persecution of these great men, and the persons employed by them, he
could have no other view than to extort money from them. There was a
person of the name of Shitab Roy, who had a great share in the conduct
of the revenues of Bahar. Mr. Hastings, in the letter to the Company,
complaining of the state of their affairs, and saying that there were
great and suspicious balances in the kingdom of Bahar, does not even
name the name of Shitab Roy. There was an English counsellor, a
particular friend of Mr. Hastings's, there, under whose control Shitab
Roy acted. Without any charges, without any orders from the Company, Mr.
Hastings dragged down that same Shitab Roy, and in the same ignominious
prison he kept him the same length of time, that is, one year and three
months, without trial; and when the trial came on, there was as much
appearance of collusion in the trial as there was of rigor in the
previous process. This is the manner in which Mr. Hastings executed the
command of the Company for removing Mahomed Reza Khân.
When a successor to Mahomed Reza Khân was to be appointed, your
Lordships naturally expect, from the character I have given of him, and
from the nature of his functions, that Mr. Hastings would be
particularly precise, would use the utmost possible care in nominating a
person to succeed him, who might fulfil the ends and objects of his
employment, and be at the same time beyond all doubt and suspicion of
corruption in any way whatever. Let us now see how he fills up that
office thus vacant. When the Company ordered Mahomed Reza Khân to be
dispossessed of his office, they ordered at the same time that the
salary of his successor should be reduced: that 30,000_l._ was a
sufficient recompense for that office. Your Lordships will see by the
allowance for the office, even reduced as it was, that they expected
some man of great eminence, of great consequence, and fit for those
great and various trusts. They cut off the dewanny from it, that is, the
collection of the revenues; and having lessened his labors, they
lessened his reward.--They ordered that this person, who was to be
guardian of the Nabob in his minority, and who was to represent the
government, should have but 30,000_l._ The order they give is this.
"And that as Mahomed Reza Khân can no longer be considered by us as one
to whom such a power can safely be committed, we trust to your local
knowledge the selection of some person well qualified for the affairs of
government, and of whose attachment to the Company you shall be well
assured. Such person you will recommend to the Nabob, to succeed Mahomed
Reza, as minister of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's
minority; and we persuade ourselves that the Nabob will pay such regard
to your recommendation as to invest him with the necessary power and
authority.
"As the advantages which the Company may receive from the appointment of
such minister will depend on his readiness to promote our views and
advance our interest, we are willing to allow him so liberal a
gratification as may excite his zeal and insure his attachment to the
Company; we therefore empower you to grant to the person whom you shall
think worthy of this trust an annual allowance not exceeding three lacs
of rupees, which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any
services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him to
support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we must
add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the active
minister of the Nabob's government, we hope and trust that you will show
yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in you by being
actuated therein by no other motives than those of the public good and
the safety and interest of the Company."
My Lords, here they have given a reward, and they have described a
person fit to succeed in all capacities the man whom they had thought
fit to depose. Now, as we have seen how Mr. Hastings obeyed the
Company's orders in the manner of removing Mahomed Reza Khân from his
office, let us see how he obeyed their order for filling it up. Your
Lordships will naturally suppose that he made all the orders of
Mahometan and Hindoo princes to pass in strict review before him; that
he had considered their age, authority, dignity, the goodness of their
manners; and upon the collation of all these circumstances had chosen a
person fit to be a regent to guard the Nabob's minority from all
rapacity whatever, and fit to instruct him in everything. I will give
your Lordships Mr. Hastings's own idea of the person necessary to fill
such offices.
"That his rank ought to be such as at least ought not to wound the
Nabob's honor, or lessen his credit in the estimation of the people, by
the magisterial command which the new guardian must exercise over
him,--with abilities and vigor of mind equal to the support of that
authority; and the world will expect that the guardian be especially
qualified by his own acquired endowments to discharge the duties of that
relation in the education of his young pupil, to inspire him with
sentiments suitable to his birth, and to instruct him in the principles
of his religion."
This, upon another occasion, is Mr. Hastings's sense of the man who
ought to be placed in that situation of trust in which the Company
ordered him to place him. Did Mr. Hastings obey that order? No, my
Lords, he appointed no man to fill that office. What, no man at all? No,
he appointed no person at all in the sense which is mentioned there,
which constantly describes a person at least of the male sex: he
appointed a woman to fill that office; he appointed a woman, in a
country where no woman can be seen, where no woman can be spoken to by
any one without a curtain between them; for all these various duties,
requiring all these qualifications described by himself, he appointed a
woman. Do you want more proof than this violent transgression of the
Company's orders upon that occasion that some corrupt motive must have
influenced him?
My Lords, it is necessary for me to state the situation of the family,
that you may judge from thence of the corrupt motives of Mr. Hastings's
proceedings. The Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân had among the women of his
seraglio a person called Munny Begum. She was a dancing-girl, whom he
had seen at some entertainment; and as he was of a licentious turn, this
dancing-girl, in the course of her profession as a prostitute, so far
inveigled the Nabob, that, having a child or pretending to have had a
child by him, he brought her into the seraglio; and the Company's
servants sold to that son the succession of that father. This woman had
been sold as a slave,--her profession a dancer, her occupation a
prostitute. And, my Lords, this woman having put her natural son, as we
state, and shall prove, in the place of the legitimate offspring of the
Nabob, having got him placed by the Company's servants on the musnud,
she came to be at the head of that part of the household which relates
to the women: which is a large and considerable trust in a country where
polygamy is admitted, and where women of great rank may possibly be
attended by two thousand of the same sex in inferior situations. As soon
as the legitimate son of the Nabob came to the musnud, there was no
ground for keeping this woman any longer in that situation; and upon an
application of the Company to Mahomed Reza Khân to know who ought to
have the right of superiority, he answered, as he ought to have done,
that, though all the women of the seraglio ought to have honor, yet the
mother of the Nabob ought to have the superiority of it. Therefore this
woman was removed, and the mother of the Nabob was placed in her
situation. In that situation Mr. Hastings found the seraglio. If his
duties had gone no further than the regulation of an Eastern household,
he ought to have kept the Nabob's mother there by the rules of that
country.
What did he do? Not satisfied with giving to this prostitute every favor
that she could desire, (and money must be the natural object of such a
person,) Mr. Hastings deposes the Nabob's own mother, turns her out of
the employment, and puts at the head of the seraglio this prostitute,
who at the best, in relation to him, could only be a step-mother. If you
heard no more, do your Lordships want anything further to convince you
that this must be a violent, atrocious, and corrupt act,--suppose it had
gone no further than the seraglio? But when I call this woman a
dancing-girl, I state something lower than Europeans have an idea of
respecting that situation. She was born a slave, bred a dancing-girl.
Her dancing was not any of those noble and majestic movements which make
part of the entertainment of the most wise, of the education of the most
virtuous, which improve the manners without corrupting the morals of all
civilized people, and of which, among uncivilized people, the professors
have their due share of admiration; but these dances were not decent to
be seen nor fit to be related. I shall pass them by. Your Lordships are
to suppose the lowest degree of infamy in occupation and situation, when
I tell you that Munny Begum was a slave and a dancing-girl.
The history of the Munny Begum is this. "At a village called Balkonda,
near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty, not
being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave-girl
belonging to Summin Ali Khân, whose name was Bissoo. During the space of
five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was educated by Bissoo after
the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon
the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah, brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah,
sent for Bissoo Beg's set of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which
Munny Begum was one, and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their
expenses, to dance at the wedding. While the ceremony was celebrating,
they were kept by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed
them, and they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier
Khân then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five
hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was
pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the Nabob
Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner has she remained in the Nabob's
family ever since."
Now it required a very peculiar mode of selection to take such a woman,
so circumstanced, (resembling whom there was not just such another,) to
depose the Nabob's own mother from the superiority of the household, and
to substitute this woman. It would have been an abominable abuse, and
would have implied corruption in the grossest degree, if Mr. Hastings
had stopped there. He not only did this, but he put _her_, this woman,
in the very place of Mahomed Reza Khân: he made her guardian, he made
her regent, he made her viceroy, he made her the representative of the
native government of the country in the eyes of strangers. There was not
a trust, not a dignity in the country, which he did not put, during the
minority of this unhappy person, her step-son, into the hands of this
woman.
Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in
disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a _man_ fit
to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân, to exercise all the great and
arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the
regulation of the Nabob's household; and then I will venture to say,
that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this
appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the
result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the
corruption was. Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was
before heard of: a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a
fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in
the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend
the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in
all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the
Nabob had sprung.
These are circumstances that leave no doubt of the grossest and most
flagrant corruption. But was there no application made to Mr. Hastings
upon that occasion? The Nabob's uncle, whom Mr. Hastings declares to be
a man of no dangerous ambition, no alarming parts, no one quality that
could possibly exclude him from that situation, makes an application to
Mr. Hastings for that place, and was by Mr. Hastings rejected. The
reason he gives for his rejection is, because he cannot put any man in
it without danger to the Company, who had ordered him to put a man into
it. One would imagine the trust to be placed in him was such as enabled
him to overturn the Company in a moment. Now the situation in which the
Nabob's uncle, Yeteram ul Dowlah, would have been placed was this: he
would have had no troops, he would have had no treasury, he would have
had no collections of revenue, nothing, in short, that could have made
him dangerous, but he would have been an absolute pensioner and
dependant upon the Company, though in high office; and the least attempt
to disturb the Company, instead of increasing, would have been
subversive of his own power. If Mr. Hastings should still insist that
there might be danger from the appointment of a man, we shall prove that
he was of opinion that there could be no danger from any one,--that the
Nabob himself was a mere shadow, a cipher, and was kept there only to
soften the English government in the eyes and opinion of the natives.
My Lords, I will detail these circumstances no further, but will bring
some collateral proofs to show that Mr. Hastings was at that very time
conscious of the wicked and corrupt act he was doing. For, besides this
foolish principle of policy, which he gives as a reason for defying the
orders of the Company, and for insulting the country, that had never
before seen a woman in that situation, and _his_ declaration to the
Company, that their government cannot be supported by private justice,
(a favorite maxim, which he holds upon all occasions,) besides these
reasons which he gave for his politic injustice, he gives the following.
The Company had ordered that 30,000_l._ should be given to the person
appointed. He knew that the Company could never dream of giving this
woman 30,000_l._ a year, and he makes use of that circumstance to
justify him in putting her in that place: for he says, the Company, in
the distressed state of its affairs, could never mean to give 30,000_l._
a year for the office which they order to be filled; and accordingly,
upon principles of economy, as well as upon principles of prudence, he
sees there could be no occasion for giving this salary, and that it will
be saved to the Company. But no sooner had he given her the appointment
than that appointment became a ground for giving her that money. The
moment he had appointed her, he overturns the very principle upon which
he had appointed her, and gives the 30,000_l._ to her, and the officers
under her, saving not one shilling to the Company by this infamous
measure, which he justified only upon the principle of economy. The
30,000_l._ was given, the principle of economy vanished, a shocking
arrangement was made, and Bengal saw a dancing-girl administering its
justice, presiding over all its remaining power, wealth, and influence,
exhibiting to the natives of the country their miserable state of
degradation, and the miserable dishonor of the English Company in Mr.
Hastings's abandonment of all his own pretences.
But there is a still stronger presumption. The Company ordered that this
person, who was to have the management of the Nabob's revenue, and who
was to be his guardian, should keep a strict account, which account
should be annually transmitted to the Presidency, and by the Presidency
to Europe; and the purpose of it was, to keep a control upon the reduced
expenses of the sixteen lac which were ordered in the manner I
mentioned. Your Lordships will naturally imagine that that control was
kept safe. No, here is the order of the Directors, and you will see how
Mr. Hastings obeyed it.
"As the disbursement of the sums allotted to the Nabob for the
maintenance of his household and family and the support of his dignity
will pass through the hands of the minister who shall be selected by
you, conformable to our preceding orders, we expect that you will
require such minister to deliver annually to your board a regular and
exact account of the application of the several sums paid by the Company
to the Nabob. This you will strictly examine; and we trust that you will
not suffer any part of the Nabob's stipend to be appropriated to the
minister's own use, or wasted among the unnecessary dependants of the
court, but that the whole amount be applied to the purposes for which it
was assigned by us."
One would have imagined, that, after Mr. Hastings had made so suspicious
an arrangement, (I will not call it by any worse name,) he would have
removed all suspicion with regard to money,--that he would have obeyed
the Company by constituting the control which they had ordered to be
placed over a man, even a fit man, and a man worthy of the trust
committed to him. But what is his answer, when three years after he is
desired to produce this account? His answer is,--"I can save the board
the trouble of this reference by acquainting them that no such accounts
have ever been transmitted, nor, as I can affirm with most certain
knowledge, any orders given for that purpose, either to Gourdas, to
whose office it did not properly belong, nor to the Begum, who had the
actual charge and responsibility of those disbursements."
He has given to this woman the charge of all the disbursements of the
Company; the officer whom you would imagine would be responsible was not
responsible, but to this prostitute and dancing-girl the whole of the
revenue was given; when he was ordered to transmit that account, he not
only did not produce that account, but had given no order that it
should be kept: so that no doubt can be left upon your Lordships' minds,
that the sixteen lac, which were reserved for the support of the dignity
of the government of that country, were employed for the purpose of Mr.
Hastings's having a constant bank, from which he should draw every
corrupt emolument he should think fit for himself and his associates.
Thus your Lordships see that he appointed an improper person to the
trust without any control, and that the very accounts which were to be
the guardians of his purity, and which were to remove suspicion from
him, he never so much as directed or ordered. If any one can doubt that
that transaction was in itself corrupt, I can only say that his mind
must be constituted in a manner totally different from that which
prevails in any of the higher or lower branches of judicature in any
country in the world. The suppression of an account is a proof of
corruption.
When Mr. Hastings committed these acts of violence against Mahomed Reza
Khân, when he proceeded to make arrangements in the Company's affairs of
the same kind with those in which corruption had been before exercised,
he was bound by a particular responsibility that there should be nothing
mysterious in his own conduct, and that at least all the accounts should
be well kept. He appointed a person nominally for that
situation,--namely, the Rajah Gourdas. Who was he? A person acting, he
says, under the influence of Rajah Nundcomar, whom he had declared was
not fit to be employed or trusted: all the offices were filled by him.
But had Rajah Gourdas, whose character is that of an excellent man,
against whom there could lie no reasonable objection on account of his
personal character, and whose want of talents was to be supplied by
those of Nundcomar, (and of _his_ parts Mr. Hastings spoke as highly as
possible,)--had he, I say, the management? No: but Munny Begum. Did she
keep any accounts? No.
Mr. Hastings was ordered, and a very disagreeable and harsh order it
was, to take away one half of the Nabob's allowance which he had by
treaty. I do not charge Mr. Hastings with this reduction: he had nothing
to do with that. Sixteen lac were cut off, and sixteen left; these two
sums had been distributed, one for the support of the seraglio and the
dignity of the state, the other for the court establishment and the
household. The sixteen lac which was left, therefore, required to be
well economized, and well administered. There was a rigor in the
Company's order relative to it, which was, that it should take place
from an antedated time, that is, a whole year prior to the communication
of their order to the Nabob. The order was, that the Nabob's stipend
should be reduced to sixteen lac a year from the month of January. Mr.
Hastings makes this reflection upon it, in order to leave no doubt upon
your mind of his integrity in administering that great trust: he says,--
"Your order for the reduction of the Nabob's stipend was communicated to
him in the month of December, 1771. He remonstrated against it, and
desired it might be again referred to the Company. The board entirely
acquiesced in his remonstrance, and the subsequent payments of his
stipend were paid as before. I might easily have availed myself of this
plea. I might have treated it as an act of the past government, with
which I had no cause to interfere, and joined in asserting the
impossibility of his defraying the vast expense of his court and
household without it, which I could have proved by plausible arguments,
drawn from the actual amount of the nizamut and bhela establishments;
and both the Nabob and Begum would have liberally purchased my
forbearance. Instead of pursuing this plan, I carried your orders
rigidly and literally into execution. I undertook myself the laborious
and reproachful task of limiting his charges, from an excess of his
former stipend, to the sum of his reduced allowance."
He says in another place,--"The stoppage of the king's tribute was an
act of mine, and I have been often reproached with it. It was certainly
in my power to have continued the payment of it, and to have made my
terms with the king for any part of it which I might have chosen to
reserve for my own use. He would have thanked me for the remainder."
My Lords, I believe it is a singular thing, and what your Lordships have
been very little used to, to see a man in the situation of Mr. Hastings,
or in any situation like it, so ready in knowing all the resources by
which sinister emolument may be made and concealed, and which, under
pretences of public good, may be transferred into the pocket of him who
uses those pretences. He is resolved, if he is innocent, that his
innocence shall not proceed from ignorance. He well knows the ways of
falsifying the Company's accounts; he well knows the necessities of the
natives, and he knows that by paying a part of their dues they will be
ready to give an acquittance of the whole. These are parts of Mr.
Hastings's knowledge of which your Lordships will see he also well
knows how to avail himself.
But you would expect, when he reduced the allowance to sixteen lac, and
took credit to himself as if he had done the thing which he professed,
and had argued from his rigor and cruelty his strict and literal
obedience to the Company, that he had in reality done it. The very
reverse: for it will be in proof, that, after he had pretended to reduce
the Company's allowance, he continued it a twelvemonth from the day in
which he said he had entirely executed it, to the amount of 90,000_l._,
and entered a false account of the suppression in the Company's
accounts; and when he has taken a credit as under pretence of reducing
that allowance, he paid 90,000_l._ more than he ought. Can you, then,
have a doubt, after all these false pretences, after all this fraud,
fabrication, and suppression which he made use of, that that 90,000_l._,
of which he kept no account and transmitted no account, was money given
to himself for his own private use and advantage?