evidence. The lac and a half was not only attested by Rajah Gourdas, by
the Begum, by Chittendur, by the Begum again upon Mr. Hastings's own
question, indirectly admitted by Mr. Hastings, proved by the orders for
it to be written off to expense, (such a body of proof as perhaps never
existed,) but there is one proof still remaining, namely, a paper, which
was produced before the Committee, and which we shall produce to your
Lordships. It is an authentic paper, delivered in favor of Mr. Hastings
by Major Scott, who acted at that time as Mr. Hastings's agent, to a
committee of the House of Commons, and authenticated to come from Munny
Begum herself. All this body of evidence we mean to produce; and we
shall prove, first, that he received the two lacs,--and, secondly, that
he received one lac and a half under the name of entertainment. With
regard to the lac and a half, Mr. Hastings is so far from controverting
it, even indirectly, that he is obliged to establish it by testimonies
produced by himself, in order to sink in that, if he can, the two lacs,
which he thinks he is not able to justify, but which he fears will be
proved against him. The lac and a half, I do believe, he will not be
advised to contest; but whether he is or no, we shall load him with it,
we shall prove it beyond all doubt. But there are other circumstances
further auxiliary in this business, which, from the very attempts to
conceal it, prove beyond doubt the fraudulent and wicked nature of the
transaction. In the account given by the Begum, a lac, which is for Mr.
Hastings's entertainment, is entered in a suspicious neighborhood; for
there is there entered a lac of rupees paid for the subahdarry sunnuds
to the Mogul through the Rajah Shitab Roy. Upon looking into the
account, and comparing it with another paper produced, the first thing
we find is, that this woman charges the sum paid to be a sum due; and
then she charges this one lac to have been paid when the Mogul was in
the hands of the Mahrattas, when all communication with him was stopped,
and when Rajah Shitab Roy, who is supposed to have paid it, was under
confinement in the hands of Mr. Hastings. Thus she endeavors to conceal
the lac of rupees paid to Mr. Hastings.
In order to make this transaction, which, though not in itself
intricate, is in some degree made so by Mr. Hastings, clear to your
Lordships, we pledge ourselves to give to your Lordships, what must be a
great advantage to the culprit himself, a syllabus, the heads of all
this charge, and of the proofs themselves, with their references, to
show how far the proof goes to the two lacs, and then to the one lac and
a half singly. This we shall put in writing, that you may not depend
upon the fugitive memory of a thing not so well, perhaps, or powerfully
expressed as it ought to be, and in order to give every advantage to the
defendant, and to give every facility to your Lordships' judgment: and
this will, I believe, be thought a clear and fair way of proceeding.
Your Lordships will then judge whether Mr. Hastings's conduct at the
time, his resisting an inquiry, preventing his servant appearing as an
evidence, discountenancing and discouraging his colleagues, raising
every obstruction to the prosecution, dissolving the Council,
preventing evidence and destroying it as far as lay in his power by
collateral means, be not also such presumptive proofs as give double
force to all the positive proof we produce against him.
The lac and a half, I know, he means to support upon the custom of
entertainment; and your Lordships will judge whether or not a man who
was ordered and had covenanted never to take more than 400_l._ could
take 16,000_l._ under color of an entertainment. That which he intends
to produce as a justification we charge, and your Lordships and the
world will think, to be the heaviest aggravation of his crime. And after
explaining to your Lordships the circumstances under which this
justification is made, and leaving a just impression of them upon your
minds, I shall beg your Lordships' indulgence to finish this member of
the business to-morrow.
It is stated and entered in the account, that an entertainment was
provided for Mr. Hastings at the rate of 200_l._ a day. He stayed at
Moorshedabad for near three months; and thus you see that visits from
Mr. Hastings are pretty expensive things: it is at the rate of
73,000_l._ a year for his entertainment. We find that Mr. Middleton, an
English gentleman who was with him, received likewise (whether under the
same pretence I know not, and it does not signify) another sum equal to
it; and if these two gentlemen had stayed in that country a year, their
several allowances would have been 146,000_l._ out of the Nabob's
allowance of 160,000_l._ a year: they would have eat up nearly the whole
of it. And do you wonder, my Lords, that such guests and such hosts are
difficult to be divided? Do you wonder that such visits, when so well
paid for and well provided for, were naturally long? There is hardly a
prince in Europe who would give to another prince of Europe from his
royal hospitality what was given upon this occasion to Mr. Hastings.
Let us now see what was Mr. Hastings's business during this long
protracted visit. First, he tells you that he came there to reduce all
the state and dignity of the Nabob. He tells you that he felt no
compunction in reducing that state; that the elephants, the menagerie,
the stables, all went without mercy, and consequently all the persons
concerned in them were dismissed also. When he came to the abolition of
the pensions, he says,--"I proceeded with great pain, from the
reflection that I was the instrument in depriving whole families, all at
once, of their bread, and reducing them to a state of penury: convinced
of the necessity of the measure, I endeavored to execute it with great
impartiality." Here he states the work he was employed in, when he took
this two hundred pounds a day for his own pay. "It was necessary to
begin with reforming the useless servants of the court, and retrenching
the idle parade of elephants, menageries, &c., which loaded the civil
list. This cost little regret in performing; but the Resident, who took
upon himself the chief share in this business, acknowledges that he
suffered considerably in his feelings, when he came to touch on the
pension list. Some hundreds of persons of the ancient nobility of the
country, excluded, under our government, from almost all employments,
civil or military, had, ever since the revolution, depended on the
bounty of the Nabob; and near ten lacs were bestowed that way. It is not
that the distribution was always made with judgment or impartial, and
much room was left for a reform; but when the question was to cut off
entirely the greatest part, it could not fail to be accompanied with
circumstances of real distress. The Resident declares, that, even with
some of the highest rank, he could not avoid discovering, under all the
pride of Eastern manners, the manifest marks of penury and want. There
was, however, no room left for hesitation: to confine the Nabob's
expenses within the limited sum, it was necessary that pensions should
be set aside."
Here, my Lords, is a man sent to execute one of the most dreadful
offices that was ever executed by man,--to cut off, as he says himself,
with a bleeding heart, the only remaining allowance made for hundreds of
the decayed nobility and gentry of a great kingdom, driven by our
government from the offices upon which they existed. In this moment of
anxiety and affliction, when he says he felt pain and was cut to the
heart to do it,--at this very moment, when he was turning over fourteen
hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry of this country to downright
want of bread,--just at that moment, while he was doing this act, and
feeling this act in this manner, from the collected morsels forced from
the mouths of that indigent and famished nobility he gorged his own
ravenous maw with an allowance of two hundred pounds a day for his
entertainment. As we see him in this business, this man is unlike any
other: he is also never corrupt but he is cruel; he never dines without
creating a famine; he does not take from the loose superfluity of
standing greatness, but falls upon the indigent, the oppressed, and
ruined; he takes to himself double what would maintain them. His is
unlike the generous rapacity of the noble eagle, who preys upon a
living, struggling, reluctant, equal victim; his is like that of the
ravenous vulture, who falls upon the decayed, the sickly, the dying, and
the dead, and only anticipates Nature in the destruction of its object.
His cruelty is beyond his corruption: but there is something in his
hypocrisy which is more terrible than his cruelty; for, at the very time
when with double and unsparing hands he executes a proscription, and
sweeps off the food of hundreds of the nobility and gentry of a great
country, his eyes overflow with tears, and he turns the precious balm
that bleeds from wounded humanity, and is its best medicine, into fatal,
rancorous, mortal poison to the human race.
You have seen, that, when he takes two hundred pounds a day for his
entertainment, he tells you that in this very act he is starving
fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry. My Lords, you have
the blood of nobles,--if not, you have the blood of men in your veins:
you feel as nobles, you feel as men. What would you say to a cruel Mogul
exactor, by whom after having been driven from your estates, driven from
the noble offices, civil and military, which you hold, driven from your
bishoprics, driven from your places at court, driven from your offices
as judges, and, after having been reduced to a miserable flock of
pensioners, your very pensions were at last wrested from your mouths,
and who, though at the very time when those pensions were wrested from
you he declares them to have been the only bread of a miserable decayed
nobility, takes himself two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment,
and continues it till it amounts to sixteen thousand pounds? I do
think, that, of all the corruptions which he has not owned, but has not
denied, or of those which he does in effect own, and of which he brings
forward the evidence himself, the taking and claiming under color of an
entertainment is ten times the most nefarious.
I shall this day only further trouble your Lordships to observe that he
has never directly denied this transaction. I have tumbled over the
records, I have looked at every part, to see whether he denies it. He
did not deny it at the time, he did not deny it to the Court of
Directors: on the contrary, he did in effect acknowledge it, when,
without directly acknowledging it, he promised them a full and liberal
explanation of the whole transaction. He never did give that
explanation. Parliament took up the business; this matter was reported
at the end of the Eleventh Report; but though the House of Commons had
thus reported it, and made that public which before was upon the
Company's records, he took no notice of it. Then another occasion
arises: he comes before the House of Commons; he knows he is about to be
prosecuted for those very corruptions; he well knows these charges exist
against him; he makes his defence (if he will allow it to be his
defence); but, though thus driven, he did not there deny it, because he
knew, that, if he had denied it, it could be proved against him. I
desire your Lordships will look at that paper which we have given in
evidence, and see if you find a word of denial of it: there is much
discourse, much folly, much insolence, but not one word of denial. Then,
at last, it came before this tribunal against him. I desire to refer
your Lordships to that part of his defence to the article in which this
bribe is specifically charged: he does not deny it there; the only
thing which looks like a denial is one sweeping clause inserted, (in
order to put us upon the proof,) that all the charges are to be
conceived as denied; but a specific denial to this specific charge in no
stage of the business, from beginning to end, has he once made.
And therefore here I close that part of the charge which relates to the
business of Nundcomar. Your Lordships will see such a body of
presumptive proof and positive proof as never was given yet of any
secret corrupt act of bribery; and there I leave it with your Lordships'
justice. I beg pardon for having detained you so long; but your
Lordships will be so good as to observe that no business ever was
covered with more folds of iniquitous artifice than this which is now
brought before you.
SPEECH
ON
THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.
SECOND DAY: SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1789.
My Lords,--When I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships, I
endeavored to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an
intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an
affair was consistent with the brevity which I endeavored to preserve,
the proofs which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an
inquiry instituted by an order of the Court of Directors into the
corruption and peculation of persons in authority in India. My Lords, I
have endeavored to show you by anterior presumptive proofs, drawn from
the nature and circumstances of the acts themselves inferring guilt,
that such actions and such conduct could be referable only to one cause,
namely, _corruption_; I endeavored to show you afterwards, my Lords,
what the specific nature and extent of the corruption was, as far as it
could be fully proved; and lastly, the great satisfactory presumption
which attended the inquiry with regard to Mr. Hastings,--namely, that,
contrary to law, contrary to his duty, contrary to what is owed by
innocence to itself, Mr. Hastings resisted that inquiry, and employed
all the power of his office to prevent the exercise of it, either in
himself or in others. These presumptions and these proofs will be
brought before your Lordships, distinctly and in order, at the end of
this opening.
The next point on which I thought it necessary to proceed was relative
to the presumptions which his subsequent conduct gave with regard to his
guilt: because, my Lords, his uniform tenor of conduct, such as must
attend guilt, both in the act, at the time of the inquiry, and
subsequent to it, will form such a body of satisfactory evidence as I
believe the human mind is not made to resist.
My Lords, there is another reason why I choose to enter into the
presumptions drawn from his conduct and the fact, taking his conduct in
two parts, if it may be so expressed, _omission_ and _commission_, in
order that your Lordships should more fully enter into the consequences
of this system of bribery. But before I say anything upon that, I wish
your Lordships to be apprised, that the Commons, in bringing this bribe
of three lac and a half before your Lordships, do not wish by any means
to have it understood that this is the whole of the bribe that was
received by Mr. Hastings in consequence of delivering up the whole
management of the government of the country to that improper person whom
he nominated for it. My Lords, from the proofs that will be adduced
before you, there is great probability that he received very nearly a
hundred thousand pounds; there is positive proof of his receiving fifty;
and we have chosen only to charge him with that of which there is such
an accumulated body of proof as to leave no doubt upon the minds of your
Lordships. All this I say, because we are perfectly apprised of the
sentiments of the public upon this point: when they hear of the enormity
of Indian peculation, when they see the acts done, and compare them
with the bribes received, the acts seem so enormous and the bribes
comparatively so small, that they can hardly be got to attribute them to
that motive. What I mean to state is this: that, from a collective view
of the subject, your Lordships will be able to judge that enormous
offences have been committed, and that the bribe which we have given in
proof is a specimen of the nature and extent of those enormous bribes
which extend to much greater sums than we are able to prove before you
in the manner your Lordships would like and expect.
I have already remarked to your Lordships, that, after this charge was
brought and recorded before the Council in spite of the resistance made
by Mr. Hastings, in which he employed all the power and authority of his
station, and the whole body of his partisans and associates in iniquity,
dispersed through every part of these provinces,--after he had taken all
these steps, finding himself pressed by the proof and pressed by the
presumption of his resistance to the inquiry, he did think it necessary
to make something like a defence. Accordingly he has made what he calls
a justification, which did not consist in the denial of that fact, or
any explanation of it. The mode he took for his defence was abuse of his
colleagues, abuse of the witnesses, and of every person who in the
execution of his duty was inquiring into the fact, and charging them
with things which, if true, were by no means sufficient to support him,
either in defending the acts themselves, or in the criminal means he
used to prevent inquiry into them. His design was to mislead their
minds, and to carry them from the accusation and the proof of it. With
respect to the passion, violence, and intemperate heat with which he
charged them, they were proceeding in an orderly, regular manner; and if
on any occasion they seem to break out into warmth, it was in
consequence of that resistance which he made to them, in what your
Lordships, I believe, will agree with them in thinking was one of the
most important parts of their functions. If they had been intemperate in
their conduct, if they had been violent, passionate, prejudiced against
him, it afforded him only a better means of making his defence; because,
though in a rational and judicious mind the intemperate conduct of the
accuser certainly proves nothing with regard to the truth or falsehood
of his accusation, yet we do know that the minds of men are so
constituted that an improper mode of conducting a right thing does form
some degree of prejudice against it. Mr. Hastings, therefore, unable to
defend himself upon principle, has resorted as much as he possibly could
to prejudice. And at the same time that there is not one word of denial,
or the least attempt at a refutation of the charge, he has loaded the
records with all manner of minutes, proceedings, and letters relative to
everything but the fact itself. The great aim of his policy, both then,
before, and ever since, has been to divert the mind of the auditory, or
the persons to whom he addressed himself, from the nature of his cause,
to some collateral circumstance relative to it,--a policy to which he
has always had recourse; but that trick, the last resource of despairing
guilt, I trust will now completely fail him.
Mr. Hastings, however, began to be pretty sensible that this way of
proceeding had a very unpromising and untoward look; for which reason he
next declared that he reserved his defence for fear of a legal
prosecution, and that some time or other he would give a large and
liberal explanation to the Court of Directors, to whom he was answerable
for his conduct, of his refusing to suffer the inquiry to proceed, of
his omitting to give them satisfaction at the time, of his omitting to
take any one natural step that an innocent man would have taken upon
such an occasion. Under this promise he has remained from that time to
the time you see him at your bar, and he has neither denied, exculpated,
explained, or apologized for his conduct in any one single instance.
While he accuses the intemperance of his adversaries, he shows a degree
of temperance in himself which always attends guilt in despair: for
struggling guilt may be warm, but guilt that is desperate has nothing to
do but to submit to the consequences of it, to bear the infamy annexed
to its situation, and to try to find some consolation in the effects of
guilt with regard to private fortune for the scandal it brings them into
in public reputation. After the business had ended in India, the causes
why he should have given the explanation grew stronger and stronger: for
not only the charges exhibited against him were weighty, but the manner
in which he was called upon to inquire into them was such as would
undoubtedly tend to stir the mind of a man of character, to rouse him to
some consideration of himself, and to a sense of the necessity of his
defence. He was goaded to make this defence by the words I shall read to
your Lordships from Sir John Clavering.
"In the late proceedings of the Revenue Board it will appear that there
is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General
has thought it reasonable to abstain." He further says, in answer to
Mr. Hastings, "The malicious view with which this innuendo" (an innuendo
of Mr. Hastings) "is thrown out is only worthy of a man who, having
disgraced himself in the eyes of every man of honor both in Asia and in
Europe, and having no imputation to lay to our charge, has dared to
attempt in the dark what malice itself could not find grounds to aim at
openly."
These are the charges which were made upon him,--not loosely, in the
heat of conversation, but deliberately, in writing, entered upon record,
and sent to his employers, the Court of Directors, those whom the law
had set over him, and to whose judgment and opinion he was responsible.
Do your Lordships believe that it was conscious innocence that made him
endure such reproaches, so recorded, from his own colleague? Was it
conscious innocence that made him abandon his defence, renounce his
explanation, and bear all this calumny, (if it was calumny,) in such a
manner, without making any one attempt to refute it? Your Lordships will
see by this, and by other minutes with which the books are filled, that
Mr. Hastings is charged quite to the brim with corruptions of all sorts,
and covered with every mode of possible disgrace. For there is something
so base and contemptible in the crimes of peculation and bribery, that,
when they come to be urged home and strongly against a man, as here they
are urged, nothing but a consciousness of guilt can possibly make a
person so charged support himself under them. Mr. Hastings considered
himself, as he has stated, to be under the necessity of bearing them.
What is that necessity? Guilt. Could he say that Sir John Clavering (for
I say nothing now of Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, who were joined
with him) was a man weak and contemptible? I believe there are those
among your Lordships who remember that Sir John Clavering was known
before he went abroad, and better known by his conduct after, to be a
man of the most distinguished honor that ever served his Majesty; he
served his Majesty in a military situation for many years, and
afterwards in that high civil situation in India. It is known that
through every step and gradation of a high military service, until he
arrived at the highest of all, there never was the least blot upon him,
or doubt or suspicion of his character; that his temper for the most
part, and his manners, were fully answerable to his virtues, and a noble
ornament to them; that he was one of the best natured, best bred men, as
well as one of the highest principled men to be found in his Majesty's
service; that he had passed the middle time of life, and come to an age
which makes men wise in general; so that he could be warmed by nothing
but that noble indignation at guilt which is the last thing that ever
was or will be extinguished in a virtuous mind. He was a man whose voice
was not to be despised; but if his character had been personally as
contemptible as it was meritorious and honorable in every respect, yet
his situation as a commissioner named by an act of Parliament for the
express purpose of reforming India gave him a weight and consequence
that could not suffer Mr. Hastings, without a general and strong
presumption of his guilt, to acquiesce in such recorded minutes from
him. But if he had been a weak, if he had been an intemperate man, (in
reality he was as cool, steady, temperate, judicious a man as ever was
born,) the Court of Directors, to whom Mr. Hastings was responsible by
every tie and every principle, and was made responsible at last by a
positive act of Parliament obliging him to yield obedience to their
commands as the general rule of his duty,--the Court of Directors, I
say, perfectly approved of every part of General Clavering's, Colonel
Monson's, and Mr. Francis's conduct; they approved of this inquiry which
Mr. Hastings rejected; and they have declared, "that the powers and
instructions vested in and given to General Clavering and the other
gentlemen were such as fully authorized them in every inquiry that seems
to have been their object ... Europeans."[2]
Now after the supreme authority, to which they were to appeal in all
their disputes, had passed this judgment upon this very inquiry, the
matter no longer depended upon Mr. Hastings's opinion; nor could he be
longer justified in attributing that to evil motives either of malice or
passion in his colleagues. When the judges who were finally to determine
who was malicious, who was passionate, who was or was not justified
either in setting on foot the inquiry or resisting it, had passed that
judgment, then Mr. Hastings was called upon by all the feelings of a
man, and by his duty in Council, to give satisfaction to his masters,
the Directors, who approved of the zeal and diligence shown in that very
inquiry, the passion of which he only reprobated, and upon which he
grounded his justification.