on the part of Mr. Hastings through Gunga Govind Sing you will expect to
hear some explanation. Of the first sum, which is said to have been paid
through Gunga Govind Sing, amounting on the cabooleat to four lac, and
of which no more than two lac was actually received,--that is to say,
half of it was sunk,--we have this memorandum only: "Although Mr.
Hastings was extremely dissatisfied with the excuses Gunga Govind Sing
assigned for not paying Mr. Croftes the sum stated by the paper No. 1 to
be in his charge, he never could obtain from him any further payments
on this account." Mr. Hastings is exceedingly dissatisfied with those
excuses, and this is the whole account of the transaction. This is the
only thing said of Gunga Govind Sing in the account: he neither states
how he came to be employed, or for what he was employed. It appears,
however, from the transaction, as far as we can make our way through
this darkness, that he had actually received 10,000_l._ of the money,
which he did not account for, and that he pretended that there was an
arrear of the rest. So here Mr. Hastings's bribe-agent admits that he
had received 10,000_l._, but he will not account for it; he says there
is an arrear of another 10,000_l._; and thus it appears that he was
enabled to take from somebody at Dinagepore, by a cabooleat, 40,000_l._,
of which Mr. Hastings can get but 20,000_l._: there is cent per cent
loss upon it. Mr. Hastings was so exceedingly dissatisfied with this
conduct of Gunga Govind Sing, that you would imagine a breach would have
immediately ensued between them. I shall not anticipate what some of my
honorable friends will bring before your Lordships; but I tell you,
that, so far from quarrelling with Gunga Govind Sing, or being really
angry with him, it is only a little pettish love quarrel with Gunga
Govind Sing: _amantium iræ amoris integratio est_. For Gunga Govind
Sing, without having paid him one shilling of this money, attended him
to the Ganges; and one of the last acts of Mr. Hastings's government was
to represent this man, who was unfaithful even to fraud, who did not
keep the common faith of thieves and robbers, this very man he
recommends to the Company as a person who ought to be rewarded, as one
of their best and most faithful servants. And how does he recommend him
to be rewarded? By giving him the estate of another person,--the way in
which Mr. Hastings desires to be always rewarded himself: for, in
calling upon the Company's justice to give him some money for expenses
with which he never charged them, he desires them to assign him the
money upon some person of the country. So here Mr. Hastings recommends
Gunga Govind Sing not only to trust, confidence, and employment, which
he does very fully, but to a reward taken out of the substance of other
people. This is what Mr. Hastings has done with Gunga Govind Sing; and
if such are the effects of his anger, what must be the effect of his
pleasure and satisfaction? Now I say that Mr. Hastings, who, in fact,
saw this man amongst the very last with whom he had any communication in
India, could not have so recommended him after this known fraud, in one
business only, of 20,000_l._,--he could not so have supported him, he
could not so have caressed him, he could not so have employed him, he
could not have done all this, unless he had paid to Mr. Hastings
privately that sum of money which never was brought into any even of
these miserable accounts, without some payment or other with which Mr.
Hastings was and ought to be satisfied, or unless Gunga Govind Sing had
some dishonorable secret to tell of him which he did not dare to provoke
him to give a just account of, or, lastly, unless the original agreement
was that half or a third of the bribe should go to Gunga Govind Sing.
Such is this patriotic scheme of bribery, this public-spirited
corruption which Mr. Hastings has invented upon this occasion, and by
which he thinks out of the vices of mankind to draw a better revenue
than out of any legal source whatever; and therefore he has resolved to
become the most corrupt of all Governors-General, in order to be the
most useful servant to the finances of the Company.
So much as to the first article of Dinagepore peshcush. All you have is,
that G.G.S is Gunga Govind Sing; that he has cheated the public of half
of it; that Mr. Hastings was angry with him, and yet went away from
Bengal, rewarding, praising, and caressing him. Are these things to pass
as matters of course? They cannot so pass with your Lordships' sagacity:
I will venture to say that no court, even of _pie-poudre_, could help
finding him guilty upon such a matter, if such a court had to inquire
into it.
The next article is _Patna_. Here, too, he was to receive 40,000_l._;
but from whom this deponent saith not. At this circumstance Mr. Larkins,
who is a famous deponent, never hints once. You may look through his
whole letter, which is a pretty long one, (and which I will save your
Lordships the trouble of hearing read at length now, because you will
have it before you when you come to the Patna business,) and you will
only find that somebody had engaged to pay him 40,000_l._, and that but
half of this sum was received. You want an explanation of this. You have
seen the kind of explanation given in the former case, a conjectural
explanation of G.G.S. But when you come to the present case, who the
person paying was, why the money was not paid, what the cause of failure
was, you are not told: you only learn that there was that sum deficient;
and Mr. Larkins, who is our last resort and final hope of elucidation in
this transaction, throws not the smallest glimpse of light upon it. We
of the House of Commons have been reduced to form the best legitimate
conjectures we could upon this business, and those conjectures have led
us to further evidence, which will enable us to fix one of the most
scandalous and most mischievous bribes, in all the circumstances of it,
upon Mr. Hastings, that was ever known. If he extorted 40,000_l._ under
pretence of the Company's service, here is again another failure of half
the money. Oh, my Lords, you will find that even the remaining part was
purchased with the loss of one of the best revenues in India, and with
the grievous distress of a country that deserved well your protection,
instead of being robbed to give 20,000_l._ to the Company, and another
20,000_l._ to some robber or other, black or white. When I say, given to
some other robber, black or white, I do not suppose that either
generosity, friendship, or even communion, can exist in that country
between white men and black: no, their colors are not more adverse than
their characters and tempers. There is not that _idem velle et idem
nolle_, there are none of those habits of life, nothing, that can bind
men together even in the most ordinary society: the mutual means of such
an union do not exist between them. It is a money-dealing, and a
money-dealing only, which can exist between them; and when you hear that
a black man is favored, and that 20,000_l._ is pretended to be left in
his hands, do not believe it: indeed, you cannot believe it; for we will
bring evidence to show that there is no friendship between those
people,--and that, when black men give money to a white man, it is a
bribe,--and that, when money is given to a black man, he is only a
sharer with the white man in their infamous profits. We find, however,
somebody, anonymous, with 20,000_l._ left in his hands; and when we come
to discover who the man is, and the final balance which appears against
him in his account with the Company, we find that for this 20,000_l._,
which was received for the Company, they paid such a compound interest
as was never before paid for money advanced: the most violently griping
usurer, in dealing with the most extravagant heir, never made such a
bargain as Mr. Hastings has made for the Company by this bribe.
Therefore it could be nothing but fraud that could have got him to have
undertaken such a revenue. This evidently shows the whole to be a
pretence to cover fraud, and not a weak attempt to raise a revenue,--and
that Mr. Hastings was not that idiot he represents himself to be, a man
forgetting all his offices, all his duties, all his own affairs, and all
the public affairs. He does not, however, forget how to make a bargain
to get money; but when the money is to be recovered for the Company, (as
he says,) he forgets to recover it: so that the accuracy with which he
begins a bribe, _acribus initiis et soporosâ fine_, and the carelessness
with which he ends it, are things that characterize, not weakness and
stupidity, but fraud.
The next article we proceed to is _Nuddea_. Here we have more light; but
does Mr. Larkins anywhere tell you anything about Nuddea? No it appears
as if the account had been paid up, and that the cabooleat and the
payments answer and tally with each other; yet, when we come to produce
the evidence upon these parts, you will see most abundant reason to be
assured that there is much more concealed than is given in this
account,--that it is an account current, and not an account
closed,--and that the agreement was for some other and greater sum than
appears. It might be expected that the Company would inquire of Mr.
Hastings, and ask, "From whom did he get it? Who has received it? Who is
to answer for it?" But he knew that they were not likely to make any
inquiry at all,--they are not that kind of people. You would imagine
that a mercantile body would have some of the mercantile excellencies,
and even you would allow them perhaps some of the mercantile faults. But
they have, like Mr. Hastings, forgotten totally the mercantile
character; and, accordingly, neither accuracy nor fidelity of account do
they ever require of Mr. Hastings. They have too much confidence in him;
and he, accordingly, acts like a man in whom such confidence, without
reason, is reposed.
Your Lordships may perhaps suppose that the payment of this money was an
act of friendship and generosity in the people of the country. No: we
have found out, and shall prove, from whom he got it; at least we shall
produce such a conjecture upon it as your Lordships will think us bound
to do, when we have such an account before us. Here on the face of the
account there is no deficiency; but when we look into it, we find
skulking in a corner a person called Nundulol, from whom there is
received 58,000 rupees. You will find that he, who appears to have paid
up this money, and which Mr. Hastings spent as he pleased in his journey
to Benares, and who consequently must have had some trust reposed in
him, was the wickedest of men, next to those I have mentioned,--always
giving the first rank to Gunga Govind Sing, _primus inter pares_, the
second to Debi Sing, the third to Cantoo Baboo: this man is fit to be
one next on a par with them. Mr. Larkins, when he comes to explain this
article, says, "I believe it is for a part of the Dinagepore peshcush,
which would reduce the balance to about 5,000_l._": but he does not
pretend to know what it is given for; he gives several guesses at it;
"but," he says, "as I do not know, I shall not pretend to give more than
my conjecture upon it." He is in the right; because we shall prove
Nundulol never did have any thing to do with the Dinagepore peshcush.
These are very extraordinary proceedings. It is my business simply to
state them to your Lordships now; we will give them in afterwards in
evidence, and I will leave that evidence to be confirmed and fortified
by further observations.
One of the objects of Mr. Larkins's letter is to illustrate the bonds.
He says, "The two first stated sums" (namely, Dinagepore and Patna, in
the paper marked No. 1, I suppose, for he seems to explain it to be
such) "are sums for a part of which Mr. Hastings took two bonds: viz.,
No. 1539, dated 1st October, 1780, and No. 1540, dated 2d October, 1780,
each for the sum of current rupees 1,16,000, or sicca rupees one lac.
The remainder of that amount was carried to the credit of the head,
_Four per Cent Remittance Loan:_ Mr. Hastings having taken a bond for
it, (No. 89,) which has been since completely liquidated, conformable to
the law." But before I proceed with the bonds, I will beg leave to
recall to your Lordships' recollection that Mr. Larkins states in his
letter that these sums were received in November. How does this agree
with another state of the transaction given by Mr. Hastings, namely,
that the time of his taking the bonds was the 1st and 2d of October? Mr.
Larkins, therefore, who has thought proper to say that the money was
received in the month of November, has here given as extraordinary an
instance either of fraudulent accuracy or shameful official inaccuracy
as was ever perhaps discovered. The first sums are asserted to be paid
to Mr. Croftes on the 18th and 19th of Asin, 1187. The month of Asin
corresponds with the month of September and part of October, and not
with November; and it is the more extraordinary that Mr. Larkins should
mistake this, because he is in an office which requires monthly
payments, and consequently great monthly exactness, and a continual
transfer from one month to another: we cannot suppose any accountant in
England can be more accurately acquainted with the succession of months
than Mr. Larkins must have been with the comparative state of Bengal and
English months. How are we to account for this gross inaccuracy? If you
have a poet, if you have a politician, if you have a moralist
inaccurate, you know that these are cases which, from the narrow bounds
of our weak faculties, do not perhaps admit of accuracy. But what is an
inaccurate _accountant_ good for? "Silly man, that dost not know thy own
silly trade!" was once well said: but the trade here is not silly. You
do not even praise an accountant for being accurate, because you have
thousands of them; but you justly blame a public accountant who is
guilty of a gross inaccuracy. But what end could his being inaccurate
answer? Why not name October as well as November? I know no reason for
it; but here is certainly a gross mistake: and from the nature of the
thing, it is hardly possible to suppose it to be a mere mistake. But
take it that it is a mistake, and to have nothing of fraud, but mere
carelessness; this, in a man valued by Mr. Hastings for being very
punctilious and accurate, is extraordinary.
But to return to the bonds. We find a bond taken in the month of Shawal,
1186, or 1779, but the receipt is said to be in Asin, 1780: that is to
say, there was a year and about three months between the collection and
the receipt; and during all that period of time an enormous sum of money
had lain in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing, to be employed when Mr.
Hastings should think fit. He employed it, he says, for the Mahratta
expedition. Now he began that letter on the 29th of November by telling
you that the bribe would not have been taken from Cheyt Sing, if it had
not been at the instigation of an exigency which it seems required a
supply of money, to be procured lawfully or unlawfully. But in fact
there was no exigency for it before the Berar army came upon the borders
of the country,--that army which he invited by his careless conduct
towards the Rajah of Berar, and whose hostility he was obliged to buy
off by a sum of money; and yet this bribe was taken from Cheyt Sing long
before he had this occasion for it. The fund lay in Gunga Govind Sing's
hands; and he afterwards applied to that purpose a part of this fund,
which he must have taken without any view whatever to the Company's
interest. This pretence of the exigency of the Company's affairs is the
more extraordinary, because the first receipt of these moneys was some
time in the year 1779 (I have not got the exact date of the agreement);
and it was but a year before that the Company was so far from being in
distress, that he declared he should have, at very nearly the period
when this bribe became payable, a very large sum (I do not recollect the
precise amount) in their treasury. I cannot certainly tell when the
cabooleat, or agreement, was made; yet I shall lay open something very
extraordinary upon that subject, and will lead you, step by step, to the
bloody scenes of Debi Sing. Whilst, therefore, Mr. Hastings was carrying
on these transactions, he was carrying them on without any reference to
the pretended object to which he afterwards applied them. It was an old,
premeditated plan; and the money to be received could not have been
designed for an exigency, because it was to be paid by monthly
instalments. The case is the same with respect to the other cabooleats:
it could not have been any momentary exigence which he had to provide
for by these sums of money; they were paid regularly, period by period,
as a constant, uniform income, to Mr. Hastings.
You find, then, Mr. Hastings first leaving this sum of money for a year
and three months in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; you find, that, when
an exigence pressed him by the Mahrattas suddenly invading Bengal, and
he was obliged to refer to his bribe-fund, he finds that fund empty, and
that, in supplying money for this exigence, he takes a bond for two
thirds of his own money and one third of the Company's. For, as I stated
before, Mr. Larkins proves of one of these accounts, that he took, in
the month of January, for this bribe-money, which, according to the
principles he lays down, was the Company's money, three bonds as for
money advanced from his own cash. Now this sum of three lacs, instead of
being all his own, as it should appear to be in the month of January,
when he took the bonds, or two thirds his own and one third the
Company's, as he said in his letter of the 29th of November, turns out,
by Mr. Larkins's account, paragraph 9, which I wish to mark to your
Lordships, to be two thirds the Company's money and one third his own;
and yet it is all confounded under bonds, as if the money had been his
own. What can you say to this heroic sharper disguised under the name of
a patriot, when you find him to be nothing but a downright cheat, first
taking money under the Company's name, then taking their securities to
him for their own money, and afterwards entering a false account of
them, contradicting that by another account?--and God knows whether the
third be true or false. These are not things that I am to make out by
any conclusion of mine; here they are, made out by himself and Mr.
Larkins, and, comparing them with his letter of the 27th, you find a
gross fraud covered by a direct falsehood.
We have now done with Mr. Larkins's account of the bonds, and are come
to the other species of Mr. Hastings's frauds, (for there is a great
variety in them,) and first to Cheyt Sing's bribe. Mr. Larkins came to
the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govind Sing and through
Cantoo Baboo. Of this bribe he was not in the secret originally, but was
afterwards made a confidant in it; it was carried to him; and the
account he gives of it I will state to your Lordships.
"The fourth sum stated in Mr. Hastings's account was the produce of
sundry payments made to me by Sadamund, Cheyt Sing's buckshee, who
either brought or sent the gold mohurs to my house, from whence they
were taken by me to Mr. Croftes, either on the same night or early in
the morning after: they were made at different times, and I well
remember that the same people never came twice. On the 21st June, 1780,
Mr. Hastings sent for me, and desired that I would take charge of a
present that had been offered to him by Cheyt Sing's buckshee, under the
plea of atoning for the opposition which he had made towards the payment
of the extra subsidy for defraying part of the expenses of the war, but
really in the hope of its inducing Mr. Hastings to give up that claim;
with which view the present had first been offered. Mr. Hastings
declared, that, although he would not take this for his own use, he
would apply it to that of the Company, in removing Mr. Francis's
objections to the want of a fund for defraying the extra expenses of
Colonel Camac's detachment. On my return to the office, I wrote down the
substance of what Mr. Hastings had said to me, and requested Mr. James
Miller, my deputy, to seal it up with his own seal, and write upon it,
that he had then done so at my request. He was no further informed of my
motive for this than merely that it contained the substance of a
conversation which had passed between me and another gentleman, which,
in case that conversation should hereafter become the subject of
inquiry, I wished to be able to adduce the memorandum then made of it,
in corroboration of my own testimony; and although that paper has
remained unopened to this hour, and notwithstanding that I kept no
memorandum whatever of the substance thereof, yet, as I have wrote this
representation under the most scrupulous adherence to what I conceived
to be truth, should it ever become necessary to refer to this paper, I
am confident that it will not be found to differ materially from the
substance of this representation."
I forgot to mention, that, besides these two bonds, which Mr. Hastings
declared to be the Company's, and one bond his own, that he slipped into
the place of the bond of his own a much better, namely, a bond of
November, which he never mentioned to the Company till the 22d of May;
and this bond for current rupees 1,74,000, or sicca rupees 1,50,000, was
taken for the payment stated in the paper No. 1 to have been made to Mr.
Croftes on the 11th Aghan, 1187, which corresponds to the 23d of
November, 1780. This is the Nuddea money, and this is all that you know
of it; you know that this money, for which he had taken this other bond
from the Company, was not his own neither, but bribes taken from the
other provinces.
I am ashamed to be troublesome to your Lordships in this dry affair, but
the detection of fraud requires a good deal of patience and assiduity,
and we cannot wander into anything that can relieve the mind: if it was
in my power to do it, I would do it. I wish, however, to call your
Lordships' attention to this last bribe before I quit these bonds. Such
is the confusion, so complicated, so intricate are these bribe accounts,
that there is always something left behind, glean never so much from the
paragraphs of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Larkins. "I could not bring them to
account," says Mr. Larkins. "They were received before the 1st and 2d of
October." Why does not the running treasury account give an account of
them? The Committee of the House of Commons examined whether the running
treasury account had any such account of sums deposited. No such thing.
They are said by Mr. Hastings to be deposited in June: they were not
deposited in October, nor any account of them given till the January
following. "These bonds," says he, "I could not enter as regular money,
to be entered on the Company's account, or in any public way, until I
had had an order of the Governor-General and Council." But why had not
you an order of the Governor-General and Council? We are not calling on
you, Mr. Larkins, for an account of your conduct: we are calling upon
Mr. Hastings for an account of his conduct, and which he refers to you
to explain. Why did not Mr. Hastings order you to carry them to the
public account? "Because," says he, "there was no other way." Every one
who knows anything of a treasury or public banking-place knows, that if
any person brings money as belonging to the public, that the public
accountant is bound, no doubt, to receive it and enter it as such.
"But," says he, "I could not do it until the account could be settled,
as between debtor and creditor: I did not do it till I could put on one
side durbar charges, secret service, to such an amount, and balance that
again with bonds to Mr. Hastings." That is, he could not make an entry
regularly in the Company's books until Mr. Hastings had enabled him to
commit one of the grossest frauds and violations of a public trust that
ever was committed, by ordering that money of the Company's to be
considered as his own, and a bond to be taken as a security for it from
the Company, as if it was his own.
But to proceed with this deposit. What is the substance of Mr. Larkins's
explanation of it? The substance of this explanation is, that here was a
bribe received by Mr. Hastings from Cheyt Sing, guarded with such
scrupulous secrecy, that it was not carried to the house of Mr. Croftes,
who was to receive it finally, but to the house of Mr. Larkins, as a
less suspected place; and that it was conveyed in various sums, no two
people ever returning twice with the various payments which made up that
sum of 23,000_l._ or thereabouts. Now do you want an instance of
prevarication and trickery in an account? If any person should inquire
whether 23,000_l._ had been paid by Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, there
was not any one man living, or any person concerned in the transaction,
except Mr. Larkins, who received it, that could give an account of how
much he received, or who brought it. As no two people are ever his
confidants in the same transaction in Mr. Hastings's accounts, so here
no two people are permitted to have any share whatever in bringing the
several fragments that make up this sum. This bribe, you might imagine,
would have been entered by Mr. Larkins to some public account, at least
to the fraudulent account of Mr. Hastings. No such thing. It was never
entered till the November following. It was not entered till Mr. Francis
had left Calcutta. All these corrupt transactions were carried on
privately by Mr. Hastings alone, without any signification to his
colleagues of his carrying on this patriotic traffic, as he called it.
Your Lordships will also consider both the person who employs such a
fraudulent accountant, and his ideas of his duty in his office. These
are matters for your Lordships' grave determination; but I appeal to
you, upon the face of these accounts, whether you ever saw anything so
gross,--and whether any man could be daring enough to attempt to impose
upon the credulity of the weakest of mankind, much more to impose upon
such a court as this, such accounts as these are.