sort of means could be furnished of interfering in the government of the
country, he has a right to avail himself of them, to use them at his
pleasure, and to govern by his own arbitrary will. The Vizier, he says,
by this treaty was reduced to a state of vassalage; and he makes this
curious distinction in proof of it. It was, he says, an optional
vassalage: for, if he chose to get rid of our troops, he might do so and
be free; if he had not a mind to do that, and found a benefit in it,
then he was a vassal. But there is nothing less true. Here is a person
who keeps a subsidiary body of your troops, which he is to pay for you;
and in consequence of this Mr. Hastings maintains that he becomes a
vassal. I shall not dispute whether vassalage is optional or by force,
or in what way Mr. Hastings considered this prince as a vassal of the
Company. Let it be as he pleased. I only think it necessary that your
Lordships should truly know the actual state of that country, and the
ground upon which Mr. Hastings stood. Your Lordships will find it a
fairy land, in which there is a perpetual masquerade, where no one thing
appears as it really is,--where the person who seems to have the
authority is a slave, while the person who seems to be the slave has the
authority. In that ambiguous government everything favors fraud,
everything favors peculation, everything favors violence, everything
favors concealment. You will therefore permit me to show to you what
were the principles upon which Mr. Hastings appears, according to the
evidence before you, to have acted,--what the state of the country was,
according to his conceptions of it; and then you will see how he applied
those principles to that state.
"The means by which our government acquired this influence," says Mr.
Hastings, "and its right to exercise it, will require a previous
explanation." He then proceeds,--"With his death [Sujah Dowlah's] a new
political system commenced, and Mr. Bristow was constituted the
instrument of its formation, and the trustee for the management of it.
The Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah was deprived of a large part of his
inheritance,--I mean the province of Benares, attached by a very feeble
and precarious tenure to our dominions; the army fixed to a permanent
station in a remote line of his frontier, with an augmented and
perpetual subsidy; a new army, amphibiously composed of troops in his
service and pay, commanded by English officers of our own nomination,
for the defence of his new conquests; and his own natural troops
annihilated, or alienated by the insufficiency of his revenue for all
his disbursements, and the prior claims of those which our authority or
influence commanded: in a word, he became a vassal of the government;
but he still possessed an ostensible sovereignty. His titular rank of
Vizier of the Empire rendered him a conspicuous object of view to all
the states and chiefs of India; and on the moderation and justice with
which the British government in Bengal exercised its influence over him
many points most essential to its political strength and to the honor of
the British name depended."
Your Lordships see that the system which is supposed to have reduced him
to vassalage did not make, as he contends, a violent exercise of our
power necessary or proper; but possessing, as the Nabob did, that high
nominal dignity, and being in that state of vassalage, as Mr. Hastings
thought proper to term it, though there is no vassalage mentioned in
the treaty,--being, I say, in that situation of honor, credit, and
character, sovereign of a country as large as England, yielding an
immense revenue, and flourishing in trade, certainly our honor depended
upon the use we made of that influence which our power gave us over him;
and we therefore press it upon your Lordships, that the conduct of Mr.
Hastings was such as dishonored this nation.
He proceeds,--"This is not a place, nor have I room in it, to prove,
what I shall here content myself with affirming, that, by a sacred and
undeviating observance of every principle of public faith, the British
dominion might have by this time acquired the means of its extension,
through a virtual submission to its authority, to every region of
Hindostan and Deccan. I am not sure that I should advise such a design,
were it practicable, which at this time it certainly is not; and I very
much fear that the limited formation of such equal alliances as might be
useful to our present condition, and conduce to its improvement, is
become liable to almost insurmountable difficulties: every power in
India must wish for the support of ours, but they all dread the
connection. The subjection of Bengal, and the deprivation of the family
of Jaffier Ali Khân, though an effect of inevitable necessity, the
present usurpations of the rights of the Nabob Wallau Jau in the
Carnatic, and the licentious violations of the treaty existing between
the Company and the Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah, though checked by the
remedial interposition of this government, stand as terrible precedents
against us; the effects of our connection with the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah
had a rapid tendency to the same consequences, and it has been my
invariable study to prevent it."
Your Lordships will remember that the counsel at the bar have said that
they undertook the defence of Warren Hastings, not in order to defend
him, but to rescue the British character from the imputations which have
been laid upon it by the Commons of Great Britain. They have said that
the Commons of Great Britain have slandered their country, and have
misrepresented its character; while, on the contrary, the servants of
the Company have sustained and maintained the dignity of the English
character, have kept its public faith inviolate, preserved the people
from oppression, reconciled every government to it in India, and have
made every person under it prosperous and happy.
My Lords, you see what this man says himself, when endeavoring to prove
his own innocence. Instead of proving it by the facts alleged by his
counsel, he declares that by preserving good faith you might have
conquered India, the most glorious conquest that was ever made in the
world; that all the people want our assistance, but dread our
connection. Why? Because our whole conduct has been one perpetual tissue
of perfidy and breach of faith with every person who has been in
alliance with us, in any mode whatever. Here is the man himself who says
it. Can we bear that this man should now stand up in this place as the
assertor of the honor of the British nation against us, who charge this
dishonor to have fallen upon us by him, through him, and during his
government?
But all the mischief, he goes on to assert, was in the previous system,
in the formation of which he had no share,--the system of 1775, when
the first treaty with the Nabob was made. "That system," says he, "is
not mine; it was made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr.
Francis." So it was, my Lords. It did them very great honor, and I
believe it ever will do them honor, in the eyes of the British nation,
that they took an opportunity, without the violation of faith, without
the breach of any one treaty, and without injury to any person, to do
great and eminent services to the Company. But Mr. Hastings disclaims
it, unnecessarily disclaims it, for no one charges him with it. What we
charge him with is the abuse of that system. To one of these abuses I
will now call your Lordships' attention. Finding, soon after his
appointment to the office of Governor-General, that the Nabob was likely
to get into debt, he turns him into a vassal, and resolves to treat him
as such. You will observe that this is not the only instance in which,
upon a failure of payment, the defaulter becomes directly a vassal. You
remember how Durbege Sing, the moment he fell into an arrear of tribute,
became a vassal, and was thrown into prison, without any inquiry into
the causes which occasioned that arrear. With respect to the Nabob of
Oude, we assert, and can prove, that his revenue was 3,600,000_l._ at
the day of his father's death; and if the revenue fell off afterwards,
there was abundant reason to believe that he possessed in abundance the
means of paying the Company every farthing.
Before I quit this subject, your Lordships will again permit me to
reprobate the malicious insinuations by which Mr. Hastings has thought
proper to slander the virtuous persons who are the authors of that
system which he complains of. They are men whose characters this country
will ever respect, honor, and revere, both the living and the dead,--the
dead for the living, and the living for the dead. They will altogether
be revered for a conduct honorable and glorious to Great Britain, whilst
their names stand as they now do, unspotted by the least imputation of
oppression, breach of faith, perjury, bribery, or any other fraud
whatever. I know there was a faction formed against them upon that very
account. Be corrupt, you have friends; stem the torrent of corruption,
you open a thousand venal mouths against you. Men resolved to do their
duty must be content to suffer such opprobrium, and I am content; in the
name of the living and of the dead, and in the name of the Commons, I
glory in our having appointed some good servants at least to India.
But to proceed. "This system was not," says he, "of my making." You
would, then, naturally imagine that the persons who made this abominable
system had also made some tyrannous use of it. Let us see what use they
made of it during the time of their majority in the Council. There was
an arrear of subsidy due from the Nabob. How it came into arrear we
shall consider hereafter. The Nabob proposed to pay it by taxing the
jaghires of his family, and taking some money from the Begum. This was
consented to by Mr. Bristow, at that time Resident for the Company in
Oude; and to this arrangement Asoph ul Dowlah and his advisers lent a
willing ear. What did Mr. Hastings then say of this transaction? He
called it a violent assumption of power on the part of the Council. He
did not, you see, then allow that a bad system justified any persons
whatever in an abuse of it. He contended that it was a violent attack
upon the rights and property of the parties from whom the money was to
be taken, that it had no ground or foundation in justice whatever, and
that it was contrary to every principle of right and equity.
Your Lordships will please to bear in mind, that afterwards, by his own
consent, and the consent of the rest of the Council, this business was
compromised between the son, the mother, and their relations. A very
great sum of money, which was most useful to the Company at that period,
was raised by a family compact and arrangement among themselves. This
proceeding was sanctioned by the Company, Mr. Hastings himself
consenting; and a pledge was given to the Begums and family of the
Nabob, that this should be the last demand made upon them,--that it
should be considered, not as taken compulsively, but as a friendly and
amicable donation. They never admitted, nor did the Nabob ever contend,
that he had any right at all to take this money from them. At that time
it was not Mr. Hastings's opinion that the badness of the system would
justify any violence as a consequence of it; and when the advancement of
the money was agreed to between the parties, as a family and amicable
compact, he was as ready as anybody to propose and sanction a regular
treaty between the parties, that all claims on one side and all kind of
uneasiness on the other should cease forever, under the guardianship of
British faith.
Mr. Hastings, as your Lordships remember, has conceded that British
faith is the support of the British empire; that, if that empire is to
be maintained, it is to be maintained by good faith; that, if it is to
be propagated, it is to be propagated by public faith; and that, if the
British empire falls, it will be through perfidy and violence. These are
the principles which he assumes, when he chooses to reproach others. But
when he has to defend his own perfidy and breaches of faith, then, as
your Lordships will find set forth in his defence before the House of
Commons on the Benares charge, he denies, or at least questions, the
validity of any treaty that can at present be made with India. He
declares that he considers all treaties as being weakened by a
considerable degree of doubt respecting their validity and their binding
force, in such a state of things as exists in India.
Whatever was done, during that period of time to which I have alluded,
by the majority of the Council, Mr. Hastings considered himself as
having nothing to do with, on the plea of his being a dissentient
member: a principle which, like other principles, I shall take some
notice of by-and-by. Colonel Monson and General Clavering died soon
after, and Mr. Hastings obtained a majority in the Council, and was
then, as he calls it, restored to his authority; so that any evil that
could be done by evil men under that evil system could have lasted but
for a very short time indeed. From that moment, Mr. Hastings, in my
opinion, became responsible for every act done in Council, while he was
there, which he did not resist, and for every engagement which he did
not oppose. For your Lordships will not bear that miserable jargon which
you have heard, shameful to office and to official authority, that a
man, when, he happens not to find himself in a majority upon any
measure, may think himself excusable for the total neglect of his duty;
that in such a situation he is not bound to propose anything that it
might be proper to propose, or to resist anything that it might be
proper to resist. What would be the inference from such an assumption?
That he can never act in a commission; that, unless a man has the
supreme power, he is not responsible for anything he does or neglects to
do. This is another principle which your Lordships will see constantly
asserted and constantly referred to by Mr. Hastings. Now I do contend,
that, notwithstanding his having been in a minority, if there was
anything to be done that could prevent oppressive consequences, he was
bound to do that thing; and that he was bound to propose every possible
remedial measure. This proud, rebellious proposition against the law,
that any one individual in the Council may say that he is responsible
for nothing, because he is not the whole Council, calls for your
Lordships' strongest reprobation.
I must now beg leave to observe to you, that the treaty was made (and I
wish your Lordships to advert to dates) in the year 1775; Mr. Hastings
acquired the majority in something more than a year afterwards; and
therefore, supposing the acts of the former majority to have been ever
so iniquitous, their power lasted but a short time. From the year 1776
to 1784 Mr. Hastings had the whole government of Oude in himself, by
having the majority in the Council. My Lords, it is no offence that a
Governor-General, or anybody else, has the majority in the Council. To
have the government in himself is no offence. Neither was it any
offence, if you please, that the Nabob was virtually a vassal to the
Company, as he contends he was. For the question is not, what a
Governor-General _may_ do, but what Warren Hastings did do. He who has a
majority in Council, and records his own acts there, may justify these
acts as legal: I mean the mode is legal. But as he executes whatever he
proposes as Governor-General, he is solely responsible for the _nature_
of the acts themselves.
I shall now show your Lordships that Mr. Hastings, finding, as he
states, the Nabob to be made by the treaty in 1775 eventually a vassal
to the Company, has thought proper to make him a vassal to himself, for
his own private purposes. Your Lordships will see what corrupt and
iniquitous purposes they were. In the first place, in order to
annihilate in effect the Council, and to take wholly from them their
control in the affairs of Oude, he suppressed (your Lordships will find
the fact proved in your minutes) the Persian correspondence, which was
the whole correspondence of Oude. This whole correspondence was secreted
by him, and kept from the Council. It was never communicated to the
Persian translator of the Company, Mr. Colebrooke, who had a salary for
executing that office. It was secreted, and kept in the private cabinet
of Mr. Hastings; from the period of 1781 to 1785 no part of it was
communicated to the Council. There is nothing, as your Lordships have
often found in this trial, that speaks for the man like himself; there
is nothing will speak for his conduct like the records of the Company.
"_Fort William, 19th February, 1785._
"At a Council: present, the Honorable John Macpherson, Esquire,
Governor-General, President, and John Stables, Esquire.
* * * * *
"The Persian Translator, attending in obedience to the Board's
orders, reports, that, since the end of the year 1781, there have
been no books of correspondence kept in his office, because, from
that time until the late Governor-General's departure, he was
employed but once by the Governor-General to manage the
correspondence, during a short visit which Major Davy, the military
Persian interpreter, paid by the Governor's order to Lucknow; that,
during that whole period of three years, he remained entirely
ignorant of the correspondence, as he was applied to on no occasion,
except for a few papers sometimes sent to him by the secretaries,
which he always returned to them as soon as translated.
"The Persian Translator has received from Mr. Scott, since the late
Governor-General's departure, a trunk containing English draughts
and translations and the Persian originals of letters and papers,
with three books in the Persian language containing copies of
letters written between August, 1782, and January, 1785; and if the
Board should please to order the secretaries of the general
department to furnish him with copies of all translations and
draughts recorded in their Consultations between the 1st of January,
1782, and the 31st of January, 1785, he thinks that he should be
able, with what he has found in Captain Scott's trunk, to make up
the correspondence for that period.
(Signed) "EDWARD COLEBROOKE,
"_Persian Translator._"
Hear, then, my Lords, what becomes of the records of the Company, which
were to be the vouchers for every public act,--which were to show
whether, in the Company's transactions, agreements, and treaties with
the native powers, the public faith was kept or not. You see them all
crammed into Mr. Scott's trunk: a trunk into which they put what they
please, take out what they please, suppress what they please, or thrust
in whatever will answer their purpose. The records of the
Governor-General and Council of Bengal are kept in Captain Jonathan
Scott's trunk; this trunk is to be considered as the real and true
channel of intelligence between the Company and the country powers. But
even this channel was not open to any member of the Council, except Mr.
Hastings; and when the Council, for the first time, daring to think for
themselves, call upon the Persian Translator, he knows nothing about it.
We find that it is given into the hands of a person nominated by Mr.
Hastings,--Major Davy. What do the Company know of him? Why, he was Mr.
Hastings's private secretary. In this manner the Council have been
annihilated during all these transactions, and have no other knowledge
of them than just what Mr. Hastings and his trunk-keeper thought proper
to give them. All, then, that we know of these transactions is from the
miserable, imperfect, garbled correspondence.
But even if these papers contained a full and faithful account of the
correspondence, what we charge is its not being delivered to the Council
as it occurred from time to time. Mr. Hastings kept the whole government
of Oude in his own hands; so that the Council had no power of judging
his acts, of checking, controlling, advising, or remonstrating. It was
totally annihilated by him; and we charge, as an act of treason and
rebellion against the act of Parliament by which he held his office, his
depriving the Council of their legitimate authority, by shutting them
out from the knowledge of all affairs,--except, indeed, when he thought
it expedient, for his own justification, to have their nominal
concurrence or subsequent acquiescence in any of his more violent
measures.
Your Lordships see Mr. Hastings's system, a system of concealment, a
system of turning the vassals of the Company into his own vassals, to
make them contributory, not to the Company, but to himself. He has
avowed this system in Benares; he has avowed it in Oude. It was his
constant practice. Your Lordships see in Oude he kept a correspondence
with Mr. Markham for years, and did alone all the material acts which
ought to have been done in Council. He delegated a power to Mr. Markham
which he had not to delegate; and you will see he has done the same in
every part of India.
We first charge him not only with acting without authority, but with a
strong presumption, founded on his concealment, of intending to act
mischievously. We next charge his concealing and withdrawing
correspondence, as being directly contrary to the orders of the Court of
Directors, the practice of his office, and the very nature and existence
of the Council in which he was appointed to preside. We charge this as a
substantive crime, and as the forerunner of the oppression, desolation,
and ruin of that miserable country.
Mr. Hastings having thus rendered the Council blind and ignorant, and
consequently fit for subserviency, what does he next do? I am speaking,
not with regard to the time of his particular acts, but with regard to
the general spirit of the proceedings. He next flies in the face of the
Company upon the same principle on which he removed Mr. Fowke from
Benares. "I removed _him_ on political grounds," says he, "against the
orders of the Court of Directors, because I thought it necessary that
the Resident should be a man of my own nomination and confidence." At
Oude he proceeds on the same principle. Mr. Bristow had been nominated
to the office of Resident by the Court of Directors. Mr. Hastings, by an
act of Parliament, was ordered to obey the Court of Directors. He
positively refuses to receive Mr. Bristow, for no other reason that we
know of but because he was nominated by the Court of Directors; he
defies the Court, and declares in effect that they shall not govern that
province, but that he will govern it by a Resident of his own.
Your Lordships will mark his progress in the establishment of that new
system, which, he says, he had been obliged to adopt by the evil system
of his predecessors. First, he annihilates the Council, formed by an act
of Parliament, and by order of the Court of Directors. In the second
place, he defies the order of the Court, who had the undoubted
nomination of all their own servants, and who ordered him, under the
severest injunction, to appoint Mr. Bristow to the office of Resident in
Oude. He for some time refused to nominate Mr. Bristow to that office;
and even when he was forced, against his will, to permit him for a while
to be there, he sent Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, who annihilated Mr.
Bristow's authority so completely that no one public act passed through
his hands.
After he had ended this conflict with the Directors, and had entirely
shook off their authority, he resolved that the native powers should
know that they were not to look to the Court of Directors, but to look
to his arbitrary will in all things; and therefore, to the astonishment
of the world, and as if it were designedly to expose the nakedness of
the Parliament of Great Britain, to expose the nakedness of the laws of
Great Britain, and the nakedness of the authority of the Court of
Directors to the country powers, he wrote a letter, which your Lordships
will find in page 795 of the printed Minutes. In this letter the secret
of his government is discovered to the country powers. They are given to
understand, that, whatever exaction, whatever oppression or ruin they
may suffer, they are to look nowhere for relief but to him: not to the
Council, not to the Court of Directors, not to the sovereign authority
of Great Britain, but to him, and him only.