yet it did not continue absolutely and relatively long; because the
Court of Directors, as soon as they heard of this iniquitous
appointment, which glared upon them in all the light of its infamy,
immediately wrote the strongest, the most decided, and the most
peremptory censure upon him, attributing his acts, every one of them, to
the same causes to which I attribute them. As a proof that the Court of
Directors saw the thing in the very light in which I represent it to
your Lordships, and indeed in which every one must see it, you will find
that they reprobate all his idle excuses,--that they reprobate all the
actors in the scene,--that they consider everything to have been done,
not by the Nabob, but by himself,--that the object of the appointment of
Munny Begum was _money_, and that the consequence of that appointment
was the robbery of the Nabob's treasury. "We by no means approve your
late proceedings, on the application of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah for
the removal of the Naib Subahdar. The requisition of Mobarek ul Dowlah
was improper and unfriendly; because he must have known that the late
appointment of Mahomed Reza Khân to the office of Naib Subahdar had been
marked with the Company's special approbation, and that the Court of
Directors had assured him of their favor so long as a firm attachment
to the Company's interest and a proper discharge of the duties of his
station should render him worthy of their protection. We therefore
repeat our declaration, that to require the dismission of a
prime-minister thus circumstanced, without producing the smallest proof
of his infidelity to the Company, or venturing to charge him with one
instance of maladministration in the discharge of his public duty, was
improper and inconsistent with the friendship subsisting between the
Nabob of Bengal and the Company." And further on they say,--"The Nabob
having intimated that he had repeatedly stated the trouble and
uneasiness which he had suffered from the naibship of the nizamut being
vested in Mahomed Reza Khân, we observe one of the members of your board
desired the Nabob's repeated letters on the subject might be read, but
this reasonable request was overruled, on a plea of saving the board's
time, which we can by no means admit as a sufficient objection. The
Nabob's letters of the 25th and 30th August, of the 3d September and
17th November, leave us no doubt of the true design of this
extraordinary business being to bring forward Munny Begum, and again to
invest her with improper power and influence, notwithstanding our former
declaration, that so great a part of the Nabob's allowance had been
embezzled or misapplied under her superintendence."
At present I do not think it necessary, because it would be doing more
than enough, it would be slaying the slain, to show your Lordships what
Mr. Hastings's motives were in acting against the sense of the East
India Company, appointed by an act of Parliament to control him,--that
he did it for a corrupt purpose, that all his pretences were false and
fraudulent, and that he had his own corrupt views in the whole of the
proceeding. But in the statement which I have given of this matter, I
beg your Lordships to observe the instruments with which Mr. Hastings
acts. The great men of that country, and particularly the Subahdar
himself, the Nabob, are and is in so equivocal a situation, that it
afforded him two bolting-holes, by which he is enabled to resist the
authority of the Company, and exercise an arbitrary authority of his
own: for, though the Nabob has the titles of high sovereignty, he is the
lowest of all dependants; he appears to be the master of the
country,--he is a pensioner of the Company's government.
When Mr. Hastings wants him to obey and answer his corrupt purposes, he
finds him in the character of a pensioner: when he wants his authority
to support him in opposition to the authority of the Company,
immediately he invests him with high sovereign powers, and he dare not
execute the orders of the Company for fear of doing some act that will
make him odious in the eyes of God and man. We see how he appointed all
officers for him, and forbade his interference in all affairs. When the
Company see the impropriety and the guilt of these acts, and order him
to rescind them, and appoint again Mahomed Reza Khân, he declares he
will not, that he cannot do it in justice, but that he will consent to
send him the order of the Company, but without backing it with any order
of the board: which, supposing even there had been no private
communication, was, in other words, commanding him to disobey it. So
this poor man, who a short time before was at the feet of Mr. Hastings,
whom Mr. Hastings declared to be a pageant, and swore in a court of
justice that he was but a pageant, and followed that affidavit with
long declarations in Council that he was a pageant in sovereignty, and
ought in policy ever to be held out as such,--this man he sets up in
opposition to the Company, and refuses to appoint Mahomed Reza Khân to
the office which was guarantied to him by the express faith of the
Company, pledged to his support. Will any man tell me that this
resistance, under such base, though plausible pretences, could spring
from any other cause than a resolution of persisting systematically in
his course of corruption and bribery through Munny Begum?
But there is another circumstance that puts this in a stronger light. He
opposes the Nabob's mock authority to the authority of the Company, and
leaves Mahomed Reza Khân unemployed, because, as he says, he cannot in
justice execute orders from the Company (though they are his undoubted
masters) contrary to the rights of the Nabob. You see what the rights of
the Nabob were: the rights of the Nabob were, to be governed by Munny
Begum and her scandalous ministers. But, however, we now see him exalted
to be an independent sovereign; he defies the Company at the head of
their armies and their treasury; that name that makes all India shake
was defied by one of its pensioners. My Lords, human greatness is an
unstable thing. This man, so suddenly exalted, was as soon depressed;
and the manner of his depression is as curious as that of his exaltation
by Mr. Hastings, and will tend to show you the man most clearly.
Mr. Francis, whose conduct all along was directed by no other principles
than those which were in conformity with the plan adopted by himself and
his virtuous colleagues, namely, an entire obedience to the laws of his
country, and who constantly had opposed Mr. Hastings, upon principles of
honor, and principles of obedience to the authority of the Company under
which he acted, had never contended for any one thing, in any way, or in
any instance, but obedience to them, and had constantly asserted that
Mahomed Reza Khân ought to be put into employment. Mr. Hastings as
constantly opposed him; and the reason he gave for it was, that it was
against the direct rights of the Nabob, and that they were rights so
sacred that they could not be infringed even by the sovereign authority
of the Company ordering him to do it. He had so great an aversion to the
least subtraction of the Nabob's right, that, though expressly commanded
by the Court of Directors, he would not suffer Mahomed Reza Khân to be
invested with his office under the Company's authority. The Nabob was
too sovereign, too supreme, for him to do it. But such is the fate of
human grandeur, that a whimsical event reduced the Nabob to his state of
pageant again, and made him the mere subject of--you will see whom. Mr.
Hastings found he was so embarrassed by his disobedience to the spirit
of the orders of the Company, and by the various wild projects he had
formed, as to make it necessary for him, even though he had a majority
in the Council, to gain over at any price Mr. Francis. Mr. Francis,
frightened by the same miserable situation of affairs, (for this
happened at a most dangerous period,--the height of the Mahratta war,)
was willing likewise to give up his opposition to Mr. Hastings, to
suspend the execution of many rightful things, and to concede them to
the public necessity. Accordingly he agreed to terms with Mr. Hastings.
But what was the price of that concession? Any base purpose, any
desertion of public duty? No: all that he desired of Mr. Hastings was,
that he should obey the orders of the Company; and among other acts of
the obedience required was this, that Mahomed Reza Khân should be put
into his office.
You have heard how Mr. Hastings opposed the order of the Company, and on
what account he opposed it. On the 1st of September he sent an order to
the Nabob, now become his subject, to give up this office to Mahomed
Reza Khân: an act which he had before represented as a dethroning of the
Nabob. The order went on the 1st of September, and on the 3d this great
and mighty prince, whom all earth could not move from the assertion of
his rights, gives them all up, and Mahomed Reza Khân is invested with
them. So there all his pretences were gone. It is plain that what had
been done before was for Munny Begum, and that what he now gave up was
from necessity: and it shows that the Nabob was the meanest of his
servants; for in truth he ate his daily bread out of the hands of Mr.
Hastings, through Munny Begum.
Mahomed Reza Khân was now invested again with his office; but such was
the treachery of Mr. Hastings, that, though he wrote to the Nabob that
this was done in consequence of the orders of the Company, he did
clandestinely, according to his usual mode, assure the Nabob that
Mahomed Reza Khân should not hold the place longer than till he heard
from England. He then wrote him another letter, that he should hold it
no longer than while he submitted to his present necessity, (thus giving
up to his colleague what he refused to the Company,) and engaged,
privately, that he would dismiss Mahomed Reza Khân again. And
accordingly, the moment he thought Mr. Francis was not in a condition to
give him trouble any longer, that moment he again turned out Mahomed
Reza Khân from that general superintendence of affairs which the Company
gave him, and deposed him as a minister, leaving him only a very
confined authority as a magistrate.
All these changes, no less than four great revolutions, if I may so call
them, were made by Mr. Hastings for his own corrupt purposes. This is
the manner in which Mr. Hastings has played with the most sacred objects
that man ever had a dealing with: with the government, with the justice,
with the order, with the dignity, with the nobility of a great country:
he played with them to satisfy his own wicked and corrupt purposes
through the basest instrument.
Now, my Lords, I have done with these presumptions of corruption with
Munny Begum, and have shown that it is not a slight crime, but that it
is attended with a breach of public faith, with a breach of his orders,
with a breach of the whole English government, and the destruction of
the native government, of the police, the order, the safety, the
security, and the justice of the country,--and that all these are much
concerned in this cause. Therefore the Commons stand before the face of
the world, and say, We have brought a cause, a great cause, a cause
worthy the Commons of England to prosecute, and worthy the Lords to
judge and determine upon.
I have now nothing further to state than what the consequences are of
Mr. Hastings taking bribes,--that Mr. Hastings's taking of bribes is not
only his own corruption, but the incurable corruption of the whole
service. I will show, first, that he was named in 1773 to put an end to
that corruption. I will show that he did not,--that he knowingly and
willingly connived at it,--and that that connivance was the principal
cause of all the disorders that have hitherto prevailed in that country.
I will show you that he positively refused to obey the Company's order
to inquire into and to correct the corruptions that prevailed in that
country; next, that he established an avowed system of connivance, in
order to gain over everything that was corrupt in the country; and that,
lastly, to secure it, he gave up all the prosecutions, and enervated and
took away the sole arm left to the Company for the assertion of
authority and the preservation of good morals and purity in their
service.
My Lords, here is a letter, in the year 1773, in which the Court of
Directors had, upon his own representation, approved some part of his
conduct. He is charmed with their approbation; he promises the greatest
things; but I believe your Lordships will see, from the manner in which
he proceeds at that very instant, that a more deliberate system, for not
only being corrupt himself, but supporting corruption in others, never
was exhibited in any public paper.
"While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past successes of
my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back with a mixture of
anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I may since have
hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my letters addressed to your
Honorable Court, and to the Secret Committee, repeat the strongest
promises of prosecuting the inquiries into the conduct of your servants
which you had been pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will
readily perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations;
since it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I
foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the
disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time I
will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might have
delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have been
accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the entire
attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even with all the
aids of leisure and authority, would have proved ineffectual. I dare
appeal to the public records, to the testimony of those who have
opportunities of knowing me, and even to the detail which the public
voice can report of the past acts of this government, that my time has
been neither idly nor uselessly employed: yet such are the cares and
embarrassments of this various state, that, although much may be done,
much more, even in matters of moment, must necessarily remain neglected.
To select from the miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies
present to our choice those points on which the general welfare of your
affairs most essentially depends, to provide expedients for future
advantages and guard against probable evils, are all that your
administration can faithfully promise to perform for your service with
their united labors most diligently exerted. They cannot look back
without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which are those
of your interests, to endless researches, which can produce no real
good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of
personal malevolence, both here and at home."
My Lords, this is the first man, I believe, that ever took credit for
his sincerity from his breach of his promises. "I could not," he says,
"have made these promises, if I had not thought that I could perform
them. Now I find I cannot perform them, and you have in that
non-performance and in that profession a security for my sincerity when
I promised them." Upon this principle, any man who makes a promise has
nothing to do afterwards, but to say that he finds himself (without
assigning any particular cause for it) unable to perform it,--not only
to justify himself for his non-performance, but to justify himself and
claim credit for sincerity in his original profession. The charge was
given him specially, and he promised obedience, over and over, upon the
spot, and in the country, in which he was no novice, for he had been
bred in it: it was his native country in one sense, it was the place of
his renewed nativity and regeneration. Yet this very man, as if he was a
novice in it, now says, "I promised you what I now find I cannot
perform." Nay, what is worse, he declares no man could perform it, if he
gave up his whole time to it. And lastly, he says, that the inquiry into
these corruptions, even if you succeeded in it, would do more harm than
good. Now was there ever an instance of a man so basely deserting a
duty, and giving so base a reason for it? His duty was to put an end to
corruption in every channel of government. It cannot be done. Why?
Because it would expose our affairs to malignity and enmity, and end,
perhaps, to our disadvantage. Not only will he connive himself, but he
advises the Company to do it. For fear of what? For fear that their
service was so abandoned and corrupt, that the display of the evil would
tend more to their disreputation than all their attempts to reform it
would tend to their service.
Mr. Hastings should naturally have imagined that the law was a resource
in this desperate case of bribery. He tells you, that in "that charge of
oppression, though they were supported by the cries of the people and
the most authentic representations, it is yet impossible in most cases
to obtain legal proofs." Here is a system of total despair upon the
business, which I hope and believe is not a desperate one, and has not
proved a desperate one, whenever a rational attempt has been made to
pursue it. Here you find him corrupt, and you find, in consequence of
that corruption, that he screens the whole body of corruption in India,
and states an absolute despair of any possibility, by any art or
address, of putting an end to it. Nay, he tells you, that, if corruption
did not exist, if it was not connived at, that the India Company could
not exist. Whether that be a truth or not I cannot tell; but this I
know, that it is the most horrible picture that ever was made of any
country. It might be said that these were excuses for omissions,--sins
of omission he calls them. I will show that they were systematic, that
Mr. Hastings did uniformly profess that he would connive at abuses, and
contend that abuses ought to be connived at. When the whole mystery of
the iniquity, in which he himself was deeply concerned, came to
light,--when it appeared that all the Company's orders were
contravened,--that contracts were given directly contrary to their
orders, and upon principles subversive of their government, leading to
all manner of oppression and ruin to the country,--what was Mr.
Hastings's answer? "I must here remark, that the majority ... I had not
the power of establishing it."[5] Then he goes on and states other cases
of corruption, at every one of which he winks. Here he states another
reason for his connivance. "Suppose again," (for he puts another
supposition, and these suppositions are not hypotheses laid down for
argument, but real facts then existing before the Council examining into
grievances,)--"suppose again, that any person had benefited himself ...
unprofitable discussion."[6]
Here is a direct avowal of his refusing to examine into the conduct of
persons in the Council, even in the highest departments of government,
and the best paid, for fear he should dissatisfy them, and should lose
their votes, by discovering those peculations and corruptions, though he
perfectly knew them. Was there ever, since the world began, any man who
would dare to avow such sentiments, until driven to the wall? If he
could show that he himself abhorred bribes, and kept at a distance from
them, then he might say, "I connive at the bribes of others"; but when
he acknowledges that he takes bribes, how can you doubt that he buys a
corrupt confederacy, and puts an end to any hope through him of
reformation of the abuses at Bengal? But your Lordships will see that he
not only connived at abuse, but patronized it and supported it for his
own political purposes; since he here confesses, that, if inquiry into
it created him ill-humor, and produced him an opposition in Council, he
sacrificed it to the power of the Company, and the constitution of their
government. Did he so? The Company ordered him to prosecute those
people, and their constitution required that they should be prosecuted.
"No," says Mr. Hastings, "the conniving at it procures a majority of
votes." The very thing that he bought was not worth half the price he
paid for it. He was sent to reform corruptions, and, in order that he
might reform corruptions, he winked at, countenanced, and patronized
them, to get a majority of votes; and what was, in fact, a sacrifice to
his own interest, ambition, and corruption, he calls a sacrifice to the
Company. He puts, then, this alternative: "Either give everything into
my hand, suffer me to go on, and have no control, or else I wink at
every species of corruption." It is a remarkable and stupendous thing,
that, when all the world was alarmed at the disorders of the Company,
when that alarm occasioned his being sent out, and when, in consequence
of that alarm, Parliament suspended the constitution of the Company, and
appointed another government, Mr. Hastings should tell that Company that
Parliament had done wrong, and that the person put at the head of that
government was to wink at those abuses. Nay, what is more, not only does
Mr. Hastings declare, upon general principles, that it was impossible to
pursue all the delinquencies of India, and that, if possible to pursue
them, mischief would happen from it, but your Lordships will observe
that Mr. Hastings, in this business, during the whole period of the
administration of that body which was sent out to inquire into and
reform the corruptions of India, did not call one person to an account;
nor, except Mr. Hastings, this day, has any one been called to an
account, or punished for delinquency. Whether he will be punished or no,
time will show. I have no doubt of your Lordships' justice, and of the
goodness of our cause.
The table of the House of Commons groaned under complaints of the evils
growing in India under this systematic connivance of Mr. Hastings. The
Directors had set on foot prosecutions, to be conducted God knows how;
but, such as they were, they were their only remedy; and they began to
consider at last that these prosecutions had taken a long oblivious nap
of many years; and at last, knowing that they were likely, in the year
1782, to be called to a strict account about their own conduct, the
Court of Directors began to rouse themselves, and they write thus:
"Having in several of our letters to you very attentively perused all
the proceedings referred to in these paragraphs, relative to the various
forgeries on the Company's treasuries, we lament exceedingly that the
parties should have been so long in confinement without being brought to
trial."
Here, my Lords, after justice had been asleep awhile, it revived. They
directed two things: first, that those suits should be pursued; but
whether pursued or not, that an account of the state of them should be
given, that they might give orders concerning them.
Your Lordships see the orders of the Company. Did they not want to
pursue and to revive those dormant prosecutions? They want to have a
state of them, that they may know how to direct the future conduct of
them with more effect and vigor than they had yet been pursued with. You
will naturally imagine that Mr. Hastings did not obey their orders, or
obeyed them languidly. No, he took another part. He says, "Having
attentively read and weighed the arguments ... for withdrawing them."[7]
Thus he begins with the general principle of connivance; he directly
avows he does it for a political purpose; and when the Company directs
he shall proceed in the suits, instead of deferring to their judgment,
he takes the judgment on himself, and says theirs is untenable; he
directly discharges the prosecutions of the Company, supersedes the
authority of his masters, and gives a general release to all the persons
who were still suffering by the feeble footsteps of justice in that
country. He gave them an act of indemnity, and that was the last of his
acts.
Now, when I show the consequence of his bribery, the presumptions that
arise from his own bribes, his attention to secure others from the
punishment of theirs, and, when ordered to carry on a suit, his
discharging it,--when we see all this, can we avoid judging and forming
our opinions upon two grand points: first, that no man would proceed in
that universal patronage of guilt, unless he was guilty himself; next,
that, by a universal connivance for fourteen years, he is himself the
cause and mainspring of all the evils, calamities, extortion, and
bribery, that have prevailed and ravaged that country for so long a
time? There is, indeed, no doubt either of his guilt, or of the
consequences of it, by which he has extinguished the last expiring hope
and glimpse that remained of procuring a remedy for India of the evils
that exist in it.
I would mention, that, as a sort of postscript, when he could no longer
put the government into the hands of that infamous woman, Munny Begum,
he sent an amorous, sentimental letter to the Company, describing her
miserable situation, and advising the Company to give her a pension of
seventy-two thousand rupees a year, to maintain her. He describes her
situation in such a moving way as must melt every heart. He supposes her
to be reduced to want by the cruel orders of the Company, who retain
from her money which they were never obliged to give her. This
representation, which he makes with as much fairness as he represents
himself to be in a state of the most miserable poverty and distress, he
alone made to the Company, because his colleagues would not countenance
him in it; and we find, upon looking over Lord Cornwallis's last
examination into the whole state of this unhappy family, that this woman
was able to lend to Mobarek ul Dowlah twenty thousand pounds. Mr.
Hastings, however, could not avoid making this representation; because
he knew, that, if he quitted the country without securing that woman, by
giving her a hope that she could procure by his credit here that money
which by his authority he had before procured for her, she might then
make a discovery of all the corruption that had been carried on between
them; and therefore he squanders away the treasures of the Company, in
order to secure himself from any such detection, and to procure for
himself _razinamas_ and all those fine things. He knew that Munny Begum,
that the whole seraglio, that all the country, whom he had put under the
dominion of Sir John D'Oyly, that all those people might have made a
discovery of all his corrupt proceedings; he therefore gets the Nabob to
appoint Sir John D'Oyly his agent here, with a view of stopping his
mouth, and by the hope of another 160,000_l._ a year to prevent his
giving an account of the dilapidation and robbery that was made of the
160,000_l._ which had been left him.
* * * * *