Chapter 5

Your Lordships see what the opinion of the Council was of their own constitution. You see for what it was made. You see for what purposes the great revenue trust was taken from the Council-General, from the supreme government. You see for what purposes the executive power was destroyed. You have it from one of the gentlemen of this commission, at first four in number, and afterwards five, who was the most active, efficient member of it. You see it was made for the purpose of being a tool in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; that integrity, ability, and vigilance could avail nothing; that the whole country might be laid under contribution by this man, and that he could thus practise bribery with impunity. Thus your Lordships see the delegation of all the authority of the country, above and below, is given by Mr. Hastings to this Gunga Govind Sing. The screen, the veil, spread before this transaction, is torn open by the very people themselves who are the tools in it. They confess they can do nothing; they know they are instruments in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and Mr. Hastings uses his name and authority to make them such in the hands of the basest, the wickedest, the corruptest, the most audacious and atrocious villain ever heard of. It is to him all the English authority is sacrificed, and four gentlemen are appointed to be his tools and instruments. Tools and instruments for what? They themselves state, that, if he has the inclination, he has the power and ability to lay the whole country under contribution, that he enters into the most minute secrets of every individual in it, gets into the bottom of their family affairs, and has a power totally to subvert and destroy them; and we shall show upon that head, that he well fulfilled the purposes for which he was appointed. Did Mr. Hastings pretend to say that he destroyed the Provincial Councils for their corruptness or insufficiency, when he dissolved them? No: he says he has no objection to their competency, no charge to make against their conduct, but that he has destroyed them for his new arrangement. And what is his new arrangement? Gunga Govind Sing. Forty English gentlemen were removed from their offices by that change. Mr. Hastings did it, however, very economically; for all these gentlemen were instantly put upon pensions, and consequently burdened the establishment with a new charge. Well, but the new Council was formed and constituted upon a very economical principle also. These five gentlemen, you will have it in proof, with the necessary expenses of their office, were a charge of 62,000_l._ a year upon the establishment. But for great, eminent, capital services, 62,000_l._, though a much larger sum than what was thought fit to be allowed for the members of the Supreme Council itself, may be admitted. I will pass it. It shall be granted to Mr. Hastings, that these pensions, though they created a new burden on the establishment, were all well disposed, provided the Council did their duty. But you have heard what they say themselves: they are not there put to do any duty; they can do no duty; their abilities, their integrity, avail them nothing; they are tools in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing. Mr. Hastings, then, has loaded the revenue with 62,000_l._ a year to make Gunga Govind Sing master of the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. What must the thing to be moved be, when the machinery, when the necessary tools, for Gunga Govind Sing have cost 62,000_l._ a year to the Company? There it is; it is not my representation, not the representation of observant strangers, of good and decent people, that understand the nature of that service, but the opinion of the tools themselves.

Now did Mr. Hastings employ Gunga Govind Sing without a knowledge of his character? His character was known to Mr. Hastings: it was recorded long before, when he was turned out of another office. "During my long residence," says he, "in this country, this is the first time I heard of the character of Gunga Govind Sing being infamous. No information I have received, though I have heard _many_ people speak ill of him, ever pointed to any particular _act_ of infamy committed by Gunga Govind Sing. I have no intimate knowledge of Gunga Govind Sing. What I understand of his character has been from Europeans as well as natives." After,--"He had many enemies at the time he was proposed to be employed in the Company's service, and not _one advocate_ among the natives who had immediate access to myself. I think, therefore, if his character had been such as has been described, the knowledge of it could hardly have failed to have been ascertained to me by the _specific_ facts. I have heard him loaded, as I have many others, with general reproaches, but have never heard any one express a doubt of _his abilities_." Now, if anything in the world should induce you to put the whole trust of the revenues of Bengal, both above and below, into the hands of a single man, and to delegate to him the whole jurisdiction of the country, it must be that he either was, or at least was reputed to be, a man of integrity. Mr. Hastings does not pretend that he is reputed to be a man of integrity. He knew that he was not able to contradict the charge brought against him, and that he had been turned out of office by his colleagues, for reasons assigned upon record, and approved by the Directors, for malversation in office. He had, indeed, crept again into the Calcutta Committee; and they were upon the point of turning him out for malversation, when Mr. Hastings saved them the trouble by turning out the whole Committee, consisting of a president and five members. So that in all times, in all characters, in all places, he stood as a man of a bad character and evil repute, though supposed to be a man of great abilities.

My Lords, permit me for one moment to drop my representative character here, and to speak to your Lordships only as a man of some experience in the world, and conversant with the affairs of men and with the characters of men.

I do, then, declare my conviction, and wish it may stand recorded to posterity, that there never was a _bad man_ that had ability for _good service_. It is not in the nature of such men; their minds are so distorted to selfish purposes, to knavish, artificial, and crafty means of accomplishing those selfish ends, that, if put to any good service, they are poor, dull, helpless. Their natural faculties never have that direction; they are paralytic on that side; the muscles, if I may use the expression, that ought to move it, are all dead. They know nothing, but how to pursue selfish ends by wicked and indirect means. No man ever knowingly employed a bad man on account of his abilities, but for evil ends. Mr. Hastings knew this man to be bad; all the world knew him to be bad; and how did he employ him? In such a manner as that he might be controlled by others? A great deal might be said for him, if this had been the case. There might be circumstances in which such a man might be used in a subordinate capacity. But who ever thought of putting such a man virtually in possession of the whole authority both of the Committee and the Council-General, and of the revenues of the whole country?

As soon as we find Gunga Govind Sing here, we find him employed in the way in which he was meant to be employed: that is to say, we find him employed in taking corrupt bribes and corrupt presents for Mr. Hastings. Though the Committee were tools in his hands, he was a tool in the hands of Mr. Hastings; for he had, as we shall prove, constant, uniform, and close communications with Mr. Hastings. And, indeed, we may be saved a good deal of the trouble of proof; for Mr. Hastings himself, by acknowledging him to be his bribe-broker, has pretty well authenticated a secret correspondence between them. For the next great bribe as yet discovered to be taken by Mr. Hastings, about the time of his great operation of 1781, was the bribe of 40,000_l._, which we charge to have been privately taken from one of two persons, but from which is not yet ascertained, but paid to him through this flagitious black agent of his iniquities, Gunga Govind Sing. The discovery is made by another agent of his, called Mr. Larkins, one of his white bribe-confidants, and by him made Accountant-General to the Supreme Presidency. For this sum, so clandestinely and corruptly taken, he received a bond to himself, on his own account, as for money lent to the Company. For, upon the frequent, pressing, tender solicitations of the Court of Directors, always insinuated to him in a very delicate manner, Mr. Hastings had written to Mr. Larkins to find out, if he could, some of his own bribes; and accordingly Mr. Larkins sent over an account of various bribes,--an account which, even before it comes directly in evidence before you, it will be pleasant to your Lordships to read. In this account, under the head, "_Dinagepore, No. 1_," I find "_Duplicate copy of the particulars of debts, in which the component parts of sundry sums received on the account of the Honorable Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies were received by Mr. Hastings and paid to the Sub-Treasurer_." We find here, "_Dinagepore peshcush, four lacs of rupees, cabooleat_": that is, an agreement to pay four lacs of rupees, of which three were received and one remained in balance at the time this account was made out. All that we can learn from this account, after all our researches, after all the Court of Directors could do to squeeze it out of him, is, that he received from Dinagepore, at twelve monthly payments, a sum of about three lacs of rupees, upon an engagement to pay him four; that is, he received about 30,000_l._ out of 40,000_l._ which was to be paid him: and we are told that he received this sum through the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and that he was exceedingly angry with Gunga Govind Sing for having kept back or defrauded him of the sum of 10,000_l._ out of the 40,000_l._ To keep back from him the fourth part of the whole bribe was very reprehensible behavior in Gunga Govind Sing, certainly very unworthy of the great and high trust which Mr. Hastings reposed in his integrity. My Lords, this letter tells us Mr. Hastings was much irritated at Gunga Govind Sing. You will hereafter see how Mr. Hastings behaves to persons against whom he is irritated for their frauds upon him in their joint concerns. In the mean time Gunga Govind Sing rests with you as a person with whom Mr. Hastings is displeased on account of infidelity in the honorable trust of bribe undertaker and manager.

My Lords, you are not very much enlightened, I believe, by seeing these words, _Dinagepore peshcush_. We find a province, we find a sum of money, we find an agent, and we find a receiver. The _province_ is _Dinagepore_, the _agent_ is _Gunga Govind Sing_, the _sum_ agreed on is 40,000_l._, and the _receiver_ of a part of that is _Mr. Hastings_. This is all that can be seen. Who it was that gave this sum of money to Mr. Hastings in this manner does no way appear; it is _murder by persons unknown_: and this is the way in which Mr. Hastings, after all the reiterated solicitations of Parliament, of the Company, and the public, has left the account of this bribe.

Let us, however, now see what was the state of transactions at Dinagepore at that period. For, if Mr. Hastings in the transactions at that period did anything for that country, it must be presumed this money was given for those acts; for Mr. Hastings confesses it was a sum of money corruptly received, but honestly applied. It does not signify much, at first view, from whom he received it; it is enough to fix upon him that he did receive it. But because the consequences of his bribes make the main part of what I intend to bring before your Lordships, I shall beg to state to you, with your indulgence, what I have been able to discover by a very close investigation of the records respecting this business of Dinagepore.

Dinagepore, Rungpore, and Edrackpore make a country, I believe, pretty nearly as large as all the northern counties of England, Yorkshire included. It is no mean country, and it has a prince of great, ancient, illustrious descent at the head of it, called the Rajah of Dinagepore.

I find, that, about the month of July, 1780, the Rajah of Dinagepore, after a long and lingering illness, died, leaving an half-brother and an adopted son. A litigation respecting the succession instantly arose in the family; and this litigation was of course referred to, and was finally to be decided by, the Governor-General in Council,--being the ultimate authority to which the decision of all these questions was to be referred. This cause came before Mr. Hastings, and I find that he decided the question in favor of the adopted son of the Rajah against his half-brother. I find that upon that decision a rent was settled, and a peshcush, or fine, paid. So that all that is in this transaction is fair and above-board: there is a dispute settled; there is a fine paid; there is a rent reserved to the Company; and the whole is a fair settlement. But I find along with it very extraordinary acts; for I find Mr. Hastings taking part in favor of the minor, agreeably to the principles of others, and contrary to his own. I find that he gave the guardianship of this adopted son to the brother of the Ranny, as she is called, or the widow of the deceased Rajah; and though the hearing and settling of this business was actually a part of the duty of his office, yet I find, that, when the steward of the province of Dinagepore was coming down to represent this case to Mr. Hastings, Mr. Hastings, on pretence that it would only tend to increase the family dissensions, so far from hearing fully all the parties in this business, not only sent him back, but ordered him to be actually turned out of his office. If, then, the 40,000_l._ be the same with the money taken from the Rajah in 1780, to which account it seems to refer, (for it was taken in regular payments, beginning July, 1780, and ending at the same period in 1781,) it was a sum of money corruptly taken by him as a judge in a litigation of inheritance between two great parties. So that he received the sum of 40,000_l._ for a judgment; which, whether that judgment was right or wrong, true or false, he corruptly received.

This sum was received, as your Lordships will observe, through Gunga Govind Sing. He was the broker of the agreement: he was the person who was to receive it by monthly instalments, and he was to pay it to Mr. Hastings. His son was in the office of Register-General of the whole country, who had in his custody all the papers, documents, and everything which could tend to settle a litigation among the parties. If Mr. Hastings took this bribe from the Rajah of Dinagepore, he took a bribe from an infant of five years old through the hands of the Register. That is, the judge receives a bribe through the hands of the keeper of the genealogies of the family, the records and other documents, which must have had the principal share in settling the question.

This history of this Dinagepore peshcush is the public one received by the Company, and which is entered upon the record,--but not the private, and probably the true history of this corrupt transaction.

Very soon after this decision, very soon after this peshcush was given, we find all the officers of the young Rajah, who was supposed to have given it, turned out of their employment by Gunga Govind Sing,--by the very man who received the peshcush for Mr. Hastings. We find them all turned out of their employments; we find them all accused, without any appearance or trace in the records of any proof of embezzlement, of neglect in the education of the minor Rajah, of the mismanagement of his affairs, or the allotment of an unsuitable allowance. And accordingly, to prevent the relations of his adopted mother, to prevent those who might be supposed to have an immediate interest in the family, from abusing the trust of his education and the trust of the management of his fortune, Gunga Govind Sing, (for I trust your Lordships would not suffer me, if I had a mind, to quote that tool of a thing, the Committee of Revenue, bought at 62,000_l._ a year,--you would not suffer me to name it, especially when you know all the secret agency of bribes in the hand of Gunga Govind Sing,)--this Gunga Govind Sing produces soon after another character, to whom he consigns the custody of the whole family and the whole province.

I will do Mr. Hastings the justice to say, that, if he had known there was another man more accomplished in all iniquity than Gunga Govind Sing, he would not have given him the first place in his confidence. But there is another next to him in the country, whom you are to hear of by-and-by, called Debi Sing. This person, in the universal opinion of all Bengal, is ranked next to Gunga Govind Sing; and, what is very curious, they have been recorded by Mr. Hastings as rivals in the same virtues.

Arcades ambo, Et cantare pares, et respondere parati.

But Mr. Hastings has the happiest modes in the world: these rivals were reconciled on this occasion, and Gunga Govind Sing appoints Debi Sing, superseding all the other officers for no reason whatever upon record. And because, like champions, they ought to go in pairs, there is an English gentleman, one Mr. Goodlad, whom you will hear of presently, appointed along with him. Absolute strangers to the Rajah's family, the first act they do is to cut off a thousand out of sixteen hundred a month from his allowance. They state (though there was a great number of dependants to maintain) that six hundred would be enough to maintain him. There appears in the account of these proceedings to be such a flutter about the care of the Rajah, and the management of his household: in short, that there never was such a tender guardianship as, always with the knowledge of Mr. Hastings, is exercised over this poor Rajah, who had just given (if he did give) 40,000_l._ for _his own_ inheritance, if it was his due,--for the inheritance of _others_, if it was not his due. One would think he was entitled to some mercy; but, probably because the money could not otherwise be supplied, his establishment was cut down by Debi Sing and Mr. Goodlad a thousand a month, which is just twelve thousand a year.

When Mr. Hastings had appointed those persons to the guardianship who had an interest in the management of the Rajah's education and fortune, one should have thought, before they were turned out, he would at least have examined whether such a step was proper or not. No: they were turned out without any such examination; and when I come to inquire into the proceedings of Gunga Govind Sing's Committee, I do not find that the new guardians have brought to account one single shilling they received, appointed as they were by that council newly made to superintend all the affairs of the Rajah. There is not one word to be found of an account: Debi Sing's honor, fidelity, and disinterestedness, and that of Mr. Goodlad, is sufficient; and that is the way in which the management and superintendence of one of the greatest houses in that country is given to the guardianship of strangers. And how is it managed? We find Debi Sing in possession of the Rajah's family, in possession of his affairs, in the management of his whole zemindary; and in the course of the next year he is to give him in farm the whole of the revenues of these three provinces. Now whether the peshcush was received for the nomination of the Rajah as a bribe in judgment, or whether Mr. Hastings got it from Debi Sing as a bribe in office, for appointing him to the guardianship of a family that did not belong to him, and for the dominion of three great and once wealthy provinces,--(which is best or worst I shall not pretend to determine,)--you find the Rajah in his possession; you find his education, his household, in his possession; the public revenues are in his possession; they are given over to him.

If we look at the records, the letting of these provinces appears to have been carried on by the new Committee of Revenue, as the course and order of business required it should. But by the investigation into Mr. Hastings's money transactions, the insufficiency and fallacy of these records is manifest beyond a doubt. From this investigation it is discovered that it was in reality a bargain secretly struck between the Governor-General and Debi Sing, and that the Committee were only employed in the mere official forms. From the time that Mr. Hastings new-modelled the revenue system, nothing is seen in its true shape. We now know, in spite of the fallacy of these records, who the true grantor was: it will not be amiss to go a little further in supplying their defects, and to inquire a little concerning the grantee. This makes it necessary for me to inform your Lordships who Debi Sing is.

[_Mr. Burke read the Committee's recommendation of Debi Sing to the Governor-General and Council; but the copy of the paper alluded to is wanting._]

* * * * *

Here is a choice; here is Debi Sing presented for his knowledge in business, his trust and fidelity, and that he is a person against whom no objection can be made. This is presented to Mr. Hastings, by him recorded in the Council Books, and by him transmitted to the Court of Directors. Mr. Hastings has since recorded, that he knew this Debi Sing, (though he here publicly authorizes the nomination of him to all that great body of trusts,)--that he knew him to be a man completely capable of the most atrocious iniquities that were ever charged upon man. Debi Sing is appointed to all those great trusts, through the means of Gunga Govind Sing, from whom he (Mr. Hastings) had received 30,000_l._ as a part of a bribe.

Now, though it is a large field, though it is a thing that I must confess I feel a reluctance almost in venturing to undertake, exhausted as I am, yet such is the magnitude of the affair, such the evil consequences that followed from a system of bribery, such the horrible consequences of superseding all the persons in office in the country to give it into the hands of Debi Sing, that, though it is the public opinion, and though no man that has ever heard the name of Debi Sing does not know that he was only second to Gunga Govind Sing, yet it is not to my purpose, unless I prove that Mr. Hastings knew his character at the very time he accepts him as a person against whom no exception could be made.

It is necessary to inform your Lordships who this Debi Sing was, to whom these great trusts were committed, and those great provinces given.

It may be thought, and not unnaturally, that, in this sort of corrupt and venal appointment to high trust and office, Mr. Hastings has no other consideration than the money he received. But whoever thinks so will be deceived. Mr. Hastings was very far from indifferent to the character of the persons he dealt with. On the contrary, he made a most careful selection; he had a very scrupulous regard to the aptitude of the men for the purposes for which he employed them, and was much guided by his experience of their conduct in those offices which had been sold to them upon former occasions.

Except Gunga Govind Sing, (whom, as justice required, Mr. Hastings distinguished by the highest marks of his confidence,) there was not a man in Bengal, perhaps not upon earth, a match for this Debi Sing. He was not an unknown subject, not one rashly taken up as an experiment. He was a tried man; and if there had been one more desperately and abandonedly corrupt, more wildly and flagitiously oppressive, to be found unemployed in India, large as his offers were, Mr. Hastings would not have taken this money from Debi Sing.