disclosed in a letter from Patna, dated the 20th January, 1782. You find
mystery and concealment in every one of Mr. Hastings's discoveries. For
(which is a curious part of it) this letter was not sent to the Court of
Directors in their packet regularly, but transmitted by Major Fairfax,
one of his agents, to Major Scott, another of his agents, to be
delivered to the Company. Why was this done? Your Lordships will judge,
from that circuitous mode of transmission, whether he did not thereby
intend to leave some discretion in his agent to divulge it or not. We
are told he did not; but your Lordships will believe that or not,
according to the nature of the fact. If he had been anxious to make this
discovery to the Directors, the regular way would have been to send his
letter to the Directors immediately in the packet: but he sent it in a
box to an agent; and that agent, upon due discretion, conveyed it to the
Court of Directors. Here, however, he tells you nothing about the
persons from whom he received this money, any more than he had done
respecting the two former sums.
On the 2d of May following the date of this Patna letter he came down to
Calcutta with a mind, as he himself describes it, greatly agitated. All
his hope of plundering Benares had totally failed. The produce of the
robbing of the Begums, in the manner your Lordships have heard, was all
dissipated to pay the arrears of the armies: there was no fund left. He
felt himself agitated and full of dread, knowing that he had been
threatened with having his place taken from him several times, and that
he might be called home to render an account. He had heard that
inquiries had begun in a menacing form in Parliament; and though at that
time Bengal was not struck at, there was a charge of bribery and
peculation brought against the Governor of Madras. With this dread, with
a mind full of anxiety and perturbation, he writes a letter, as he
pretends, on the 22d of May, 1782. Your Lordships will remark, that,
when he came down to Calcutta from his expedition up the country, he did
not till the 22d of May give any account whatever of these
transactions,--and that this letter, or pretended letter, of the 22d of
May was not sent till the 16th of December following. We shall clearly
prove that he had abundant means of sending it, and by various ways,
before the 16th of December, 1782, when he inclosed in another letter
that of the 22d of May. This is the letter of discovery; this is the
letter by which his breast was to be laid open to his employers, and all
the obscurity of his transactions to be elucidated. Here are indeed new
discoveries, but they are like many new-discovered lands, exceedingly
inhospitable, very thinly inhabited, and producing nothing to gratify
the curiosity of the human mind.
This letter is addressed to the Honorable the Court of Directors, dated
Fort William, 22d May, 1782. He tells them he had promised to account
for the ten lacs of rupees which he had received, and this promise, he
says, he now performs, and that he takes that opportunity of accounting
with them likewise for several other sums which he had received. His
words are,--
"This promise I now perform, and, deeming it consistent with the spirit
of it, I have added such other sums as have been occasionally converted
to the Company's property through my means, in consequence of the like
original destination. Of the second of these sums you have already been
advised in a letter which I had the honor to address the Honorable Court
of Directors, dated 29th November, 1780. Both this and the third article
were paid immediately to the treasury, by my order to the sub-treasurer
to receive them on the Company's account, but never passed through my
hands. The three sums for which bonds were granted were in like manner
paid to the Company's treasury, without passing through my hands, but
their _application_ was not specified. The sum of 50,000 current rupees
was received while I was on my journey to Benares, and applied as
expressed in the account.
"As to the manner in which these sums have been expended, the reference
which I have made of it in the accompanying account, to the several
accounts in which they are credited, renders any other specification of
it unnecessary,--_besides_ that these accounts either have or will have
received a much stronger authentication than any that I could give to
mine."
I wish your Lordships to attend to the next paragraph, which is meant by
him to explain why he took bribes at all,--why he took bonds for some of
them, as moneys of his own, and not moneys of the Company,--why he
entered some upon the Company's accounts, and why of the others he
renders no account at all. Light, however, will beam upon you as we
proceed.
"Why these sums were taken by me,--why they were, except the second,
quietly transferred to the Company's use,--why bonds were taken for the
first, and not for the rest,--might, were this matter exposed to the
view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures, to which it would
be of little use to reply. Were your Honorable Court to question me on
these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's
benefit, at times when the Company very much needed them,--that I either
chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving
bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which
my memory could at this distance of time verify, and that I did not
think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. I trust,
Honorable Sirs, to your breasts for a candid interpretation of my
actions,--and assume the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a
subject, on such _an occasion_, entitled to it."
Lofty, my Lords! You see, that, after the Directors had expected an
explanation for so long a time, he says, "Why these sums were taken by
me, and, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use, I
cannot tell; why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest, I
cannot tell: if this matter were exposed to view, it would furnish a
variety of conjectures." Here is an account which is to explain the most
obscure, the most mysterious, the most evidently fraudulent
transactions. When asked how he came to take these bonds, how he came
to use these frauds, he tells you he really does not know,--that he
might have this motive for it, that he might have another motive for
it,--that he wished to conceal it from public curiosity,--but, which is
the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for
it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of
a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon
principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some
motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to
him, and why he enters some and not others,--he knows nothing of these
things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use.
"You foolish Court of Directors may conjecture and conjecture on. You
are asking me why I took bonds to myself for money of yours, why I have
cheated you, why I have falsified my account in such a manner. I will
not tell you."
In the satisfaction which he had promised to give them he neither
mentions the persons, the times, the occasions, or motives for any of
his actions. He adds, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the
same means with the rest." For some purposes, he thought it necessary to
use the most complicated and artful concealments; for some, he could not
tell what his motives were; and for others, that it was mere
carelessness. Here is the exchequer of bribery!--have I falsified any
part of my original stating of it?--an exchequer in which the man who
ought to pay receives, the man who ought to give security takes it, the
man who ought to keep an account says he has forgotten; an exchequer in
which oblivion was the remembrancer; and, to sum up the whole, an
exchequer into the accounts of which it was useless to inquire. This is
the manner in which the account of near two hundred thousand pounds is
given to the Court of Directors. You can learn nothing in this business
that is any way distinct, except a premeditated design of a concealment
of his transactions. That is avowed.
But there is a more serious thing behind. Who were the instruments of
his concealment? No other, my Lords, than the Company's public
accountant. That very accountant takes the money, knowing it to be the
Company's, and that it was only pretended to be advanced by Mr. Hastings
for the Company's use. He sees Mr. Hastings make out bonds to himself
for it, and Mr. Hastings makes him enter him as creditor, when in fact
he was debtor. Thus he debauches the Company's accountant, and makes him
his confederate. These fraudulent and corrupt acts, covered by false
representations, are proved to be false not by collation with anything
else, but false by a collation with themselves. This, then, is the
account, and his explanation of it; and in this insolent, saucy,
careless, negligent manner, a public accountant like Mr. Hastings, a man
bred up a book-keeper in the Company's service, who ought to be exact,
physically exact, in his account, has not only been vicious in his own
account, but made the public accounts vicious and of no value.
But there is in this account another curious circumstance with regard to
the deposit of this sum of money, to which he referred in his first
paragraph of his letter of the 29th of November, 1780. He states that
this deposit was made and passed into the hands of Mr. Larkins on the
1st of June. It did so; but it is not entered in the Company's accounts
till November following. Now in all that intermediate space where was
it? what account was there of it? It was entirely a secret between Mr.
Larkins and Mr. Hastings, without a possibility of any one discovering
any particular relative to it. Here is an account of two hundred
thousand pounds received, juggled between the accountant and him,
without a trace of it appearing in the Company's books. Some of those
committees, to whom, for their diligence at least, I must say the public
have some obligation, and in return for which they ought to meet with
some indulgence, examining into all these circumstances, and having
heard that Mr. Hastings had deposited a sum of money in the hands of the
Company's sub-treasurer in the month of June, sent for the Company's
books. They looked over those books, but they did not find the least
trace of any such sum of money, and not any account of it: nor could
there be, because it was not paid to the Company's account till the
November following. The accountant had received the money, but never
entered it from June till November. Then, at last, have we an account of
it. But was it even then entered regularly upon the Company's accounts?
No such thing: it is a deposit carried to the Governor-General's credit.
[_The entry of the several species in which this deposit was made
was here read from the Company's General Journal of 1780 and 1781._]
My Lords, when this account appears at last, when this money does emerge
in the public accounts, whose is it? Is it the Company's? No: Mr.
Hastings's. And thus, if, notwithstanding this obscure account in
November, the Directors had claimed and called for this affinity to an
anecdote,--if they had called for this anecdote and examined the
account,--if they had said, "We observe here entered two lac and
upwards; come, Mr. Hastings, let us see where this money is,"--they
would find that it is Mr. Hastings's money, not the Company's; they
would find that it is carried to his credit. In this manner he hands
over this sum, telling them, on the 22d of May, 1782, that not only the
bonds were a fraud, but the deposit was a fraud, and that neither bonds
nor deposit did in reality belong to him. Why did he enter it at all?
Then, afterwards, why did he not enter it as the Company's? Why make a
false entry, to enter it as his own? And how came he, two years after,
when he does tell you that it was the Company's and not his own, to
alter the public accounts? But why did he not tell them at that time,
when he pretends to be opening his breast to the Directors, from whom he
received it, or say anything to give light to the Company respecting it?
who, supposing they had the power of dispensing with an act of
Parliament, or licensing bribery at their pleasure, might have been
thereby enabled to say, "Here you ought to have received it,--there it
might be oppressive and of dreadful example."
I have only to state, that, in this letter, which was pretended to be
written on the 22d of May, 1782, your Lordships will observe that he
thinks it his absolute duty (and I wish to press this upon your
Lordships, because it will be necessary in a comparison which I shall
have hereafter to make) to lay open all their affairs to them, to give
them a full and candid explanation of his conduct, which he afterwards
confesses he is not able to do. The paragraph has been just read to you.
It amounts to this: "I have taken many bribes,--have falsified your
accounts,--have reversed the principle of them in my own favor; I now
discover to you all these my frauds, and think myself entitled to your
confidence upon this occasion." Now all the principles of diffidence,
all the principles of distrust, nay, more, all the principles upon which
a man may be convicted of premeditated fraud, and deserve the severest
punishment, are to be found in this case, in which he says he holds
himself to be entitled to their confidence and trust. If any of your
Lordships had a steward who told you he had lent you your own money, and
had taken bonds from you for it, and if he afterwards told you that that
money was neither yours nor his, but extorted from your tenants by some
scandalous means, I should be glad to know what your Lordships would
think of such a steward, who should say, "I will take the freedom to
add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such an occasion,
entitled to your confidence and trust." You will observe his cavalier
mode of expression. Instead of his exhibiting the rigor and severity of
an accountant and a book-keeper, you would think that he had been a
reader of sentimental letters; there is such an air of a novel running
through the whole, that it adds to the ridicule and nausea of it: it is
an oxymel of squills; there is something to strike you with horror for
the villany of it, something to strike you with contempt for the fraud
of it, and something to strike you with utter disgust for the vile and
bad taste with which all these base ingredients are assorted.
Your Lordships will see, when the account which is subjoined to this
unaccountable letter comes before you, that, though the Company had
desired to know the channels through which he got those sums, there is
not (except by a reference that appears in another place to one of the
articles) one single syllable of explanation given from one end to the
other, there is not the least glimpse of light thrown upon these
transactions. But we have since discovered from whom he got these
bribes; and your Lordships will be struck with horror, when you hear it.
I have already remarked to you, that, though this letter is dated upon
the 22d of May, it was not dispatched for Europe till December
following; and he gets Mr. Larkins, who was his agent and instrument in
falsifying the Company's accounts, to swear that this letter was written
upon the 22d of May, and that he had no opportunity to send it, but by
the "Lively" in December. On the 16th of that month he writes to the
Directors, and tells them that he is quite shocked to find he had no
earlier opportunity of making this discovery, which he thought himself
bound to make; though this discovery, respecting some articles of it,
had now been delayed nearly two years, and though it since appears that
there were many opportunities, and particularly by the "Resolution," of
sending it. He was much distressed, and found himself in an awkward
situation, from an apprehension that the Parliamentary inquiry, which he
knew was at this time in progress, might have forced from him this
notable discovery. He says, "I do not fear the consequences of any
Parliamentary process." Indeed, he needed not to fear any Parliamentary
inquiry, if it produced no further discovery than that which your
Lordships have in the letter of the 22d of May, and in the accounts
subjoined to it. He says, that "the delay is of no public consequence;
but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard
as unfortunate, because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from
the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since
furnished."
Now here is a very curious letter, that I wish to have read for some
other reasons, which will afterwards appear, but principally at present
for the purpose of showing you that he held it to be his duty and
thought it to the last degree dishonorable not to give the Company an
account of those secret bribes: he thought it would reflect upon him,
and ruin his character forever, if this account did not come voluntarily
from him, but was extorted by terror of Parliamentary inquiry. In this
letter of the 16th December, 1782, he thus writes.
"The delay is of no public consequence, but it has produced a situation
which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate; because it
exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late
Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished, but which were unknown
when my letter was written, and written in the necessary consequence of
a promise made to that effect in a former letter to your Honorable
Committee, dated 20th January last. However, to preclude the possibility
of such reflections from affecting me, I have desired Mr. Larkins, who
was privy to the whole transaction, to affix to the letter his affidavit
of the date in which it was written. I own I feel most sensibly the
mortification of being reduced to the necessity of using such
precautions to guard my reputation from dishonor. If I had at any time
possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which
they never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have
disdained to use these attentions. How I have drawn on me a different
treatment I know not; it is sufficient that I have not merited it. And
in the course of a service of thirty-two years, and ten of these
employed in maintaining the powers and discharging the duties of the
first office of the British government in India, that honorable court
ought to know whether I possess the integrity and honor which are the
first requisites of such a station. If I wanted these, they have
afforded me but too powerful incentives to suppress the information
which I now convey to them through you, and to appropriate to my own use
the sums which I have already passed to their credit, by the unworthy
and, pardon me, if I add, dangerous, reflections which they have passed
upon me for the first communication of this kind: and your own
experience will suggest to you, that there are persons who would profit
by such a warning.
"Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed
to view business in an official and regular light, may appear
unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to
suggest to your consideration.
"If I appear in any unfavorable light by these transactions, I resign
the common and legal security of those who commit crimes or errors. I am
ready to answer every particular question that may be put against
myself, upon honor or upon oath.
"The sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come
would never have yielded them to the Company publicly; and the
exigencies of your service (exigencies created by the exposition of
your affairs, and faction in your councils) required those supplies.
"I could have concealed them, had I had a wrong motive, from yours and
the public eye forever; and I know that the difficulties to which a
spirit of injustice may subject me for my candor and avowal are greater
than any possible inconvenience that could have attended the
concealment, except the dissatisfaction of my own mind. These
difficulties are but a few of those which I have suffered in your
service. The applause of my own breast is my surest reward, and was the
support of my mind in meeting them. Your applause, and that of my
country, are my next wish in life."
Your Lordships will observe at the end of this letter, that this man
declares his first applause to be from his own breast, and that he next
wishes to have the applause of his employers. But reversing this, and
taking their applause first, let us see on what does he ground his hope
of their applause? Was it on his former conduct? No: for he says that
conduct had repeatedly met with their disapprobation. Was it upon the
confidence which he knew they had in him? No: for he says they gave more
of their confidence to the meanest of his predecessors. Observe, my
Lords, the style of insolence he constantly uses with regard to all
mankind. Lord Clive was his predecessor, Governor Cartier was his
predecessor, Governor Verelst was his predecessor: every man of them as
good as himself: and yet he says the Directors had given "more of their
confidence to the _meanest_ of his predecessors." But what was to
entitle him to their applause? A clear and full explanation of the
bribes he had taken. Bribes was to be the foundation of their
confidence in him, and the clear explanation of them was to entitle him
to their applause! Strange grounds to build confidence upon!--the rotten
ground of corruption, accompanied with the infamy of its avowal! Strange
ground to expect applause!--a discovery which was no discovery at all!
Your Lordships have heard this discovery, which I have not taken upon me
to state, but have read his own letter on the occasion. Has there, at
this moment, any light broken in upon you concerning this matter?
But what does he say to the Directors? He says, "Upon the whole of these
transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an
official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I
have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration." He looks
upon them and treats them as a set of low mechanical men, a set of
low-born book-keepers, as base souls, who in an account call for
explanation and precision. If there is no precision in accounts, there
is nothing of worth in them. You see he himself is an eccentric
accountant, a Pindaric book-keeper, an arithmetician in the clouds. "I
know," he says, "what the Directors desire: but they are mean people;
they are not of elevated sentiments; they are modest; they avoid
ostentation in taking of bribes: I therefore am playing cups and balls
with them, letting them see a little glimpse of the bribes, then
carrying them fairly away." Upon this he founds the applause of his own
breast.
Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.