The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume XII Part 13

My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs, who has arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the great Mahometan doctors and the great n.o.bility of the country, and he is put under the most absolute guardianship of Sir John D'Oyly. But Mr.

Hastings has given Sir John D'Oyly a great character. I cannot confirm it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings's instruments. They must stand forth here, and defend their own character before you.

Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to another circ.u.mstance in this transaction. You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for his redemption. "I will give you," he says, "40,000_l._ a year to have the management of my own affairs." Good heavens! Here is a man, who, according to Mr. Hastings's a.s.sertion, had an indisputable right to the management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and peculation which here stare you in the face. Judge of the nature and character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the supreme authority of the country. This offer shows that at this time the Nabob had it not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is brought forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.

Munny Begum had the management before. But, whether it be an Englishman, a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman, it is all Warren Hastings.

With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets Sir John D'Oyly, in the narrative that he makes before the House of Commons, positively to deny in the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would give oath of it, that the Nabob never gave a commission to any one to make such an offer. That such an offer was made had been long published and long in print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it in the Ninth Report of the Select Committee; that the Committee had so done was well known to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the part of Mr.

Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyly was said to contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this transaction. It is this,--that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings is the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may answer his purposes.

You would naturally have imagined, that, in the House of Commons, where clouds of witnesses had been before produced by the friends and agents of Mr. Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir John to contradict this reported offer; but not a word from Sir John D'Oyly. At last he is examined before the Committee of Managers. He refuses to answer. Why? Because his answers might criminate himself. My Lords, every answer that most of them have been required to make they are sensible they cannot make without danger of criminating themselves, being all involved in the crimes of the prisoner. He has corrupted and ruined the whole service; there is not one of them that dares appear and give a fair and full answer in any case, as you have seen in Mr.

Middleton, and many others at your bar. "I will not answer this question," they say, "because it tends to criminate myself." How comes it that the Company's servants are not able to give evidence in the affairs of Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?

Well,--Sir John D'Oyly is in England,--why is he not called now? I have not the honor of being intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man of a reputable and honorable family. Why is he not called by Mr.

Hastings to verify the a.s.sertion, and why do they suffer this black record to stand before your Lordships to be urged by us, and to press it as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John D'Oyly can acquit him of this part of our accusation, he would certainly bring him as a witness to your bar; but he knows he cannot. When, therefore, I see upon your records that Sir John D'Oyly and Mr. Hastings received such an offer for the redemption of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude, first, that at the time of this offer the Nabob had not the disposal of his own affairs,--and, secondly, that those who had the disposal of them disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they could hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What explanation of this matter has been attempted? There is no explanation given of it at all. It stands clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you. They have not attempted to produce the least evidence against it. Therefore in that state I leave it with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention, and that, though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Khan from the seat of justice, he was made a cipher in it. All his other offices were taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly, directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied the rest.i.tution of Mahomed Reza Khan to all the offices which he had before held. He was stripped of everything but a feeble administration of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the circ.u.mstances, have been much better in his hands than it had been in Sudder ul Huk Khan's.

Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued to the last; and when he was going away, on the 3d of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental letter to the Court of Directors in her praise. This letter was transmitted without having been communicated to the Council. You have heard of delicate affidavits; here you have a sentimental official despatch: your Lordships will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your printed Minutes. He writes in such a delicate, sentimental strain of this woman, that I will venture to say you will not find in all the "Arcadia," in all the novels and romances that ever were published, an instance of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent affection, defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever exist, than existed in Mr.

Hastings towards this old woman, Munny Begum. As cases of this kind, cases of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions, are rare in the Company's records, I recommend it as a curiosity to your Lordships'

reading, as well as a proof of what is the great spring and movement of all the prisoner's actions. On this occasion he thus speaks of Munny Begum.

"She, too, became the victim of your policy, and of the resentments which succeeded. Something, too, she owed of the source of her misfortunes to the belief of the personal grat.i.tude which she might entertain for the public attention which I had shown to her.

Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment which a ruffian would have shuddered at committing, and which no recollection of past enmities shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded from any commission of authority, she still maintained the decorum of her character; nor even then, nor before, nor since that period, has the malice of calumny ever dared to breathe on her reputation."--Delicate! sentimental!--"Pardon, honorable Sirs, this freedom of expostulation. I must in honest truth repeat, that your commands laid the first foundation of her misfortunes; to your equity she has now recourse through me for their alleviation, that she may pa.s.s the remainder of her life in a state which may at least efface the remembrance of the years of her affliction; and to your humanity she and an unseen mult.i.tude of the most helpless of her s.e.x cry for subsistence."

Moving and pathetic!--I wish to recommend every word of this letter to your Lordships' consideration, as a model and pattern of perfection.

Observe his pity for a woman who had suffered such treatment from the servants of the Company (a parcel of ruffians!)--treatment that a ruffian would be ashamed of! Your Lordships have seen, in the evidence, what this ruffianism was. It was neither more nor less than what was necessary in order to get at the accounts, which she concealed, as his own corrupt transactions. She was told, indeed, that she must privately remove to another house whilst her papers were examining. Mr. Hastings can never forget this. He cannot believe that anybody dare send such an order; and he calls upon you to consider the helplessness of their s.e.x, and the affronts offered to women.

For Heaven's sake, my Lords, recollect the manner in which Mr. Hastings and his creatures treated the Begums of Oude, and consider that this woman was only threatened (for the threat was never attempted to be executed) that she must, if she did not deliver up the accounts, probably be removed to another house, and leave the accounts behind her.

This blot can never be effaced; and for this he desires the Court of Directors to make her a large allowance to comfort her in her old age.

In this situation Mr. Hastings leaves her. He leaves in the situation I have described the justice of the country. The only concern he has at parting is, that this woman may have a large allowance.

But I have yet to tell your Lordships, and it appears upon your printed Minutes, that this woman had a way of comforting herself:--for old ladies of that description, who have pa.s.sed their youth in amus.e.m.e.nts, in dancing, and in gallantries, in their old age are apt to take comfort in brandy. This lady was a smuggler, and had influence enough to avoid payment of the duty on spirits, in which article she is the largest dealer in the district,--as, indeed, she is in almost every species of trade. Thus your Lordships see that this sentimental lady, whom Mr.

Hastings recommends to the Directors, had ways of comforting herself.

She carried on, notwithstanding her dignity, a trade in spirits. Now a Mahometan of distinction never carries on any trade at all,--it is an unknown thing,--very few Mahometans of any rank carry on any trade at all; but that a Mahometan should carry on a trade in spirits is a prodigy never heard of before; for a woman of quality, for a woman of sentiment, to become a dealer in spirits is, my Lords, a thing reserved for the sentimental age of Mr. Hastings; and I will venture to say that no man or woman could attempt any such a trade in India, without being dishonored, ruined in character, and disgraced by it. But she appears not only to have been a dealer in it, but, through the influence which Mr. Hastings gave her, to have monopolized the trade in brandy, and to have evaded the duties. This, then, is the state in which we leave the two sentimental lovers,--the one consoling herself with brandy, the other wheedling and whining; and, as Swift describes the progress of an intrigue in some respects similar, which he calls "The Progress of Love," whereas this is the Progress of Sentiment,

"They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar, Are cat and dog, and rogue and wh.o.r.e."

Here they set up the sign of the Old Blue Boar. Munny Begum monopolizes the trade in spirits; and hence she and Mr. Hastings commence their sentimental correspondence.--And now, having done with this progress of love, we return to the progress of justice.

We have seen how Sudder ul Huk Khan, the chief-justice of Mr. Hastings's own nomination, was treated. Now you shall see how justice was left to shift for herself under Mahomed Reza Khan. In page 1280 of your Lordships' Minutes you will see the progress of all these enormities,--of Munny Begum's dealing in spirits, of her engrossing the trade, of her evading duties,--and, lastly, the extinction of all order in that country, and the funeral of justice itself. Mr. Sh.o.r.e's evidence respecting this state of the country will admit of no doubt.

_Mr. Sh.o.r.e's Remarks accompanying the Governor-General's Minutes of the 18th May, 1785._

"Foujdarry jurisdiction.--Of the foujdarry jurisdiction nothing has yet been said. In this department criminal justice is administered, and it is the only office left to the Nabob. I do not see any particular reason for changing the system itself, and perhaps it would on many accounts be improper; but some regulations are highly necessary. Mahomed Reza is at the head of this department, and is the only person I know in the country qualified for it. If he were left to himself, I have not a doubt but he would conduct it well; but he is so circ.u.mscribed by recommendations of particular persons, and by the protection held out to his officers by Europeans, that to my knowledge he has not been able to punish them, even when they have been convicted of the greatest enormities; and he has often on this account been blamed, where his hands were tied up."

My Lords, you now see in this minute of Sir John Sh.o.r.e, now Governor-General of Bengal, one of Mr. Hastings's own committee for drawing up his defence, the review which he had just then taken of the ruins of the government which had been left to him by Mr. Hastings. You see here not the little paltry things which might deserve in their causes the animadversion of a rough satirist like Doctor Swift, whom I have just quoted, but you see things ten thousand times more serious, things that deserve the thunderbolt of vindictive justice upon the head of the prisoner at your bar. For you see, that, after he had ostensibly restored Mahomed Reza Khan, the man who could and would have executed his office with fidelity and effect, the man who was fit for and disposed to do his duty, there was still neither law, order, nor justice in the country. Why? Because of the interposition of Europeans, and men who must have been patronized and supported by Europeans. All this happened before Mr. Hastings's departure: so that the whole effect of the new arrangement of government was known to him before he left Calcutta. The same pretended remedy was applied. But in fact he left this woman in the full possession of her power. His last thoughts were for her; for the justice of the country, for the peace and security of the people of Bengal, he took no kind of care; these great interests were left to the mercy of the woman and her European a.s.sociates.

My Lords, I have taken some pains in giving you this history. I have shown you his open acts and secret stratagems, in direct rebellion to the Court of Directors,--his double government, his false pretences of restoring the Nabob's independence, leading in effect to a most servile dependence, even to the prohibition of the approach of any one, native or European, near him, but through the intervention of Sir John D'Oyly.

I therefore again repeat it, that Sir John D'Oyly, and the English gentlemen who were patronized and countenanced by Mr. Hastings, had wrought all that havoc in the country before Mr. Hastings left it.

I have particularly dwelt upon the administration of justice, because I consider it as the source of all good, and the maladministration of it as the source of all evil in the country. Your Lordships have heard how it was totally destroyed by Mr. Hastings through Sir John D'Oyly, who was sent there by him for the purpose of forming a clandestine government of corruption and peculation. This part of our charge speaks for itself, and I shall dismiss it with a single observation,--that not the least trace of an account of all these vast sums of money delivered into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly for the use of the Nabob appears in any part of the Company's records. The undeniable inferences to be drawn from this fact are, first, that, wherever we find concealment of money, and the ceasing of an account, there has been fraud,--and, secondly, that, if we find this concealment accompanied with the devastation of a country, and the extinction of justice in it, that devastation of the country and that extinction of justice have been the result of that fraudulent peculation.

I am sure your Lordships will not think that a charge of the annihilation of administrative justice, in which the happiness and prosperity of a great body of n.o.bility, of numerous ancient and respectable families, and of the inhabitants in general of extensive and populous provinces are concerned, can, if it stood single and alone, be a matter of trifling moment. And in favor of whom do all these sacrifices appear to have been made? In favor of an old prost.i.tute, who, if shown to your Lordships here, like Helen to the counsellors of Troy, would not, I think, be admitted to have charms that could palliate this man's abominable conduct; you would not cry out with them,--

?? ??es??, ...

????d' ?f? ???a??? p???? ?????? ???ea p?s?e??.

For I will fairly say that there are some pa.s.sions that have their excuses; but the pa.s.sion towards this woman was the pa.s.sion of avarice and rapacity only,--a pa.s.sion, indeed, which lasted to the end of his government, and for which he defied the orders of the Court of Directors, rebelled against his masters, and finally subverted the justice of a great country.

My Lords, I have done with this business. I come next to the third division of the natives, those who form the landed interest of the country. A few words only will be necessary upon this part of the subject. The fact is, that Mr. Hastings, at one stroke, put up the property of all the n.o.bility and gentry, and of all the freeholders, in short, the whole landed interest of Bengal, to a public auction, and let it to the highest bidder. I will make no observations upon the nature of this measure to your Lordships, who represent so large a part of the dignity, together with so large a part of the landed interest of this kingdom: though I think, that, even under your Lordships' restrictive order, I am ent.i.tled so to do; because we have examined some witnesses upon this point, in the revenue charge. Suffice it to say, that it is in evidence before your Lordships that this sale was ordered. Mr. Hastings does not deny it. He says, indeed, he did it not with an ill intention.

My answer is, that it could have been done with no other than a bad intention. The owners of the land had no way left to save themselves but to become farmers of their own estates; and from the compet.i.tion which naturally took place, (and he himself declared, that the persons, whether owners or strangers, to whom he let the lands, had agreed to rents which surpa.s.sed their abilities to pay,) I need not tell you what must have been the consequence, when it got into such rapacious hands, and was taken out of the hands of its natural proprietors: that the public revenue had sunk and lost by it, and that the country was wasted and destroyed. I leave it to your Lordships' own meditation and reflection; and I shall not press it one step further than just to remind you of what has been so well opened and pressed by my fellow Managers. He, Mr. Hastings, confesses that he let the lands to his own banians; he took his own domestic servants and put them in the houses of the n.o.bility of the country; and this he did in direct violation of an express order made by himself, that no banian of a collector (the spirit of which order implied ten thousand times more strongly the exclusion of any banians of a Governor-General) should have any one of those farms.

We also find that he made a regulation that no farmers should rent more than a lac of rupees; but at the same time we find his banians holding several farms to more than that amount. In short, we find that in every instance, where, under some plausible pretence or other, the fixed regulations are violated, it touches him so closely as to make it absolutely impossible not to suppose that he himself had the advantage of it.

For, in the first place, you have proof that he does take bribes, and that he has corrupt dealings. This is what he admits; but he says that he has done it from public-spirited motives. Now there is a rule, formed upon a just, solid presumption of law, that, if you find a man guilty of one offence contrary to known law, whenever there is a suspicious case against him of the same nature, the _onus probandi_ that he is not guilty is turned upon him. Therefore, when I find the regulations broken,--when I find farms given of more than a lac of rupees,--when I find them given to the Governor-General's own banian, contrary to the principle of the regulation, contrary, I say, in the strongest way to it,--when I find that he acc.u.mulates farms beyond the regulated number,--when I find all these things done, and besides that the banian has great balances of account against him,--then, by the presumption of law, I am bound to believe that all this was done, not for the servants, but for the master.

It is possible Mr. Hastings might really be in love with Munny Begum; be it so,--many great men have played the fool for prost.i.tutes, from Mark Antony's days downwards; but no man ever fell in love with his own banian. The persons for whom Mr. Hastings was guilty of all this rapine and oppression have neither relations nor kindred whom they own, nor does any trace of friendship exist among them; they do not live in habits of intimacy with any one; they are good fellows and bottle-companions.

I must now proceed to observe upon another matter which has been stated to your Lordships,--namely, that, as soon as he obtained the majority in the Council, (that beginning of all evils, that opening of Pandora's box,) by the death of General Clavering and Colonel Monson, the first thing he did was to appoint a commission, called an _aumeeny_, to go through the whole country, to enter every man's house, to examine his t.i.tle-deeds, and to demand his papers of accounts of every kind, for the purpose of enabling himself to take advantage of the hopes and fears of all the parties concerned, and thus to ravage and destroy all their property.

And whom does he place at the head of this commission, to be the manager of the whole affair? Gunga Govind Sing, another banian of his, and one of his own domestic servants. This we have discovered lately, and not without some surprise; for though I knew he kept a rogue in his house, yet I did not think that it was a common receptacle of thieves and robbers. I did not know till lately that this Gunga Govind Sing was his domestic servant; but Mr. Hastings, in a letter to the Court of Directors, calls him his faithful domestic servant, and as such calls upon the Company to reward him. To this banian all the Company's servants are made subject; they are bound to obey all his orders, and those of his committee. I hope I need not tell your Lordships what sort of stuff this committee was made of, by which Gunga Govind Sing was enabled to ravage the whole country.

But, say his counsel, Mr. Hastings thought that the value of the lands was thoroughly known; they had been investigated three times over, and they were all let by public auction to the highest bidder.--This may or may not be a true test of their value; but it is a test which, as it led to the almost entire confiscation of the landed interest of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, three great kingdoms, by a dash of that man's pen, into the hands of his banians and creatures, I can never think of it, or of its author, without horror.

Some people say, you ought to hate the crime and love the criminal. No, that is the language of false morality; you ought to hate the crime and the criminal, if the crime is of magnitude. If the crime is a small one, then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the criminal; but when there are great crimes, then you may hate them together. What! am I to love Nero? to fall in love with Heliogabalus? is Domitian to be the subject of my affection? No, we hate the crime, and we hate the criminal ten times more; and if I use indignant language, if I use the language of scorn and horror with respect to the criminal, I use the language that becomes me.

But, says one of the counsel, the Company might possess a knowledge of the country in general, but they could not know every _bega_, of it, (about the third part of an acre of land,) without such a commission.

That is to say, you could not squeeze everything out of the people, without ordering such a villain as Gunga Govind Sing, (I call things, by their names,) that most atrocious and wicked instrument of the most atrocious and wicked tyranny, to examine every man's papers, to oblige every man to produce his t.i.tles and accounts upon pain of criminal punishment, to be inflicted at the discretion of this commissioner, this Gunga Govind Sing. For an account of these acts, and for a description of an aumeeny, I refer your Lordships to the evidence in your Minutes, from page 1287 to 1301; and I pa.s.s on, expressing only my horror and detestation at it, and wishing to kindle in your Lordships' minds the same horror and detestation of it.

Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with confiscation only.

He comes just afterwards with a blister upon the sore. He lets loose another set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under Gunga Govind Sing, and these poor people are ravaged by the whole tribe of Calcutta banians.

Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in page 1022, where he states that Nundcomar desired him to make his son an aumeen. "The promise which he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he should be const.i.tuted aumeen, that is, inquisitor-general over the whole country, and that I would delegate to him my whole power and influence, is something more than a negative falsehood." He justly and naturally reprobates the proposition of appointing an inquisitor-general over the whole country; and yet we see him afterwards appointing Gunga Govind Sing such an inquisitor-general over the whole country, in order that a bega of land should not escape him.

Let us see how all this ended, and what it is that leads me directly to the presumption of corruption against him in this wicked _aumeeny_ scheme. Now I will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended, I will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal by public auction, I will forgive all he has done with regard to his banians, I shall forgive him even this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships that there was the smallest use made of it with regard to the settlement of the revenues of the Company. If there was not, then there is obviously one use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all the people of the whole country under obedience to Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was done? t.i.tles and accounts were exacted; the estimate was made, acre by acre; but we have not been able to find one word on their records of any return that was made to the Company of this investigation, or of any settlement or a.s.sessment of the country founded upon it, or of any regulation that was established upon it. Therefore, as an honest man, and as a man who is standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous suppositions. I cannot, I say, entertain any doubts that the only purpose it was designed to answer was to subject the whole landed interest of the country to the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to the cruel purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another purpose and I will give up the argument: for if there are two ways of accounting for the same act, it is possible it may be attributed to the better motive; but when we see that a bad thing was done under pretence of some good, we must attach a bad motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.

I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal. I have omitted much which might have been pressed upon your Lordships, not from any indisposition to remark upon the matter more fully, but because it has been done already by abler persons; I only wished to make some practical inferences, which, perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that one system of known or justly presumed corruption pervades the whole of this business, from one end to the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed interest, and the native zemindars or landholders of the country, I pa.s.s to the English government.

My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter extinction of the native Mahometan government, when we have shown the extinction of the native landed interest, what hope can there be for that afflicted country but in the servants of the Company? When we have shown the corrupt state of that service, what hope but from the Court of Directors, what hope but in the superintending control of British tribunals? I think as well of the body of my countrymen as any man can do. I do not think that any man sent out to India is sent with an ill purpose, or goes out with bad dispositions. No: I think the young men who go there are fair and faithful representatives of the people of the same age,--uncorrupted, but corruptible from their age, as we all are. They are sent there young. There is but one thing held out to them,--"You are going to make your fortune." The Company's service is to be the restoration of decayed n.o.ble families; it is to be the renovation of old, and the making of new ones. Now, when such a set of young men are sent out with these hopes and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,--when these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best, most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling, or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their education at once. What is the education of the generality of the world?

Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation, examples of virtues and of justice, form the education of the world. If the Company's servants have not that education, and are left to give loose to their natural pa.s.sions, some would be corrupt of course, and some would be uncorrupt; but probably the majority of them would be inclined to pursue moderate courses between these two. Now I am to show you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this alternative: "Be starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint the hopes of your families, or be my slaves, be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything I shall wish you to conceal." This was the state of the service. Therefore the Commons did well and wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or that servant who may have peculated, but to punish the man who was sent to reform abuses, and to make Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant example of British justice.

I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of the Company's government,--to show you what Mr. Hastings was expected to do for their reformation, and what he actually did do; I shall then show your Lordships the effects of the whole.

I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an extract from the Directors' letter to Bengal, of the 10th April, 1773.