The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VIII Part 12

That the House may be apprised of the nature of this article of deposit, it may not be improper to state that the Company receive into their treasury the cash of private persons, placed there as in a bank.

On this no interest is paid, and the party depositing has a right to receive it upon demand. Under this head of account no public money is ever entered. Mr. Hastings, neither at making the deposit as his own, nor at the time of his disclosure of the real proprietor, (which he makes to be the Company,) has given any information of the persons from whom this money had been received. Mr. Scott was applied to by your Committee, but could not give any more satisfaction in this particular than in those relative to the bonds.

The t.i.tle of the account of the 22d of May purports not only that those sums were paid into the Company's treasury by Mr. Hastings's order, but that they were applied to the Company's service. No service is specified, directly or by any reference, to which this great sum of money has been applied.

Two extraordinary articles follow this, in the May account, amounting to about 29,000_l._[40] These articles are called Receipts for Durbar Charges. The general head of Durbar Charges, made by persons in office, when a.n.a.lyzed into the particulars, contains various expenses, including bounties and presents made by government, chiefly in the foreign department. But in the last account he confesses that this sum also is not his, but the Company's property; but as in all the rest, so in this, he carefully conceals the means by which he acquired the money, the time of his taking it, and the persons from whom it was taken. This is the more extraordinary, because, in looking over the journals and ledgers of the Treasury, the presents received and carried to the account of the Company (which were generally small and complimental) were precisely entered, with the name of the giver.

Your Committee, on turning to the account of Durbar charges in the ledger of that month, find the sum, as stated in the account of May 22d, to be indeed paid in; but there is no specific application whatsoever entered.

The account of the whole money thus clandestinely received, as stated on the 22d of May, 1782, (and for a great part of which Mr. Hastings to that time took credit for, and for the rest has accounted in an extraordinary manner as his own,) amounts in the whole to upwards of ninety-three thousand pounds sterling: a vast sum to be so obtained, and so loosely accounted for! If the money taken from the Rajah of Benares be added, (as it ought,) it will raise the sum to upwards of 116,000_l._; if the 11,600_l._ bond in October be added, it will be upwards of 128,000_l._ received in a secret manner by Mr. Hastings in about one year and five months. To all these he adds another sum of one hundred thousand pounds, received as a present from the Subah of Oude.

Total, upwards of 228,000_l._

Your Committee find that this last is the only sum the giver of which Mr. Hastings has thought proper to declare. It is to be observed, that he did not receive this 100,000_l._ in money, but in bills on a great native money-dealer resident at Benares, and who has also an house at Calcutta: he is called Gopal Das. The negotiation of these bills tended to make a discovery not so difficult as it would have been in other cases.

With regard to the application of this last sum of money, which is said to be carried to the Durbar charges of April, 1782, your Committee are not enabled to make any observations on it, as the account of that period has not yet arrived.

Your Committee have, in another Report, remarked fully upon most of the circ.u.mstances of this extraordinary transaction. Here they only bring so much of these circ.u.mstances again into view as may serve to throw light upon the true nature of the sums of money taken by British subjects in power, under the name of _presents_, and to show how far they are ent.i.tled to that description in any sense which can fairly imply in the pretended donors either willingness or ability to give. The condition of the bountiful parties who are not yet discovered may be conjectured from the state of those who have been made known: as far as that state anywhere appears, their generosity is found in proportion, not to the opulence they possess or to the favors they receive, but to the indigence they feel and the insults they are exposed to. The House will particularly attend to the situation of the princ.i.p.al giver, the Subah of Oude.

"When the knife," says he, "had penetrated to the bone, and I was surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live in expectations, I wrote you an account of my difficulties.

"The answer which I have received to it is such that it has given me inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or expectation from you and the Council that you would ever have given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never before wrote, and which I could not have imagined. As I am resolved to _obey_ your orders, and directions of the Council, without any delay, as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those _orders_, delivered up _all my private papers_ to him [the Resident], that, when he shall have examined my receipts and expenses, _he may take whatever remains_. As I know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the Company, and Council, I have not failed to _obey_ in any instance, but requested of him that it might be done so as not to _distress me in my necessary expenses_: there being no other funds but those for the expenses of my mutseddies, household expenses, and servants, &c. He demanded these in such a manner, that, being _remediless_, I was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly _stopped the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether sepoys, mutseddies, or household servants, and the expenses of my family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependants, which were for their support_. I had raised thirteen hundred horse and three battalions of sepoys to attend upon me; but as I have no resources to support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed in the mahals [districts] and to send his people [the Resident's people] into the mahals, so that I have not now one single servant about me. Should I mention to what further difficulties I have been reduced, it would lay me open to contempt."

In other parts of this long remonstrance, as well as in other remonstrances no less serious, he says, "that it is difficult for him to save himself alive; that in all his affairs _Mr. Hastings had given full powers to the gentlemen here_," (meaning the English Resident and a.s.sistants,) "_who have done whatever they chose, and still continue to do it_. I never expected that _you_ would have brought me into such apprehension, and into so weak a state, without _writing to me on any one of those subjects_; since I have not the smallest connection with anybody except yourself. I am in such distress, both day and night, that I see not the smallest prospect of deliverance from it, since you are so displeased with me _as not to honor me with a single letter_."

In another remonstrance he thus expresses himself. "The affairs of this world are unstable, and soon pa.s.s away: it would therefore be inc.u.mbent on the _English_ gentlemen to show _some_ friendship for me in my _necessities_,--I, who have always exerted my very life in the service of the English, _a.s.signed over to them all the resources left in my country_, stopped my very household expenses, together with the jaghires of my servants and dependants, to the amount of 98,98,375 rupees.

Besides this, as to the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and uncle, which were granted to them for their support, _agreeable to engagements_, you are the _masters_,--if the Council have sent orders for the stopping their jaghires also, stop them. I have no resources left in my country, and have no friends by me, being even distressed in my daily subsistence. I have some elephants, horses, and the houses which I inhabit: if they can be of any service to my friends, they are ready. Whenever you can discover any resources, seize upon them: I shall not interfere to prevent you. In my present distress for my daily expenses, I was in hopes that they would have excused some part of my debt. Of what use is it for me to relate my situation, which is known to the whole world? This much is sufficient."

The truth of all these representations is nowhere contested by Mr.

Hastings. It is, indeed, admitted in something stronger than words; for, upon account of the Nabob's condition, and the no less distressed condition of his dominions, he thought it fit to withdraw from him and them a large body of the Company's troops, together with all the English of a civil description, who were found no less burdensome than the military. This was done on the declared inability of the country any longer to support them,--a country not much inferior to England in extent and fertility, and, till lately at least, its equal in population and culture.

It was to a prince, in a state so far remote from freedom, authority, and opulence, so penetrated with the treatment he had received, and the behavior he had met with from Mr. Hastings, that Mr. Hastings has chosen to attribute a disposition so very generous and munificent as, of his own free grace and mere motion, to make him a present, at one donation, of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds sterling. This vast private donation was given at the moment of vast instant demands severely exacted on account of the Company, and acc.u.mulated on immense debts to the same body,--and all taken from a ruined prince and almost desolated territory.

Mr. Hastings has had the firmness, with all possible ease and apparent unconcern, to request permission from the Directors to legalize this forbidden present for his own use. This he has had the courage to do at a time when he had abundant reason to look for what he has since received,--their censure for many material parts of his conduct towards the people from whose wasted substance this pretended free gift was drawn. He does not pretend that he has reason to expect the smallest degree of partiality, in this or any other point, from the Court of Directors. For, besides his complaint, first stated, of having never possessed their confidence, in a late letter[41] (in which, notwithstanding the censures of Parliament, he magnifies his own conduct) he says, that, in all the long period of his service, "he has almost unremittedly wanted the support which all his predecessors had enjoyed from their const.i.tuents. From mine," says he, "I have received _nothing but reproach, hard_ epithets, _and indignities_, instead of rewards and encouragement." It must therefore have been from some other source of protection than that which the law had placed over him that he looked for countenance and reward in violating an act of Parliament which forbid him from _taking gifts or presents on any account whatsoever_,--much less a gift of this magnitude, which, from the distress of the giver, must be supposed the effect of the most cruel extortion.

The Directors did wrong in their orders to appropriate money, which they must know could not have been acquired by the consent of the pretended donor, to their own use.[42] They acted more properly in refusing to confirm this grant to Mr. Hastings, and in choosing rather to refer him to the law which he had violated than to his own sense of what he thought he was ent.i.tled to take from the natives: putting him in mind that the Regulating Act had expressly declared "that no Governor-General, or any of the Council, shall, directly or indirectly, accept, receive, or take, of or from any person or persons, or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any of the aforesaid." Here is no reserve for the case of a disclosure to the Directors, and for the legalizing the breach of an act of Parliament by their subsequent consent. The illegality attached to the action at its very commencement, and it could never be afterwards legalized: the Directors had no such power reserved to them. Words cannot be devised of a stronger import or studied with more care. To these words of the act are opposed the declaration and conduct of Mr. Hastings, who, in his letter of January, 1782, thinks fit to declare, that "an offer of a very considerable sum of money was made to him, both on the part of the Nabob and his ministers, as _a present_, which he _accepted without hesitation_." The plea of his pretended necessity is of no avail. The present was not in ready money, nor, as your Committee conceive, applicable to his immediate necessities. Even his credit was not bettered by bills at long periods; he does not pretend that he raised any money upon them; nor is it conceivable that a banker at Benares would be more willing to honor the drafts of so miserable, undone, and dependent a person as the Nabob of Oude than those of the Governor-General of Bengal, which might be paid either on the receipt of the Benares revenue, or at the seat of his power, and of the Company's exchequer. Besides, it is not explicable, upon any grounds that can be avowed, why the Nabob, who could afford to give these bills as _a present_ to Mr. Hastings, could not have equally given them in discharge of the debt which he owed to the Company. It is, indeed, very much to be feared that the people of India find it sometimes turn more to their account to give presents to the English in authority than to pay their debts to the public; and this is a matter of a very serious consideration.

No small merit is made by Mr. Hastings, and that, too, in a high and upbraiding style, of his having come to a voluntary discovery of this and other unlawful practices of the same kind. "That honorable court,"

says Mr. Hastings, addressing himself to his masters, in his letter of December, 1782, "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 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 pa.s.sed to their credit, by their _unworthy_, and pardon me if I add _dangerous reflections_, which they have pa.s.sed upon me for the first communication of this kind"; and he immediately adds, what is singular and striking, and savors of a recriminatory insinuation, "_and your own experience_ will suggest to you that there are persons who would profit by such a warning."[43] To what Directors in particular this imputation of experience is applied, and what other persons they are in whom _experience_ has shown a disposition to profit of such a warning, is a matter highly proper to be inquired into. What Mr. Hastings says further on this subject is no less worthy of attention:--"_that he could have concealed these transactions, if he had a wrong motive, from theirs and the public eye forever_."[44]

It is undoubtedly true, that, whether the observation be applicable to the particular case or not, practices of this corrupt nature are extremely difficult of detection anywhere, but especially in India; but all restraint upon that grand fundamental abuse of presents is gone forever, if the servants of the Company can derive safety from a defiance of the law, when they can no longer hope to screen themselves by an evasion of it. All hope of reformation is at an end, if, confiding in the force of a faction among Directors or proprietors to bear them out, and possibly to vote them the fruit of their crimes as a reward of their discovery, they find that their bold avowal of their offences is not only to produce indemnity, but to be rated for merit. If once a presumption is admitted, that, wherever something is divulged, nothing is hid, the discovering of one offence may become the certain means of concealing a mult.i.tude of others. The contrivance is easy and trivial, and lies open to the meanest proficient in this kind of art; it will not only become an effectual cover to such practices, but will tend infinitely to increase them. In that case, sums of money will be taken for the purpose of discovery and making merit with the Company, and other sums will be taken for the private advantage of the receiver.

It must certainly be impossible for the natives to know what presents are for one purpose, or what for the other. It is not for a Gentoo or a Mahometan landholder at the foot of the remotest mountains in India, who has no access to our records and knows nothing of our language, to distinguish what lacs of rupees, which he has given _eo nomine_ as a present to a Company's servant, are to be authorized by his masters in Leadenhall Street as proper and legal, or carried to their public account at their pleasure, and what are laid up for his own emolument.

The legislature, in declaring all presents to be the property of the Company, could not consider corruption, extortion, and fraud as any part of their resources. The property in such presents was declared to be theirs, not as a fund for their benefit, but in order to found a legal t.i.tle to a civil suit. It was declared theirs, to facilitate the recovery out of corrupt and oppressive hands of money illegally taken; but this legal fiction of property could not nor ought by the legislature to be considered in any other light than as a trust held by them for those who suffered the injury. Upon any other construction, the Company would have a right, first, to extract money from the subjects or dependants of this kingdom committed to their care, by means of particular conventions, or by taxes, by rents, and by monopolies; and when they had exhausted every contrivance of public imposition, then they were to be at liberty to let loose upon the people all their servants, from the highest rank to the lowest, to prey upon them at pleasure, and to draw, by personal and official authority, by influence, venality, and terror, whatever was left to them,--and that all this was justified, provided the product was paid into the Company's exchequer.

This prohibition and permission of presents, with this declaration of property in the Company, would leave no property to any man in India.

If, however, it should be thought that this clause in the act[45] should be capable, by construction and retrospect, of so legalizing and thus appropriating these presents, (which your Committee conceive impossible,) it is absolutely necessary that it should be very fully explained.

The provision in the act was made in favor of the natives. If such construction prevails, the provision made as their screen from oppression will become the means of increasing and aggravating it without bounds and beyond remedy. If presents, which when they are given were unlawful, can afterwards be legalized by an application of them to the Company's service, no sufferer can even resort to a remedial process at law for his own relief. The moment he attempts to sue, the money may be paid into the Company's treasury; it is then lawfully taken, and the party is non-suited.

The Company itself must suffer extremely in the whole order and regularity of their public accounts, if the idea upon which Mr. Hastings justifies the taking of these presents receives the smallest countenance. On his principles, the same sum may become private property or public, at the pleasure of the receiver; it is in his power, Mr.

Hastings says, to conceal it forever.[46] He certainly has it in his power not only to keep it back and bring it forward at his own times, but even to shift and reverse the relations in the accounts (as Mr.

Hastings has done) in what manner and proportion seems good to him, and to make himself alternately debtor or creditor for the same sums.

Of this irregularity Mr. Hastings himself appears in some degree sensible. He conceives it possible that his transactions of this nature may to the Court of Directors seem unsatisfactory. He, however, puts it hypothetically: "If to you," says he, "who are accustomed to view business in an _official and regular light, they should appear unprecedented, if not improper_."[47] He just conceives it possible that in an official money transaction the Directors may expect a proceeding official and regular. In what other lights than those which are official and regular matters of public account ought to be regarded by those who have the charge of them, either in Bengal or in England, does not appear to your Committee. Any other is certainly "unprecedented and improper,"

and can only serve to cover fraud both in the receipt and in the expenditure. The acquisition of 58,000 rupees, or near 6000_l._, which appears in the sort of _unofficial and irregular account_ that he furnishes of his presents, in his letter of May, 1782,[48] must appear extraordinary indeed to those who expect from men in office something official and something regular. "This sum," says he, "I received while I was on my journey to Benares."[49] He tells it with the same careless indifference as if things of this kind were found by accident on the high-road.

Mr. Hastings did not, indeed he could not, doubt that this unprecedented and improper account would produce much discussion. He says, "Why these sums were taken by me, why they were (except the second) _quietly_ transferred to the Company's account, why bonds were taken for the first and not for the rest, might, were this matter to be exposed to the view of the public, _furnish a variety of conjectures_."[50]

This matter has appeared, and has furnished, as it ought to do, something more serious than conjectures. It would in any other case be supposed that Mr. Hastings, expecting such inquiries, and considering that the questions are (even as they are imperfectly stated by himself) far from frivolous, would condescend to give some information upon them; but the conclusion of a sentence so importantly begun, and which leads to such expectations, is, "that to these conjectures it would be of little use to reply." This is all he says to public conjecture.

To the Court of Directors he is very little more complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never done before.

"_Were_ your Honorable Court to question me upon these points, I _would_ answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's benefit, at times in which the Company very much stood in need of 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."[51]

He here professes not to be certain of the motives by which he was himself actuated in so extraordinary a concealment, and in the use of such extraordinary means to effect it; and as if the acts in question were those of an absolute stranger, and not his own, he gives various loose conjectures concerning the motive to them. He even supposes, in taking presents contrary to law, and in taking bonds for them as his own, contrary to what he admits to be truth and fact, that he might have acted without any distinct motive at all, or at least such as his memory could reach at that distance of time. That immense distance, in the faintness of which his recollection is so completely lost as to set him guessing at his motives for his own conduct, was from the 15th of January, 1781, when the bonds at his own request were given, to the date of this letter, which is the 22d of May, 1782,--that is to say, about one year and four months.

As to the other sums, for which no bond was taken, the ground for the difference in his explanation is still more extraordinary: he says, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with _the rest_."[52] The rest of these sums, which were not worth his care, are stated in his account to be greater than those he was so solicitous (for some reason which he cannot guess) to cover under bonds: these sums amount to near 53,000_l._; whereas the others did not much exceed 40,000_l._ For these actions, attended with these explanations, he ventures to appeal to their (the Directors') b.r.e.a.s.t.s for a candid interpretation, and "he a.s.sumes the freedom to add, that he thinks himself, on _such_ a subject, and on _such_ an occasion, ent.i.tled to it";[53] and then, as if he had performed some laudable exploit, in the accompanying letter he glories in the integrity of his conduct; and antic.i.p.ating his triumph over injustice, and the applauses which at a future time he seems confident he shall receive, says he, "The applause of my own breast is my surest reward: your applause and that of my country is my next wish in life."[54] He declares in that very letter that he had not _at any time_ possessed the confidence with them which they never withheld from the meanest of his predecessors. With wishes so near his heart perpetually disappointed, and, instead of applauses, (as he tells us,) receiving nothing but reproaches and disgraceful epithets, his steady continuance for so many years in their service, in a place obnoxious in the highest degree to suspicion and censure, is a thing altogether singular.

It appears very necessary to your Committee to observe upon the great leading principles which Mr. Hastings a.s.sumes, to justify the irregular taking of these vast sums of money, and all the irregular means he had employed to cover the greater part of it. These principles are the more necessary to be inquired into, because, if admitted, they will serve to justify every species of improper conduct. His words are, "that the sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come would never have yielded them to the Company _publicly_; and that the exigencies of their service (exigencies created by the exposition of their affairs, and faction in their divided councils) required those supplies."[55]

As to the first of these extraordinary positions, your Committee cannot conceive what motive could actuate any native of India dependent on the Company, in a.s.sisting them privately, and in refusing to a.s.sist them publicly. If the transaction was fair and honest, every native must have been desirous of making merit with the great governing power. If he gave his money as a free gift, he might value himself upon very honorable and very acceptable service; if he lent it on the Company's bonds, it would still have been of service, and he might also receive eight per cent for his money. No native could, without some interested view, give to the Governor-General what he would refuse to the Company as a grant, or even as a loan. It is plain that the powers of government must, in some way or other, be understood by the natives to be at sale. The Governor-General says that he took the money with an original destination to the purposes to which he a.s.serts he has since applied it.

But this original destination was in his own mind only,--not declared, nor by him pretended to be declared, to the party who gave the presents, and who could perceive nothing in it but money paid to the supreme magistrate for his private emolument. All that the natives could possibly perceive in such a transaction must be highly dishonorable to the Company's government; for they must conceive, when they gave money to Mr. Hastings, that they bought from Mr. Hastings either what was their own right or something that was not so, or that they redeemed themselves from some acts of rigor inflicted, threatened, or apprehended. If, in the first case, Mr. Hastings gave them the object for which they bargained, his act, however proper, was corrupt,--if he did not, it was both corrupt and fraudulent; if the money was extorted by force or threats, it was oppressive and tyrannical. The very nature of such transactions has a tendency to teach the natives to pay a corrupt court to the servants of the Company; and they must thereby be rendered less willing, or less able, or perhaps both, to fulfil their engagements to the state. Mr. Scott's evidence a.s.serts that they would rather give to Mr. Hastings than lend to the Company. It is very probable; but it is a demonstration of their opinion of his power and corruption, and of the weak and precarious state of the Company's authority.

The second principle a.s.sumed by Mr. Hastings for his justification, namely, that factious opposition and a divided government might create exigencies requiring such supplies, is full as dangerous as the first; for, if, in the divisions which must arise in all councils, one member of government, when he thinks others factiously disposed, shall be ent.i.tled to take money privately from the subject for the purposes of his politics, and thereby to dispense with an act of Parliament, pretences for that end cannot be wanting. A dispute may always be raised in council in order to cover oppression and peculation elsewhere. But these principles of Mr. Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient members. The law has placed the sense of the whole in the majority; and it is not a thing to be suffered, that any of the members should privately raise money for the avowed purpose of defeating that sense, or for promoting designs that are contrary to it: a more alarming a.s.sumption of power in an individual member of any deliberative or executive body cannot be imagined. Mr. Hastings had no right, in order to clear himself of peculation, to criminate the majority with faction.

No member of any body, outvoted on a question, has, or can have, a right to direct any part of his public conduct by that principle. The members of the Council had a common superior, to whom they might appeal in their mutual charges of faction: they did so frequently; and the imputation of faction has almost always been laid on Mr. Hastings himself.

But there were periods, very distinguished periods too, in the records of the Company, in which the clandestine taking of money could not be supported even by this pretence. Mr. Hastings has been charged with various acts of peculation, perpetrated at a time he could not excuse himself by the plea of any public purpose to be carried on, or of any faction in council by which it was traversed. It may be necessary here to recall to the recollection of the House, that, on the cry which prevailed of the ill practices of the Company's servants in India, (which general cry in a great measure produced the Regulating Act of 1773,) the Court of Directors, in their instructions of the 29th of March, 1774, gave it as an injunction to the Council-General, that "they _immediately_ cause the _strictest_ inquiry to be made into _all_ oppressions which may have been committed either against natives or Europeans, and into _all_ abuses which may have prevailed in the collection of the revenues or _any part of the civil government_ of the Presidency; and that you communicate to us _all information_ which you may be able to obtain relative thereto, or any embezzlement or dissipation of the Company's money."

In this inquiry, by far the most important abuse which appeared on any of the above heads was that which was charged relative to the sale in gross by Mr. Hastings of nothing less than the whole authority of the country government in the disposal of the guardianship of the Nabob of Bengal.

The present Nabob, Mobarek ul Dowlah, was a minor when he succeeded to the t.i.tle and office of Subahdar of the three provinces in 1770.

Although in a state approaching to subjection, still his rank and character were important. Much was necessarily to depend upon a person who was to preserve the moderation of a sovereign not supported by intrinsic power, and yet to maintain the dignity necessary to carry on the representation of political government, as well as the substance of the whole criminal justice of a great country. A good education, conformably to the maxims of his religion and the manners of his people, was necessary to enable him to fill that delicate place with reputation either to the Mahometan government or to ours. He had still to manage a revenue not inconsiderable, which remained as the sole resource for the languishing dignity of persons any way distinguished in rank among Mussulmen, who were all attached and clung to him. These considerations rendered it necessary to put his person and affairs into proper hands.

They ought to have been men who were able by the gravity of their rank and character to preserve his morals from the contagion of low and vicious company,--men who by their integrity and firmness might be enabled to resist in some degree the rapacity of Europeans, as well as to secure the remaining fragments of his property from the attempts of the natives themselves, who must lie under strong temptation of taking their share in the last pillage of a decaying house.

The Directors were fully impressed with the necessity of such an arrangement. Your Committee find, that, on the 26th of August, 1771, they gave instructions to the President and Council to appoint "a minister to transact the political affairs of the circar [government],--and to select for that purpose some person well qualified for the affairs of government to be the minister of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's minority."

The order was so distinct as not to admit of a mistake; it was (for its matter) provident and well considered; and the trust which devolved on Mr. Hastings was of such a nature as might well stimulate a man sensible to reputation to fulfil it in a manner agreeably to the directions he had received, and not only above just cause of exception, but out of the reach of suspicion and malice. In that situation it was natural to suppose he would cast his eyes upon men of the first repute and consideration among the Mussulmen of high rank.

Mr. Hastings, instead of directing his eyes to the durbar, employed his researches in the seraglio. In the inmost recesses of that place he discovered a woman secluded from the intercourse and shut up from the eyes of men, whom he found to correspond with the orders he had received from the Directors, as a person well "qualified for the affairs of government, fit to be a minister of government and the guardian of the Nabob's minority." This woman he solemnly invests with these functions.

He appoints Rajah Gourdas, whom some time after he himself qualified with a description of a young man of mean abilities, to be her duan, or steward of the household. The rest of the arrangement was correspondent to this disposition of the princ.i.p.al offices.

It seems not to have been lawful or warrantable in Mr. Hastings to set aside the arrangement positively prescribed by the Court of Directors, which evidently pointed to a man, not to any woman whatever. As a woman confined in the female apartment, the lady he appointed could not be competent to hold or qualified to exercise any active employment: she stood in need of guardians for herself, and had not the ability for the guardianship of a person circ.u.mstanced as the Subah was. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis declare in their minute, "that they believe there never was an instance in India of such a trust so disposed of." Mr. Hastings has produced no precedent in answer to this objection.

It will be proper to state to the House the situation and circ.u.mstances of the women princ.i.p.ally concerned, who were in the seraglio of Jaffier Ali Khan at his death. The first of these was called Munny Begum, a person originally born of poor and obscure parents, who delivered her over to the conductress of a company of dancing girls; in which profession being called to exhibit at a festival, the late Nabob took a liking to her, and, after some cohabitation, she obtained such influence over him that he took her for one of his wives and (she seems to have been the favorite) put her at the head of his harem; and having a son by her, this son succeeded to his authority and estate,--Munny Begum, the mother, being by his will a devisee of considerable sums of money, and other effects, on which he left a charge, which has since been applied to the service of the East India Company. The son of this lady dying, and a son by another wife succeeding, and dying also, the present Nabob, Mobarek ul Dowlah, son by a third wife, succeeded. This woman was then alive, and in the seraglio.

It was Munny Begum that Mr. Hastings chose, and not the natural mother of the Nabob. Whether, having chosen a woman in defiance of the Company's orders, and in pa.s.sing by the natural parent of the minor prince, he was influenced by respect for the disposition made by the deceased Nabob during his life, or by other motives, the House will determine upon a view of the facts which follow. It will be matter of inquiry, when the question is stated upon the appointment of a stepmother in exclusion of the parent, whether the usage of the East constantly authorizes the continuance of that same distribution of rank and power which was settled in the seraglio during the life of a deceased prince, and which was found so settled at his death, and afterwards, to the exclusion of the mother of the successor. In case of female guardianship, her claim seems to be a right of Nature, and which nothing but a very clear positive law will (if that can) authorize the departure from. The history of Munny Begum is stated on the records of the Council-General, and no attempt made by Mr. Hastings to controvert the truth of it.

That was charged by the majority of Council to have happened which might be expected inevitably to happen: the care of the Nabob's education was grossly neglected, and his fortune as grossly mismanaged and embezzled.

What connection this waste and embezzlement had with the subsequent events the House will judge.