was removed, a part of the charge was not strangled with him. Whilst the
process against Nundcomar was carrying on before Sir Elijah Impey, the
process was continuing against Mr. Hastings in other modes; the receipt
of a part of those bribes from Munny Begum, to the amount of 15,000_l._,
was proved against him, and that a sum to the same amount was to be paid
to his associate, Mr. Middleton. As it was proved at Calcutta, so it
will be proved at your Lordships' bar to your entire satisfaction by
records and living testimony now in England. It was, indeed, obliquely
admitted by Mr. Hastings himself.
The excuse for this bribe, fabricated by Mr. Hastings, and taught to
Munny Begum, when he found that she was obliged to prove it against him,
was, that it was given to him for his entertainment, according to some
pretended custom, at the rate of 200_l._ sterling a day, whilst he
remained at Moorshedabad. My Lords, this leads me to a few reflections
on the apology or defence of this bribe. We shall certainly, I hope,
render it clear to your Lordships that it was not paid in this manner as
a daily allowance, but given in a gross sum. But take it in his own way,
it was no less illegal, and no less contrary to his covenant; but if
true under the circumstances, it was an horrible aggravation of his
crime. The first thing that strikes is, that visits from Mr. Hastings
are pretty severe things, and hospitality at Moorshedabad is an
expensive virtue, though for provision it is one of the cheapest
countries in the universe. No wonder that Mr. Hastings lengthened his
visit, and made it extend near three months. Such hosts and such guests
cannot be soon parted. Two hundred pounds a day for a visit! It is at
the rate of 78,000_l._ a year for himself; and as I find his companion
was put on the same allowance, it will be 146,000_l._ a year for
hospitality to two English gentlemen. I believe that there is not a
prince in Europe who goes to such expensive hospitality of splendor.
But that you may judge of the true nature of this hospitality of
corruption, I must bring before you the business of the visitor and the
condition of the host, as stated by Mr. Hastings himself, who best knows
what he was doing. He was, then, at the old capital of Bengal at the
time of this expensive entertainment, on a business of retrenchment, and
for the establishment of a most harsh, rigorous, and oppressive economy.
He wishes the task were assigned to spirits of a less gentle kind. By
Mr. Hastings's account, he was giving daily and hourly wounds to his
humanity in depriving of their sustenance hundreds of persons of the
ancient nobility of a great fallen kingdom. Yet it was in the midst of
this galling duty, it was at that very moment of his tender sensibility,
that, from the collected morsels plucked from the famished mouths of
hundreds of decayed, indigent, and starving nobility, he gorged his
ravenous maw with 200_l._ a day for his entertainment. In the course of
all this proceeding your Lordships will not fail to observe he is never
corrupt, but he is cruel; he never dines with comfort, but where he is
sure to create a famine. He never robs from the loose superfluity of
standing greatness; he devours the fallen, the indigent, the
necessitous. His extortion is not like the generous rapacity of the
princely eagle, who snatches away the living, struggling prey; he is a
vulture, who feeds upon the prostrate, the dying, and the dead. As his
cruelty is more shocking than his corruption, so his hypocrisy has
something more frightful than his cruelty; for whilst his bloody and
rapacious hand signs proscriptions, and now sweeps away the food of the
widow and the orphan, his eyes overflow with tears, and he converts the
healing balm that bleeds from wounded humanity into a rancorous and
deadly poison to the race of man.
Well, there was an end to this tragic entertainment, this feast of
Tantalus. The few left on the pension-list, the poor remnants that had
escaped, were they paid by his administratrix and deputy, Munny Begum?
Not a shilling. No fewer than forty-nine petitions, mostly from the
widows of the greatest and most splendid houses of Bengal, came before
the Council, praying in the most deplorable manner for some sort of
relief out of the pittance assigned them. His colleagues, General
Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, men who, when England is
reproached for the government of India, will, I repeat it, as a shield
be held up between this nation and infamy, did, in conformity to the
strict orders of the Directors, appoint Mahomed Reza Khân to his old
offices, that is, to the general superintendency of the household and
the administration of justice, a person who by his authority might keep
some order in the ruling family and in the state. The Court of Directors
authorized them to assure those offices to him, with a salary reduced
indeed to 30,000_l._ a year, during his good behavior. But Mr. Hastings,
as soon as he obtained a majority by the death of the two best men ever
sent to India, notwithstanding the orders of the Court of Directors, in
spite of the public faith solemnly pledged to Mahomed Reza Khân, without
a shadow of complaint, had the audacity to dispossess him of all his
offices, and appoint his bribing patroness, the old dancing-girl, Munny
Begum, once more to the viceroyalty and all its attendant honors and
functions.
The pretence was more insolent and shameless than the act. Modesty does
not long survive innocence. He brings forward the miserable pageant of
the Nabob, as he called him, to be the instrument of his own disgrace,
and the scandal of his family and government. He makes him to pass by
his mother, and to petition us to appoint Munny Begum once more to the
administration of the viceroyalty. He distributed Mahomed Reza Khân's
salary as a spoil.
When the orders of the Court to restore Mahomed Reza Khân, with their
opinion on the corrupt cause of his removal, and a second time to pledge
to him the public faith for his continuance, were received, Mr.
Hastings, who had been just before a pattern of obedience, when the
despoiling, oppressing, imprisoning, and persecuting this man was the
object, yet, when the order was of a beneficial nature, and pleasant to
a well-formed mind, he at once loses all his old principles, he grows
stubborn and refractory, and refuses obedience. And in this sullen,
uncomplying mood he continues, until, to gratify Mr. Francis, in an
agreement on some of their differences, he consented to his proposition
of obedience to the appointment of the Court of Directors. He grants to
his arrangement of convenience what he had refused to his duty, and
replaces that magistrate. But mark the double character of the man,
never true to anything but fraud and duplicity. At the same time that he
publicly replaces this magistrate, pretending compliance with his
colleague and obedience to his masters, he did, in defiance of his own
and the public faith, privately send an assurance to the Nabob, that is,
to Munny Begum,--informs her that he was compelled by necessity to the
present arrangement in favor of Mahomed Reza Khân, but that on the first
opportunity he would certainly displace him again. And he kept faith
with his corruption; and to show how vainly any one sought protection in
the lawful authority of this kingdom, he displaced Mahomed Reza Khân
from the lieutenancy and controllership, leaving him only the judicial
department miserably curtailed.
But does he adhere to his old pretence of freedom to the Nabob? No such
thing. He appoints an absolute master to him under the name of Resident,
a creature of his personal favor, Sir John D'Oyly, from whom there is
not one syllable of correspondence and not one item of account. How
grievous this yoke was to that miserable captive appears by a paper of
Mr. Hastings, in which he acknowledges that the Nabob had offered, out
of the 160,000_l._ payable to him yearly, to give up to the Company no
less than 40,000_l._ a year, in order to have the free disposal of the
rest. On this all comment is superfluous. Your Lordships are furnished
with a standard by which you may estimate his real receipt from the
revenue assigned to him, the nature of the pretended Residency, and its
predatory effects. It will give full credit to what was generally
rumored and believed, that substantially and beneficially the Nabob
never received fifty out of the one hundred and sixty thousand pounds;
which will account for his known poverty and wretchedness, and that of
all about him.
Thus by his corrupt traffic of bribes with one scandalous woman he
disgraced and enfeebled the native Mahomedan government, captived the
person of the sovereign, and ruined and subverted the justice of the
country. What is worse, the steps taken for the murder of Nundcomar, his
accuser, have confirmed and given sanction not only to the corruptions
then practised by the Governor-General, but to all of which he has since
been guilty. This will furnish your Lordships with some general idea
which will enable you to judge of the bribe for which he sold the
country government.
Under this head you will have produced to you full proof of his sale of
a judicial office to a person called Khân Jehan Khân, and the modes he
took to frustrate all inquiry on that subject, upon a wicked and false
pretence, that, according to his religious scruples, he could not be
sworn.
The great end and object I have in view is to show the criminal
tendency, the mischievous nature of these crimes, and the means taken to
elude their discovery. I am now giving your Lordships that general view
which may serve to characterize Mr. Hastings's administration in all the
other parts of it.
It was not true in fact, as Mr. Hastings gives out, that there was
nothing now against him, and that, when he had got rid of Nundcomar and
his charge, he got rid of the whole. No such thing. An immense load of
charges of bribery remained. They were coming afterwards from every part
of the province; and there was no office in the execution of justice
which he was not accused of having sold in the most flagitious manner.
After all this thundering the sky grew calm and clear, and Mr. Hastings
sat with recorded peculation, with peculation proved upon oath on the
minutes of that very Council,--he sat at the head of that Council and
that board where his peculations were proved against him. These were
afterwards transmitted and recorded in the registers of his masters, as
an eternal monument of his corruption, and of his high disobedience, and
flagitious attempts to prevent a discovery of the various peculations of
which he had been guilty, to the disgrace and ruin of the country
committed to his care.
Mr. Hastings, after the execution of Nundcomar, if he had intended to
make even a decent and commonly sensible use of it, would naturally have
said, "This man is justly taken away who has accused me of these crimes;
but as there are other witnesses, as there are other means of a further
inquiry, as the man is gone of whose perjuries I might have reason to be
afraid, let us now go into the inquiry." I think he did very ill not to
go into the inquiry when the man was alive; but be it so, that he was
afraid of him, and waited till he was removed, why not afterwards go
into such an inquiry? Why not go into an inquiry of all the other
peculations and charges upon him, which were innumerable, one of which I
have just mentioned in particular, the charge of Munny Begum, of having
received from her, or her adopted son, a bribe of 40,000_l._?
Is it fit for a governor to say, will Mr. Hastings say before this
august assembly, "I may be accused in a court of justice,--I am upon my
defence,--let all charges remain against me,--I will not give you an
account"? Is it fit that a governor should sit with recorded bribery
upon him at the head of a public board and the government of a great
kingdom, when it is in his power by inquiry to do it away? No: the
chastity of character of a man in that situation ought to be as dear to
him as his innocence. Nay, more depended upon it. His innocence regarded
himself; his character regarded the public justice, regarded his
authority, and the respect due to the English in that country. I charge
it upon him, that not only did he suppress the inquiry to the best of
his power, (and it shall be proved,) but he did not in any one instance
endeavor to clear off that imputation and reproach from the English
government. He went further; he never denied hardly any of those charges
at the time. They are so numerous that I cannot be positive; some of
them he might meet with some sort of denial, but the most part he did
not.
The first thing a man under such an accusation owes to the world is to
deny the charge; next, to put it to the proof; and lastly, to let
inquiry freely go on. He did not permit this, but stopped it all in his
power. I am to mention some exceptions, perhaps, hereafter, which will
tend to fortify the principle tenfold.
He promised, indeed, the Court of Directors (to whom he never denied the
facts) a full and liberal explanation of these transactions; which full
and liberal explanation he never gave. Many years passed; even
Parliament took notice of it; and he never gave them a liberal
explanation, or any explanation at all of them. A man may say, "I am
threatened with a suit in a court, and it may be very disadvantageous to
me, if I disclose my defence." That is a proper answer for a man in
common life, who has no particular character to sustain; but is that a
proper answer for a governor accused of bribery, that accusation
transmitted to his masters, and his masters giving credit to it? Good
God! is that a state in which a man is to say, "I am upon the
defensive--I am on my guard,--I will give you no satisfaction,--I have
promised it, but I have already deferred it for seven or eight years"?
Is not this tantamount to a denial?
Mr. Hastings, with this great body of bribery against him, was
providentially freed from Nundcomar, one of his accusers, and, as good
events do not come alone, (I think there is some such proverb,) it did
so happen that all the rest, or a great many of them, ran away. But,
however, the recorded evidence of the former charges continued; no new
evidence came in; and Mr. Hastings enjoyed that happy repose which
branded peculation, fixed and eternized upon the records of the Company,
must leave upon a mind conscious of its own integrity.
My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to
his character. It is the grace, undoubtedly, of a virtuous, firm mind
often to despise common, vulgar calumny; but if ever there is an
occasion in which it does become such a mind to disprove it, it is the
case of being charged in high office with pecuniary malversation,
pecuniary corruption. There is no case in which it becomes an honest
man, much less a great man, to leave upon record specific charges
against him of corruption in his government, without taking any one step
whatever to refute them.
Though Mr. Hastings took no step to refute the charges, he took many
steps to punish the authors of them; and those miserable people who had
the folly to make complaints against Mr. Hastings, to make them under
the authority of an act of Parliament, under every sanction of public
faith, yet, in consequence of those charges, every person concerned in
them has been, as your Lordships will see, since his restoration to
power, absolutely undone, brought from the highest situation to the
lowest misery, so that they may have good reason to repent they ever
trusted an English Council, that they ever trusted a Court of Directors,
that they ever trusted an English act of Parliament, that they ever
dared to make their complaints.
And here I charge upon Mr. Hastings, that, by never taking a single step
to defeat or detect the falsehood of any of those charges against him,
and by punishing the authors of them, he has been guilty of such a
subversion of all the principles of British government as will deserve,
and will I dare say meet, your Lordships' most severe animadversion.
In the course of this inquiry we find a sort of pause in his
peculations, a sort of gap in the history, as if pages were torn out.
No longer we meet with the same activity in taking money that was before
found; not even a trace of complimentary presents is to be found in the
records during the time whilst General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and
Mr. Francis formed the majority of the Council. There seems to have been
a kind of truce with that sort of conduct for a while, and Mr. Hastings
rested upon his arms. However, the very moment Mr. Hastings returned to
power, peculation began again just at the same instant; the moment we
find him free from the compulsion and terror of a majority of persons
otherwise disposed than himself, we find him at his peculation again.
My Lords, at this time very serious inquiries had begun in the House of
Commons concerning peculation. They did not go directly to Bengal, but
they began upon the coast of Coromandel, and with the principal
governors there. There was, however, an universal opinion (and justly
founded) that these inquiries would go to far greater lengths. Mr.
Hastings was resolved, then, to change the whole course and order of his
proceeding. Nothing could persuade him, upon any account, to lay aside
his system of bribery: that he was resolved to persevere in. The point
was now to reconcile it with his safety. The first thing he did was to
attempt to conceal it; and accordingly we find him depositing very great
sums of money in the public treasury through the means of the two
persons I have already mentioned, namely, the deputy-treasurer and the
accountant,--paying them in and taking bonds for them as money of his
own, and bearing legal interest. This was his method of endeavoring to
conceal some at least of his bribes: for I would not suggest, nor have
your Lordships to think, that I believe that these were his only
bribes,--for there is reason to think there was an infinite number
besides; but it did so happen that they were those bribes which he
thought might be discovered, some of which he knew were discovered, and
all of which he knew might become the subject of a Parliamentary
inquiry.
Mr. Hastings said he might have concealed them forever. Every one knows
the facility of concealing corrupt transactions everywhere, in India
particularly. But this is by himself proved not to be universally true,
at least not to be true in his own opinion; for he tells you, in his
letter from Cheltenham, that he _would_ have concealed the Nabob's
100,000_l._, but that the magnitude rendered it easy of discovery. He,
therefore, avows an intention of concealment.
But it happens here, very singularly, that this sum, which his fears of
discovery by _others_ obliged him to discover _himself_, happens to be
one of those of which no trace whatsoever appears, except merely from
the operation of his own apprehensions. There is no collateral
testimony: Middleton knew nothing of it; Anderson knew nothing of it; it
was not directly communicated to the faithful Larkins or the trusty
Croftes;--which proves, indeed, the facility of concealment. The fact
is, you find the application always upon the discovery. But concealment
or discovery is a thing of accident.
The bribes which I have hitherto brought before your Lordships belong to
the first period of his bribery, before he thought of the doctrine on
which he has since defended it. There are many other bribes which we
charge him with having received during this first period, before an
improving conversation and close virtuous connection with great lawyers
had taught him how to practise bribes in such a manner as to defy
detection, and instead of punishment to plead merit. I am not bound to
find order and consistency in guilt: it is the reign of disorder. The
order of the proceeding, as far as I am able to trace such a scene of
prevarication, direct fraud, falsehood, and falsification of the public
accounts, was this. From bribes he knew he could never abstain; and his
then precarious situation made him the more rapacious. He knew that a
few of his former bribes had been discovered, declared, recorded,--that
for the moment, indeed, he was secure, because all informers had been
punished and all concealers rewarded. He expected hourly a total change
in the Council, and that men like Clavering and Monson might be again
joined to Francis, that some great avenger should arise from their
ashes,--"_Exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor_,"--and that a more
severe investigation and an infinitely more full display would be made
of his robbery than hitherto had been done. He therefore began, in the
agony of his guilt, to cast about for some device by which he might
continue his offence, if possible, with impunity,--and possibly make a
merit of it. He therefore first carefully perused the act of Parliament
forbidding bribery, and his old covenant engaging him not to receive
presents. And here he was more successful than upon former occasions. If
ever an act was studiously and carefully framed to prevent bribery, it
is that law of the 13th of the King, which he well observes admits no
latitudes of construction, no subterfuge, no escape, no evasion. Yet has
he found a defence of his crimes even in the very provisions which were
made for their prevention and their punishment. Besides the penalty
which belongs to every informer, the East India Company was invested
with a fiction of property in all such bribes, in order to drag them
with more facility out of the corrupt hands which held them. The
covenant, with an exception of one hundred pounds, and the act of
Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General
and Council should receive no presents _for their own use_. He therefore
concluded that the system of bribery and extortion might be
clandestinely and safely carried on, provided the party taking the
bribes had an inward intention and mental reservation that they should
be privately applied to the Company's service in any way the briber
should think fit, and that on many occasions this would prove the best
method of supply for the exigencies of their service.
He accordingly formed, or pretended to form, a private bribe exchequer,
collateral with and independent of the Company's public exchequer,
though in some cases administered by those whom for his purposes he had
placed in the regular official department. It is no wonder that he has
taken to himself an extraordinary degree of merit. For surely such an
invention of finance, I believe, never was heard of,--an exchequer
wherein extortion was the assessor, fraud the cashier, confusion the
accountant, concealment the reporter, and oblivion the remembrancer: in
short, such as I believe no man, but one driven by guilt into frenzy,
could ever have dreamed of.
He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a
parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers. He is an eccentric book-keeper,
a Pindaric accountant. I have heard of "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy
rolling." Here was a revenue exacted from whom he pleased, at what times
he pleased, in what proportions he pleased, through what persons he
pleased, by what means he pleased, to be accounted for or not, at his
discretion, and to be applied to what service he thought proper. I do
believe your Lordships stand astonished at this scheme; and indeed I
should be very loath to venture to state such a scheme at all, however I
might have credited it myself, to any sober ears, if, in his defence
before the House of Commons, and before the Lords, he had not directly
admitted the fact of taking the bribes or forbidden presents, and had
not in those defences, and much more fully in his correspondence with
the Directors, admitted the fact, and justified it upon these very
principles.
As this is a thing so unheard-of and unexampled in the world, I shall
first endeavor to account as well as I can for his motives to it, which
your Lordships will receive or reject, just as you shall find them tally
with the evidence before you: I say, his motives to it; because I
contend that public valid reasons for it he could have none; and the
idea of making the corruption of the Governor-General a resource to the
Company never did or could for a moment enter into his thoughts. I shall
then take notice of the juridical constructions upon which he justifies
his acting in this extraordinary manner; and lastly, show you the
concealments, prevarications, and falsehoods with which he endeavors to
cover it. Because wherever you find a concealment you make a discovery.
Accounts of money received and paid ought to be regular and official.