of this captain-generalship which I have alluded to? Are there no signs
of this man's being a captain-general of iniquity, under whom all the
spoilers of India were paid, disciplined, and supported? I not only
charge him with being guilty of a thousand crimes, but I assert that
there is not a soldier or a civil servant in India whose culpable acts
are not owing to this man's example, connivance, and protection.
Everything which goes to criminate them goes directly against the
prisoner. He puts them in a condition to plunder; he suffered no native
authority or government to restrain them; and he never called a man to
an account for these flagitious acts which he has thought proper to
bring before his country in the most solemn manner and upon the most
solemn occasion.
I verily believe, in my conscience, his accusation is not true, in the
excess, in the generality and extravagance in which he charges it. That
it is true in a great measure we cannot deny; and in that measure we, in
our turn, charge him with being the author of all the crimes which he
denounces; and if there is anything in the charge beyond the truth, it
is he who is to answer for the falsehood.
I will now refer your Lordships to his opinion of the civil service, as
it is declared and recorded in his remarks upon the removal of the
Company's civil servants by him from the service of the Vizier.--"I
was," says he, "actuated solely by motives of justice to him [the Nabob
of Oude], and a regard to the honor of our national character."--Here,
you see, he declares his opinion that in Oude the civil servants of the
Company had destroyed the national character, and that therefore they
ought to be recalled.--"By removing these people," he adds, "I diminish
my patronage."--But I ask, How came they there? Why, through this
patronage. He sent them there to suck the blood which the military had
spared. He sent these civil servants to do ten times more mischief than
the military ravagers could do, because they were invested with greater
authority.--"If," says he, "I recall them from thence, I lessen my
patronage."--But who, my Lords, authorized him to become a patron? What
laws of his country justified him in forcing upon the Vizier the civil
servants of the Company? What treaty authorized him to do it? What
system of policy, except his own wicked, arbitrary system, authorized
him to act thus?
He proceeds to say, "I expose myself to obloquy and resentment from
those who are immediately affected by the arrangement, and the long
train of their friends and powerful patrons."--My Lords, it is the
constant burden of his song, that he cannot do his duty, that he is
fettered in everything, that he fears a thousand mischiefs to happen to
him,--not from his acting with carefulness, economy, frugality, and in
obedience to the laws of his country, but from the very reverse of all
this. Says he, "I am afraid I shall forfeit the favor of the powerful
patrons of those servants in England, namely, the Lords and Commons of
England, if I do justice to the suffering people of this country."
In the House of Commons there are undoubtedly powerful people who may be
supposed to be influenced by patronage; but the higher and more powerful
part of the country is more directly represented by your Lordships than
by us, although we have of the first blood of England in the House of
Commons. We do, indeed, represent, by the knights of the shires, the
landed interest; by our city and borough members we represent the
trading interest; we represent the whole people of England collectively.
But neither blood nor power is represented so fully in the House of
Commons as that order which composes the great body of the people,--the
protection of which is our peculiar duty, and to which it is our glory
to adhere. But the dignities of the country, the great and powerful, are
represented eminently by your Lordships. As we, therefore, would keep
the lowest of the people from the contagion and dishonor of peculation
and corruption, and above all from exercising that vice which, among
commoners, is unnatural as well as abominable, the vice of tyranny and
oppression, so we trust that your Lordships will clear yourselves and
the higher and more powerful ranks from giving the smallest countenance
to the system which we have done our duty in denouncing and bringing
before you.
My Lords, you have heard the account of the civil service. Think of
their numbers, think of their influence, and the enormous amount of
their salaries, pensions, and emoluments! They were, you have heard, an
intolerable burden on the revenues and authority of the Vizier; and they
exposed us to the envy and resentment of the whole country, by excluding
the native servants and adherents of the prince from the just reward of
their services and attachments. Here, my Lords, is the whole civil
service brought before you. They usurp the country, they destroy the
revenues, they overload the prince, and they exclude all the nobility
and eminent persons of the country from the just reward of their
service.
Did Mr. Francis, whom I saw here a little while ago, send these people
into that country? Did General Clavering, or Colonel Monson, whom he
charges with this system, send them there? No, they were sent by
himself; and if one was sent by anybody else for a time, he was soon
recalled: so that he is himself answerable for all the peculation which
he attributes to the civil service. You see the character given of that
service; you there see their accuser, you there see their defender, who,
after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished
the guilty in either, and now receives the prodigal praises of both.
I defy the ingenuity of man to show that Mr. Hastings is not the defamer
of the service. I defy the ingenuity of man to show that the honor of
Great Britain has not been tarnished under his patronage. He engaged to
remove all these bloodsuckers by the treaty of Chunar; but he never
executed that treaty. He proposed to take away the temporary brigade;
but he again established it. He redressed no grievance; he formed no
improvements in the government; he never attempted to provide a remedy
without increasing the evil tenfold. He was the primary and sole cause
of all the grievances, civil and military, to which the unhappy natives
of that country were exposed; and he was the accuser of all the
immediate authors of those grievances, without having punished any one
of them. He is the accuser of them all. But the only person whom he
attempted to punish was that man who dared to assert the authority of
the Court of Directors, and to claim an office assigned to him by them.
I will now read to your Lordships the protest of General Clavering
against the military brigade.--"Taking the army from the Nabob is an
infringement of the rights of an independent prince, leaving only the
name and title of it without the power. It is taking his subjects from
him, against every law of Nature and of nations."
I will next read to your Lordships a minute of Mr. Francis's.--"By the
foregoing letter from Mr. Middleton it appears that he has taken the
government of the Nabob's dominions directly upon himself. I was not a
party to the resolutions which preceded that measure, and will not be
answerable for the consequences of it."
The next paper I will read is one introduced by the Managers, to prove
that a representation was made by the Nabob respecting the expenses of
the gentlemen resident at his court, and written after the removal
before mentioned.
_Extract of a Letter from the Vizier to Mr. Macpherson, received
the 21st April, 1785._
"With respect to the expenses of the gentlemen who are here, I have
before written in a covered manner; I now write plainly, that I have
no ability to give money to the gentlemen, because I am indebted
many lacs of rupees to the bankers for the payment of the Company's
debt. At the time of Mr. Hastings's departure, I represented to him
that I had no resources for the expenses of the gentlemen. Mr.
Hastings, having ascertained my distressed situation, told me that
after his arrival in Calcutta he would consult with the Council, and
remove from hence the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every
person except the gentlemen in office here. At this time that all
the concerns are dependent upon you, and you have in every point
given ease to my mind, according to Mr. Hastings's agreement, I hope
that the expenses of the gentlemen maybe removed from me, and that
you may recall every person residing here beyond the gentlemen in
office. Although Major Palmer does not at this time demand anything
for the gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them anything, yet
the custom of the English gentlemen is, when they remain here, they
will in the end ask for something. This is best, that they should be
recalled."
I think so, too; and your Lordships will think so with me; but Mr.
Hastings, who says that he himself thought thus in September, 1781, and
engaged to recall these gentlemen, was so afraid of their powerful
friends and patrons here, that he left India, and left all that load of
obloquy upon his successors. He left a Major Palmer there, in the place
of a Resident: a Resident of his own, as your Lordships must see; for
Major Palmer was no Resident of the Company's. This man received a
salary of about 23,000_l._ a year, which he declared to be less than his
expenses; by which we may easily judge of the enormous salaries of those
who make their fortunes there. He was left by Mr. Hastings as his
representative of peculation, his representative of tyranny. He was the
second agent appointed to control all power ostensible and unostensible,
and to head these gentlemen whose "custom," the Nabob says, "was in the
end to ask for money." Money they must have; and there, my Lords, is the
whole secret.
* * * * *
I have this day shown your Lordships the entire dependence of Oude on
the British empire. I have shown you how Mr. Hastings usurped all power,
reduced the prince to a cipher, and made of his minister a mere creature
of his own,--how he made the servants of the Company dependent on his
own arbitrary will, and considered independence a proof of corruption.
It has been likewise proved to your Lordships that he suffered the army
to become an instrument of robbery and oppression, and one of its
officers to be metamorphosed into a farmer-general to waste the country
and embezzle its revenues. You have seen a clandestine and fraudulent
system, occasioning violence and rapine; and you have seen the prisoner
at the bar acknowledging and denouncing an abandoned spirit of rapacity
without bringing its ministers to justice, and pleading as his excuse
the fear of offending your Lordships and the House of Commons. We have
shown you the government, revenue, commerce, and agriculture of Oude
ruined and destroyed by Mr. Hastings and his creatures. And to wind up
all, we have shown you an army so corrupted as to pervert the
fundamental principles of justice, which are the elements and basis of
military discipline. All this, I say, we have shown you; and I cannot
believe that your Lordships will consider that we have trifled with your
time, or strained our comments one jot beyond the strict measure of the
text. We have shown you a horrible scene, arising from an astonishing
combination of horrible circumstances. The order in which you will
consider these circumstances must be left to your Lordships.
At present I am not able to proceed further. My next attempt will be to
bring before you the manner in which Mr. Hastings treated movable and
immovable property in Oude, and by which he has left nothing undestroyed
in that devoted country.
END OF VOL. XI.