Council, assumed an authority to do
that which we assert a Resident at Benares had no right to do, but to
which he was instigated by Mr. Hastings's recommendation that Durbege
Sing should be prevented from flight.
Now, my Lords, was it to be expected that a man of Durbege Sing's rank
should suffer these hardships and indignities, and at the same time kiss
the rod and say, "I have deserved it all"? We know that all mankind
revolts at oppression, if it be real; we know that men do not willingly
submit to punishment, just or unjust; and we find that Durbege Sing had
near relatives, who used for his relief all the power which was left
them,--that of remonstrating with his oppressors. Two _arzees_, or
petitions, were presented to the Council, of which we shall first call
your Lordships' attention to one from the dowager princess of Benares,
in favor of her child and of her family.
_From the Ranny, widow of Bulwant Sing. Received the 15th of
December, 1782._
"I and my children have no hopes but from your Highness, and our
honor and rank are bestowed by you. Mr. Markham, from the advice of
my enemies, having protected the farmers, would not permit the
balances to be collected. Baboo Durbege Sing frequently before
desired that gentleman to show his resentment against the people who
owed balances, that the balances might be collected, and to give
ease to his mind for the present year, conformably to the requests
signed by the presence, that he might complete the _bundobust_. But
that gentleman would not listen to him, and, having appointed a
_mutsuddy_ and _tahsildar_, employs them in the collections of the
year, and sent two companies of sepoys and arrested Baboo Durbege
Sing upon this charge, that he had secreted in his house many lacs
of rupees from the collections, and he carried the mutsuddies and
treasurer with their papers to his own presence. He neither
ascertained this matter by proofs, nor does he complete the balance
of the sircar from the _jaidads_ of the balances: right or wrong, he
is resolved to destroy our lives. As we have no asylum or hope
except from your Highness, and as the Almighty has formed your mind
to be a distributor of justice in these times, I therefore hope from
the benignity of your Highness, that you will inquire and do justice
in this matter, and that an _aumeen_ may be appointed from the
presence, that, having discovered the crimes or innocence of Baboo
Durbege Sing, he may report to the presence. Further particulars
will be made known to your Highness by the arzee of my son Rajah
Mehip Narrain Bahadur."
_Arzee from Rajah Mehip Narrain Bahadur. Received 15th December,
1782._
"I before this had the honor of addressing several arzees to your
presence; but, from my unfortunate state, not one of them has been
perused by your Highness, that my situation might be fully learnt by
you. The case is this. Mr. Markham, from the advice of my enemies,
having occasioned several kinds of losses, and given protection to
those who owed balances, prevented the balance from being
collected,--for this reason, that, the money not being paid in time,
the Baboo might be convicted of inability. From this reason, all the
owers of balances refused to pay the _malwajib_ of the sircar.
Before this, the Baboo had frequently desired that gentleman to show
his resentment against the persons who owed the balances, that the
balances might be paid, and that his mind might be at ease for the
present year, so that the _bundobust_ of the present year might be
completed,--adding, that, if, next year, such kinds of injuries, and
protection of the farmers, were to happen, he should not be able to
support it."
I am here to remark to your Lordships, that the last of these petitions
begins by stating, "I before this have had the honor of addressing
several arzees to your presence; but, from my unfortunate state, not one
of them has been perused by your Highness." My Lords, if there is any
one right secured to the subject, it is that of presenting a petition
and having that petition noticed. This right grows in importance in
proportion to the power and despotic nature of the governments to which
the petitioner is subject: for where there is no sort of remedy from any
fixed laws, nothing remains but complaint, and prayers, and petitions.
This was the case in Benares: for Mr. Hastings had destroyed every trace
of law, leaving only the police of the single city of Benares. Still we
find this complaint, prayer, and petition was not the first, but only
one of many, which Mr. Hastings took no notice of, entirely despised,
and never would suffer to be produced to the Council; which never knew
anything, until this bundle of papers came before them, of the complaint
of Mr. Markham against Durbege Sing, or of the complaint of Durbege Sing
against Mr. Markham.
Observe, my Lords, the person that put Durbege Sing in prison was Mr.
Markham; while the complaint in the arzee is, that Mr. Markham was
himself the cause of the very failure for which he imprisoned him. Now
what was the conduct of Mr. Hastings as judge? He has two persons before
him: the one in the ostensible care of the revenue of the country; the
other his own agent, acting under his authority. The first is accused by
the second of default in his payments; the latter is complained of by
the former, who says that the occasion of the accusation had been
furnished by him, the accuser. The judge, instead of granting redress,
dismisses the complaints against Mr. Markham with reprehension, and
sends the complainant to rot in prison, without making one inquiry, or
giving himself the trouble of stating to Mr. Markham the complaints
against him, and desiring him to clear himself from them. My Lords, if
there were nothing but this to mark the treacherous and perfidious
nature of his conduct, this would be sufficient.
In this state of things, Mr. Hastings thus writes.
"To Mr. Markham. The measures which you have taken with Baboo Durbege
Sing are perfectly right and proper, so far as they go; and we now
direct that you exact from him, with the utmost rigor, every rupee of
the collections which it shall appear that he has made and not brought
to account, and either confine him at Benares, or send him prisoner to
Chunar, and keep him in confinement until he shall have discharged the
whole of the amount due from him."
He here employs the very person against whom the complaint is made to
imprison the complainant. He approves the conduct of his agent without
having heard his defence, and leaves him, at his option, to keep his
victim a prisoner at Benares, or to imprison him in the fortress of
Chunar, the infernal place to which he sends the persons whom he has a
mind to extort money from.
Your Lordships will be curious to know how this debt of Durbege Sing
stood at the time of his imprisonment. I will state the matter to your
Lordships briefly, and in plain language, referring you for the
particulars of the account to the papers which are in your Minutes. It
appears from them, that, towards the end of the yearly account in 1782,
a kist or payment of eight lacs (about 80,000_l._), the balance of the
annual tribute, was due. In part of this kist, Durbege Sing paid two
lacs (20,000_l._). Of the remaining six lacs (60,000_l._), the
outstanding debts in the country due to the revenue, but not collected
by the Naib, amounted to four lacs (40,000_l._). Thus far the account
is not controverted by the accusing party. But Mr. Markham asserts that
he _shall_ be able to prove that the Naib had also actually received the
other two lacs (20,000_l._), and consequently was an actual defaulter to
that amount, and had, upon the whole, suffered the annual tribute to
fall six lacs in arrear. The Naib denies the receipt of the two lacs
just mentioned, and challenges inquiry; but no inquiries appear to have
been made, and to this hour Mr. Markham has produced no proof of the
fact. With respect to the arrear of the tribute money which appeared on
the balance of the whole account, the Naib defended himself by alleging
the distresses of the country, the diminution of his authority, and the
want of support from the supreme government in the collection of the
revenues; and he asserts that he has assets sufficient, if time and
power be allowed him for collecting them, to discharge the whole balance
due to the Company. The immediate payment of the whole balance was
demanded, and Durbege Sing, unable to comply with the demand, was sent
to prison. Thus stood the business, when Mr. Markham, soon after he had
sent the Naib to prison, quitted the Residency. He was succeeded by Mr.
Benn, who acted exactly upon the same principle. He declares that the
six lacs demanded were not demanded upon the principle of its having
been actually collected by him, but upon the principle of his having
agreed to pay it. "We have," say Mr. Hastings's agents to the Naib, "we
have a Jew's bond. If it is in your bond, we will have it, or we will
have a pound of your flesh: whether you have received it or not is no
business of ours." About this time some hopes were entertained by the
Resident that the Naib's personal exertions in collecting the arrears of
the tribute might be useful. These hopes procured him a short liberation
from his confinement. He was let out of prison, and appears to have made
another payment of half a lac of rupees. Still the terms of the bond
were insisted on, although Mr. Hastings had allowed that these terms
were extravagant, and only one lac and a half of the money which had
been actually received remained unpaid. One would think that common
charity, that common decency, that common regard to the decorum of life
would, under such circumstances, have hindered Mr. Hastings from
imprisoning him again. But, my Lords, he was imprisoned again; he
continued in prison till Mr. Hastings quitted the country; and there he
soon after died,--a victim to the enormous oppression which has been
detailed to your Lordships.
It appears that in the mean time the Residents had been using other
means for recovering the balance due to the Company. The family of the
Rajah had not been paid one shilling of the 60,000_l._, allowed for
their maintenance. They were obliged to mortgage their own hereditary
estates for their support, while the Residents confiscated all the
property of Durbege Sing. Of the money thus obtained what account has
been given? None, my Lords, none. It must therefore have been disposed
of in some abominably corrupt way or other, while this miserable victim
of Mr. Hastings was left to perish in a prison, after he had been
elevated to the highest rank in the country.
But, without doubt, they found abundance of effects after his death? No,
my Lords, they did not find anything. They ransacked his house; they
examined all his accounts, every paper that he had, in and out of
prison. They searched and scrutinized everything. They had every penny
of his fortune, and I believe, though I cannot with certainty know, that
the man died insolvent; and it was not pretended that he had ever
applied to his own use any part of the Company's money.
Thus Durbege Sing is gone; this tragedy is finished; a second Rajah of
Benares has been destroyed. I do not speak of that miserable puppet who
was said by Mr. Hastings to be in a state of childhood when arrived at
manhood, but of the person who represented the dignity of the family. He
is gone; he is swept away; and in his name, in the name of this devoted
Durbege Sing, in the name of his afflicted family, in the name of the
people of the country thus oppressed by an usurped authority, in the
name of all these, respecting whom justice has been thus outraged, we
call upon your Lordships for justice.
We are now at the commencement of a new order of things. Mr. Markham had
been authorized to appoint whoever he pleased as Naib, with the
exception of Ussaun Sing. He accordingly exercises this power, and
chooses a person called Jagher Deo Seo. From the time of the confinement
of Durbege Sing to the time of this man's being put into the government,
in whose hands were the revenues of the country? Mr. Markham himself has
told you, at your bar, that they were in his hands,--that he was the
person who not only named this man, but that he had the sole management
of the revenues; and he was, of course, answerable for them all that
time. The nominal title of Zemindar was still left to the miserable
pageant who held it; but even the very name soon fell entirely out of
use. It is in evidence before your Lordships that his name is not even
so much as mentioned in the proceedings of the government; and that the
person who really governed was not the ostensible Jagher Deo Seo, but
Mr. Markham. The government, therefore, was taken completely and
entirely out of the hands of the person who had a legal right to
administer it,--out of the hands of his guardians,--out of the hands of
his mother,--out of the hands of his nearest relations,--and, in short,
of all those who, in the common course of things, ought to have been
intrusted with it. From all such persons, I say, it was taken: and
where, my Lords, was it deposited? Why, in the hands of a man of whom we
know nothing, and of whom we never heard anything, before we heard that
Mr. Markham, of his own usurped authority, authorized by the usurped
authority of Mr. Hastings, without the least communication with the
Council, had put him in possession of that country.
Mr. Markham himself, as I have just said, administered the revenues
alone, without the smallest authority for so doing, without the least
knowledge of the Council, till Jagher Deo Seo was appointed Naib. Did he
then give up his authority? No such thing. All the measures of Jagher
Deo Seo's government were taken with the concurrence and joint
management of Mr. Markham. He conducted the whole; the settlements were
made, the leases and agreements with farmers all regulated by him. I
need not tell you, I believe, that Jagher Deo Seo was not a person of
very much authority in the case: your Lordships would laugh at me, if I
said he was. The revenue arrangements were, I firmly believe, regulated
and made by Mr. Markham. But whether they were or were not, it comes to
the same thing. If they were improperly made and improperly conducted,
Mr. Hastings is responsible for the whole of the mismanagement; for he
gave the entire control to a person who had little experience, who was
young in the world (and this is the excuse I wish to make for a
gentleman of that age). He appointed him, and gave him at large a
discretionary authority to name whom he pleased to be the ostensible
Naib; but we know that he took the principal part himself in all his
settlements and in all his proceedings.
Soon after the Naib had been thus appointed and instructed by Mr.
Markham, he settled, under his directions, the administration of the
country. Mr. Markham then desires leave from Mr. Hastings to go down to
Calcutta. I imagine he never returned to Benares; he comes to Europe;
and here end the acts of this viceroy and delegate.
Let us now begin the reign of Mr. Benn and Mr. Fowke. These gentlemen
had just the same power delegated to them that Mr. Markham
possessed,--not one jot less, that I know of; and they were therefore
responsible, and ought to have been called to an account by Mr. Hastings
for every part of their proceedings. I will not give you my own account
of the reign of these gentlemen; but I will read to you what Mr.
Hastings has thought proper to represent the state of the people to be
under their government. This course will save your Lordships time and
trouble; for it will nearly supersede all observations of mine upon the
subject. I hold in my hand Mr. Hastings's representation of the effects
produced by a government which was conceived by himself, carried into
effect by himself, and illegally invested by him with illegal powers,
without any security or responsibility of any kind. Hear, I say, what an
account Mr. Hastings gave, when he afterwards went up to Benares upon
another wicked project, and think what ought to have been his feelings
as he looked upon the ruin he had occasioned. Think of the condition in
which he saw Benares the first day he entered it. He then saw it
beautiful, ornamented, rich,--an object that envy would have shed tears
over for its prosperity, that humanity would have beheld with eyes
glistening with joy for the comfort and happiness which were there
enjoyed by man: a country flourishing in cultivation to such a degree
that the soldiers were obliged to march in single files through the
fields of corn, to avoid damaging them; a country in which Mr. Stables
has stated that the villages were thick beyond all expression; a country
where the people pressed round their sovereign, as Mr. Stables also told
you, with joy, triumph, and satisfaction. Such was the country; and in
such a state and under such a master was it, when he first saw it. See
what it now is under Warren Hastings; see what it is under the British
government; and then judge whether the Commons are or are not right in
pressing the subject upon your Lordships for your decision, and letting
you and all this great auditory know what sort of a criminal you have
before you, who has had the impudence to represent to your Lordships at
your bar that Benares is in a flourishing condition, in defiance of the
evidence which we have under his own hands, and who, in all the false
papers that have been circulated to debauch the public opinion, has
stated that we, the Commons, have given a false representation as to
the state of the country under the English government.
_Lucknow, the 2d of April, 1784. Addressed to the Honorable Edward
Wheler, Esq., &c. Signed Warren Hastings. It is in page 306 of the
printed Minutes._
"Gentlemen,--Having contrived, by making forced stages, while the
troops of my escort marched at the ordinary rate, to make a stay of
five days at Benares, I was thereby furnished with the means of
acquiring some knowledge of the state of the province, which I am
anxious to communicate to you: indeed, the inquiry, which was in a
great degree obtruded upon me, affected me with very mortifying
reflections on my own inability to apply it to any useful purpose.
"From the confines of Buxar to Benares I was followed and fatigued
by the clamors of the discontented inhabitants. It was what I
expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of
authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of
it. The distresses which were produced by the long continued drought
unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; yet I have
reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if
not a corrupt and oppressive administration. Of a multitude of
petitions which were presented to me, and of which I took minutes,
every one that did not relate to a personal grievance contained the
representation of one and the same species of oppression, which is
in its nature of an influence most fatal to the future cultivation.
The practice to which I allude is this. It is affirmed that the
aumils and renters exact from the proprietors of the actual harvest
a large increase in kind on their stipulated rent: that is, from
those who hold their pottahs by the tenure of paying one half of the
produce of their crops, either the whole without a subterfuge, or a
large proportion of it by false measurement or other pretexts; and
from those whose engagements are for a fixed rent in money the half
or a greater proportion is taken in kind. This is in effect a tax
upon the industry of the inhabitants; since there is scarcely a
field of grain in the province, I might say not one, which has not
been preserved by the incessant labor of the cultivator, by digging
wells for their supply, or watering them from the wells of masonry
with which this country abounds, or from the neighboring tanks,
rivers, and nullahs. The people who imposed on themselves this
voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended with expense,
did it in the expectation of reaping the profits of it; and it is
certain that they would not have done it, if they had known that
their rulers, from whom they were entitled to an indemnification,
would take from them what they had so hardly earned. If the same
administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a
want of the natural rains, every field will be abandoned, the
revenue fail, and thousands perish, through the want of subsistence:
for who will labor for the sole benefit of others, and to make
himself the subject of vexation? These practices are not to be
imputed to the aumils employed in the districts, but to the Naib
himself. The avowed principle on which he acts, and which he
acknowledged to myself, is, that the whole sum fixed for the revenue
of the province must be collected, and that for this purpose the
deficiency arising in places where the crops have failed, or which
have been left uncultivated, must be supplied from the resources of
others, where the soil has been better suited to the season, or the
industry of the cultivators more successfully exerted: a principle
which, however specious and plausible it may at first appear,
certainly tends to the most pernicious and destructive consequences.
If this declaration of the Naib had been made only to myself, I
might have doubted my construction of it; but it was repeated by him
to Mr. Anderson, who understood it exactly in the same sense. In the
management of the customs, the conduct of the Naib, or of the
officers under him, was forced also upon my attention. The
exorbitant rates exacted by an arbitrary valuation of the goods, the
practice of exacting duties twice on the same goods, first from the
seller and afterwards from the buyer, and the vexatious disputes and
delays drawn on the merchants by these oppressions, were loudly
complained of; and some instances of this kind were said to exist at
the very time when I was in Benares. Under such circumstances, we
are not to wonder, if the merchants of foreign countries are
discouraged from resorting to Benares, and if the commerce of that
province should annually decay.