resident at his court, that the number of Company's troops stationed in
his dominions was a main cause of his distress,--and that all those
which he was not bound by treaty to maintain should be withdrawn, as
they had greatly diminished his revenue and impoverished his country. I
will read you, if you please, a few extracts from these representations.
He states, "that the country and cultivation are abandoned, and this
year in particular, from the excessive drought of the season, deductions
of many lacs having been allowed to the farmers, who are still left
unsatisfied"; and then he proceeds with a long detail of his own
distress, and that of his family and all his dependants; and adds, "that
the new-raised brigade is not only quite useless to my government, but
is, moreover, the cause of much loss both in revenues and customs. The
detached body of troops under European officers bring nothing _but
confusion to the affairs of my government, and are entirely their own
masters_." Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings's confidential resident, vouches
for the truth of this representation in its fullest extent. "I am
concerned to confess that there is too good ground for this plea. _The
misfortune hat been general throughout the whole of the vizier's_ [the
Nabob of Oude] _dominions_, obvious to everybody; and so _fatal_ have
been its consequences, that no person of either credit or character
would enter into engagements with government for farming the country."
He then proceeds to give strong instances of the general calamity, and
its effects.
It was now to be seen what steps the Governor-General and Council took
for the relief of this distressed country, long laboring under the
vexations of men, and now stricken by the hand of God. The case of a
general famine is known to relax the severity even of the most rigorous
government.--Mr. Hastings does not deny or show the least doubt of the
fact. The representation is humble, and almost abject. On this
representation from a great prince of the distress of his subjects, Mr.
Hastings falls into a violent passion,--such as (it seems) would be
unjustifiable in any one who speaks of any part of _his_ conduct. He
declares "that the _demands_, the _tone_ in which they were asserted,
and the _season_ in which they were made, are all equally alarming, and
appear to him to require an adequate degree of firmness in this board in
_opposition_ to them." He proceeds to deal out very unreserved language
on the person and character of the Nabob and his ministers. He declares,
that, in a division between him and the Nabob, "_the strongest must
decide_." With regard to the urgent and instant necessity from the
failure of the crops, he says, "that _perhaps_ expedients _may be found_
for affording a _gradual_ relief from the burden of which he so heavily
complains, and it shall be my endeavor to seek them out": and lest he
should be suspected of too much haste to alleviate sufferings and to
remove violence, he says, "that these must be _gradually_ applied, and
their complete _effect_ may be _distant_; and this, I conceive, _is all_
he can claim of right."
This complete effect of his lenity is distant indeed. Rejecting this
demand, (as he calls the Nabob's abject supplication,) he attributes it,
as he usually does all things of the kind, to the division in their
government, and says, "This is a powerful motive with _me_ (however
inclined I might be, _upon any other occasion_, to yield to some _part_
of his demand) to give them an _absolute and unconditional refusal_ upon
the present,--and even _to bring to punishment, if my influence can
produce that effect, those incendiaries who have endeavored to make
themselves the instruments of division between us_."
Here, Sir, is much heat and passion,--but no more consideration of the
distress of the country, from a failure of the means of subsistence, and
(if possible) the worse evil of an useless and licentious soldiery, than
if they were the most contemptible of all trifles. A letter is written,
in consequence, in such a style of lofty despotism as I believe has
hitherto been unexampled and unheard of in the records of the East. The
troops were continued. The _gradual_ relief, whose effect was to be so
_distant_, has _never_ been substantially and beneficially applied,--and
the country is ruined.
Mr. Hastings, two years after, when it was too late, saw the absolute
necessity of a removal of the intolerable grievance of this licentious
soldiery, which, under pretence of defending it, held the country under
military execution. A new treaty and arrangement, according to the
pleasure of Mr. Hastings, took place; and this new treaty was broken in
the old manner, in every essential article. The soldiery were again
sent, and again set loose. The effect of all his manoeuvres, from which
it seems he was sanguine enough to entertain hopes, upon the state of
the country, he himself informs us,--"The event has proved the _reverse_
of these hopes, and _accumulation of distress, debasement, and
dissatisfaction_ to the Nabob, and _disappointment and disgrace to
me_.--Every measure [which he had himself proposed] has been _so
conducted_ as to give him cause of displeasure. There are no officers
established by which his affairs could be regularly conducted: mean,
incapable, and indigent men have been appointed. A number of the
districts without authority, and without the means of personal
protection; some of them have been murdered by the zemindars, and those
zemindars, instead of punishment, have been permitted to retain their
zemindaries, with independent authority; _all_ the other zemindars
suffered to rise up in rebellion, and to insult the authority of the
sircar, without any attempt made to suppress them; and the Company's
debt, instead of being discharged by the assignments and extraordinary
sources of money provided for that _purpose, is likely to exceed even
the amount at which it stood at the time in which the arrangement with
his Excellency was concluded_." The House will smile at the resource on
which the Directors take credit as such a certainty in their curious
account.
This is Mr. Hastings's own narrative of the effects of his own
settlement. This is the state of the country which we have been told is
in perfect peace and order; and, what is curious, he informs us, that
_every part of this was foretold to him in the order and manner in which
it happened_, at the very time he made his arrangement of men and
measures.
The invariable course of the Company's policy is this: either they set
up some prince too odious to maintain himself without the necessity of
their assistance, or they soon render him odious by making him the
instrument of their government. In that case troops are bountifully sent
to him to maintain his authority. That he should have no want of
assistance, a civil gentleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court,
who, under pretence of providing duly for the pay of these troops, gets
assignments on the revenue into his hands. Under his provident
management, debts soon accumulate; new assignments are made for these
debts; until, step by step, the whole revenue, and with it the whole
power of the country, is delivered into his hands. The military do not
behold without a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the civil
department. They feel that in a country driven to habitual rebellion by
the civil government the military is necessary; and they will not permit
their services to go unrewarded. Tracts of country are delivered over to
their discretion. Then it is found proper to convert their commanding
officers into farmers of revenue. Thus, between the well-paid civil and
well-rewarded military establishment, the situation of the natives may
be easily conjectured. The authority of the regular and lawful
government is everywhere and in every point extinguished. Disorders and
violences arise; they are repressed by other disorders and other
violences. Wherever the collectors of the revenue and the farming
colonels and majors move, ruin is about them, rebellion before and
behind them. The people in crowds fly out of the country; and the
frontier is guarded by lines of troops, not to exclude an enemy, but to
prevent the escape of the inhabitants.
By these means, in the course of not more than four or five years, this
once opulent and flourishing country, which, by the accounts given in
the Bengal consultations, yielded more than three crore of sicca rupees,
that is, above three millions sterling, annually, is reduced, as far as
I can discover, in a matter purposely involved in the utmost perplexity,
to less than one million three hundred thousand pounds, and that exacted
by every mode of rigor that can be devised. To complete the business,
most of the wretched remnants of this revenue are mortgaged, and
delivered into the hands of the usurers at Benares (for there alone are
to be found some lingering remains of the ancient wealth of these
regions) at an interest of near _thirty per cent per annum_.
The revenues in this manner failing, they seized upon the estates of
every person of eminence in the country, and, under the name of
_resumption_, confiscated their property. I wish, Sir, to be understood
universally and literally, when I assert that there is not left one man
of property and substance for his rank in the whole of these provinces,
in provinces which are nearly the extent of England and Wales taken
together: not one landholder, not one banker, not one merchant, not one
even of those who usually perish last, the _ultimum moriens_ in a ruined
state, not one farmer of revenue.
One country for a while remained, which stood as an island in the midst
of the grand waste of the Company's dominion. My right honorable friend,
in his admirable speech on moving the bill, just touched the situation,
the offences, and the punishment of a native prince, called Fizulla
Khân. This man, by policy and force, had protected himself from the
general extirpation of the Rohilla chiefs. He was secured (if that were
any security) by a treaty. It was stated to you, as it was stated by the
enemies of that unfortunate man, "that the whole of his country _is_
what the whole country of the Rohillas _was_, cultivated like a garden,
without one neglected spot in it." Another accuser says,--"Fyzoolah
Khan, though a bad soldier, [that is the true source of his misfortune,]
has approved himself a good aumil,--having, it is supposed, in the
course of a few years, at least _doubled_ the population and revenue of
his country." In another part of the correspondence he is charged with
making his country an asylum for the oppressed peasants who fly from the
territories of Oude. The improvement of his revenue, arising from this
single crime, (which Mr. Hastings considers as tantamount to treason,)
is stated at an hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.
Dr. Swift somewhere says, that he who could make two blades of grass
grow where but one grew before was a greater benefactor to the human
race than all the politicians that ever existed. This prince, who would
have been deified by antiquity, who would have been ranked with Osiris,
and Bacchus, and Ceres, and the divinities most propitious to men, was,
for those very merits, by name attacked by the Company's government, as
a cheat, a robber, a traitor. In the same breath in which he was
accused as a rebel, he was ordered at once to furnish five thousand
horse. On delay, or (according to the technical phrase, when any
remonstrance is made to them) "_on evasion_," he was declared a violator
of treaties, and everything he had was to be taken from him. Not one
word, however, of horse in this treaty.
The territory of this Fizulla Khân, Mr. Speaker, is less than the County
of Norfolk. It is an inland country, full seven hundred miles from any
seaport, and not distinguished for any one considerable branch of
manufacture whatsoever. From this territory several very considerable
sums had at several times been paid to the British resident. The demand
of cavalry, without a shadow or decent pretext of right, amounted to
three hundred thousand a year more, at the lowest computation; and it is
stated, by the last person sent to negotiate, as a demand of little use,
if it could be complied with,--but that the compliance was impossible,
as it amounted to more than his territories could supply, if there had
been no other demand upon him. Three hundred thousand pounds a year from
an inland country not so large as Norfolk!
The thing most extraordinary was to hear the culprit defend himself from
the imputation of his virtues, as if they had been the blackest
offences. He extenuated the superior cultivation of his country. He
denied its population. He endeavored to prove that he had often sent
back the poor peasant that sought shelter with him.--I can make no
observation on this.
After a variety of extortions and vexations, too fatiguing to you, too
disgusting to me, to go through with, they found "that they ought to be
in a better state to warrant forcible means"; they therefore contented
themselves with a gross sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for
their present demand. They offered him, indeed, an indemnity from their
exactions in future for three hundred thousand pounds more. But he
refused to buy their securities,--pleading (probably with truth) his
poverty; but if the plea were not founded, in my opinion very wisely:
not choosing to deal any more in that dangerous commodity of the
Company's faith; and thinking it better to oppose distress and unarmed
obstinacy to uncolored exaction than to subject himself to be considered
as a cheat, if he should make a treaty in the least beneficial to
himself.
Thus they executed an exemplary punishment on Fizulla Khân for the
culture of his country. But, conscious that the prevention of evils is
the great object of all good regulation, they deprived him of the means
of increasing that criminal cultivation in future, by exhausting his
coffers; and that the population of his country should no more be a
standing reproach and libel on the Company's government, they bound him
by a positive engagement not to afford any shelter whatsoever to the
farmers and laborers who should seek refuge in his territories from the
exactions of the British residents in Oude. When they had done all this
effectually, they gave him a full and complete acquittance from all
charges of rebellion, or of any intention to rebel, or of his having
originally had any interest in, or any means of, rebellion.
These intended rebellions are one of the Company's standing resources.
When money has been thought to be heaped up anywhere, its owners are
universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their
money and their treasons at once. The money once taken, all accusation,
trial, and punishment ends. It is so settled a resource, that I rather
wonder how it comes to be omitted in the Directors' account; but I take
it for granted this omission will be supplied in their next edition.
The Company stretched this resource to the full extent, when they
accused two old women, in the remotest corner of India, (who could have
no possible view or motive to raise disturbances,) of being engaged in
rebellion, with an intent to drive out the English nation, in whose
protection, purchased by money and secured by treaty, rested the sole
hope of their existence. But the Company wanted money, and the old women
_must_ be guilty of a plot. They were accused of rebellion, and they
were convicted of wealth. Twice had great sums been extorted from them,
and as often had the British faith guarantied the remainder. A body of
British troops, with one of the military farmers-general at their head,
was sent to seize upon the castle in which these helpless women resided.
Their chief eunuchs, who were their agents, their guardians, protectors,
persons of high rank according to the Eastern manners, and of great
trust, were thrown into dungeons, to make them discover their hidden
treasures; and there they lie at present. The lands assigned for the
maintenance of the women were seized and confiscated. Their jewels and
effects were taken, and set up to a pretended auction in an obscure
place, and bought at such a price as the gentlemen thought proper to
give. No account has ever been transmitted of the articles or produce of
this sale. What money was obtained is unknown, or what terms were
stipulated for the maintenance of these despoiled and forlorn
creatures: for by some particulars it appears as if an engagement of the
kind was made.
Let me here remark, once for all, that though the act of 1773 requires
that an account of all proceedings should be diligently transmitted,
that this, like all the other injunctions of the law, is totally
despised, and that half at least of the most important papers are
intentionally withheld.
I wish you, Sir, to advert particularly, in this transaction, to the
quality and the numbers of the persons spoiled, and the instrument by
whom that spoil was made. These ancient matrons, called the Begums, or
Princesses, were of the first birth and quality in India: the one
mother, the other wife, of the late Nabob of Oude, Sujah Dowlah, a
prince possessed of extensive and flourishing dominions, and the second
man in the Mogul Empire. This prince (suspicious, and not unjustly
suspicious, of his son and successor) at his death committed his
treasures and his family to the British faith. That family and household
consisted of _two thousand women_, to which were added two other
seraglios of near kindred, and said to be extremely numerous, and (as I
am well informed) of about fourscore of the Nabob's children, with all
the eunuchs, the ancient servants, and a multitude of the dependants of
his splendid court. These were all to be provided, for present
maintenance and future establishment, from the lands assigned as dower,
and from the treasures which he left to these matrons, in trust for the
whole family.
So far as to the objects of the spoil. The _instrument_ chosen by Mr.
Hastings to despoil the relict of Sujah Dowlah was _her own son_, the
reigning Nabob of Oude. It was the pious hand of a son that was selected
to tear from his mother and grandmother the provision of their age, the
maintenance of his brethren, and of all the ancient household of his
father. [_Here a laugh, from some young members_.] The laugh is
_seasonable_, and the occasion decent and proper.
By the last advices, something of the sum extorted remained unpaid. The
women, in despair, refuse to deliver more, unless their lands are
restored, and their ministers released from prison; but Mr. Hastings and
his council, steady to their point, and consistent to the last in their
conduct, write to the resident to stimulate the son to accomplish the
filial acts he had brought so near to their perfection. "We desire," say
they in their letter to the resident, (written so late as March last,)
"that you will inform us if any, and what means, have been taken for
recovering the balance due from the Begum [Princess] at Fyzabad; and
that, if necessary, you _recommend_ it to the vizier to enforce _the
most effectual means_ for that purpose."
What their effectual means of enforcing demands on women of high rank
and condition are I shall show you, Sir, in a few minutes, when I
represent to you another of these plots and rebellions, which _always_
in India, though so _rarely_ anywhere else, are the offspring of an easy
condition and hoarded riches.
Benares is the capital city of the Indian religion. It is regarded as
holy by a particular and distinguished sanctity; and the Gentoos in
general think themselves as much obliged to visit it once in their lives
as the Mahometans to perform their pilgrimage to Mecca. By this means
that city grew great in commerce and opulence; and so effectually was it
secured by the pious veneration of that people, that in all wars and in
all violences of power there was so sure an asylum both for poverty and
wealth, (as it were under a divine protection,) that the wisest laws and
best assured free constitution could not better provide for the relief
of the one or the safety of the other; and this tranquillity influenced
to the greatest degree the prosperity of all the country, and the
territory of which it was the capital. The interest of money there was
not more than half the usual rate in which it stood in all other places.
The reports have fully informed you of the means and of the terms in
which this city and the territory called Ghazipoor, of which it was the
head, came under the sovereignty of the East India Company.
If ever there was a subordinate dominion pleasantly circumstanced to the
superior power, it was this. A large rent or tribute, to the amount of
two hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year, was paid in monthly
instalments with the punctuality of a dividend at the Bank. If ever
there was a prince who could not have an interest in disturbances, it
was its sovereign, the Rajah Cheit Sing. He was in possession of the
capital of his religion, and a willing revenue was paid by the devout
people who resorted to him from all parts. His sovereignty and his
independence, except his tribute, was secured by every tie. His
territory was not much less than half of Ireland, and displayed in all
parts a degree of cultivation, ease, and plenty, under his frugal and
paternal management, which left him nothing to desire, either for honor
or satisfaction.
This was the light in which this country appeared to almost every eye.
But Mr. Hastings beheld it askance. Mr. Hastings tells us that it was
_reported_ of this Cheit Sing, that his father left him a million
sterling, and that he made annual accessions to the hoard. Nothing could
be so obnoxious to indigent power. So much wealth could not be innocent.
The House is fully acquainted with the unfounded and unjust requisitions
which were made upon this prince. The question has been most ably and
conclusively cleared up in one of the reports of the select committee,
and in an answer of the Court of Directors to an extraordinary
publication against them by their servant, Mr. Hastings. But I mean to
pass by these exactions as if they were perfectly just and regular; and
having admitted them, I take what I shall now trouble you with only as
it serves to show the spirit of the Company's government, the mode in
which it is carried on, and the maxims on which it proceeds.
Mr. Hastings, from whom I take the doctrine, endeavors to prove that
Cheit Sing was no sovereign prince, but a mere zemindar, or common
subject, holding land by rent. If this be granted to him, it is next to
be seen under what terms he is of opinion such a landholder, that is a
British subject, holds his life and property under the Company's
government. It is proper to understand well the doctrines of the person
whose administration has lately received such distinguished approbation
from the Company. His doctrine is,--"That the Company, or the _person
delegated by it_, holds _an absolute_ authority over such
zemindars;--that he [such a subject] owes _an implicit_ and _unreserved_
obedience to its authority, at the _forfeiture_ even of his _life_ and
_property_, at the DISCRETION of those who held _or fully represented_
the sovereign authority;--and that _these_ rights are _fully_ delegated
_to him_, Mr. Hastings."