I know that a good deal of latitude is allowed to advocates, when

opening a cause in a private court, to indulge themselves in their

narratives leading to the charges they intend to bring. They are not

always called to the strictest account for such prefatory matter,

because the court, when it comes to judge, sifts and distinguishes it

from the points to be strictly proved, and on whose merits the cause

relies. But I wish your Lordships to know, that, with the high opinion I

have of your gravity, (and it is impossible for a man to conceive a

higher,) and sensible of the weight of those I represent at this place,

namely, the Commons of Great Britain, I should be sorry that any one

substantial fact, even in this explanatory opening, or even the color of

the fact, should be alleged, which, when called upon, I should not be

ready to make good to you by proof,--I mean, by proof adapted to its

nature: public opinion, by evidence of public opinion; by record, that

to which record is applicable; by oral testimony, things to which oral

testimony alone can be produced; and, last of all, that which is matter

of historic proof, by historic evidence. This I hope to do with the

usual allowance to errors and mistakes, which is the claim of human

infirmity.

Then, my Lords, two distinct people inhabit India. Two sorts of people

inhabit the same country, as totally distinct from each other, in

characters, lives, opinions, prejudices, and manners, as the inhabitants

of countries most remote from each other. For both of these descriptions

Mr. Hastings was bound to provide equally, agreeable to the terms of

the charter which the Company received from the lawful governing power

of that country: a charter received at its own solicitation; a charter

not forced upon us by a superior power, but given at the immediate

solicitation of the principal servants belonging to the Company; a

charter solemnly accepted by the Company, and by them, I am very sorry

to say, little regarded,--or, at least, little regarded by their

principal servants.

My Lords, the first description of people who are subjected virtually to

the British empire through those mediums which I have described to you

are the original inhabitants of Hindostan, who have in all time, and

beyond all the eras which we use, (I mean always the two grand eras

excepted,) been the aboriginal inhabitants and proprietors of that

country,--with manners, religion, customs, and usages appropriated to

themselves, and little resembling those of the rest of mankind. This

description of men is commonly called Gentoos. The system and principle

of that government is locality. Their laws, their manners, their

religion are all local.

Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was is a matter lost in

the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading

principle of his policy to connect the people with their soil.

Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger acquaintance with

our species daily discovers, and which perhaps an attentive reflection

might explain in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of

India,--who are the softest in their manners of any of our race,

approaching almost to feminine tenderness,--who are formed

constitutionally benevolent, and, in many particulars, made to fill a

larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in,--who extend their

good-will to the whole animal creation,--these people are, of all

nations, the most unalliable to any other part of mankind. They cannot,

the highest orders of them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any

other. That bond which is one of the chief instruments of society, and

which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no

existence with them: I mean the convivial bond. That race can be held to

no other by that great link of life. No Hindoo can mix at meals even

with those on whom he depends for the meat he eats. This circumstance

renders it difficult for us to enter with due sympathy into their

concerns, or for them to enter into ours, even when we meet on the same

ground. But there are other circumstances which render our intercourse,

in our mutual relation, very full of difficulty. The sea is between us.

The mass of that element, which, by appearing to disconnect, unites

mankind, is to them a forbidden road. It is a great gulf fixed between

you and them,--not so much that elementary gulf, but that gulf which

manners, opinions, and laws have radicated in the very nature of the

people. None of their high castes, without great danger to his

situation, religion, rank, and estimation, can ever pass the sea; and

this forbids, forever, all direct communication between that country and

this. That material and affecting circumstance, my Lords, makes it ten

times more necessary, since they cannot come to us, to keep a strict eye

upon all persons who go to them. It imposes upon us a stricter duty to

guard with a firm and powerful vigilance those whose principles of

conscience weaken their principles of self-defence. If we undertake to

govern the inhabitants of such a country, we must govern them upon their

own principles and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think to force

them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in

their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result

from both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have

more versatility of character and manners, and it is we who must

conform. We know what the empire of opinion is in human nature. I had

almost said that the law of opinion was human nature itself. It is,

however, the strongest principle in the composition of the frame of the

human mind; and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides

in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put

together. But if such is the empire of opinion even amongst us, it has a

pure, unrestrained, complete, and despotic power amongst them. The

variety of balanced opinions in our minds weakens the force of each: for

in Europe, sometimes, the laws of religion differ from the laws of the

land; sometimes the laws of the land differ from our laws of honor; our

laws of honor are full of caprice, differing from those other laws, and

sometimes differing from themselves: but there the laws of religion, the

laws of the land, and the laws of honor are all united and consolidated

in one invariable system, and bind men by eternal and indissoluble bonds

to the rules of what, amongst them, is called his _caste_.

It may be necessary just to state to your Lordships what a _caste_ is.

The Gentoo people, from the oldest time, have been distributed into

various orders, all of them hereditary: these family orders are called

castes; these castes are the fundamental part of the constitution of

the Gentoo commonwealth, both in their church and in their state.

Your Lordships are born to hereditary honors in the chief of your

houses; the rest mix with the people. With the Gentoos, they who are

born noble can never fall into any second rank. They are divided into

four orders,--the Brahmins, the Chittery, the Bice, and the Soodur, with

many subdivisions in each. An eternal barrier is placed between them.

The higher cannot pass into the lower; the lower cannot rise into the

higher. They have all their appropriated rank, place, and situation, and

their appropriated religion too, which is essentially different in its

rites and ceremonies, sometimes in its object, in each of those castes.

A man who is born in the highest caste, which at once unites what would

be tantamount in this country to the dignity of the peerage and the

ennobled sanctity of the episcopal character,--the Brahmin, who sustains

these characters, if he loses his caste, does not fall into an inferior

order, the Chittery, the Bice, or the Soodur, but he is thrown at once

out of all ranks of society. He is precipitated from the proudest

elevation of respect and honor to a bottomless abyss of contempt,--from

glory to infamy,--from purity to pollution,--from sanctity to

profanation. No honest occupation is open to him; his children are no

longer his children; their parent loses that name; the conjugal bond is

dissolved. Few survive this most terrible of all calamities. To speak to

an Indian of his caste is to speak to him of his all.

But the rule of caste has, with them, given one power more to fortune

than the manners of any other nation were ever known to do. For it is

singular, the caste may be lost, not only by certain voluntary crimes,

but by certain involuntary sufferings, disgraces, and pollutions, that

are utterly out of their power to prevent. Those who have patiently

submitted to imprisonment,--those who have not flinched from the

scourge,--those who have been as unmoved as marble under torture,--those

who have laughed at the menaces of death itself,--have instantly given

way, when it has been attempted to subject them to any of those

pollutions by which they lose caste. To this caste they are bound by all

laws of all descriptions, human and divine; and inveterate usage has

radicated it in them to a depth and with an adhesion with which no other

known prejudice has been known to exist. Tyranny is therefore armed

against them with a greater variety of weapons than are found in its

ordinary stores.

This, amongst a thousand other considerations, speaks to us in very

authoritative language with what care and circumspection we ought to

handle people so delicate. In the course of this trial your Lordships

will see with horror the use which Mr. Hastings made, through several of

his wicked and abominable instruments, chosen from the natives

themselves, of these superadded means of oppression. I shall prove, in

the course of this trial, that he has put his own menial domestic

servant,--a wretch totally dependent,--a wretch grossly ignorant,--the

common instrument of his bribery and peculation,--he has enthroned him,

I say, on the first seat of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which was to

decide upon the castes of all those people, including their rank, their

family, their honor, and their happiness here, and, in their judgment,

their salvation hereafter. Under the awe of this power, no man dared to

breathe a murmur against his tyranny. Fortified in this security, he

says, "Who complains of me!"--"No, none of us dare complain of you,"

says the trembling Gentoo. "No! your menial servant has my caste in his

power."--I shall not trouble your Lordships with mentioning others; it

was enough that Cantoo Baboo, and Ginga Govind Sing, names to which your

Lordships are to be familiarized hereafter,--it is enough that those

persons had the caste and character of all the people of Bengal in their

hands. Through them he has taken effectual security against all

complaint. Your Lordships will hence discern how very necessary it is

become that some other personage should intervene, should take upon him

their representation, and by his freedom and his power should supply the

defects arising from their servitude and their impotence. The Commons of

Great Britain charge themselves with this character.

My Lords, these Gentoo people are the original people of Hindostan. They

are still, beyond comparison, the most numerous. Faults this nation may

have; but God forbid we should pass judgment upon people who framed

their laws and institutions prior to our insect origin of yesterday!

With all the faults of their nature and errors of their institutions,

their institutions, which act so powerfully on their natures, have two

material characteristics which entitle them to respect: first, great

force and stability; and next, excellent moral and civil effects.

Their stability has been proved by their holding on an uniform tenor for

a duration commensurate to all the empires with which history has made

us acquainted; and they still exist in a green old age, with all the

reverence of antiquity, and with all the passion that people have to

novelty and change. They have stood firm on their ancient base; they

have cast their roots deep in their native soil,--perhaps because they

have never spread them anywhere else than in their native soil. Their

blood, their opinions, and the soil of their country make one consistent

piece, admitting no mixture, no adulteration, no improvement:

accordingly, their religion has made no converts, their dominion has

made no conquests; but in proportion as their laws and opinions were

concentred within themselves, and hindered from spreading abroad, they

have doubled their force at home. They have existed in spite of

Mahomedan and Portuguese bigotry,--in spite of Tartarian and Arabian

tyranny,--in spite of all the fury of successive foreign conquest,--in

spite of a more formidable foe, the avarice of the English dominion.

I have spoken now, my Lords, of what their principles are, their laws

and religious institutions, in point of force and stability; I have

given instances of their force in the very circumstance in which all the

institutions of mankind in other respects show their weakness. They have

existed, when the country has been otherwise subdued. This alone

furnishes full proof that there must be some powerful influence

resulting from them beyond all our little fashionable theories upon such

subjects.

The second consideration in the Gentoo institutions is their beneficial

effects, moral and civil. The policy, civil or religious, or, as theirs

is, composed of both, that makes a people happy and a state flourishing,

(putting further and higher considerations out of the way, which are not

now before us,) must undoubtedly, so far as human considerations

prevail, be a policy wisely conceived in any scheme of government. It

is confirmed by all observation, that, where the Hindoo religion has

been established, that country has been flourishing. We have seen some

patterns remaining to this day. The very country which is to be the

subject of your Lordships' judicial inquiry is an instance, by an entire

change of government, of the different effects resulting from the

rapacity of a foreign hand, and the paternal, lenient, protecting arm of

a native government, formed on the long connection of prejudice and

power. I shall give you its state under the Hindoo government from a

book written by a very old servant of the Company, whose authority is of

the greater weight, as the very destruction of all this scheme of

government is the great object of the author.

The author, Mr. Holwell, divides the country of Bengal into its

different provinces. He supposes what they then paid to the supreme

government; he supposes what the country is capable of yielding; and his

project is, to change entirely the application of the revenues of the

country, and to secure the whole into the hands of government. In

enumerating these provinces, at last he comes to the province of

Burdwan.

"In truth," (says this author,) "it would be almost cruelty to molest

this happy people; for in this district are the only vestiges of the

beauty, purity, piety, regularity, equity, and strictness of the ancient

Hindostan government. Here the property as well as the liberty of the

people are inviolate. Here no robberies are heard of, either public or

private. The traveller, either with or without merchandise, becomes the

immediate care of the government, which allots him guards, without any

expense, to conduct him from stage to stage; and these are accountable

for the safety and accommodation of his person and effects. At the end

of the first stage he is delivered over, with certain benevolent

formalities, to the guards of the next, who, after interrogating the

traveller as to the usage he had received in his journey, dismiss the

first guard with a written certificate of their behavior, and a receipt

for the traveller and his effects; which certificate and receipt are

returnable to the commanding officer of the first stage, who registers

the same, and regularly reports it to the rajah.

"In this form the traveller is passed through the country; and if he

only passes, he is not suffered to be at any expense for food,

accommodation, or carriage for his merchandise or baggage: but it is

otherwise, if he is permitted to make any residence in one place above

three days, unless occasioned by sickness, or any unavoidable accident.

If anything is lost in this district,--for instance, a bag of money or

other valuables,--the person who finds it hangs it upon the next tree,

and gives notice to the nearest _chowkey_, or place of guard, the

officer of which orders immediate publication of the same by beat of

_tomtom_, or drum."

These, my Lords, are the effects universally produced by the Hindoo

polity throughout that vast region, before it was distorted and put out

of frame by the barbarism of foreign conquests. Some choice, reserved

spots continued to flourish under it to the year 1756. Some remained

till Mr. Hastings obtained the means of utterly defacing them. Such was

the prospect of Benares under the happy government of Bulwant Sing.

Such was the happy state of the same Benares in the happy days of Cheyt

Sing, until, in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings introduced _his_ reform into

that country.

Having stated the general outline of the manners of the original people

of Hindostan, having stated the general principles of their policy,

which either prohibit connection, or oblige us to a connection very

different from what we have hitherto used towards them, I shall leave it

to your Lordships' judgment whether you will suffer such fair monuments

of wisdom and benevolence to be defaced by the rapacity of your

governors. I hope I have not gone out of my way to bring before you any

circumstance relative to the Gentoo religion and manners, further than

as they relate to the spirit of our government over them; for though

there never was such food for the curiosity of the human mind as is

found in the manners of this people, I pass it totally over.

* * * * *

I wish to divide this preliminary view into six periods; and your

Lordships will consider that of the Hindoos, which I have now mentioned,

as the first era.

The second era is an era of great misfortune to that country, and to the

world in general: I mean, the time of the prophet Mahomed. The

enthusiasm which animated his first followers, the despotic power which

religion obtained through that enthusiasm, and the advantages derived

from both over the enervated great empires, and broken, disunited,

lesser governments of the world, extended the influence of that proud

and domineering sect from the banks of the Ganges to the banks of the

Loire.

This second period is the era of the Arabs. These people made a great

and lasting impression on India. They established, very early, Mahomedan

sovereigns in all parts of it, particularly in the kingdom of Bengal,

which is the principal object of our present inquiry. They held that

kingdom for a long series of years, under a dynasty of thirty-three

kings,--having begun their conquest and founded their dominion in Bengal

not very long after the time of their prophet.

These people, when they first settled in India, attempted, with the

ferocious arm of their prophetic sword, to change the religion and

manners of that country; but at length perceiving that their cruelty

wearied out itself, and never could touch the constancy of the

sufferers, they permitted the native people of the country to remain in

quiet, and left the Mahomedan religion to operate upon them as it could,

by appealing to the ambition or avarice of the great, or by taking the

lower people, who had lost their castes, into this new sect, and thus,

from the refuse of the Gentoo, increasing the bounds of the Mahomedan

religion. They left many of the ancient rajahs of the country possessed

of an inferior sovereignty; and where the strength of the country, or

other circumstances, would not permit this subordination, they suffered

them to continue in a separate state, approaching to independence, if

not wholly independent.

The Mahomedans, during the period of the Arabs, never expelled or

destroyed the native Gentoo nobility, zemindars, or landholders of the

country. They all, or almost all, remained fixed in their places,

properties, and dignities; and the shadows of several of them remain

under our jurisdiction.

The next, which is the third era, is an era the more necessary to

observe upon, because Mr. Hastings has made many applications to it in

his defence before the Commons: namely, the invasion of the Tartars, or

the era of Tamerlane. These Tartars did not establish themselves on the

ruins of the Hindoos. Their conquests were over the other Mahomedans:

for Tamerlane invaded Hindostan, as he invaded other countries, in the

character of the great reformer of the Mahomedan religion. He came as a

sort of successor to the rights of the Prophet, upon a divine title. He

struck at all the Mahomedan princes who reigned at that time. He

considered them as apostates, or at least as degenerated from the faith,

and as tyrants abusing their power. To facilitate his conquests over

these, he was often obliged to come to a sort of a composition with the

people of the country he invaded. Tamerlane had neither time nor means

nor inclination to dispossess the ancient rajahs of the country.

Your Lordships will observe that I propose nothing more than to give you

an idea of the principles of policy which prevailed in these several

revolutions, and not an history of the furious military achievements of

a barbarous invader. Historians, indeed, are generally very liberal of

their information concerning everything but what we ought to be very

anxious to know. They tell us that India was conquered by Tamerlane, and

conquered in such a year. The year will be found to coincide somewhere,

I believe, with the end of the fourteenth century. Thinking the mere

fact as of little moment, and its chronology as nothing, but thinking

the policy very material, which, indeed, is to be collected only here

and there, in various books written with various views, I shall beg

leave to lay before you a very remarkable circumstance relative to that

policy, and taken from the same book to which I formerly referred, Mr.

Holwell's.

"When the Hindoo rajahs, or princes of Hindostan, submitted to

Tamerlane, it was on these capital stipulations: that the emperor should

marry a daughter of Rajah Cheyt Sing's house; that the head of this

house should be in perpetuity governors of the citadel of Agra, and

anoint the king at his coronation; and that the emperors should never

impose the _jessera_ (or poll-tax) upon the Hindoos."

Here was a conqueror, as he is called, coming in upon terms; mixing his

blood with that of the native nobility of the country he conquered, and,

in consequence of this mixture, placing them in succession upon the

throne of the country he subdued; making one of them even hereditary

constable of the capital of his kingdom, and thereby putting his

posterity as a pledge into their hands. What is full as remarkable, he

freed the Hindoos forever from that tax which the Mahomedans have laid

upon every country over which the sword of Mahomet prevailed,--namely, a

capitation tax upon all who do not profess the religion of the

Mahomedans. But the Hindoos, by express charter, were exempted from that

mark of servitude, and thereby declared not to be a conquered people.

The native princes, in all their transactions with the Mogul government,

carried the evident marks of this free condition in a noble independency

of spirit. Within their own districts the authority of many of them

seemed entire. We are often led into mistakes concerning the government

of Hindostan, by comparing it with those governments where the prince is

armed with a full, speculative, entire authority, and where the great

people have, with great titles, no privileges at all, or, having

privileges, have those privileges only as subjects. But in Hindostan the

modes, the degrees, the circumstances of subjection varied infinitely.

In some places hardly a trace at all of subjection was to be discerned;

in some the rajahs were almost assessors of the throne, as in this case

of the Rajah Cheyt Sing. These circumstances mark, that Tamerlane,

however he may be indicated by the odious names of Tartar and Conqueror,

was no barbarian; that the people who submitted to him did not submit

with the abject submission of slaves to the sword of a conqueror, but

admitted a great supreme emperor, who was just, prudent, and politic,

instead of the ferocious, oppressive, lesser Mahomedan sovereigns, who

had before forced their way by the sword into the country.

That country resembled more a republic of princes with a great chief at

their head than a territory in absolute, uniform, systematic subjection

from one end to the other,--in which light Mr. Hastings and others of

late have thought proper to consider it. According to them, if a

subordinate prince, like Cheyt Sing, was not ready to pay any exorbitant

sum on instant demand, or submit to any extent of fine which should be

inflicted upon him by the mere will of the person who called _robbery_ a

_fine_, and who took the measure of that fine without either considering

the means of paying or the degree of delinquency that justified it,

their properties, liberties, and lives were instantly forfeited. The

rajahs of that country were armed; they had fortresses for their

security; they had troops. In the receipt of both their own and the

imperial revenue, their securities for justice were in their own hands:

but the policy of the Mogul princes very rarely led them to push that

people to such extremity as it is supposed that on every slight occasion

we have a right to push those who are the subjects of our pretended

conquest.

Mr. Holwell throws much light on this policy, which became the standing

law of the empire.

In the unfortunate wars which followed the death of Mauz-o-Din, "Sevajee

Cheyt Sing," (the great rajah we have just mentioned,) "with a select

body of Rajpoots, by a well-conducted retreat recovered Agra, and was

soon after reconciled to the king [the Mogul] and admitted to his

favor,--conformable to the steady policy of this government, in keeping

a good understanding with the principal rajahs, and more especially with

the head of this house, who is ever capable of raising and fomenting a

very formidable party upon any intended revolution in this despotic and

precarious monarchy."

You see that it was the monarchy that was precarious, not the rights of

the subordinate chiefs. Your Lordships see, that, notwithstanding our

ideas of Oriental despotism, under the successors of Tamerlane, these

principal rajahs, instead of being called wretches, and treated as such,

as Mr. Hastings has thought it becoming to call and treat them, when

they were in arms against their sovereign, were regarded with respect,

and were admitted to easy reconciliations; because, in reality, in their

occasional hostilities, they were not properly rebellious subjects, but

princes often asserting their natural rights and the just constitution

of the country.

This view of the policy which prevailed during the dynasty of Tamerlane

naturally conducts me to the next, which is the fourth era in this

history: I mean the era of the Emperor Akbar. He was the first of the

successors of Tamerlane who obtained possession of Bengal. It is easy to

show of what nature his conquest was. It was over the last Mahomedan

dynasty. He, too, like his predecessor, Tamerlane, conquered the prince,

not the country. It is a certain mark that it was not a conquered

country in the sense in which we commonly call a country conquered, that

the natives, great men and landholders, continued in every part in the

possession of their estates, and of the jurisdictions annexed to them.

It is true, that, in the several wars for the succession to the Mogul

empire, and in other of their internal wars, severe revenges were taken,

which bore resemblance to those taken in the wars of the Roses in this

country, where it was the common course, in the heat of blood,--"Off

with his head!--so much for Buckingham!" Yet, where the country again

recovered its form and settlement, it recovered the spirit of a mild

government. Whatever rigor was used with regard to the Mahomedan

adventurers from Persia, Turkey, and other parts, who filled the places

of servile grandeur in the Mogul court, the Hindoos were a favored,

protected, gently treated people.

The next, which is the fifth era, is a troubled and vexatious

period,--the era of the independent Subahs of Bengal. Five of these

subahs, or viceroys, governed from about the year 1717, or thereabouts.

They grew into independence partly by the calamities and concussions of

that empire, which happened during the disputes for the succession of

Tamerlane, and partly, and indeed principally, by the great shook which

the empire received when Thamas Kouli Khân broke into that country,

carried off its revenues, overturned the throne, and massacred not only

many of the chief nobility, but almost all the inhabitants of the

capital city. This rude shock, which that empire was never able to

recover, enabled the viceroys to become independent; but their

independence led to their ruin. Those who had usurped upon their masters

had servants who usurped upon them. Aliverdy Khân murdered his master,

and opened a way into Bengal for a body of foreign invaders, the

Mahrattas, who cruelly harassed the country for several years. Their

retreat was at length purchased, and by a sum which is supposed to

amount to five millions sterling. By this purchase he secured the

exhausted remains of an exhausted kingdom, and left it to his grandson,

Surajah Dowlah, in peace and poverty. On the fall of Surajah Dowlah, in

1756, commenced the last, which is the sixth,--the era of the British

empire.

On the fifth dynasty I have only to remark to your Lordships, that at

its close the Hindoo chiefs were almost everywhere found in possession

of the country; that, although Aliverdy Khân was a cruel tyrant, though

he was an untitled usurper, though he racked and tormented the people

under his government, urged, however, by an apparent necessity from an

invading army of one hundred thousand horse in his dominions,--yet,

under him, the rajahs still preserved their rank, their dignity, their

castles, their houses, their seigniories, all the insignia of their

situation, and always the right, sometimes also the means, of protecting

their subordinate people, till the last and unfortunate era of 1756.

Through the whole of this sketch of history I wish to impress but one

great and important truth upon your minds: namely, that, through all

these revolutions in government and changes in power, an Hindoo polity,

and the spirit of an Hindoo government, did more or less exist in that

province with which he was concerned, until it was finally to be

destroyed by Mr. Hastings.

* * * * *

My Lords, I have gone through all the eras precedent to those of the

British power in India, and am come to the first of those eras. Mr.

Hastings existed in India, and was a servant of the Company before that

era, and had his education between both. He is an antediluvian with

regard to the British dominion in Bengal. He was coexistent with all the

acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small share in all the

abuses of that abusive period which preceded his actual government. Bat

as it was during that transit from Eastern to Western power that most of

the abuses had their origin, it will not be perfectly easy for your

Lordships thoroughly to enter into the nature and circumstances of them

without an explanation of the principal events that happened from the

year 1756 until the commencement of Mr. Hastings's government,--during a

good part of which time we do not often lose sight of him. If I find it

agreeable to your Lordships, if I find that you wish to know these

annals of Indian suffering and British delinquency, if you desire that I

should unfold the series of the transactions from 1756 to the period of

Mr. Hastings's government in 1771, that you may know how far he promoted

what was good, how far he rectified what was evil, how far he abstained

from innovation in tyranny, and contented himself with the old stock of

abuse, your Lordships will have the goodness to consult the strength

which from late indisposition, begins almost to fail me. And if you

think the explanation is not time lost in this new world and in this new

business, I shall venture to sketch out, as briefly and with as much

perspicuity as I can give them, the leading events of that obscure and

perplexed period which intervened between the British settlement in 1757

and Mr. Hastings's government. If I should be so happy as to succeed in

that attempt, your Lordships' minds will be prepared for hearing this

cause. Then your Lordships will have a clear view of the origin and

nature of the abuses which prevailed in that government before Mr.

Hastings obtained his greatest power, and since that time; and then we

shall be able to enter fully and explicitly into the nature of the

cause: and I should hope that it will pave the way and make everything

easy for your subsequent justice.

I therefore wish to stop at this period, in which Mr. Hastings became

active in the service, pretty near the time when he began his political

career: and here, my Lords, I pause, wishing your indulgence at such

time as will suit your convenience for pursuing the rest of this

eventful history.

SPEECH

IN

OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT.

SECOND DAY: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1788.

My Lords,--In what I had the honor of laying before your Lordships

yesterday, and in what I may further trouble you with to-day, I wish to

observe a distinction, which if I did not lay down so perfectly as I

ought, I hope I shall now be able to mark it out with sufficient

exactness and perspicuity.

First, I beg leave to observe that what I shall think necessary to

state, as matter of preliminary explanation, in order to give your

Lordships a true idea of the scene of action, of the instruments which

Mr. Hastings employed, and the effects which they produced,--all this I

wish to be distinguished from matter brought to criminate. Even the

matter, as stated by me, which may be hereafter brought to criminate, so

far as it falls to my share at present, is only to be considered, in

this stage of the business, as merely illustrative. Your Lordships are

to expect, as undoubtedly you will require, substantial matter of

crimination to be laid open for that purpose at the moment when the

evidence to each charge is ready to be produced to you. Thus your

Lordships will easily separate historical illustration from criminal

opening. For instance, if I stated yesterday to your Lordships, as I

did, the tyranny and cruelty of one of the usurping viceroys, whose

usurpation and whose vices led the way to the destruction of his country

and the introduction of a foreign power, I do not mean to charge Mr.

Hastings with any part of that guilt: what bears upon Mr. Hastings is

his having avowedly looked to such a tyrant and such a usurper as his

model, and followed that pernicious example with a servile fidelity.

When I have endeavored to lay open to your Lordships anything abusive,

or leading to abuse, from defects or errors in the constitution of the

Company's service, I did not mean to criminate Mr. Hastings on any part

of those defects and errors: I state them to show that he took advantage

of the imperfections of the institution to lot in his abuse of the power

with which he was intrusted. If, for a further instance, I have stated

that in general the service of the India Company was insufficient in

legal pay or emolument and abundant in the means of illegal profit, I do

not state that defect as owing to Mr. Hastings; but I state it as a

fact, to show in what manner and on what pretences he did, fraudulently,

corruptly, and for the purposes of his own ambition, take advantage of

that defect, and, under color of reformation, make an illegal, partial,

corrupt rise of emoluments to certain favored persons without regard to

the interests of the service at large,--increasing rather than lessening

the means of illicit emolument, as well as loading the Company with many

heavy and ruinous expenses in avowed salaries and allowances.

Having requested your Lordships to keep in mind, which I trust you would

do even without my taking the liberty of suggesting it to you, these

necessary distinctions, I shall revert to the period at which I closed

yesterday, that great and memorable period which has remotely given

occasion to the trial of this day.

* * * * *

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare

indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of

imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of

the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

Hitherto we have not furnished our contingent to the records of honor.

We have been confounded with the herd of conquerors. Our dominion has

been a vulgar thing. But we begin to emerge; and I hope that a severe

inspection of ourselves, a purification of our own offences, a

lustration of the exorbitances of our own power, is a glory reserved to

this time, to this nation, and to this august tribunal.

The year 1756 is a memorable era in the history of the world: it

introduced a new nation from the remotest verge of the Western world,

with new manners, new customs, new institutions, new opinions, new laws,

into the heart of Asia.

My Lords, if, in that part of Asia whose native regular government was

then broken up,--if, at the moment when it had fallen into darkness and

confusion from having become the prey and almost the sport of the

ambition of its home-born grandees,--if, in that gloomy season, a star

had risen from the West, that would prognosticate a better generation,

and would shed down the sweet influences of order, peace, science, and

security to the natives of that vexed and harassed country, we should

have been covered with genuine honor. It would have been a beautiful and

noble spectacle to mankind.

Indeed, something might have been expected of the kind, when a new

dominion emanated from a learned and enlightened part of the world in

the most enlightened period of its existence. Still more might it have

been expected, when that dominion was found to issue from the bosom of a

free country, that it would have carried with it the full benefit of the

vital principle of the British liberty and Constitution, though its

municipal forms were not communicable, or at least the advantage of the

liberty and spirit of the British Constitution. Had this been the case,

(alas! it was not,) you would have been saved the trouble of this day.

It might have been expected, too, that, in that enlightened state of the

world, influenced by the best religion, and from an improved description

of that best religion, (I mean the Christian reformed religion,) that we

should have done honor to Europe, to letters, to laws, to

religion,--done honor to all the circumstances of which in this island

we boast ourselves, at the great and critical moment of that revolution.

My Lords, it has happened otherwise. It is now left for us to repair our

former errors. Resuming the history where I broke off yesterday by your

indulgence to my weakness,--Surajah Dowlah was the adopted grandson of

Aliverdy Khân, a cruel and ferocious tyrant, the manner of whose

acquisition of power I have already stated. He came too young and

unexperienced to that throne of usurpation. It was a usurpation yet

green in the country, and the country felt uneasy under it. It had not

the advantage of that prescriptive usage, that inveterate habit, that

traditionary opinion, which a long continuance of any system of

government secures to it. The only real security which Surajah Dowlah's

government could possess was the security of an army. But the great aim

of this prince and his predecessor was to supply the weakness of his

government by the strength of his purse; he therefore amassed treasures

by all ways and on all hands. But as the Indian princes, in general, are

as unwisely tenacious of their treasure as they are rapacious in getting

it, the more money he amassed, the more he felt the effects of poverty.

The consequence was, that their armies were unpaid, and, being unpaid or

irregularly paid, were undisciplined, disorderly, unfaithful. In this

situation, a young prince, confiding more in the appearances than

examining into the reality of things, undertook (from motives which the

House of Commons, with all their industry to discover the circumstances,

have found it difficult to make out) to attack a little miserable

trading fort that we had erected at Calcutta. He succeeded in that

attempt only because success in that attempt was easy. A close

imprisonment of the whole settlement followed,--not owing, I believe, to

the direct will of the prince, but, what will always happen when the

will of the prince is but too much the law, to a gross abuse of his

power by his lowest servants,--by which one hundred and twenty or more

of our countrymen perished miserably in a dungeon, by a fate too

tragical for me to be desirous to relate, and too well known to stand in

need of it.

At the time that this event happened, there was at the same time a

concurrence of other events, which, from this partial and momentary

weakness, displayed the strength of Great Britain in Asia. For some

years before, the French and English troops began, on the coast of

Coromandel, to exhibit the power, force, and efficacy of European

discipline. As we daily looked for a war with France, our settlements on

that coast were in some degree armed. Lord Pigot, then Governor of

Madras,--Lord Pigot, the preserver and the victim of the British

dominion in Asia,--detached such of the Company's force as could he

collected and spared, and such of his Majesty's ships as were on that

station, to the assistance of Calcutta. And--to hasten this history to

its conclusion--the daring and commanding genius of Clive, the patient

and firm ability of Watson, the treachery of Mir Jaffier, and the battle

of Plassey gave us at once the patronage of a kingdom and the command of

all its treasures. We negotiated with Mir Jaffier for the viceroyal

throne of his master. On that throne we seated him. And we obtained, on

our part, immense sums of money. We obtained a million sterling for the

Company, upwards of a million for individuals, in the whole a sum of

about two millions two hundred and thirty thousand pounds for various

purposes, from the prince whom we had set up. We obtained, too, the town

of Calcutta more completely than we had before possessed it, and the

twenty-four districts adjoining. This was the first small seminal

principle of the immense territorial acquisitions we have since made in

India.

Many circumstances of this acquisition I pass by. There is a sacred veil

to be drawn over the beginnings of all governments. Ours in India had an

origin like those which time has sanctified by obscurity. Time, in the

origin of most governments, has thrown this mysterious veil over them;

prudence and discretion make it necessary to throw something of the same

drapery over more recent foundations, in which otherwise the fortune,

the genius, the talents, and military virtue of this nation never shone

more conspicuously. But whatever necessity might hide or excuse or

palliate, in the acquisition of power, a wise nation, when it has once

made a revolution upon its own principles and for its own ends, rests

there. The first step to empire is revolution, by which power is

conferred; the next is good laws, good order, good institutions, to give

that power stability. I am sorry to say that the reverse of this policy

was the principle on which the gentlemen in India acted. It was such as

tended to make the new government as unstable as the old. By the vast

sums of money acquired by individuals upon this occasion, by the immense

sudden prodigies of fortune, it was discovered that a revolution in

Bengal was a mine much more easily worked and infinitely more productive

than the mines of Potosi and Mexico. It was found that the work was not

only very lucrative, but not at all difficult. Where Clive forded a deep

water upon an unknown bottom, he left a bridge for his successors, over

which the lame could hobble and the blind might grope their way. There

was not at that time a knot of clerks in a counting-house, there was not

a captain of a band of ragged _topasses_, that looked for anything less

than the deposition of subahs and the sale of kingdoms. Accordingly,

this revolution, which ought to have precluded other revolutions,

unfortunately became fruitful of them; and when Lord Clive returned to

Europe, to enjoy his fame and fortune in his own country, there arose

another description of men, who thought that a revolution might be made

upon his revolution, and as lucrative to them as his was to the first

projectors. Scarcely was Mir Jaffier, Lord Olive's nabob, seated on his

_musnud_, than they immediately, or in a short time, projected another

revolution, a revolution which was to unsettle all the former had

settled, a revolution to make way for new disturbances and new wars, and

which led to that long chain of peculation which ever since has

afflicted and oppressed Bengal.

If ever there was a time when Bengal should have had respite from

internal revolutions, it was this. The governor forced upon the natives

was now upon the throne. All the great lords of the country, both

Gentoos and Mahomedans, were uneasy, discontented, and disobedient, and

some absolutely in arms, and refusing to recognize the prince we had set

up. An imminent invasion of the Mahrattas, an actual invasion headed by

the son of the Mogul, the revenues on account of the late shock very ill

collected even where the country was in some apparent quiet, an hungry

treasury at Calcutta, an empty treasury at Moorshedabad,--everything

demanded tranquillity, and with it order and economy. In this situation

it was resolved to make a new and entirely mercenary revolution, and to

set up to sale the government, secured to its present possessor by every

tie of public faith and every sacred obligation which could bind or

influence mankind. This second revolution forms that period in the

Bengal history which had the most direct influence upon all the

subsequent transactions. It introduces some of the persons who were most

active in the succeeding scenes, and from that time to this has given

its tone and character to the British affairs and government. It marks

and specifies the origin and true principle of all the abuses which Mr.

Hastings was afterwards appointed to correct, and which the Commons

charge that he continued and aggravated: namely, the venal depositions

and venal exaltations of the country powers; the taking of bribes and

corrupt presents from all parties in those changes; the vitiating and

maiming the Company's records; the suppression of public correspondence;

corrupt combinations and conspiracies; perfidy in negotiation

established into principle; acts of the most atrocious wickedness

justified upon purity of intention; mock-trials and collusive acquittals

among the parties in common guilt; and in the end, the Court of

Directors supporting the scandalous breach of their own orders. I shall

state the particulars of this second revolution more at large.

Soon after the revolution which had seated Mir Jaffier on the viceroyal

throne, the spirit of the Mogul empire began, as it were, to make one

faint struggle before it finally expired. The then heir to that throne,

escaping from the hands of those who had held his father prisoner, had

put himself at the head of several chiefs collected under the standard

of his house, and appeared in force on the frontiers of the provinces of

Bengal and Bahar, upon both which he made some impression. This alarmed

the new powers, the Nabob Mir Jaffier, and the Presidency of Calcutta;

and as in a common cause, and by the terms of their mutual alliance,

they took the field against him. The Nabob's eldest son and

heir-apparent commanded in chief. Major Calliaud commanded the English

forces under the government of Calcutta. Mr. Holwell was in the

temporary possession of the Presidency. Mr. Vansittart was hourly

expected to supersede him. Mr. Warren Hastings, a young gentleman about

twenty-seven years of age, was Resident for the Company at the durbar,

or court, of Mir Jaffier, our new-created Nabob of Bengal, allied to

this country by the most solemn treaties that can bind men; for which

treaties he had paid, and was then paying, immense sums of money. Mr.

Warren Hastings was the pledge in his hands for the honor of the British

nation, and their fidelity to their engagements.

In this situation, Mr. Holwell, whom the terrible example of the Black

Hole at Calcutta had not cured of ambition, thought an hour was not to

be lost in accomplishing a revolution and selling the reigning Nabob.

My Lords, there was in the house of Mir Jaffier, in his court, and in

his family, a man of an intriguing, crafty, subtle, and at the same time

bold, daring, desperate, bloody, and ferocious character, called Cossim

Ali Khân. He was the son-in-law of Mir Jaffier; and he made no other use

of this affinity than to find some means to dethrone and to murder him.

This was the person in whose school of politics Mr. Hastings made his

first studies, and whose conduct he quotes as his example, and for whose

friends, agents, and favorites he has always shown a marked

predilection. This dangerous man was not long without finding persons

who observed his talents with admiration, and who thought fit to employ

him.

The Council at Calcutta was divided into two departments: one, the

Council in general; the other a Select Committee, which they had

arranged for the better carrying on their political affairs. But the

Select Committee had no power of acting wholly without the Council at

large,--at least, finally and conclusively. The Select Committee

thought otherwise. Between these litigant parties for power I shall not

determine on the merits,--thinking of nothing but the use that was made

of the power, to whomsoever it belonged. This Secret Committee, then,

without communicating with the rest of the Council, formed the plan for

a second revolution. But the concurrence of Major Calliaud, who

commanded the British troops, was essential to the purpose, as it could

not be accomplished without force. Mr. Hastings's assistance was

necessary, as it could not be accomplished without treachery.

These are the parties concerned in the intended revolution. Mr. Holwell,

who considered himself in possession only of temporary power, was urged

to precipitate the business; for if Mr. Vansittart should arrive before

his plot could be finally put into execution, he would have all the

leading advantages of it, and Mr. Holwell would be considered only as a

secondary instrument. But whilst Mr. Holwell, who originally conceived

this plot, urged forward the execution of it, in order that the chief

share of the profits might fall to him, the Major, and possibly the

Resident, held back, till they might receive the sanction of the

permanent governor, who was hourly expected, with whom one of them was

connected, and who was to carry with him the whole weight of the

authority of this kingdom. This difference produced discussions. Holwell

endeavored by his correspondence to stimulate Calliaud to this

enterprise, which without him could not be undertaken at all. But Major

Calliaud had different views. He concurred inwardly, as he tells us

himself, in all the principles of this intended revolution, in the

propriety and necessity of it. He only wished delay. But he gave such

powerful, solid, and satisfactory reasons, not against the delay, but

the very merits of the design itself, exposing the injustice and the

danger of it, and the impossibility of mending by it their condition in

any respect, as must have damned it in the minds of all rational men: at

least it ought to have damned it forever in his own. But you will see

that Holwell persevered in his plan, and that Major Calliaud thought two

things necessary: first, not wholly to destroy the scheme, which he

tells us he always approved, but to postpone the execution,--and in the

mean time to delude the Nabob by the most strong, direct, and sanguine

assurances of friendship and protection that it was possible to give to

man.

Whilst the projected revolution stood suspended,--whilst Mr. Holwell

urged it forward, and Mr. Vansittart was expected every day to give it

effect,--whilst Major Calliaud, with this design of ruining the Nabob

lodged in his breast, suspended in execution, and condemned in

principle, kept the fairest face and the most confidential interviews

with that unfortunate prince and his son,--as the operations of the

campaign relaxed, the army drew near to Moorshedabad, the capital, when

a truly extraordinary scene happened, such I am sure the English annals

before that time had furnished no example of, nor will, I trust, in

future. I shall state it as one piece from beginning to end, reserving

the events which intervened; because, as I do not produce any part of

this series for the gratification of historical curiosity, the

con-texture is necessary to demonstrate to your Lordships the spirit of

our Bengal politics, and the necessity of some other sort of judicial

inquiries than those which that government institute for themselves.

The transaction so manifestly marks the character of the whole

proceeding that I hope I shall not be blamed for suspending for a moment

the narrative of the steps taken towards the revolution, that you may

see the whole of this episode together,--that by it you may judge of the

causes which led progressively to the state in which the Company's

affairs stood, when Mr. Hastings was sent for the express purpose of

reforming it.

The business I am going to enter into is commonly known by the name of

the Story of the Three Seals. It is to be found in the Appendix, No. 10,

to the First Report of the state and condition of the East India

Company, made in 1773. The word _Report_, my Lords, is sometimes a

little equivocal, and may signify sometimes, not what is made known, but

what remains in obscurity: the detail and evidence of many facts

referred to in the Report being usually thrown into the Appendix. Many

people, and I among the rest, (I take shame to myself for it,) may not

have fully examined that Appendix. I was not a member of either of the

India committees of 1773. It is not, indeed, till within this year that

I have been thoroughly acquainted with that memorable history of the

Three Seals.

The history is this. In the year 1760 the allies were in the course of

operations against the son of the Mogul, now the present Mogul, who, as

I have already stated, had made an irruption into the kingdom of Bahar,

in order to reduce the lower provinces to his obedience. The parties

opposing him were the Nabob of Bengal and the Company's troops under

Major Calliaud. It was whilst they faced the common enemy as one body,

this negotiation for the destruction of the Nabob of Bengal by his

faithful allies of the Company was going on with diligence. At that time

the Nabob's son, Meeran, a youth in the flower of his age, bold,

vigorous, active, full of the politics in which those who are versed in

usurpation are never wanting, commanded the army under his father, but

was in reality the efficient person in all things.

About the 15th of April, 1760, as I have it from Major Calliaud's letter

of that date, the Nabob came into his tent, and, with looks of the

utmost embarrassment, big with some design which swelled his bosom,

something that was too large and burdensome to conceal, and yet too

critical to be told, appeared to be in a state of great distraction. The

Major, seeing him in this condition, kindly, gently, like a fast and

sure friend, employed (to use his own expression) _some of those

assurances that tend to make men fully open their hearts_; and

accordingly, fortified by his assurances, and willing to disburden

himself of the secret that oppressed him, he opens his heart to the

commanding officer of his new friends, allies, and protectors. The

Nabob, thus assured, did open himself, and informed Major Calliaud that

he had just received a message from the Prince, or his principal

minister, informing him that the Prince Royal, now the Mogul, had an

intention (as, indeed, he rationally might, supposing that we were as

well disposed to him as we showed ourselves afterwards) to surrender

himself into the hands of him, the Nabob, but at the same time wished,

as a guaranty, that the commander-in-chief of the English forces should

give him security for his life and his honor, when he should in that

manner surrender himself to the Nabob. I do not mean, my Lords, by

surrendering, that it was supposed he intended to surrender himself

prisoner of war, but as a sovereign dubious of the fidelity of those

about him would put himself into the hands of his faithful subjects, of

those who claimed to derive all their power, as both we and the Nabob

did, under his authority. The Nabob stated to the English general, that

without this English security the Prince would not deliver himself into

his hands. Here he confessed he found a difficulty. For the giving this

faith, if it were kept, would defeat his ultimate view, which was, when

the Prince had delivered himself into his hands, in plain terms to

murder him. This grand act could not be accomplished without the English

general. In the first place, the Prince, without the English security,

would not deliver himself into the Nabob's hands; and afterwards,

without the English concurrence, he could not be murdered. These were

difficulties that pressed upon the mind of the Nabob.

The English commander heard this astonishing proposition without any

apparent emotion. Being a man habituated to great affairs, versed in

revolutions, and with a mind fortified against extraordinary events, he

heard it and answered it without showing any signs of abhorrence or

detestation,--at the same time with a protestation that he would indeed

serve him, the Nabob, but it should be upon such terms as honor and

justice could support: informing him, that an assurance for the Prince's

safety could not be given by him, until he had consulted Mr. Holwell,

who was Governor, and his superior.

This conversation passed in the morning. On that very morning, and

whilst the transaction was hot, Major Calliaud writes to Mr. Holwell an

account of it. In his letter he informs him that he made an inquiry,

without stating from whom, but that he did inquire the probability of

the Nabob's getting possession of the Prince from some persons, who

assured him that there was no probability of the Prince's intention to

deliver himself to the Nabob on any terms. Be that as it may, it is

impossible not to remark that the whole transaction of the morning of

the 15th of April was not very discouraging to the Nabob,--not such as

would induce him to consider this most detestable of all projects as a

thing utterly unfeasible, and as such to abandon it. The evening came on

without anything to alter his opinion. Major Calliaud that evening came

to the Nabob's tent to arrange some matters relative to the approaching

campaign. The business soon ended with regard to the campaign; but the

proposal of the morning to Major Calliaud, as might be expected to

happen, was in effect renewed. Indeed, the form was a little different;

but the substantial part remained the same. Your Lordships will see what

these alterations were.

In the evening scene the persons were more numerous. On the part of the

Company, Major Calliaud, Mr. Lushington, Mr. Knox, and the ambassador at

the Nabob's court, Mr. Warren Hastings. On the part of the Moorish

government, the Nabob himself, his son Meeran, a Persian secretary, and

the Nabob's head spy, an officer well known in that part of the world,

and of some rank. These were the persons of the drama in the evening

scene. The Nabob and his son did not wait for the Prince's committing

himself to their faith, which, it seems, Major Calliaud did not think

likely to happen; so that one act of treachery is saved: but another

opened of as extraordinary a nature. Intent and eager on the execution,

and the more certain, of their design, they accepted the plan of a

wicked wretch, principal servant of the then prime-minister to the

Mogul, or themselves suggested it to him. A person called Conery, dewan

or principal steward to Camgar Khân, a great chief in the service of the

Shahzada, or Prince, (now the Great Mogul, the sovereign under whom the

Company holds their charter,) had, it seems, made a proposal to the

Nabob, that, if a considerable territory then held by his master was

assured to him, and a reward of a lac of rupees (ten or twelve thousand,

pounds) secured to him, he would for that consideration deliver the

Prince, the eldest son of the Mogul, alive into the hands of the Nabob;

or if that could not be effected, he engaged to murder him for the same

reward. But as the assassin could not rely on the Nabob and his son for

his reward for this meritorious action, and thought better of English

honor and fidelity in such delicate cases, he required that Major

Calliaud should set his seal to the agreement. This proposition was made

to an English commander: what discourse happened upon it is uncertain.

Mr. Hastings is stated by some evidence to have acted as interpreter in

this memorable congress. But Major Calliaud agreed to it without any

difficulty. Accordingly, an instrument was drawn, an indenture

tripartite prepared by the Persian secretary, securing to the party the

reward of this infamous, perfidious, murderous act. First, the Nabob put

his own seal to the murder. The Nabob's son, Meeran, affixed _his_ seal.

A third seal, the most important of all, was yet wanting. A pause

ensued: Major Calliaud's seal was not at hand; but Mr. Lushington was

sent near half a mile to bring it. It was brought at length; and the

instrument of blood and treachery was completely executed. Three seals

were set to it.

This business of the three seals, by some means not quite fully

explained, but (as suspected by the parties) by means of the information

of Mr. Holwell, who soon after came home, was conveyed to the ears of

the Court of Directors. The Court of Directors wrote out, under date of

the 7th of October, 1761, within a little more than a year after this

extraordinary transaction, to this effect:--that, in conjunction with

the Nabob, Major Calliaud had signed a paper offering a reward of a lac

of rupees, or some such sum, to several black persons, for the

assassination of the Shahzada, or Prince heir-apparent,--which paper was

offered to the then Chief of Patna to sign, but which he refused on

account of the infamy of the measure. As it appeared in the same light

to them, the Directors, they ordered a strict inquiry into it. The India

Company, who here did their duty with apparent manliness and vigor, were

resolved, however, to do it with gentleness, and to proceed in a manner

that could not produce any serious mischief to the parties charged; for

they directed the commission of inquiry to the very clan and set of

people who, from a participation in their common offences, stood in awe

of one another,--in effect, to the parties in the transaction. Without a

prosecutor, without an impartial director of the inquiry, they left it

substantially to those persons to try one another for their common acts.

Here I come upon the principle which I wish most strongly to mark to

your Lordships: I mean collusive trials and collusive acquittals. When

this matter came to be examined, according to the orders of the Court,

which was on the 4th of October, 1762, the Council consisted of Peter

Maguire, Warren Hastings, and Hugh Watts. Mr. Hastings had by this time

accomplished the business of Resident with the Nabob, and had taken the

seat to which his seniority entitled him in Council. Here a difficulty

arose _in limine_. Mr. Hastings was represented to have acted as

interpreter in this business; he was therefore himself an object of the

inquisition; he was doubtful as evidence; he was disqualified as a

judge. It likewise appeared that there might be some objection to others

whose evidence was wanting, but who were themselves concerned in the

guilt. Mr. Lushington's evidence would be useful, but there were two

circumstances rather unlucky. First, he had put the seal to the

instrument of murder; and, secondly, and what was most material, he had

made an affidavit at Patna, whilst the affair was green and recent, that

he had done so; and in the same affidavit had deposed that Warren

Hastings was interpreter in that transaction. Here were difficulties

both on him and Mr. Hastings. The question was, how to get Mr. Hastings,

the interpreter, out of his interpretation, and to put him upon the seat

of judgment. It was effected, however, and the manner in which it was

effected was something curious. Mr. Lushington, who by this time was got

completely over, himself tells you that in conferences with Major

Calliaud, and by arguments and reasons by him delivered, he was

persuaded to unsay his swearing, and to declare that he believed that

the affidavit which he made at Patna, and while the transaction was

recent or nearly recent, must be a mistake: that he _believed_ (what is

amazing indeed for any belief) that not Mr. Hastings, but he himself,

interpreted. Mr. Lushington completely loses his own memory, and he

accepts an offered, a given memory, a memory supplied to him by a party

in the transaction. By this operation all difficulties are removed: Mr.

Hastings is at once put into the capacity of a judge. He is declared by

Mr. Lushington not to have been an interpreter in the transaction. After

this, Mr. Hastings is himself examined. Your Lordships will look at the

transaction at your leisure, and I think you will consider it as a

pattern for inquiries of this kind. Mr. Hastings is examined: he does

not recollect. His memory also fails on a business in which it is not

easy to suppose a man could be doubtful,--whether he was present or not:

he thinks he was not there,--for that, if he had been there, and acted

as interpreter, he could not have forgot it.

I think it is pretty nearly as I state it: if I have fallen into any

error or inaccuracy, it is easily rectified; for here is the state of

the transaction given by the parties themselves. On this inaccurate

memory of Mr. Hastings, not venturing, however, to say positively that

he was not the interpreter, or that he was not present, he is discharged

from being an accomplice,--he is removed from the bar, and leaps upon

the seat of justice. The court thus completed, Major Calliaud comes

manfully forward to make his defence. Mr. Lushington is taken off his

back in the manner we have seen, and no one person remains but Captain

Knox. Now, if Captain Knox was there and assenting, he is an accomplice

too. Captain Knox asserts, that, at the consultation about the murder,

he said it was a pity to cut off so fine a young fellow in such a

manner,--meaning that fine young fellow the Prince, the descendant of

Tamerlane, the present reigning Mogul, from whom the Company derive

their present charter. The purpose to be served by this declaration, if

it had any purpose, was, that Captain Knox did not assent to the murder,

and that therefore his evidence might be valid.

The defence set up by Major Calliaud was to this effect. He was

apprehensive, he said, that the Nabob was alarmed at the violent designs

that were formed against him by Mr. Holwell, and that therefore, to

quiet his mind, (to quiet it by a proposition compounded of murder and

treason,--an odd kind of mind he had that was to be quieted by such

means!)--but to quiet his mind, and to show that the English were

willing to go all lengths with him, to sell body and soul to him, he did

put his seal to this extraordinary agreement, he put his seal to this

wonderful paper. He likewise stated, that he was of opinion at the time

that nothing at all sinister could happen from it, that no such murder

was likely to take place, whatever might be the intention of the

parties. In fact, he had very luckily said in a letter of his, written a

day after the setting the seal, "I think nothing will come of this

matter, but it is no harm to try." This experimental treachery, and

these essays of conditional murder, appeared to him good enough to make

a trial of; but at the same time he was afraid nothing would come of it.

In general, the whole gest of his defence comes to one point, in which

he persists,--that, whatever the act might be, his mind is clear: "My

hands are guilty, but my heart is free." He conceived that it would be

very improper, undoubtedly, to do such an act, if he suspected anything

could happen from it: he, however, let the thing out of his own hands;

he put, it into the hands of others; he put the commission into the

hands of a murderer. The fact was not denied; it was fully before these

severe judges. The extenuation was the purity of his heart, and the bad

situation of the Company's affairs,--the perpetual plea, which your

Lordships will hear of forever, and which if it will justify evil

actions, they will take good care that the most nefarious of their deeds

shall never want a sufficient justification. But then he calls upon his

life and his character to oppose to his seal; and though he has declared

that Mr. Holwell had intended ill to the Nabob, and that he approved of

those measures, and only postponed them, yet he thought it necessary, he

says, to quiet the fears of the Nabob; and from this motive he did an

act abhorrent to his nature, and which, he says, he expressed his

abhorrence of the morning after he signed it: not that he did so; but if

he had, I believe it would only have made the thing so many degrees

worse. Your Lordships will observe, that, in this conference, as stated

by himself, these reasons and apologies for it did not appear, nor did

they appear in the letter, nor anywhere else, till next year, when he

came upon his trial. Then it was immediately recollected that Mr.

Holwell's designs were so wicked they certainly must be known to the

Nabob, though he never mentioned them in the conference of the morning

or the evening of the 15th; yet such was now the weight and prevalence

of them upon the Major's mind, that he calls upon Mr. Hastings to know

whether the Nabob was not informed of these designs of Mr. Holwell

against him. Mr. Hastings's memory was not quite correct upon the

occasion. He does not recollect anything of the matter. He certainly

seems not to think that he ever mentioned it to the Nabob, or the Nabob

to him; but he does recollect, he thinks, speaking something to some of

the Nabob's attendants upon it, and further this deponent sayeth not. On

this state of things, namely, the purity of intention, the necessities

of the Company, the propriety of keeping the Nabob in perfect good-humor

and removing suspicions from his mind, which suspicions he had never

expressed, they came to the resolution I shall have the honor to read to

you: "That the representation, given in the said defence, of the state

of the affairs of the country at that time" (that is, about the month of

April, 1760) "is true and just" (that is, the bad state of the country,

which we shall consider hereafter); "that, in such circumstances, the

Nabob's urgent account of his own distresses, the Colonel's desire of

making him easy," (for here is a recapitulation of the whole defence,)

"as the first thing necessary for the good of the service, and the

suddenness of the thing proposed, might deprive him for a moment of his

recollection, and surprise him into a measure which, as to the measure

itself, he could not approve. That such only were the motives which did

or could influence Colonel Calliaud to assent to the proposal is fully

evinced by the deposition of Captain Knox and Mr. Lushington, that _his_

[_Calliaud's_] _conscience, at the time, never reproached him with a bad

design_."

Your Lordships have heard of the testimony of a person to his own

conscience; but the testimony of another man to any one's

conscience--this is the first time, I believe, it ever appeared in a

judicial proceeding. It is natural to say, "My conscience acquits me of

it"; but _they_ declare, that "_his_ conscience never reproached him

with a bad design, and therefore, upon the whole, they are satisfied

that his intention was good, though he erred in the measure."

I beg leave to state one thing that escaped me: that the Nabob, who was

one of the parties to the design, was, at the time of the inquiry, a

sort of prisoner or an exile at Calcutta; that his _moonshee_ was there,

or might have been had; and that his spy was likewise there; and that

they, though parties to this transaction, were never called to account

for it in any sense or in any degree, or to show how far it was

_necessary_ to quiet the Nabob's mind.

The accomplices, by acquitting him upon _their_ testimony to _his

conscience_, did their business nobly. But the good Court of Directors,

who were so easily satisfied, so ready to condemn at the first

proposition and so ready afterwards to acquit, put the last finishing

hand of a master to it. For the accomplices acquit him of evil

intentions and excuse his act. The Court of Directors, disapproving

indeed the measure, but receiving the testimony of his conscience in

justification of his conduct, and taking up the whole ground, honorably

acquit him, and commend this action as an instance of heroic zeal in

their service.

The great end and purpose for which I produce this to your Lordships is

to show you the necessity there is for other inquiries, other trials,

other acquittals of parties, than those made by a collusive clan abroad,

or by the Directors at home, who had required the parties to inquire of

themselves, and to take the testimony of the judges at second-hand, as

to the conscience of the party accused, respecting acts which neither

they nor any man living can look upon but with horror.

I have troubled your Lordships with the story of the Three Seals, as a

specimen of the then state of the service, and the politics of the

servants, civil and military, in the horrid abuses which then prevailed,

and which render at length the most rigorous reformation necessary. I

close this episode to resume the proceedings at the second revolution.

This affair of the three seals was, we have seen, to quiet the fears of

the Nabob. His fears it was indeed necessary to quiet; for your

Lordships will see that the man whose fears were to be set asleep by

Major Calliaud's offering him, in a scheme for murdering his sovereign,

an odd sort of opiate, made up of blood and treason, was now in a fair

way of being murdered himself by the machinations of him whose seal was

set to his murderous security of peace, and by those his accomplices,

Holwell and Hastings: at least they resolved to put him in a situation

in which his murder was in a manner inevitable, as you will see in the

sequel of the transaction. Now the plan proceeds. The parties continued

in the camp; but there was another _remora_. To remove a nabob and to

create a revolution is not easy: houses are strong who have sons grown

up with vigor and fitness for the command of armies. They are not easily

overturned by removing the principal, unless the secondary is got rid

of: and if this _remora_ could be removed, everything was going on in a

happy way in the business. This plan, which now (that is, about the

month of July) began to get into great ripeness and forwardness, Mr.

Holwell urged forward, Mr. Vansittart being hourly expected.

I do not know whether I am going to state a thing, though it is upon the

records, which will not have too theatrical an appearance for the grave

state in which we are. But here it is,--the difficulty, the knot, and

the solution, as recorded by the parties themselves. It was the object

of this bold, desperate, designing man, Cossim All Khân, who aimed at

everything, and who scrupled not to do anything in attaining what he

aimed at, to be appointed the lieutenant of the Nabob Jaffier Ali, and

thus to get possession of his office during his lifetime under that

name, with a design of murdering him: for that office, according to many

usages of that country, totally supersedes the authority of the first

magistrate, renders him a cipher in his hand, gives the administration

of his affairs and command of his troops to the lieutenant. It was a

part of his plan, that he was, after his appointment to the lieutenancy,

to be named to the succession of the Nabob, who had several other

children; but the eldest son stood in the way.

But as things hastened to a crisis, this difficulty was removed in the

most extraordinary and providential unheard-of manner, by the most

extraordinary event that, I believe, is recorded in history. Just in the

nick of time, in the moment of projection, on the 3d of July, this

Prince Meeran, in the flower of his age, bold, active, enterprising,

lying asleep in his tent, is suddenly, without any one's knowing it,

without any alarm or menace in the heavens that ever was heard of or

mentioned, without any one whatever being hurt or even alarmed in the

camp, killed with a flash of lightning. My Lords, thus was the Gordian

knot cut. This prince dies of a flash of lightning, and Mr. Lushington

(of whom you have heard) comes in the morning with his hair standing

erect, comes frightened into the presence of Major Calliaud, and, with

the utmost alarm, tells him of a circumstance that was afterwards to

give them so much pleasure. The alarm was immediately communicated to

the Major, who was seized with a fright; and fearing lest the army

should mutiny upon the death of their chief, it was contrived, in a

manner that I believe was most difficult to contrive, that what might

have excited a general mutiny was concealed by the ability, the good

conduct, and dexterity of Major Calliaud for seven days together, till

he led the army out of the place of danger. Thus a judgment fell upon

one of the (innocent) murderers in the scene of the Three Seals. This

man, who was probably guilty in his conscience as well as in act, thus

fell by that most lucky, providential, and most useful flash of

lightning.

There were at that time, it seems, in Calcutta, a wicked, skeptical set

of people, who somehow or other believed that _human_ agency was

concerned in this elective flash, which came so very opportunely, and

which was a favor so thankfully acknowledged. These wicked, ill-natured

skeptics disseminated reports (which I am sure I do not mean to charge

or prove, leaving the effect of them to you) very dishonorable, I

believe, to Cossim Ali Khân in the business, and to some Englishmen who

were concerned.

The difficulty of getting rid of Meeran being thus removed, Mr.

Vansittart comes upon the scene. I verily believe he was a man of good

intentions, and rather debauched by that amazing flood of iniquity which

prevailed at that time, or hurried and carried away with it. In a few

days he sent for Major Calliaud. All his objections vanish in _an

instant_: like that flash of lightning, everything is _instant_. The

Major agrees to perform his part. They send for Cossim Ali Khân and Mr.

Hastings; they open a treaty and conclude it with him, leaving the

management of it to two persons, Mr. Holwell and another person, whom we

have heard of, an Armenian, called Coja Petruse, who afterwards played

his part in another illustrious scene. By this Petruse and Mr. Holwell

the matter is settled. The moment Mr. Holwell is raised to be a

Secretary of State, the revolution is accomplished. By it Cossim Ali

Khân is to have the lieutenancy at present, and the succession.

Everything is put into his hands, and he is to make for it large

concessions, which you will hear of afterwards, to the Company. Cossim

Ali Khân proposed to Mr. Holwell, what would have been no bad supplement

to the flash of lightning, the murder of the Nabob; but Mr. Holwell was

a man of too much honor and conscience to suffer that. He instantly flew

out at it, and declared the whole business should stop, unless the

affair of the murder was given up. Accordingly things were so settled.

But if he gave the Nabob over to an intended murderer, and delivered his

person, treasure, and everything into his hands, Cossim Ali Khân might

have had no great reason to complain of being left to the execution of

his own projects in his own way. The treaty was made, and amounted to

this,--that the Company was to receive three great provinces: for here,

as we proceed, you will have an opportunity of observing, with the

progress of these plots, one thing which has constantly and uniformly

pervaded the whole of these projects, and which the persons concerned in

them have avowed as a principle of their actions,--that they were first

to take care of the Company's interest, then of their own; that is,

first to secure to the Company an enormous bribe, and under the shadow

of that bribe to take all the little emoluments they could to

themselves. Three great, rich, southern provinces, maritime, or nearly

maritime, Burdwan, Midnapoor, and Chittagong, were to be dissevered from

the Subah and to be ceded to the Company. There were other minor

stipulations, which it is not necessary at present to trouble you with,

signed, sealed, and executed at Calcutta between these parties with the

greatest possible secrecy. The lieutenancy and the succession were

secured to Cossim Ali, and he was likewise to give somewhere about the

sum of 200,000_l._ to the gentlemen who were concerned, as a reward for

serving him so effectually, and for serving their country so well.

Accordingly, these stipulations, actual or understood, (for they were

eventually carried into effect,) being settled, a commission of

delegation, consisting chiefly of Mr. Vansittart and Major Calliaud, was

sent up to Moorshedabad: the new Governor taking this opportunity of

paying the usual visit of respect to the Nabob, and in a manner which a

new Governor coming into place would do, with the detail of which it is

not necessary to trouble you. Mr. Hastings was at this time at the

durbar; and having everything prepared, and the ground smoothed, they

first endeavored to persuade the Nabob to deliver over the power

negotiated for into the hands of their friend Cossim Ali Khân. But when

the old man, frightened out of his wits, asked, "What is it he has bid

for me?" and added, "I will give half as much again to save myself; pray

let me know what my price is,"--he entreated in vain. They were true,

firm, and faithful to their word and their engagement. When he saw they

were resolved that he should be delivered into the hands of Cossim Ali

Khân, he at once surrenders the whole to him. They instantly grasp it.

He throws himself into a boat, and will not remain at home an hour, but

hurries down to Calcutta to leave his blood at our door, if we should

have a mind to take it. But the life of the Nabob was too great a stake

(partly as a security for the good behavior of Cossim Ali Khân, and

still more for the future use that might be made of him) to be thrown

away, or left in the hands of a man who would certainly murder him, and

who was very angry at being refused the murder of his father-in-law. The

price of this second revolution was, according to their shares in it, (I

believe I have it here,) somewhere about 200,000_l._ This little

effusion to private interest settled the matter, and here ended the

second revolution in the country: effected, indeed, without bloodshed,

but with infinite treachery, with infinite mischief, consequent to the

dismemberment of the country, and which had nearly become fatal to our

concerns there, like everything else in which Mr. Hastings had any

share.

This prince, Cossim Ali Khân, the friend of Mr. Hastings, knew that

those who could give could take away dominion. He had scarcely got upon

the throne, procured for him by our public spirit and his own

iniquities, than he began directly and instantly to fortify himself, and

to bend all his politics against those who were or could be the donors

of such fatal gifts. He began with the natives who were in their

interest, and cruelly put to death, under the eye of Mr. Hastings and

his clan, all those who, by their moneyed wealth or landed

consideration, could give any effect to their dispositions in favor of

those ambitious strangers. He removed from Moorshedabad higher up into

the country, to Monghir, in order to be more out of our view. He kept

his word pretty well, but not altogether faithfully, with the gentlemen;

and though he had no money, for his treasury was empty, he gave

obligations which are known by the name of _jeeps_--(the Indian

vocabulary will by degrees become familiar to your Lordships, as we

develop the modes and customs of the country). As soon as he had done

this, he began to rack and tear the provinces that were left to him, to

get as much from them as should compensate him for the revenues of those

great provinces he had lost; and accordingly he began a scene of

extortion, horrible, nefarious, without precedent or example, upon

almost all the landed interest of that country. I mention this, because

he is one of those persons whose governments Mr. Hastings, in a paper

called his Defence, delivered in to the House of Commons, has produced

as precedents and examples which he has thought fit to follow, and which

he thought would justify him in the conduct he has pursued. This Cossim

Ali Khân, after he had acted the tyrant on the landed interest, fell

upon the moneyed interest. In that country there was a person called

Juggut Seit. There were several of the family, who were bankers to such

a magnitude as was never heard of in the world. Receivers of the public

revenue, their correspondence extended all over Asia; and there are

those who are of opinion that the house of Juggut Seit, including all

its branches, was not worth less than six or seven millions sterling.

This house became the prey of Cossim Ali Khân; but Mr. Holwell had

predicted that _it should be delivered over to Satan to be buffeted_

(his own pious expression). He predicted the misfortunes that should

befall them; and we chose a Satan to buffet them, and who did so buffet

them, by the murder of the principal persons of the house, and by

robbing them of great sums of their wealth, that I believe such a scene

of nefarious tyranny, destroying and cutting up the root of public

credit in that country, was scarce ever known. In the mean time Cossim

was extending his tyranny over all who were obnoxious to him; and the

persons he first sought were those traitors who had been friends to the

English. Several of the principal of these he murdered. There was in the

province of Bahar a man named Ramarain; he had got the most positive

assurances of English faith; but Mr. Macguire, a member of the Council,

on the receipt of five thousand gold mohurs, or something more than

8,000_l._ sterling, delivered him up to be first imprisoned, then

tortured, then robbed in consequence of the torture, and finally

murdered, by Cossim Ali Khân. In this way Cossim Ali Khân acted, while

our government looked on. I hardly choose to mention to you the fate of

a certain native in consequence of a dispute with Mr. Mott, a friend of

Mr. Hastings, which is in the Company's records,--records which are

almost buried by their own magnitude from the knowledge of this country.

In a contest with this native for his house and property, some scuffle

having happened between the parties, the one attempting to seize and the

other to defend, the latter made a complaint to the Nabob, who was in an

entire subjection at that time to the English, and who ordered this

unfortunate man, on account of this very scuffle, arising from

defending his property, to be blown off from the mouth of a cannon. In

short, I am not able to tell your Lordships of all the nefarious

transactions of this man, whom the intrigues of Mr. Holwell and Mr.

Hastings had set upon the throne of Bengal. But there is a circumstance

in this business that comes across here, and will tend to show another

grievance that vexed that country, which vexed it long, and is one of

the causes of its chief disasters, and which, I fear, is not so

perfectly extirpated but that some part of its roots may remain in the

ground at this moment.

Commerce, which enriches every other country in the world, was bringing

Bengal to total ruin. The Company, in former times, when it had no

sovereignty or power in the country, had large privileges under their

_dustuck_, or permit: their goods passed, without paying duties, through

the country. The servants of the Company made use of this dustuck for

their own private trade, which, while it was used with moderation, the

native government winked at in some degree; but when it got wholly into

private hands, it was more like robbery than trade. These traders

appeared everywhere; they sold at their own prices, and forced the

people to sell to them at their own prices also. It appeared more like

an army going to pillage the people, under pretence of commerce, than

anything else. In vain the people claimed the protection of their own

country courts. This English army of traders in their march ravaged

worse than a Tartarian conqueror. The trade they carried on, and which

more resembled robbery than commerce, anticipated the resources of the

tyrant, and threatened to leave him no materials for imposition or

confiscation. Thus this miserable country was torn to pieces by the

horrible rapaciousness of a double tyranny. This appeared to be so

strong a case, that a deputation was sent to him at his new capital,

Monghir, to form a treaty for the purpose of giving some relief against

this cruel, cursed, and oppressive trade, which was worse even than the

tyranny of the sovereign. This trade Mr. Vansittart, the President about

this time, that is, in 1763, who succeeded to Mr. Holwell, and was in

close union of interests with the tyrant Cossim Ali Khân, by a treaty

known by the name of the treaty of Monghir, agreed very much to suppress

and to confine within something like reasonable bounds. There never was

a doubt on the face of that treaty, that it was a just, proper, fair

transaction. But as nobody in Bengal did then believe that rapine was

ever forborne but in favor of bribery, the persons who lost every

advantage by the treaty of Monghir, when they thought they saw corrupt

negotiation carrying away the prizes of unlawful commerce, and were

likely to see their trade crippled by Cossim Ali Khân, fell into a most

violent fury at this treaty; and as the treaty was made without the

concurrence of the rest of the Council, the Company's servants grew

divided: one part were the advocates of the treaty, the other of the

trade. The latter were universally of opinion that the treaty was bought

for a great sum of money. The evidence we have on our records of the

sums of money that are stated to have been paid on this occasion has

never been investigated to the bottom; but we have it on record, that a

great sum (70,000_l._) was paid to persons concerned in that

negotiation. The rest were exceedingly wroth to see themselves not

profiting by the negotiation, and losing the trade, or likely to be

excluded from it; and they were the more so, because, as we have it upon

our journals, during all that time the trade of the negotiators was not

proscribed, but a purwannah was issued by Cossim Ali Khân, that the

trade of his friends Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Hastings should not be

subject to the general regulations. This filled the whole settlement

with ill blood; but in the regulation itself (I put the motive and the

secret history out of the case) undoubtedly Mr. Hastings and Mr.

Vansittart were on the right side. They had shown to a demonstration the

mischief of this trade. However, as the other party were strong, and did

not readily let go their hold of this great advantage, first,

dissensions, murmurs, various kinds of complaints, and ill blood arose.

Cossim Ali was driven to the wall; and having at the same time made what

he thought good preparations, a war broke out at last. And how did it

break out? This Cossim Ali Khân signalized his first acts of hostility

by an atrocity committed against the faith of treaties, against the

rules of war, against every principle of honor. This intended murderer

of his father-in-law, whom Mr. Hastings had assisted to raise to the

throne of Bengal, well knowing his character and his disposition, and

well knowing what such a man was capable of doing,--this man massacred

the English wherever he met them. There were two hundred, or

thereabouts, of the Company's servants, or their dependants, slaughtered

at Patna with every circumstance of the most abominable cruelty. Their

limbs were cut to pieces. The tyrant whom Mr. Hastings set up cut and

hacked the limbs of British subjects in the most cruel and perfidious

manner, threw them into wells, and polluted the waters of the country

with British blood. Immediately war is declared against him in form.

That war sets the whole country in a blaze; and then other parties begin

to appear upon the scene, whose transactions you will find yourselves

deeply concerned in hereafter.

As soon as war was declared against Cossim, it was necessary to resolve

to put up another Nabob, and to have another revolution: and where do

they resort, but to the man whom, for his alleged tyranny, for his

incapacity, for the numberless iniquities he was said to have committed,

and for his total unfitness and disinclination to all the duties of

government, they had dethroned? This very man they take up again, to

place on the throne from which they had about two years before removed

him, and for the effecting of which they had committed so many

iniquities. Even this revolution was not made without being paid for.

According to the usual order of procession, in which the youngest walk

first, first comes the Company; and the Company had secured to it in

perpetuity those provinces which Cossim Ali Khân had ceded, as it was

thought, rather in the way of mortgage than anything else. Then, under

the name of compensation for sufferings to the people concerned in the

trade, and in the name of donation to an army and a navy which had

little to do in this affair, they tax him--what sum do you think? They

tax that empty and undone treasury of that miserable and undone country

500,000_l._ for a private emolument to themselves,--for the compensation

for this iniquitous trade,--for the compensation for abuses of which he

was neither the author nor the abettor, they tax this miserable prince

500,000_l._ That sum was given to individuals. Now comes the Company at

home, which, on hearing this news, was all inflamed. The Directors were

on fire. They were shocked at it, and particularly at this donation to

the army and navy. They resolved they would give it no countenance and

support. In the mean time the gentlemen did not trouble their heads upon

that subject, but meant to exact and get their 500,000_l._ as they

could.

Here was a third revolution, bought at this amazing sum, and this poor,

miserable prince first dragged from Moorshedabad to Calcutta, then

dragged back from Calcutta to Moorshedabad, the sport of fortune and the

plaything of avarice. This poor man is again set up, but is left with no

authority: his troops limited,--his person, everything about him, in a

manner subjugated,--a British Resident the master of his court: he is

set up as a pageant on this throne, with no other authority but what

would be sufficient to give a countenance to presents, gifts, and

donations. That authority was always left, when all the rest was taken

away. One would have thought that this revolution might have satisfied

these gentlemen, and that the money gained by it would have been

sufficient. No. The partisans of Cossim Ali wanted another revolution.

The partisans of the other side wished to have something more done in

the present. They now began to think that to depose Cossim instantly,

and to sell him to another, was too much at one time,--especially as

Cossim Ali was a man of vigor and resolution, carrying on a fierce war

against them. But what do you think they did? They began to see, from

the example of Cossim Ali, that the lieutenancy, the ministry of the

king, was a good thing to be sold, and the sale of that might turn out

as good a thing as the sale of the prince.

For this office there were two rival candidates, persons of great

consideration, in Bengal: one, a principal Mahomedan, called Mahomed

Reza Khân, a man of high authority, great piety in his own religion,

great learning in the law, of the very first class of Mahomedan

nobility; but at the same time, on all these accounts, he was abhorred

and dreaded by the Nabob, who necessarily feared that a man of Mahomed

Reza Khân's description would be considered as better entitled and

fitter for his seat, as Nabob of the provinces. To balance him, there

was another man, known by the name of the Great Rajah Nundcomar. This

man was accounted the highest of his caste, and held the same rank among

the Gentoos that Mahomed Reza Khân obtained among the Mahomedans. The

prince on the throne had no jealousy of Nundcomar, because he knew,

that, as a Gentoo, he could not aspire to the office of Subahdar. For

that reason he was firmly attached to him; he might depend completely on

his services; he was _his_ against Mahomed Reza Khân, and against the

whole world. There was, however, a flaw in the Nabob's title, which it

was necessary should be hid. And perhaps it lay against Mahomed Reza

Khân as well as him. But it was a source of apprehension to the Nabob,

and contributed to make him wish to keep all Mahomedan influence at a

distance. For he was a Syed, that is to say, a descendant of Mahomet,

and as such, though of the only acknowledged nobility among Mussulmen,

would be by that circumstance excluded, by the known laws of the Mogul

empire, from being Subahdar in any of the Mogul provinces, in case the

revival of the constitution of that empire should ever again take place.

An auction was now opened before the English Council at Calcutta.

Mahomed Reza Khân bid largely; Nundcomar bid largely. The circumstances

of these two rivals at the Nabob court were equally favorable to the

pretensions of each. But the preponderating merits of Mahomed Reza Khân,

arising from the subjection in which he was likely to keep the Nabob,

and make him fitter for the purpose of continued exactions, induced the

Council to take his money, which amounted to about 220,000_l._ Be the

sum paid what it may, it was certainly a large one; in consequence of

which the Council attempted to invest Mahomed Reza Khân with the office

of Naib Subah, or Deputy Viceroy. As to Nundcomar, they fell upon him

with a vengeful fury. He fought his battle as well as he could; he

opposed bribe to bribe, eagle to eagle; but at length he was driven to

the wall. Some received his money, but did him no service in return;

others, more conscientious, refused to receive it; and in this battle of

bribes he was vanquished. A deputation was sent from Calcutta to the

miserable Nabob, to tear Nundcomar, his only support, from his side, and

to put the object of all his terrors, Mahomed Reza Khân, in his place.

Thus began a new division that split the Presidency into violent

factions; but the faction which adhered to Nundcomar was undoubtedly the

weakest. That most miserable of men, Mir Jaffier Ali Khân, clinging, as

to the last pillar, to Nundcomar, trembling at Mahomed Reza Khân, died

in the struggle, a miserable victim to all the revolutions, to all the

successive changes and versatile politics at Calcutta. Like all the rest

of the great personages whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult

and oppression, he betook himself to the usual destructive resources of

unprincipled misery,--sensuality, opium, and wine. His gigantic frame of

constitution soon gave way under the oppression of this relief, and he

died, leaving children and grandchildren by wives and concubines. On the

old Nabob's death, Mahomed Reza Khân was acknowledged Deputy Nabob, the

money paid, and this revolution completed.

Here, my Lords, opened a new source of plunder, peculation, and bribery,

which was not neglected. Revolutions were no longer necessary;

succession supplied their places: and well the object agreed with the

policy. Rules of succession could not be very well ascertained to an

office like that of the Nabob, which was hereditary only by the

appointment of the Mogul. The issue by lawful wives would naturally be

preferred by those who meant the quiet of the country. But a more

doubtful title was preferred, as better adapted to the purposes of

extortion and peculation. This miserable succession was sold, and the

eldest of the issue of Munny Begum, an harlot, brought in to pollute the

harem of the seraglio, of whom you will hear much hereafter, was chosen.

He soon succeeded to the grave. Another son of the same prostitute

succeeded to the same unhappy throne, and followed to the same untimely

grave. Every succession was sold; and between venal successions and

venal revolutions, in a very few years seven princes and six sales were

seen successively in Bengal. The last was a minor, the issue of a

legitimate wife, admitted to succeed because a minor, and because there

was none illegitimate left. He was instantly stripped of the allowance

of his progenitors, and reduced to a pension of 160,000 a year. He still

exists, and continued to the end of Mr. Hastings's government to furnish

constant sources of bribery and plunder to him and his creatures.