now you see him at the waters at Cheltenham; and you will find his
letter from that place to comprehend the substance of all his former
letters, and to be a digest of all the falsity, fraud, and nonsense
contained in the whole of them. Here it is, and your Lordships will
suffer it to be read. I must beg your patience; I must acknowledge that
it has been the most difficult of all things to explain, but much more
difficult to make pleasant and not wearisome, falsity and fraud pursued
through all its artifices; and therefore, as it has been the most
painful work to us to unravel fraud and prevarication, so there is
nothing that more calls for the attention, the patience, the vigilance,
and the scrutiny of an exact court of justice. But as you have already
had almost the whole of the man, do not think it too much to hear the
rest in this letter from Cheltenham. It is dated, Cheltenham, 11th of
July, 1785, addressed to William Devaynes, Esquire;[8] and it begins
thus:--
"Sir,--The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to
Bengal by the 'Surprise,' dated the 16th of March, 1784, were pleased to
express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each
sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was
received,--what were my motives for withholding the several receipts
from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors,--and
what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for
paying other sums into the treasury as deposits, on my own account."
I wish your Lordships to pause a moment. Here is a letter written in
July, 1785. You see that from the 29th of December [November?], 1780,
till that time, during which interval, though convinced in his own
conscience and though he had declared his own opinion of the necessity
of giving a full explanation of these money transactions, he had been
imposing upon the Directors false and prevaricating accounts of them,
they were never able to obtain a full disclosure from him.
He goes on:--"I have been kindly apprised that the information required
as above is yet expected from me. I hope that the circumstances of my
past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus
long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the Presidency when the
'Surprise' arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention
were so entirely engrossed, to the day of my final departure from it, by
a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may
safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion
contributed by myself of the volumes which compose our Consultations of
that period,"--
These Consultations, my Lords, to which he appeals, form matter of one
of the charges that the Commons have brought against Mr.
Hastings,--namely, a fraudulent attempt to ruin certain persons employed
in subordinate situations under him, for the purpose, by intruding
himself into their place, of secretly carrying on his own transactions.
These volumes of Consultations were written to justify that act.
He next says,--"The submission which my respect would have enjoined me
to pay to the command imposed on me was lost to my recollection, perhaps
from the stronger impression which the first and distant perusal of it
had left on my mind, that it was rather intended as a reprehension for
something which had given offence in my report of the original
transaction than an expression of any want of a further elucidation of
it."
Permit me to make a few remarks upon this extraordinary passage. A
letter is written to him, containing a repetition of the request which
had been made a thousand times before, and with which he had as often
promised to comply. And here he says, "It was lost to my recollection."
Observe his memory: he can forget the command, but he has an obscure
recollection that he thought it a reprehension rather than a demand! Now
a reprehension is a stronger mode of demand. When I say to a servant,
"Why have you not given me the account which I have so often asked for?"
is he to answer, "The reason I have not given it is because I thought
you were railing at and abusing me"?
He goes on:--"I will now endeavor to reply to the different questions
which have been stated to me, in as explicit a manner as I am able. To
such information as I can give the Honorable Court is fully entitled;
and where that shall prove defective, I will point out the only means by
which it may be rendered more complete."
In order that your Lordships may thoroughly enter into the spirit of
this letter, I must request that you will observe how handsomely and
kindly these tools of Directors have expressed themselves to him, and
that even their baseness and subserviency to him were not able to draw
from him anything that could be satisfactory to his enemies: for as to
these his friends, he cares but little about satisfying them, though
they call upon him in consequence of his own promise; and this he calls
a reprehension. They thus express themselves:--"Although it is not our
intention to express any doubt of the integrity of the
Governor-General,--on the contrary, after having received the presents,
we cannot avoid expressing our approbation of his conduct in bringing
them to the credit of the Company,--yet we must confess the statement of
those transactions appears to us in many points so unintelligible, that
we feel ourselves under the necessity of calling on the Governor-General
for an explanation, agreeable to his promise voluntarily made to us. We
therefore desire to be informed of the different periods when each sum
was received, and what were the Governor-General's motives for
withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council and
of the Court of Directors, and what were his reasons for taking bonds
for part of these sums and paying other sums into the treasury as
deposits upon his own account." Such is their demand, and this is what
his memory furnishes as nothing but a reprehension.
He then proceeds:--"First, I believe I can affirm with certainty that
the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter
above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates
which are affixed to them in the account. But as this contains only the
gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though
at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a great degree
of accuracy to the account."--Your Lordships see, that, after all, he
declares he cannot make his account accurate. He further adds, "Perhaps
the Honorable Court will judge this sufficient"--that is, this
explanation, namely, that he can give none--"for any purpose to which
their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave
to refer, for a more minute information, and for the means of making any
investigation which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the
particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your
accountant-general, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses,
as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that
I ever kept of it."
Here is a man who of his bribe accounts cannot give an account in the
country where they are carried on. When you call upon him in Bengal, he
cannot give the account, because he is in Bengal; when he comes to
England, he cannot give the account here, because his accounts are left
in Bengal. Again, he keeps no accounts himself, but his accounts are in
Bengal, in the hands of somebody else: to him he refers, and we shall
see what that reference produced.
"In this, each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with
the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to
desire that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in
being and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect
concerning it."--Here are accounts kept for the Company, and yet he does
not know whether they are in existence anywhere.
"For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge
of the Council or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for
part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on
my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable
the Court of Directors of the 22d of May, 1782,--namely, 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 at that distance of time could verify, and that I did not
think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. It will
not be expected that I should be able to give a more correct explanation
of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the
time that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I
attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in
that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily or with a strong
probability follow them."
You have heard of that Oriental figure called, in the banian language, a
_painche_, in English, a _screw_. It is a puzzled and studied involution
of a period, framed in order to prevent the discovery of truth and the
detection of fraud; and surely it cannot be better exemplified than in
this sentence: "Neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer
affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such
inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them."
Observe, that he says, not _facts stated_, but _facts implied in the
report_. And of what was this to be a report? Of things which the
Directors declared they did not understand. And then the inferences
which are to follow these implied facts are to follow them--But how?
_With a strong probability_. If you have a mind to study this Oriental
figure of rhetoric, the _painche_, here it is for you in its most
complete perfection. No rhetorician ever gave an example of any figure
of oratory that can match this.
But let us endeavor to unravel the whole passage. First he states, that,
in May, 1782, he had forgotten his motives for falsifying the Company's
accounts; but he affirms the facts contained in the report, and
afterwards, very rationally, draws such inferences as necessarily or
with a strong probability follow them. And if I understand it at all,
which God knows I no more pretend to do than Don Quixote did those
sentences of lovers in romance-writers of which he said it made him run
mad to attempt to discover the meaning, the inference is, "Why do you
call upon me for accounts now, three years after the time when I could
not give you them? I cannot give them you. And as to the papers relating
to them, I do not know whether they exist; and if they do, perhaps you
may learn something from them, perhaps you may not: I will write to Mr.
Larkins for those papers, if you please." Now, comparing this with his
other accounts, you will see what a monstrous scheme he has laid of
fraud and concealment to cover his peculation. He tells them,--"I have
said that the three first sums of the account were paid into the
Company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these
was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expense
of a detachment which was formed and employed against Mahdajee Sindia,
under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly
apprised the Court of Directors in my letter of the 29th December
[November?], 1780." He does not yet tell the Directors from whom he
received it: we have found it out by other collateral means.--"The other
two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made
public, though intended for public service, and actually applied to it.
The exigencies of government were at that time my own, and every
pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I
could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized
them."--Allowable means of receiving bribes! for such I shall prove them
to be in the particular instances.--"But neither could it occur to me as
necessary to state on our Proceedings every little aid that I could thus
procure; nor do I know how I could have stated it without appearing to
court favor by an ostentation which I disdained, nor without the chance
of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion
of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my
station, to which they might have had an equal claim."
Now we see, that, after hammering his brains for many years, he does
find out his motive, which he could not verify at the time,--namely,
that, if he let his colleagues know that he was receiving bribes, and
gaining the glory of receiving them, they might take it into their heads
likewise to have their share in the same glory, as they were joined in
the same commission, enjoyed the same powers, and were subject to the
same restrictions. It was, indeed, scandalous in Mr. Hastings, not
behaving like a good, fair colleague in office, not to let them know
that he was going on in this career of receiving bribes, and to deprive
them of their share in the glory of it: but they were grovelling
creatures, who thought that keeping clean hands was some virtue.--"Well,
but you have applied some of these bribes to your own benefit: why did
you give no account of those bribes?" "I did not," he says, "because it
might have excited the envy of my colleagues." To be sure, if he was
receiving bribes for his own benefit, and they not receiving such
bribes, and if they had a liking to that kind of traffic, it is a good
ground of envy, that a matter which ought to be in common among them
should be confined to Mr. Hastings, and he therefore did well to conceal
it; and on the other hand, if we suppose him to have taken them, as he
pretends, for the Company's use, in order not to excite a jealousy in
his colleagues for being left out of this meritorious service, to which
they had an equal claim, he did well to take bonds for what ought to be
brought to the Company's account. These are reasons applicable to his
colleagues, who sat with him at the same board,--Mr. Macpherson, Mr.
Stables, Mr. Wheler, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis:
he was afraid of exciting their envy or their jealousy.
You will next see another reason, and an extraordinary one it is, which
he gives for concealing these bribes from his inferiors. But I must
first tell your Lordships, what, till the proof is brought before you,
you will take on credit,--indeed, it is on his credit,--that, when he
formed the Committee of Revenue, he bound them by a solemn oath, "not,
under any name or pretence whatever, to take from any zemindar, farmer,
person concerned in the revenue, or any other, any gift, gratuity,
allowance, or reward whatever, or anything beyond their salary"; and
this is the oath to which he alludes. Now his reason for concealing his
bribes from his inferiors, this Committee, under these false and
fraudulent bonds, he states thus:--"I should have deemed it particularly
dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a
certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to
my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them: I was
therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it,
which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the
money to be brought to my own house, or that of any person known to be
in trust for me."
My Lords, here he comes before you, avowing that he knew the practice of
taking money from these people was a thing dishonorable in itself. "I
should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own
use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had
interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by
oath not to receive them." He held it particularly dishonorable to
receive them; he had bound others by an oath not to receive them: but he
received them himself; and why does he conceal it? "Why, because," says
he, "if the suspicion came upon me, the dishonor would fall upon my
pate." Why did he, by an oath, bind his inferiors not to take these
bribes? "Why, because it was base and dishonorable so to do; and because
it would be mischievous and ruinous to the Company's affairs to suffer
them to take bribes." Why, then, did he take them himself? It was ten
times more ruinous, that he, who was at the head of the Company's
government, and had bound up others so strictly, should practise the
same himself; and "therefore," says he, "I was more than ordinarily
cautious." What! to avoid it? "No; to carry it on in so clandestine and
private a manner as might secure me from the suspicion of that which I
know to be detestable, and bound others up from practising."
We shall prove that the kind of men from whom he interdicted his
Committee to receive bribes were the identical men from whom he received
them himself. If it was good for him, it was good for them to be
permitted these means of extorting; and if it ought at all to be
practised, they ought to be admitted to extort for the good of the
Company. Rajah Nobkissin was one of the men from whom he interdicted
them to receive bribes, and from whom he received a bribe for his own
use. But he says he concealed it from them, because he thought great
mischief might happen even from their suspicion of it, and lest they
should thereby be inclined themselves to practise it, and to break their
oaths.
You take it, then, for granted that he really concealed it from them? No
such thing. His principal confidant in receiving these bribes was Mr.
Croftes, who was a principal person in this Board of Revenue, and whom
he had made to swear not to take bribes: he is the confidant, and the
very receiver, as we shall prove to your Lordships. What will your
Lordships think of his affirming and averring a direct falsehood, that
he did it to conceal it from these men, when one of them was his
principal confidant and agent in the transaction? What will you think of
his being more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it? He
ought to have avoided the crime, and the suspicion would take care of
itself.
"For these reasons," he says, "I caused it to be transported immediately
to the treasury. There I well knew, Sir, it could not be received,
without being passed to some credit; and this could only be done by
entering it as a loan or as a deposit. The first was the least liable to
reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the
second sum was entered as a deposit I am utterly ignorant. Possibly it
was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was
the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction
itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed."
My Lords, in fact, every word of this is either false or groundless: it
is completely fallacious in every part. The first sum, he says, was
entered as a loan, the second as a deposit. Why was this done? Because,
when you enter moneys of this kind, you must enter them under some name,
some head of account; "and I entered them," he says, "under these,
because otherwise there was no entering them at all." Is this true? Will
he stick to this? I shall desire to know from his learned counsel, some
time or other, whether that is a point he will take issue upon. Your
Lordships will see there were other bribes of his which he brought under
a regular official head, namely, _durbar charges_; and there is no
reason why he should not have brought these under the same head.
Therefore what he says, that there is no other way of entering them but
as loans and deposits, is not true. He next says, that in the second sum
there was no reason for concealment, because it was avowed. But that
false deposit was as much concealment as the false loan, for he entered
that money as his own; whereas, when he had a mind to carry any money to
the Company's account, he knew how to do it, for he had been accustomed
to enter it under a general name, called durbar charges,--a name which,
in its extent at least, was very much his own invention, and which, as
he gives no account of those charges, is as large and sufficient to
cover any fraudulent expenditure in the account as, one would think, any
person could wish. You see him, then, first guessing one thing, then
another,--first giving this reason, then another; at last, however, he
seems to be satisfied that he has hit upon the true reason of his
conduct.
Now let us open the next paragraph, and see what it is.--"Although I am
firmly persuaded that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I
will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the
remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain
that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the
principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I
am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the
receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of
the Court of Directors. They had answered my purpose of public utility,
and I had almost dismissed them from my remembrance."
My Lords, you will observe in this most astonishing account which he
gives here, that several of these sums he meant to conceal forever, even
from the knowledge of the Directors. Look back to his letter of 22d May,
1782, and his letter of the 16th of December, and in them he tells you
that he might have concealed them, but that he was resolved not to
conceal them; that he thought it highly dishonorable so to do; that his
conscience would have been wounded, if he had done it; and that he was
afraid it would be thought that this discovery was brought from him in
consequence of the Parliamentary inquiries. Here he says of a discovery
which he values himself upon making voluntarily, that he is afraid it
should be attributed to arise from motives of fear. Now, at last, he
tells you, from Cheltenham, at a time when he had just cause to dread
the strict account to which he is called this day, first, that he cannot
tell whether any one motive which he assigns, either in this letter or
in the former, were his real motive or not; that he does not know
whether he has not invented them since, in consequence of a train of
meditation upon what he might have done or might have said; and, lastly,
he says, contrary to all his former declarations, "that he had never
meant nor could give the Directors the least notice of them at all, as
they had answered his purpose, and he had dismissed them from his
remembrance." "I intended," he says, "always to keep them secret, though
I have declared to you solemnly, over and over again, that I did not. I
do not care how you discovered them; I have forgotten them; I have
dismissed them from my remembrance." Is this the way in which money is
to be received and accounted for?
He then proceeds thus:--"But when fortune threw a sum of money in my way
of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy
of my situation at the time I received it made me more circumspect of
appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily
and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity
of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of
which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised
to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of
it; and, in the performance of my promise, I thought it consistent with
it to add to the amount all the former appropriations of the same kind:
my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which
might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally
attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards
known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding a part of
these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and
informing them of the rest, it being my wish to clear up every doubt."