Chapter 22

Your Lordships will observe that the virtuous majority, whose reign was but short, and two of whom died of grief and vexation under the impediments which they met with from the corruptions and oppositions of Mr. Hastings, (their indirect murderer,--for it is well known to the world that their hearts were thus broken,) put their conduct out of all suspicion. For they ordered an exact account to be kept by Mahomed Reza Khân,--though, certainly, if any person in the country could be trusted, he, upon his character, might; but they did not trust him, because they knew the Company did not suffer them to trust any man: they ordered an exact account to be kept by him of the Nabob's expenses, which finally must be the Company's expenses; they ordered the account to be sent down yearly, to be controlled, if necessary, whilst the means of control existed.--What was Mr. Hastings's conduct? He did not give the persons whom he appointed any order to produce any account, though their character and circumstances were such as made an account ten thousand times more necessary from them than from those from whom it had been in former times by the Company strictly exacted. So that his not ordering any account to be given of the money that was to be expended leaves no doubt that the appointment of Munny Begum was in pursuance of his old system of bribery, and that he maintained her in office, to the subversion of public justice, for the purpose of robbing, and of continuing in the practice of robbing, the country.

But though this continued longer than was for the good of the country, yet it did not continue absolutely and relatively long; because the Court of Directors, as soon as they heard of this iniquitous appointment, which glared upon them in all the light of its infamy, immediately wrote the strongest, the most decided, and the most peremptory censure upon him, attributing his acts, every one of them, to the same causes to which I attribute them. As a proof that the Court of Directors saw the thing in the very light in which I represent it to your Lordships, and indeed in which every one must see it, you will find that they reprobate all his idle excuses,--that they reprobate all the actors in the scene,--that they consider everything to have been done, not by the Nabob, but by himself,--that the object of the appointment of Munny Begum was _money_, and that the consequence of that appointment was the robbery of the Nabob's treasury. "We by no means approve your late proceedings, on the application of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah for the removal of the Naib Subahdar. The requisition of Mobarek ul Dowlah was improper and unfriendly; because he must have known that the late appointment of Mahomed Reza Khân to the office of Naib Subahdar had been marked with the Company's special approbation, and that the Court of Directors had assured him of their favor so long as a firm attachment to the Company's interest and a proper discharge of the duties of his station should render him worthy of their protection. We therefore repeat our declaration, that to require the dismission of a prime-minister thus circumstanced, without producing the smallest proof of his infidelity to the Company, or venturing to charge him with one instance of maladministration in the discharge of his public duty, was improper and inconsistent with the friendship subsisting between the Nabob of Bengal and the Company." And further on they say,--"The Nabob having intimated that he had repeatedly stated the trouble and uneasiness which he had suffered from the naibship of the nizamut being vested in Mahomed Reza Khân, we observe one of the members of your board desired the Nabob's repeated letters on the subject might be read, but this reasonable request was overruled, on a plea of saving the board's time, which we can by no means admit as a sufficient objection. The Nabob's letters of the 25th and 30th August, of the 3d September and 17th November, leave us no doubt of the true design of this extraordinary business being to bring forward Munny Begum, and again to invest her with improper power and influence, notwithstanding our former declaration, that so great a part of the Nabob's allowance had been embezzled or misapplied under her superintendence."

At present I do not think it necessary, because it would be doing more than enough, it would be slaying the slain, to show your Lordships what Mr. Hastings's motives were in acting against the sense of the East India Company, appointed by an act of Parliament to control him,--that he did it for a corrupt purpose, that all his pretences were false and fraudulent, and that he had his own corrupt views in the whole of the proceeding. But in the statement which I have given of this matter, I beg your Lordships to observe the instruments with which Mr. Hastings acts. The great men of that country, and particularly the Subahdar himself, the Nabob, are and is in so equivocal a situation, that it afforded him two bolting-holes, by which he is enabled to resist the authority of the Company, and exercise an arbitrary authority of his own: for, though the Nabob has the titles of high sovereignty, he is the lowest of all dependants; he appears to be the master of the country,--he is a pensioner of the Company's government.

When Mr. Hastings wants him to obey and answer his corrupt purposes, he finds him in the character of a pensioner: when he wants his authority to support him in opposition to the authority of the Company, immediately he invests him with high sovereign powers, and he dare not execute the orders of the Company for fear of doing some act that will make him odious in the eyes of God and man. We see how he appointed all officers for him, and forbade his interference in all affairs. When the Company see the impropriety and the guilt of these acts, and order him to rescind them, and appoint again Mahomed Reza Khân, he declares he will not, that he cannot do it in justice, but that he will consent to send him the order of the Company, but without backing it with any order of the board: which, supposing even there had been no private communication, was, in other words, commanding him to disobey it. So this poor man, who a short time before was at the feet of Mr. Hastings, whom Mr. Hastings declared to be a pageant, and swore in a court of justice that he was but a pageant, and followed that affidavit with long declarations in Council that he was a pageant in sovereignty, and ought in policy ever to be held out as such,--this man he sets up in opposition to the Company, and refuses to appoint Mahomed Reza Khân to the office which was guarantied to him by the express faith of the Company, pledged to his support. Will any man tell me that this resistance, under such base, though plausible pretences, could spring from any other cause than a resolution of persisting systematically in his course of corruption and bribery through Munny Begum?

But there is another circumstance that puts this in a stronger light. He opposes the Nabob's mock authority to the authority of the Company, and leaves Mahomed Reza Khân unemployed, because, as he says, he cannot in justice execute orders from the Company (though they are his undoubted masters) contrary to the rights of the Nabob. You see what the rights of the Nabob were: the rights of the Nabob were, to be governed by Munny Begum and her scandalous ministers. But, however, we now see him exalted to be an independent sovereign; he defies the Company at the head of their armies and their treasury; that name that makes all India shake was defied by one of its pensioners. My Lords, human greatness is an unstable thing. This man, so suddenly exalted, was as soon depressed; and the manner of his depression is as curious as that of his exaltation by Mr. Hastings, and will tend to show you the man most clearly.

Mr. Francis, whose conduct all along was directed by no other principles than those which were in conformity with the plan adopted by himself and his virtuous colleagues, namely, an entire obedience to the laws of his country, and who constantly had opposed Mr. Hastings, upon principles of honor, and principles of obedience to the authority of the Company under which he acted, had never contended for any one thing, in any way, or in any instance, but obedience to them, and had constantly asserted that Mahomed Reza Khân ought to be put into employment. Mr. Hastings as constantly opposed him; and the reason he gave for it was, that it was against the direct rights of the Nabob, and that they were rights so sacred that they could not be infringed even by the sovereign authority of the Company ordering him to do it. He had so great an aversion to the least subtraction of the Nabob's right, that, though expressly commanded by the Court of Directors, he would not suffer Mahomed Reza Khân to be invested with his office under the Company's authority. The Nabob was too sovereign, too supreme, for him to do it. But such is the fate of human grandeur, that a whimsical event reduced the Nabob to his state of pageant again, and made him the mere subject of--you will see whom. Mr. Hastings found he was so embarrassed by his disobedience to the spirit of the orders of the Company, and by the various wild projects he had formed, as to make it necessary for him, even though he had a majority in the Council, to gain over at any price Mr. Francis. Mr. Francis, frightened by the same miserable situation of affairs, (for this happened at a most dangerous period,--the height of the Mahratta war,) was willing likewise to give up his opposition to Mr. Hastings, to suspend the execution of many rightful things, and to concede them to the public necessity. Accordingly he agreed to terms with Mr. Hastings. But what was the price of that concession? Any base purpose, any desertion of public duty? No: all that he desired of Mr. Hastings was, that he should obey the orders of the Company; and among other acts of the obedience required was this, that Mahomed Reza Khân should be put into his office.

You have heard how Mr. Hastings opposed the order of the Company, and on what account he opposed it. On the 1st of September he sent an order to the Nabob, now become his subject, to give up this office to Mahomed Reza Khân: an act which he had before represented as a dethroning of the Nabob. The order went on the 1st of September, and on the 3d this great and mighty prince, whom all earth could not move from the assertion of his rights, gives them all up, and Mahomed Reza Khân is invested with them. So there all his pretences were gone. It is plain that what had been done before was for Munny Begum, and that what he now gave up was from necessity: and it shows that the Nabob was the meanest of his servants; for in truth he ate his daily bread out of the hands of Mr. Hastings, through Munny Begum.

Mahomed Reza Khân was now invested again with his office; but such was the treachery of Mr. Hastings, that, though he wrote to the Nabob that this was done in consequence of the orders of the Company, he did clandestinely, according to his usual mode, assure the Nabob that Mahomed Reza Khân should not hold the place longer than till he heard from England. He then wrote him another letter, that he should hold it no longer than while he submitted to his present necessity, (thus giving up to his colleague what he refused to the Company,) and engaged, privately, that he would dismiss Mahomed Reza Khân again. And accordingly, the moment he thought Mr. Francis was not in a condition to give him trouble any longer, that moment he again turned out Mahomed Reza Khân from that general superintendence of affairs which the Company gave him, and deposed him as a minister, leaving him only a very confined authority as a magistrate.

All these changes, no less than four great revolutions, if I may so call them, were made by Mr. Hastings for his own corrupt purposes. This is the manner in which Mr. Hastings has played with the most sacred objects that man ever had a dealing with: with the government, with the justice, with the order, with the dignity, with the nobility of a great country: he played with them to satisfy his own wicked and corrupt purposes through the basest instrument.

Now, my Lords, I have done with these presumptions of corruption with Munny Begum, and have shown that it is not a slight crime, but that it is attended with a breach of public faith, with a breach of his orders, with a breach of the whole English government, and the destruction of the native government, of the police, the order, the safety, the security, and the justice of the country,--and that all these are much concerned in this cause. Therefore the Commons stand before the face of the world, and say, We have brought a cause, a great cause, a cause worthy the Commons of England to prosecute, and worthy the Lords to judge and determine upon.

I have now nothing further to state than what the consequences are of Mr. Hastings taking bribes,--that Mr. Hastings's taking of bribes is not only his own corruption, but the incurable corruption of the whole service. I will show, first, that he was named in 1773 to put an end to that corruption. I will show that he did not,--that he knowingly and willingly connived at it,--and that that connivance was the principal cause of all the disorders that have hitherto prevailed in that country. I will show you that he positively refused to obey the Company's order to inquire into and to correct the corruptions that prevailed in that country; next, that he established an avowed system of connivance, in order to gain over everything that was corrupt in the country; and that, lastly, to secure it, he gave up all the prosecutions, and enervated and took away the sole arm left to the Company for the assertion of authority and the preservation of good morals and purity in their service.

My Lords, here is a letter, in the year 1773, in which the Court of Directors had, upon his own representation, approved some part of his conduct. He is charmed with their approbation; he promises the greatest things; but I believe your Lordships will see, from the manner in which he proceeds at that very instant, that a more deliberate system, for not only being corrupt himself, but supporting corruption in others, never was exhibited in any public paper.

"While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back with a mixture of anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I may since have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to the Secret Committee, repeat the strongest promises of prosecuting the inquiries into the conduct of your servants which you had been pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will readily perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have been accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the entire attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even with all the aids of leisure and authority, would have proved ineffectual. I dare appeal to the public records, to the testimony of those who have opportunities of knowing me, and even to the detail which the public voice can report of the past acts of this government, that my time has been neither idly nor uselessly employed: yet such are the cares and embarrassments of this various state, that, although much may be done, much more, even in matters of moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select from the miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies present to our choice those points on which the general welfare of your affairs most essentially depends, to provide expedients for future advantages and guard against probable evils, are all that your administration can faithfully promise to perform for your service with their united labors most diligently exerted. They cannot look back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which are those of your interests, to endless researches, which can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at home."

My Lords, this is the first man, I believe, that ever took credit for his sincerity from his breach of his promises. "I could not," he says, "have made these promises, if I had not thought that I could perform them. Now I find I cannot perform them, and you have in that non-performance and in that profession a security for my sincerity when I promised them." Upon this principle, any man who makes a promise has nothing to do afterwards, but to say that he finds himself (without assigning any particular cause for it) unable to perform it,--not only to justify himself for his non-performance, but to justify himself and claim credit for sincerity in his original profession. The charge was given him specially, and he promised obedience, over and over, upon the spot, and in the country, in which he was no novice, for he had been bred in it: it was his native country in one sense, it was the place of his renewed nativity and regeneration. Yet this very man, as if he was a novice in it, now says, "I promised you what I now find I cannot perform." Nay, what is worse, he declares no man could perform it, if he gave up his whole time to it. And lastly, he says, that the inquiry into these corruptions, even if you succeeded in it, would do more harm than good. Now was there ever an instance of a man so basely deserting a duty, and giving so base a reason for it? His duty was to put an end to corruption in every channel of government. It cannot be done. Why? Because it would expose our affairs to malignity and enmity, and end, perhaps, to our disadvantage. Not only will he connive himself, but he advises the Company to do it. For fear of what? For fear that their service was so abandoned and corrupt, that the display of the evil would tend more to their disreputation than all their attempts to reform it would tend to their service.

Mr. Hastings should naturally have imagined that the law was a resource in this desperate case of bribery. He tells you, that in "that charge of oppression, though they were supported by the cries of the people and the most authentic representations, it is yet impossible in most cases to obtain legal proofs." Here is a system of total despair upon the business, which I hope and believe is not a desperate one, and has not proved a desperate one, whenever a rational attempt has been made to pursue it. Here you find him corrupt, and you find, in consequence of that corruption, that he screens the whole body of corruption in India, and states an absolute despair of any possibility, by any art or address, of putting an end to it. Nay, he tells you, that, if corruption did not exist, if it was not connived at, that the India Company could not exist. Whether that be a truth or not I cannot tell; but this I know, that it is the most horrible picture that ever was made of any country. It might be said that these were excuses for omissions,--sins of omission he calls them. I will show that they were systematic, that Mr. Hastings did uniformly profess that he would connive at abuses, and contend that abuses ought to be connived at. When the whole mystery of the iniquity, in which he himself was deeply concerned, came to light,--when it appeared that all the Company's orders were contravened,--that contracts were given directly contrary to their orders, and upon principles subversive of their government, leading to all manner of oppression and ruin to the country,--what was Mr. Hastings's answer? "I must here remark, that the majority ... I had not the power of establishing it."[5] Then he goes on and states other cases of corruption, at every one of which he winks. Here he states another reason for his connivance. "Suppose again," (for he puts another supposition, and these suppositions are not hypotheses laid down for argument, but real facts then existing before the Council examining into grievances,)--"suppose again, that any person had benefited himself ... unprofitable discussion."[6]

Here is a direct avowal of his refusing to examine into the conduct of persons in the Council, even in the highest departments of government, and the best paid, for fear he should dissatisfy them, and should lose their votes, by discovering those peculations and corruptions, though he perfectly knew them. Was there ever, since the world began, any man who would dare to avow such sentiments, until driven to the wall? If he could show that he himself abhorred bribes, and kept at a distance from them, then he might say, "I connive at the bribes of others"; but when he acknowledges that he takes bribes, how can you doubt that he buys a corrupt confederacy, and puts an end to any hope through him of reformation of the abuses at Bengal? But your Lordships will see that he not only connived at abuse, but patronized it and supported it for his own political purposes; since he here confesses, that, if inquiry into it created him ill-humor, and produced him an opposition in Council, he sacrificed it to the power of the Company, and the constitution of their government. Did he so? The Company ordered him to prosecute those people, and their constitution required that they should be prosecuted. "No," says Mr. Hastings, "the conniving at it procures a majority of votes." The very thing that he bought was not worth half the price he paid for it. He was sent to reform corruptions, and, in order that he might reform corruptions, he winked at, countenanced, and patronized them, to get a majority of votes; and what was, in fact, a sacrifice to his own interest, ambition, and corruption, he calls a sacrifice to the Company. He puts, then, this alternative: "Either give everything into my hand, suffer me to go on, and have no control, or else I wink at every species of corruption." It is a remarkable and stupendous thing, that, when all the world was alarmed at the disorders of the Company, when that alarm occasioned his being sent out, and when, in consequence of that alarm, Parliament suspended the constitution of the Company, and appointed another government, Mr. Hastings should tell that Company that Parliament had done wrong, and that the person put at the head of that government was to wink at those abuses. Nay, what is more, not only does Mr. Hastings declare, upon general principles, that it was impossible to pursue all the delinquencies of India, and that, if possible to pursue them, mischief would happen from it, but your Lordships will observe that Mr. Hastings, in this business, during the whole period of the administration of that body which was sent out to inquire into and reform the corruptions of India, did not call one person to an account; nor, except Mr. Hastings, this day, has any one been called to an account, or punished for delinquency. Whether he will be punished or no, time will show. I have no doubt of your Lordships' justice, and of the goodness of our cause.