monstrous part of the arrangement; and therefore, from his rigorous
obedience in cases of cruelty, and, where control was directed, from his
total disobedience, and from his choice of persons, from his suppression
of the accounts that ought to have been produced, and falsifying the
accounts that were kept, there arises a strong inference of corruption.
When your Lordships see all this in proof, your Lordships will justify
me in saying that there never was (taking every part of the arrangement)
such a direct, open violation of any trust.--I shall say no more with
regard to the appointment of Munny Begum.
My Lords, here ended the first scene, and here ends that body of
presumption arising from the transaction and inherent in it. My Lords,
the next scene that I am to bring before you is the positive proof of
corruption in this transaction, in which I am sure you already see that
corruption must exist. The charge was brought by a person in the highest
trust and confidence with Mr. Hastings, a person employed in the
management of the whole transaction, a person to whom the management,
subordinate to Munny Begum, of all the pecuniary transactions, and all
the arrangements made upon that occasion, was intrusted.
On the 11th day of March, 1775, Nundcomar gives to Mr. Francis, a member
of the Council, a charge against Mr. Hastings, consisting of two parts.
The first of these charges was a vast number of corrupt dealings, with
respect to which he was the informer, not the witness, but to which he
indicated the modes of inquiry; and they are corrupt dealings, as Mr.
Hastings himself states them, amounting to millions of rupees, and in
transactions every one of which implies in it the strongest degree of
corruption. The next part was of those to which he was not only an
informer, but a witness, in having been the person who himself
transmitted the money to Mr. Hastings and the agents of Mr. Hastings;
and accordingly, upon this part, which is the only part we charge, his
evidence is clear and full, that he gave the money to Mr. Hastings,--he
and the Begum (for I put them together). He states, that Mr. Hastings
received for the appointment of Munny Begum to the rajahship two lacs of
rupees, or about 22,000_l._, and that he received in another gross sum
one lac and a half of rupees: in all making three lac and a half, or
about 36,000_l._ This charge was signed by the man, and accompanied with
the account.
Mr. Hastings, on that day, made no reflection or observation whatever
upon this charge, except that he attempted to excite some suspicion that
Mr. Francis, who had produced it, was concerned in the charge, and was
the principal mover in it. He asks Mr. Francis that day this question:--
"The Governor-General observes, as Mr. Francis has been pleased to
inform the board that he was unacquainted with the contents of the
letter sent in to the board by Nundcomar, that he thinks himself
justified in carrying his curiosity further than he should have
permitted himself without such a previous intimation, and therefore begs
leave to ask Mr. Francis whether he was before this acquainted with
Nundcomar's intention of bringing such charges against him before the
board.
"_Mr. Francis._--As a member of this Council, I do not deem myself
obliged to answer any question of mere curiosity. I am willing, however,
to inform the Governor-General, that, though I was totally unacquainted
with the contents of the paper I have now delivered in to the board till
I heard it read, I did apprehend in general that it contained some
charge against him. It was this apprehension that made me so
particularly cautious in the manner of receiving the Rajah's letter. I
was not acquainted with Rajah Nundcomar's intention of bringing in such
charges as are mentioned in the letter.
"Warren Hastings.
J. Clavering.
Geo. Monson.
P. Francis."
Now what the duty of Mr. Hastings and the Council was, upon receiving
such information, I shall beg leave to state to your Lordships from the
Company's orders; but, before I read them, I must observe, that, in
pursuance of an act of Parliament, which was supposed to be made upon
account of the neglect of the Company, as well as the neglects of their
servants, and for which general neglects responsibility was fixed upon
the Company for the future, while for the present their authority was
suspended, and a Parliamentary commission sent out to regulate their
affairs, the Company did, upon that occasion, send out a general code
and body of instructions to be observed by their servants, in the 35th
paragraph of which it is said,--
"We direct that you immediately cause the strictest inquiry to be made
into all oppressions which may have been committed either against the
natives or Europeans, and into all abuses that may have prevailed in the
collection of the revenues, or any part of the civil government of the
Presidency: and that you communicate to us all information which you may
be able to learn relative thereto, or to any dissipation or embezzlement
of the Company's money."
Your Lordships see here that there is a direct duty fixed upon them to
forward, to promote, to set on foot, without exception of any persons
whatever, an inquiry into all manner of corruption, peculation, and
oppression. Therefore this charge of Nundcomar's was a case exactly
within the Company's orders; such a charge was not sought out, but was
actually laid before them; but if it had not been actually laid before
them, if they had any reason to suspect that such corruptions existed,
they were bound by this order to make an active inquiry into them.
Upon that day (11th March, 1775) nothing further passed; and, on the
part of Mr. Hastings, that charge, as far as we can find, might have
stood upon the records forever, without his making the smallest
observation upon it, or taking any one step to clear his own character.
But Nundcomar was not so inattentive to his duties as an accuser as Mr.
Hastings was to his duties as an inquirer; for, without a moment's
delay, upon the first board-day, two days after, Nundcomar came and
delivered the following letter.
"I had the honor to lay before you, in a letter of the 11th instant, an
abstracted, but true account of the Honorable Governor in the course of
his administration. What is there written I mean not the least to alter:
far from it. I have the strongest written vouchers to produce in support
of what I have advanced; and I wish and entreat, for my honor's sake,
that you will suffer me to appear before you, to establish the fact by
an additional, incontestable evidence."
My Lords, I will venture to say, if ever there was an accuser that
appeared well and with weight before any court, it was this man. He does
not shrink from his charge; he offered to meet the person he charged
face to face, and to make good his charge by his own evidence, and
further evidence that he should produce. Your Lordships have also seen
the conduct of Mr. Hastings on the first day; you have seen his
acquiescence under it; you have seen the suspicion he endeavored to
raise. Now, before I proceed to what Mr. Hastings thought of it, I must
remark upon this accusation, that it is a specific accusation, coming
from a person knowing the very transaction, and known to be concerned in
it,--that it was an accusation in writing, that it was an accusation
with a signature, that it was an accusation with a person to make it
good, that it was made before a competent authority, and made before an
authority bound to inquire into such accusation. When he comes to
produce his evidence, he tells you, first, the sums of money given, the
species in which they were given, the very bags in which they were put,
the exchange that was made by reducing them to the standard money of the
country; he names all the persons through whose hands the whole
transaction went, eight in number, besides himself, Munny Begum, and
Gourdas, being eleven, all referred to in this transaction. I do believe
that since the beginning of the world there never was an accusation
which was more deserving of inquiry, because there never was an
accusation which put a false accuser in a worse situation, and that put
an honest defendant in a better; for there was every means of collation,
every means of comparison, every means of cross-examining, every means
of control. There was every way of sifting evidence, in which evidence
could be sifted. Eleven witnesses to the transaction are referred to;
all the particulars of the payment, every circumstance that could give
the person accused the advantage of showing the falsehood of the
accusation, were specified. General accusations may be treated as
calumnies; but particular accusations, like these, afford the defendant,
if innocent, every possible means for making his defence: therefore the
very making no defence at all would prove, beyond all doubt, a
consciousness of guilt.
The next thing for your Lordships' consideration is the conduct of Mr.
Hastings upon this occasion. You would imagine that he would have
treated the accusation with a cold and manly disdain; that he would
have challenged and defied inquiry, and desired to see his accuser face
to face. This is what any man would do in such a situation. I can
conceive very well that a man composed, firm, and collected in himself,
conscious of not only integrity, but known integrity, conscious of a
whole life beyond the reach of suspicion,--that a man placed in such a
situation might oppose general character to general accusation, and
stand collected in himself, poised on his own base, and defying all the
calumnies in the world. But as it shows a great and is a proof of a
virtuous mind to despise calumny, it is the proof of a guilty mind to
despise a specific accusation, when made before a competent authority,
and with competent means to prove it. As Mr. Hastings's conduct was what
no man living expected, I will venture to say that no expression can do
it justice but his own. Upon reading the letter, and a motion being made
that Rajah Nundcomar be brought before the board to prove the charge
against the Governor-General, the Governor-General enters the following
minute.
"Before the question is put, I declare that I will not suffer Nundcomar
to appear before the board as my accuser. I know what belongs to the
dignity and character of the first member of this administration. I will
not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I
acknowledge the members of this board to be my judges. I am reduced on
this occasion to make the declaration, that I look upon General
Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis as my accusers. I cannot
prove this in the direct letter of the law, but in my conscience I
regard them as such, and I will give my reasons for it. On their arrival
at this place, and on the first formation of the Council, they thought
proper to take immediate and decisive measures in contradiction and for
the repeal of those which were formed by me in conjunction with the last
administration. I appealed to the Court of Directors from their acts.
Many subsequent letters have been transmitted both by them and by me to
the Court of Directors: by me, in protestation against their conduct; by
them, in justification of it. Quitting this ground, they since appear to
me to have chosen other modes of attack, apparently calculated to divert
my attention and to withdraw that of the public from the subject of our
first differences, which regarded only the measures that were necessary
for the good of the service, to attacks directly and personally levelled
at me for matters which tend to draw a personal and popular odium upon
me: and fit instruments they have found for their purpose,--Mr. Joseph
Fowke, Mahrajah Nundcomar, Roopnarain Chowdry, and the Ranny of Burdwan.
"It appears incontestably upon the records that the charges preferred by
the Ranny against me proceeded from the office of Mr. Fowke. All the
papers transmitted by her came in their original form written in the
English language,--some with Persian papers, of which they were supposed
to be translations, but all strongly marked with the character and idiom
of the English language. I applied on Saturday last for Persian
originals of some of the papers sent by her, and I was refused: I am
justified in declaring my firm belief that no such originals exist.
"With respect to Nundcomar's accusations, they were delivered by the
hands of Mr. Francis, who has declared that he was called upon by Rajah
Nundcomar, as a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this
state, to lay the packet which contained them before the board,--that he
conceived that he could not, consistent with his duty, refuse such a
letter at the instance of a person of the Rajah's rank, and did
accordingly receive it, and laid it before the board,--declaring at the
same time that he was unacquainted with the contents of it. I believe
that the Court of Directors, and those to whom those proceedings shall
be made known, will think differently of this action of Mr. Francis:
that Nundcomar was guilty of great insolence and disrespect in the
demand which he made of Mr. Francis; and that it was not a duty
belonging to the office of a councillor of this state to make himself
the carrier of a letter, which would have been much more properly
committed to the hands of a peon or hircarra, or delivered by the writer
of it to the secretary himself.
"Mr. Francis has acknowledged that he apprehended in general that it
contained some charge against me. If the charge was false, it was a
libel. It might have been false for anything that Mr. Francis could know
to the contrary, since he was unacquainted with the contents of it. In
this instance, therefore, he incurred the hazard of presenting a libel
to the board: this was not a duty belonging to his office as a
councillor of this state. I must further inform the board that I have
been long since acquainted with Nundcomar's intentions of making this
attack upon me. Happily, Nundcomar, among whose talents for intrigue
that of secrecy is not the first, has been ever too ready to make the
first publication of his own intentions. I was shown a paper containing
many accusations against me, which I was told was carried by Nundcomar
to Colonel Monson, and that he himself was employed for some hours in
private with Colonel Monson, explaining the nature of those charges.
"I mention only what I was told; but as the rest of the report which was
made to me corresponds exactly with what has happened since, I hope I
shall stand acquitted to my superiors and to the world in having given
so much credit to it as to bring the circumstance upon record. I cannot
recollect the precise time in which this is said to have happened, but I
believe it was either before or at the time of the dispatch of the
'Bute' and 'Pacific.' The charge has since undergone some alteration;
but of the copy of the paper which was delivered to me, containing the
original charge, I caused a translation to be made; when, suspecting the
renewal of the subject in this day's consultation, I brought it with me,
and I desire it may be recorded, that, when our superiors, or the world,
if the world is to be made the judge of my conduct, shall be possessed
of these materials, they may, by comparing the supposed original and
amended list of accusations preferred against me by Nundcomar, judge how
far I am justified in the credit which I give to the reports above
mentioned. I do not mean to infer from what I have said that it makes
any alteration in the nature of the charges, whether they were delivered
immediately from my ostensible accusers, or whether they came to the
board through the channel of patronage; but it is sufficient to
authorize the conviction which I feel in my own mind, that those
gentlemen are parties in the accusations of which they assert the right
of being the judges.
"From the first commencement of this administration, every means have
been tried both to deprive me of the legal authority with which I have
been trusted, and to proclaim the annihilation of it to the world; but
no instance has yet appeared of this in so extraordinary a degree as in
the question now before the board. The chief of the administration, your
superior, Gentlemen, appointed by the legislature itself, shall I sit at
this board to be arraigned in the presence of a wretch whom you all know
to be one of the basest of mankind? I believe I need not mention his
name; but it is Nundcomar. Shall I sit here to hear men collected from
the dregs of the people give evidence, at his dictating, against my
character and conduct? I will not. You may, if you please, form
yourselves into a committee for the investigation of these matters in
any manner which you may think proper; but I will repeat, that I will
not meet Nundcomar at the board, nor suffer Nundcomar to be examined at
the board; nor have you a right to it, nor can it answer any other
purpose than that of vilifying and insulting me to insist upon it.
"I am sorry to have found it necessary to deliver my sentiments on a
subject of so important a nature in an unpremeditated minute, drawn from
me at the board, which I should have wished to have had leisure and
retirement to have enabled me to express myself with that degree of
caution and exactness which the subject requires. I have said nothing
but what I believe and am morally certain I shall stand justified for in
the eyes of my superiors and the eyes of the world; but I reserve to
myself the liberty of adding my further sentiments in such a manner and
form as I shall hereafter judge necessary."
My Lords, you see here the picture of Nundcomar drawn by Mr. Hastings
himself; you see the hurry, the passion, the precipitation, the
confusion, into which Mr. Hastings is thrown by the perplexity of
detected guilt; you see, my Lords, that, instead of defending himself,
he rails at his accuser in the most indecent language, calling him a
wretch whom they all knew to be the basest of mankind,--that he rails at
the Council, by attributing their conduct to the worst of motives,--that
he rails at everybody, and declares the accusation to be a libel: in
short, you see plainly that the man's head is turned. You see there is
not a word he says upon this occasion which has common sense in it; you
see one great leading principle in it,--that he does not once attempt to
deny the charge. He attempts to vilify the witness, he attempts to
vilify those he supposes to be his accusers, he attempts to vilify the
Council; he lags upon the accusation, he mixes it with other
accusations, which had nothing to do with it, and out of the whole he
collects a resolution--to do what? To meet his adversary and defy him?
No,--that he will not suffer him to appear before him: he says, "I will
not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I
acknowledge the board to be my judges."
He was not called upon to acknowledge them to be his judges. Both he and
they were called upon to inquire into all corruptions without exception.
It was his duty not merely [not?] to traverse and oppose them while
inquiring into acts of corruption, but he was bound to take an active
part in it,--that if they had a mind to let such a thing sleep upon
their records, it was his duty to have brought forward the inquiry. They
were not his judges, they were not his accusers; they were his
fellow-laborers in the inquiry ordered by the Court of Directors, their
masters, and by which inquiry he might be purged of that corruption with
which he stood charged.
He says, "Nundcomar is a wretch whom you all know to be the basest of
mankind." I believe they did not know the man to be a wretch, or the
basest of mankind; but if he was a wretch, and if he was the basest of
mankind, if he was guilty of all the crimes with which we charge Mr.
Hastings, (not one of which was ever proved against him,)--if any of
your Lordships were to have the misfortune to be before this tribunal,
before any inquest of the House of Commons, or any other inquest of this
nation, would you not say that it was the greatest possible advantage to
you that the man who accused you was a miscreant, the vilest and basest
of mankind, by the confession of all the world? Do mankind really, then,
think that to be accused by men of honor, of weight, of character, upon
probable charges, is an advantage to them, and that to be accused by the
basest of mankind is a disadvantage? No: give me, if ever I am to have
accusers, miscreants, as he calls him,--wretches, the basest and vilest
of mankind. "The board," says he, "are my accusers." If they were, it
was their duty; but they were not his accusers, but were inquiring into
matters which it was equally his duty to inquire into. He would not
suffer Nundcomar to be produced; he would not suffer Nundcomar to be
examined; he rather suffered such an accusation to stand against his
name and character than permit it to be inquired into. Do I want any
other presumption of his guilt, upon such an occasion, than such conduct
as this?
This man, whom he calls a wretch, the basest and vilest of mankind, was
undoubtedly, by himself, in the records of the Company, declared to be
one of the first men of that country, everything that a subject could
be, a person illustrious for his birth, sacred with regard to his caste,
opulent in fortune, eminent in situation, who had filled the very first
offices in that country; and that he was, added to all this, a man of
most acknowledged talents, and of such a superiority as made the whole
people of Bengal appear to be an inferior race of beings compared to
him,--a man whose outward appearance and demeanor used to cause
reverence and awe, and who at that time was near seventy years of age,
which, without any other title, generally demands respect from mankind.
And yet this man he calls the basest of mankind, a name which no man is
entitled to call another till he has proved something to justify him in
so doing; and notwithstanding his opulence, his high rank, station, and
birth, he despises him, and will not suffer him to be heard as an
accuser before him. I will venture to say that Mr. Hastings, in so
doing, whether elevated by philosophy or inflated by pride, is not like
the rest of mankind. We do know, that, in all accusations, a great part
of their weight and authority comes from the character, the situation,
the name, the description, the office, the dignity of the persons who
bring them; mankind are so made, we cannot resist this prejudice; and it
has weight, and ever will have _primâ facie_ weight, in all the
tribunals in the world. If, therefore, Rajah Nundcomar was a man who (it
is not degrading to your Lordships to say) was equal in rank, according
to the idea of his country, to any peer in this House, as sacred as a
bishop, of as much gravity and authority as a judge, and who was
prime-minister in the country in which he lived, with what face can Mr.
Hastings call this man a wretch, and say that he will not suffer him to
be brought before him? If, indeed, joined with such circumstances, the
accuser be a person of bad morals, then, I admit, those bad morals take
away from their weight; but for a proof of that you must have some other
grounds than the charges and the railing of the culprit against him.
I might say that his passion is a proof of his guilt; and there is an
action which is more odious than the crimes he attempts to cover,--_for
he has murdered this man by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey_; and if his
counsel should be unwise enough to endeavor to detract from the credit
of this man by the pretended punishment to which he was brought, we will
open that dreadful scene to your Lordships, and you will see that it
does not detract from his credit, but brings an eternal stain and
dishonor upon the justice of Great Britain: I say nothing further of it.
As he stood there, as he gave that evidence that day, the evidence was
to be received; it stands good, and is a record against Mr.
Hastings,--with this addition, that he would not suffer it to be
examined. He railed at his colleagues. He says, if the charge was false,
they were guilty of a libel. No: it might have been the effect of
conspiracy, it might be punished in another way; but if it was false, it
was no libel. And all this is done to discountenance inquiry, to bring
odium upon his colleagues for doing their duty, and to prevent that
inquiry which could alone clear his character.