waste lands into cultivation, in like manner as he has done in
Khereed, with this difference or addition in his instructions,--that
he subjoin in those to the Aband Kar, or manager, of the
re-cultivation of Sekunderpoor, the rates at which he is authorized
to grant pottahs for the various kinds of land; and it is
recommended to him to make these rates even somewhat lower than he
may himself think strictly conformable to justice, reporting the
particulars to the Resident.
"The Rajah is also desired to prepare and transmit a table of
similar rates to the Aband Kar of purgunnah Khereed.
(Signed) "JON^N DUNCAN, _Resident_.
"BENARES, the 12th September, 1788."
Here your Lordships find, in spite of Mr. Hastings himself, in spite of
all the testimonies which he has called, and of all the other
testimonies which he would have called, that his own account of the
matter is confirmed against his own pretended evidence; you find his own
written account confirmed in a manner not to be doubted: and the only
difference between his account and this is, that the people did not fly
from Mr. Duncan, when he approached, as they fled from Mr. Hastings.
They did not feel any of that terror at the approach of a person from
the beneficent government of Lord Cornwallis with which they had been
entirely filled at the appearance of the prisoner at your bar. From him
they fled in dismay. They fled from his very presence, as from a
consuming pestilence, as from something far worse than drought and
famine; they fled from him as a cruel, corrupt, and arbitrary governor,
which is worse than any other evil that ever afflicted mankind.
You see, my Lords, in what manner the country has been wasted and
destroyed; and you have seen, by the date of these measures, that they
have happened within a few years, namely, since the expulsion of Rajah
Cheyt Sing. There begins the era of calamity. Ask yourselves, then,
whether you will or can countenance the acts which led directly and
necessarily to such consequences. Your Lordships will mark what it is to
oppress and expel a cherished individual from his government, and
finally to subvert it. Nothing stands after him; down go all order and
authority with him; ruin and desolation fall upon the country; the
fields are uncultivated, the wells are dried up. The people, says Mr.
Duncan, promised, indeed, some time or other, under some other
government, to do something. They will again cultivate the lands, when
they can get an assurance of security. My Lords, judge, I pray you,
whether the House of Commons, when they had read the account which Mr.
Hastings has himself given of the dreadful consequences of his
proceedings, when they had read the account given by Mr. Duncan of an
uncultivated country as far as the eye could reach, would not have shown
themselves unworthy to represent not only the Commons of Great Britain,
but the meanest village in it, if they had not brought this great
criminal before you, and called upon your Lordships to punish him. This
ruined country, its desolate fields and its undone inhabitants, all call
aloud for British justice, all call for vengeance upon the head of this
execrable criminal.
Oh! but we ought to be tender towards his personal character,--extremely
cautious in our speech; we ought not to let indignation loose.--My
Lords, we do let our indignation loose; we cannot bear with patience
this affliction of mankind. We will neither abate our energy, relax in
our feelings, nor in the expressions which those feelings dictate.
Nothing but corruption like his own could enable any man to see such a
scene of desolation and ruin unmoved. We feel pity for the works of God
and man; we feel horror for the debasement of human nature; and feeling
thus, we give a loose to our indignation, and call upon your Lordships
for justice.
Strange as it may appear to your Lordships, there remains to be stated
an aggravation of his crimes, and of his victims' misery. Would you
consider it possible, my Lords, that there could be an aggravation of
such a case as you have heard? Would you think it possible for a people
to suffer more than the inhabitants of Benares have suffered, from the
noble possessor of the splendid mansion down to the miserable tenants of
the cottage and the hut? Yes, there is a state of misery, a state of
degradation, far below all that you have yet heard. It is, my Lords,
that these miserable people should come to your Lordships' bar, and
declare that they have never felt one of those grievances of which they
complain; that not one of those petitions with which they pursued Mr.
Hastings had a word of truth in it; that they felt nothing under his
government but ease, tranquillity, joy, and happiness; that every day
during his government was a festival, and every night an illumination
and rejoicing. The addresses which contain these expressions of
satisfaction have been produced at your bar, and have been read to your
Lordships. You must have heard with disgust, at least, these flowers of
Oriental rhetoric, penned at ease by dirty hireling moonshees at
Calcutta, who make these people put their seals, not to declarations of
their ruin, but to expressions of their satisfaction. You have heard
what he himself says of the country; you have heard what Mr. Duncan says
of it; you have heard the cries of the country itself calling for
justice upon him: and now, my Lords, hear what he has made these people
say. "We have heard that the gentlemen in England are displeased with
Mr. Hastings, on suspicion that he oppressed us, the inhabitants of
this place, took our money by deceit and force, and ruined the country."
They then declare solemnly before God, according to their different
religions, that Mr. Hastings "distributed protection and security to
religion, and kindness and peace to all. He is free," say they, "from
the charge of embezzlement and fraud, and his heart is void of
covetousness and avidity. During the period of his government no one
ever experienced from him other than protection and justice, never
having felt hardships from him; nor did the poor ever know the weight of
an oppressive hand from him. Our characters and reputation have been
always guarded in quiet from attack, by the vigilance of his prudence
and foresight, and by the terror of his justice."
Upon my word, my Lords, the paragraphs are delightful. Observe, in this
translation from the Persian there is all the fluency of an English
paragraph well preserved. All I can say is, that these people of Benares
feel their joy, comfort, and satisfaction in swearing to the falseness
of Mr. Hastings's representation against himself. In spite of his own
testimony, they say, "He secured happiness and joy to us; he
reëstablished the foundation of justice; and we at all times, during his
government, lived in comfort and passed our days in peace." The shame of
England and of the English government is here put upon your Lordships'
records. Here you have, just following that afflicting report of Mr.
Duncan's, and that account of Mr. Hastings himself, in which he said the
inhabitants fled before his face, the addresses of these miserable
people. He dares to impose upon your eyesight, upon your common sense,
upon the plain faculties of mankind. He dares, in contradiction to all
his own assertions, to make these people come forward and swear that
they have enjoyed nothing but complete satisfaction and pleasure during
the whole time of his government.
My Lords, I have done with this business, for I have now reached the
climax of degradation and suffering, after moving step by step through
the several stages of tyranny and oppression. I have done with it, and
have only to ask, In what country do we live, where such a scene can by
any possibility be offered to the public eye?
Let us here, my Lords, make a pause.--You have seen what Benares was
under its native government. You have seen the condition in which it was
left by Cheyt Sing, and you have seen the state in which Mr. Hastings
left it. The rankling wounds which he has inflicted upon the country,
and the degradation to which the inhabitants have been subjected, have
been shown to your Lordships. You have now to consider whether or not
you will fortify with your sanction any of the detestable principles
upon which the prisoner justifies his enormities.
My Lords, we shall next come to another dependent province, when I shall
illustrate to your Lordships still further the effects of Mr. Hastings's
principles. I allude to the province of Oude,--a country which, before
our acquaintance with it, was in the same happy and flourishing
condition with Benares, and which dates its period of decline and misery
from the time of our intermeddling with it. The Nabob of Oude was
reduced, as Cheyt Sing was, to be a dependant on the Company, and to be
a greater dependant than Cheyt Sing, because it was reserved in Cheyt
Sing's agreement that we should not interfere in his government. We
interfered in every part of the Nabob's government; we reduced his
authority to nothing; we introduced a perfect scene of anarchy and
confusion into the country, where there was no authority but to rob and
destroy.
I have not strength at present to proceed; but I hope I shall soon be
enabled to do so. Your Lordships cannot, I am sure, calculate from your
own youth and strength; for I have done the best I can, and find myself
incapable just at this moment of going any further.
SPEECH
IN
GENERAL REPLY.
FOURTH DAY: THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 1794.
My Lords,--When I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships from
this place, my want of strength obliged me to conclude where the
patience of a people and the prosperity of a country subjected by solemn
treaties to British government had concluded. We have left behind us the
inhabitants of Benares, after having seen them driven into rebellion by
tyranny and oppression, and their country desolated by our misrule. Your
Lordships, I am sure, have had the map of India before you, and know
that the country so destroyed and so desolated was about one fifth of
the size of England and Wales in geographical extent, and equal in
population to about a fourth. Upon this scale you will judge of the
mischief which has been done.
My Lords, we are now come to another devoted province: we march from
desolation to desolation; because we follow the steps of Warren
Hastings, Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal. You will here find the
range of his atrocities widely extended; but before I enter into a
detail of them, I have one reflection to make, which I beseech your
Lordships to bear in mind throughout the whole of this deliberation. It
is this: you ought never to conclude that a man must necessarily be
innoxious because he is in other respects insignificant. You will see
that a man bred in obscure, vulgar, and ignoble occupations, and trained
in sordid, base, and mercenary habits, is not incapable of doing
extensive mischief, because he is little, and because his vices are of a
mean nature. My Lords, we have shown to you already, and we shall
demonstrate to you more clearly in future, that such minds placed in
authority can do more mischief to a country, can treat all ranks and
distinctions with more pride, insolence, and arrogance, than those who
have been born under canopies of state and swaddled in purple: you will
see that they can waste a country more effectually than the proudest and
most mighty conquerors, who, by the greatness of their military talents,
have first subdued and afterwards plundered nations.
The prisoner's counsel have thought proper to entertain your Lordships,
and to defend their client, by comparing him with the men who are said
to have erected a pyramid of ninety thousand human heads. Now look back,
my Lords, to Benares; consider the extent of country laid waste and
desolated, and its immense population; and then see whether famine may
not destroy as well as the sword, and whether this man is not as well
entitled to erect his pyramid of ninety thousand heads as any terrific
tyrant of the East. We follow him now to another theatre, the
territories of the Nabob of Oude.
My Lords, Oude, (together with the additions made to it by Sujah
Dowlah,) in point of geographical extent, is about the size of England.
Sujah Dowlah, who possessed this country as Nabob, was a prince of a
haughty character,--ferocious in a high degree towards his enemies, and
towards all those who resisted his will. He was magnificent in his
expenses, yet economical with regard to his resources,--maintaining his
court in a pomp and splendor which is perhaps unknown to the sovereigns
of Europe. At the same time he was such an economist, that from an
inconsiderable revenue, at the beginning of his reign, he was annually
enabled to make great savings. He thus preserved, towards the end of it,
his people in peace, tranquillity, and order; and though he was an
arbitrary prince, he never strained his revenue to such a degree as to
lose their affections while he filled his exchequer. Such appears to
have been the true character of Sujah Dowlah: your Lordships have heard
what is the character which the prisoner at your bar and his counsel
have thought proper to give you of him.
Surely, my Lords, the situation of the great, as well as of the lower
ranks in that country, must be a subject of melancholy reflection to
every man. Your Lordships' compassion will, I presume, lead you to feel
for the lowest; and I hope that your sympathetic dignity will make you
consider in what manner the princes of this country are treated. They
have not only been treated at your Lordships' bar with indignity by the
prisoner, but his counsel do not leave their ancestors to rest quietly
in their graves. They have slandered their families, and have gone into
scandalous history that has no foundation in facts whatever.
Your Lordships have seen how he attempted to slander the ancestors of
Cheyt Sing, to deny that they were zemindars; and yet he must have known
from printed books, taken from the Company's records, the utter falsity
of his declaration. You need only look into Mr. Verelst's Appendix, and
there you will see that that country has always been called the
Zemindary of Bulwant Sing. You will find him always called the Zemindar;
it was the known, acknowledged name, till this gentleman thought proper
at the bar of the House of Commons to deny that he was a zemindar, and
to assert that he was only an aumil. He slanders the pedigree of this
man as mean and base, yet he was not ashamed to take from him
twenty-three thousand pounds. In like manner he takes from Asoph ul
Dowlah a hundred thousand pounds, which he would have appropriated to
himself, and then directs his counsel to rake up the slander of Dow's
History, a book of no authority, a book that no man values in any
respect or degree. In this book they find that romantic, absurd, and
ridiculous story upon which an honorable fellow Manager of mine, who is
much more capable than I am of doing justice to the subject, has
commented with his usual ability: I allude to that story of spitting on
the beard,--the mutual compact to poison one another. That Arabian tale,
fit only to form a ridiculous tragedy, has been gravely mentioned to
your Lordships for the purpose of slandering the pedigree of this Vizier
of Oude, and making him vile in your Lordships' eyes. My honorable
friend has exposed to you the absurdity of these stories, but he has not
shown you the malice of their propagators. The prisoner and his counsel
have referred to Dow's History, who calls this Nabob "the more infamous
son of an infamous Persian peddler." They wish that your Lordships
should consider him as a person vilely born, ignominiously educated, and
practising a mean trade, in order that, when it shall be proved that he
and his family were treated with every kind of indignity and contempt by
the prisoner at your bar, the sympathy of mankind should be weakened.
Consider, my Lords, the monstrous perfidy and ingratitude of this man,
who, after receiving great favors from the Nabob, is not satisfied with
oppressing his offspring, but goes back to his ancestors, tears them out
of their graves, and vilifies them with slanderous aspersions. My Lords,
the ancestor of Sujah Dowlah was a great prince,--certainly a
subordinate prince, because he was a servant of the Great Mogul, who was
well called King of Kings, for he had in his service persons of high
degree. He was born in Persia; but was not, as is falsely said, _the
more infamous son of an infamous Persian peddler_. Your Lordships are
not unacquainted with the state and history of India; you therefore know
that Persia has been the nursery of all the Mahometan nobility of India:
almost everything in that country which is not of Gentoo origin is of
Persian; so much so, that the Persian language is the language of the
court, and of every office from the highest to the lowest. Among these
noble Persians, the family of the Nabob stands in the highest degree.
His father's ancestors were of noble descent, and those of his mother,
Munny Begum, more eminently and more illustriously so. This
distinguished family, on no better authority than that of the historian
Dow, has been slandered by the prisoner at your bar, in order to destroy
the character of those whom he had already robbed of their substance.
Your Lordships will have observed with disgust how the Dows and the
Hastings, and the whole of that tribe, treat their superiors,--in what
insolent language they speak of them, and with what pride and indignity
they trample upon the first names and the first characters in that
devoted country.
But supposing it perfectly true that this man was "the more infamous son
of an infamous Persian peddler," he had risen to be the secondary
sovereign of that country. He had a revenue of three millions six
hundred thousand pounds sterling: a vast and immense revenue; equal,
perhaps, to the clear revenue of the King of England. He maintained an
army of one hundred and twenty thousand men. He had a splendid court;
and his country was prosperous and happy. Such was the situation of
Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude, and such the condition of Oude under
his government. With his pedigree, I believe, your Lordships will think
we have nothing to do in the cause now before us. It has been pressed
upon us; and this marks the indecency, the rancor, the insolence, the
pride and tyranny which the Dows and the Hastings, and the people of
that class and character, are in the habit of exercising over the great
in India.
My Lords, I shall be saved a great deal of trouble in proving to you the
flourishing state of Oude, because the prisoner admits it as largely as
I could wish to state it; and what is more, he admits, too, the truth of
our statement of the condition to which it is now reduced,--but I shall
not let him off so easily upon this point. He admits, too, that it was
left in this reduced and ruined state at the close of his
administration. In his Defence he attributes the whole mischief
generally to a faulty system of government. My Lords, systems never make
mankind happy or unhappy, any further than as they give occasions for
wicked men to exercise their own abominable talents, subservient to
their own more abominable dispositions. "The system," says Mr. Hastings,
"was bad; but I was not the maker of it." Your Lordships have seen him
apply this mode of reasoning to Benares, and you will now see that he
applies it to Oude. "I came," says he, "into a bad system; that system
was not of my making, but I was obliged to act according to the spirit
of it."
Now every honest man would say,--"I came to a bad system: I had every
facility of abusing my power, I had every temptation to peculate, I had
every incitement to oppress, I had every means of concealment, by the
defects of the system; but I corrected that evil system by the goodness
of my administration, by the prudence, the energy, the virtue of my
conduct." This is what all the rest of the world would say: but what
says Mr. Hastings? "A bad system was made to my hands; I had nothing to
do in making it. I was altogether an involuntary instrument, and obliged
to execute every evil which that system contained." This is the line of
conduct your Lordships are called to decide upon. And I must here again
remind you that we are at an issue of law. Mr. Hastings has avowed a
certain set of principles upon which he acts; and your Lordships are
therefore to judge whether his acts are justifiable because he found an
evil system to act upon, or whether he and all governors upon earth have
not a general good system upon which they ought to act.
The prisoner tells you, my Lords, that it was in consequence of this
evil system, that the Nabob, from being a powerful prince, became
reduced to a wretched dependant on the Company, and subject to all the
evils of that degraded state,--subject to extortion, to indignity, to
oppression. All these your Lordships are called upon to sanction; and
because they may be connected with an existing system, you are to
declare them to be an allowable part of a code for the government of
British India.
In the year 1775, that powerful, magnificent, and illustrious prince,
Sujah Dowlah, died in possession of the country of Oude. He had long
governed a happy and contented people, and, if we except the portion of
tyranny which we admit he really did exercise towards some few
individuals who resisted his power, he was a wise and beneficent
governor. This prince died in the midst of his power and fortune,
leaving somewhere about fourscore children. Your Lordships know that the
princes of the East have a great number of wives; and we know that these
women, though reputed of a secondary rank, are yet of a very high
degree, and honorably maintained according to the customs of the East.
Sujah Dowlah had but one lawful wife: he had by her but one lawful
child, Asoph ul Dowlah. He had about twenty-one male children, the
eldest of whom was a person whom you have heard of very often in these
proceedings, called Saadut Ali. Asoph ul Dowlah, being the sole
legitimate son, had all the pretensions to succeed his father, as
Subahdar of Oude, which could belong to any person under the Mogul
government.
Your Lordships will distinguish between a Zemindar, who is a perpetual
landholder, the hereditary proprietor of an estate, and a Subahdar, who
derives from his master's will and pleasure all his employments, and
who, instead of having the jaghiredars subject to his supposed arbitrary
will, is himself a subject, and must have his sovereign's patent for
his place. Therefore, strictly and properly speaking, there is no
succession in the office of Subahdar. At this time the Company, who
alone could obtain the _sunnuds_ [_sunnud?_], or patent, from the Great
Mogul, upon account of the power they possessed in India, thought, and
thought rightly, that with an officer who had no hereditary power there
could be no hereditary engagements,--and that in their treaty with Asoph
ul Dowlah, for whom they had procured the sunnud from the Great Mogul,
they were at liberty to propose their own terms, which, if honorable and
mutually advantageous to the new Subahdar and to the Company, they had a
right to insist upon. A treaty was therefore concluded between the
Company and Asoph ul Dowlah, in which the latter stipulated to pay a
fixed subsidy for the maintenance of a certain number of troops, by
which the Company's finances were greatly relieved and their military
strength greatly increased.
This treaty did not contain one word which could justify any
interference in the Nabob's government. That evil system, as Mr.
Hastings calls it, is not even mentioned or alluded to; nor is there, I
again say, one word which authorized Warren Hastings, or any other
person whatever, to interfere in the interior affairs of his country. He
was legally constituted Viceroy of Oude; his dignity of Vizier of the
Empire, with all the power which that office gave him, derived from and
held under the Mogul government, he legally possessed; and this evil
system, which Mr. Hastings says led him to commit the enormities of
which you shall hear by-and-by, was neither more nor less than what I
have now stated.