Chapter 24

In bringing before you his arbitrary mode of imposing duties, I beg to remind your Lordships, that, when I examined Mr. Markham concerning the imposing of a duty of five per cent instead of the former duty of two, I asked him whether that five per cent was not laid on in such a manner as utterly to extinguish the trade, and whether it was not in effect and substance five times as much as had been paid before. What was his answer? Why, that many plans, which, when considered in the closet, look specious and plausible, will not hold when they come to be tried in practice, and that this plan was one of them. The additional duties, said he, have never since been exacted. But, my Lords, the very attempt to exact them utterly ruined the trade of the country. They were imposed upon a visionary theory, formed in his own closet, and the result was exactly what might have been anticipated. Was it not an abominable thing in Mr. Hastings to withhold from the Council the means of ascertaining the real operation of his taxes? He had no knowledge of trade himself; he cannot keep an account; he has no memory. In fact, we find him a man possessed of no one quality fit for any kind of business whatever. We find him pursuing his own visionary projects, without knowing anything of the nature or [of?] the circumstances under which the trade of the country was carried on. These projects might have looked very plausible: but when you come to examine the actual state of the trade, it is not merely a difference between five and two per cent, but it becomes a different mode of estimating the commodity, and it amounts to five times as much as was paid before. We bring this as an exemplification of this cursed mode of arbitrary proceeding, and to show you his total ignorance of the subject, and his total indifference about the event of the measure he was pursuing. When he began to perceive his blunders, he never took any means whatever to put the new regulations which these blunders had made necessary into execution, but he left all this mischievous project to rage in its full extent.

I have shown your Lordships how he managed the private property of the country, how he managed the government, and how he managed the trade. I am now to call your Lordships' attention to some of the consequences which have resulted from the instances of management, or rather gross mismanagement, which have been brought before you. Your Lordships will recollect that none of these violent and arbitrary measures, either in their conception or in the progress of their execution, were officially made known to the Council; and you will observe, as we proved, that the same criminal concealment existed with respect to the fatal consequences of these acts.

After the flight of Cheyt Sing, the revenues were punctually paid by the Naib, Durbege Sing, month by month, kist by kist, until the month of July, and then, as the country had suffered some distress, the Naib wished this kist, or instalment, to be thrown on the next month. You will ask why he wished to burden this month beyond the rest. I reply, The reason was obvious: the month of August is the last of the year, and he would, at its expiration, have the advantage of viewing the receipts of the whole year, and ascertaining the claim of the country to the remission of a part of the annual tribute which Mr. Hastings had promised, provided the instalments were paid regularly. It was well known to everybody that the country had suffered very considerably by the revolt, and by a drought which prevailed that year. The Rajah, therefore, expected to avail himself of Mr. Hastings's flattering promise, and to save by the delay the payment of one of the two kists. But mark the course that was taken. The two kists were at once demanded at the end of the year, and no remission of tribute was allowed. By the promise of remission Mr. Hastings tacitly acknowledged that the Rajah was overburdened; and he admits that the payment of the July kist was postponed at the Rajah's own desire. He must have seen the Rajah's motive for desiring delay, and he ought to have taken care that this poor man should not be oppressed and ruined by this compliance with requests founded on such motives.

So passed the year 1781. No complaints of arrears in Durbege Sing's payments appear on record before the month of April, 1782; and I wish your Lordships seriously to advert to the circumstances attending the evidence respecting these arrears, which has been produced for the first time by the prisoner in his defence here at your bar. This evidence does not appear in the Company's records; it does not appear in the book of the Benares correspondence; it does not appear in any documents to which the Commons could have access; it was unknown to the Directors, unknown to the Council, unknown to the Residents, Mr. Markham's successors, at Benares, unknown to the searching and inquisitive eye of the Commons of Great Britain. This important evidence was drawn out of Mr. Markham's pocket, in the presence of your Lordships. It consists of a private correspondence which he carried on with Mr. Hastings, unknown to the Council, after Durbege Sing had been appointed Naib, after the new government had been established, after Mr. Hastings had quitted that province, and had apparently wholly abandoned it, and when there was no reason whatever why the correspondence should not be public. This private correspondence of Mr. Markham's, now produced for the first time, is full of the bitterest complaints against Durbege Sing. These clandestine complaints, these underhand means of accomplishing the ruin of a man, without the knowledge of his true and proper judges, we produce to your Lordships as a heavy aggravation of our charge, and as a proof of a wicked conspiracy to destroy the man. For if there was any danger of his falling into arrears when the heavy accumulated kists came upon him, the Council ought to have known that danger; they ought to have known every particular of these complaints: for Mr. Hastings had then carried into effect his own plans.

I ought to have particularly marked for your Lordships' attention this second era of clandestine correspondence between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Markham. It commenced after Mr. Hastings had quitted Benares, and had nothing to do with it but as Governor-General: even after his extraordinary, and, as we contend, illegal, power had completely expired, the same clandestine correspondence was carried on. He apparently considered Benares as his private property; and just as a man acts with his private steward about his private estate, so he acted with the Resident at Benares. He receives from him and answers letters containing a series of complaints against Durbege Sing, which began in April and continued to the month of November, without making any public communication of them. He never laid one word of this correspondence before the Council until the 29th of November, and he had then completely settled the fate of this Durbege Sing.

This clandestine correspondence we charge against him as an act of rebellion; for he was bound to lay before the Council the whole of his correspondence relative to the revenue and all the other affairs of the country. We charge it not only as rebellion against the orders of the Company and the laws of the land, but as a wicked plot to destroy this man, by depriving him of any opportunity of defending himself before the Council, his lawful judges. I wish to impress it strongly on your Lordships' minds, that neither the complaints of Mr. Markham nor the exculpations of Durbege Sing were ever made known till Mr. Markham was examined in this hall.

The first intimation afforded the Council of what had been going on at Benares from April, 1782, at which time, Mr. Markham says, the complaints against Durbege Sing had risen to serious importance, was in a letter dated the 27th of November following. This letter was sent to the Council from Nia Serai, in the Ganges, where Mr. Hastings had retired for the benefit of the air. During the whole time he was in Calcutta, it does not appear upon the records that he had ever held any communication with the Council upon the subject. The letter is in the printed Minutes, page 298, and is as follows.

"_The Governor-General._--I desire the Secretary to lay the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham before the board, and request that orders may be immediately sent to him concerning the subjects contained in them. It may be necessary to inform the board, that, on repeated information from Mr. Markham, which indeed was confirmed to me beyond a doubt by other channels, and by private assurances which I could trust, that the affairs of that province were likely to fall into the greatest confusion from the misconduct of Baboo Durbege Sing, whom I had appointed the Naib, fearing the dangerous consequences of a delay, and being at too great a distance to consult the members of the board, who I knew could repose that confidence in my local knowledge as to admit of this occasional exercise of my own separate authority, I wrote to Mr. Markham the letter to which he alludes, dated the 29th of September last, of which I now lay before the board a copy. The first of the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham arrived at a time when a severe return of my late illness obliged me, by the advice of my physicians, to leave Calcutta for the benefit of the country air, and prevented me from bringing it earlier before the notice of the board."

I have to remark upon this part of the letter, that he claims for himself an exercise of his own authority. He had now no delegation, and therefore no claim to separate authority. He was only a member of the board, obliged to do everything according to the decision of the majority, and yet he speaks of his own separate authority; and after complimenting himself, he requests its confirmation. The complaints of Mr. Markham had been increasing, growing, and multiplying upon him, from the month of April preceding, and he had never given the least intimation of it to the board until he wrote this letter. This was at so late a period that he then says, "The time won't wait for a remedy; I am obliged to use my own separate authority"; although he had had abundant time for laying the whole matter before the Council.

He next goes on to say,--"It had, indeed, been my intention, but for the same cause, to have requested the instructions of the board for the conduct of Mr. Markham in the difficulties which he had to encounter immediately after the date of my letter to him, and to have recommended the substance of it for an order to the board." He seems to have promised Mr. Markham, that, if the violent act which Mr. Markham proposed, and which he, Mr. Hastings, ordered, was carried into execution, an authority should be procured from the board. He, however, did not get Mr. Markham such an authority. Why? Because he was resolved, as he has told you, to act by his own separate authority; and because, as he has likewise told you, that he disobeys the orders of the Court of Directors, and defies the laws of his country, as a signal of his authority.

Now what does he recommend to the board? That it will be pleased to confirm the appointment which Mr. Markham made in obedience to his individual orders, as well as the directions which he had given him to exact from Baboo Durbege Sing with the utmost rigor every rupee of the collections, and either to confine him at Benares or send him to Chunar and imprison him there until the whole of his arrears were paid up. Here, then, my Lords, you have, what plainly appears in every act of Mr. Hastings, a feeling of resentment for some personal injury. "I feel myself," says he, "and may be allowed on such an occasion to acknowledge it, personally hurt at the ingratitude of this man, and the discredit which his ill conduct has thrown on my appointment of him. The Rajah himself, scarcely arrived at the verge of manhood, was in understanding but little advanced beyond the term of childhood; and it had been the policy of Cheyt Sing to keep him equally secluded from the world and from business." This is the character Mr. Hastings gives of a man whom he appointed to govern the country. He goes on to say of Durbege Sing,--"As he was allowed a jaghire of a very liberal amount, to enable him to maintain a state and consequence suitable both to the relation in which he stood to the Rajah and the high office which had been assigned to him, and sufficient also to free him from the temptation of little and mean peculations, it is therefore my opinion, and I recommend, that Mr. Markham be ordered to divest him of his jaghire, and reunite it to the _malguzaree_, or the land paying its revenue through the Rajah to the Company. The opposition made by the Rajah and the old Ranny, both equally incapable of judging for themselves, do certainly originate from some secret influence which ought to be checked by a decided and peremptory declaration of the authority of the board, and a denunciation of their displeasure at their presumption. If they can be induced to yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement, and to adopt it as a measure formed with their participation, it would be better than that it should be done by a declared act of compulsion; but at all events it ought to be done." My Lords, it had been already done: the Naib was dismissed; he was imprisoned; his jaghire was confiscated: all these things were done by Mr. Hastings's orders. He had resolved to take the whole upon himself; he had acted upon that resolution before he addressed this letter to the board.

Thus, my Lords, was this unhappy man punished without any previous trial, or any charges, except the complaints of Mr. Markham, and some other private information which Mr. Hastings said he had received. Before the poor object of these complaints could make up his accounts, before a single step was taken, judicially or officially, to convict him of any crime, he was sent to prison, and his private estates confiscated.

My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain claim from you, that no man shall be imprisoned till a regular charge is made against him, and the accused fairly heard in his defence. They claim from you, that no man shall be imprisoned on a matter of account, until the account is settled between the parties. And claiming this, we do say that the prisoner's conduct towards Durbege Sing was illegal, unjust, violent, and oppressive. The imprisonment of this man was clearly illegal on the part of Mr. Hastings, as he acted without the authority of the Council, and doubly oppressive, as the imprisoned man was thereby disabled from settling his account with the numberless sub-accountants whom he had to deal with in the collection of the revenue.

Having now done with these wicked, flagitious, abandoned, and abominable acts, I shall proceed to the extraordinary powers given by Mr. Hastings to his instrument, Mr. Markham, who was employed in perpetrating these acts, and to the very extraordinary instructions which he gave this instrument for his conduct in the execution of the power intrusted to him. In a letter to Mr. Markham, he says,--

"I need not tell you, my dear Sir, that I possess a very high opinion of your abilities, and that I repose the utmost confidence in your integrity." He might have had reason for both, but he scarcely left to Mr. Markham the use of either. He arbitrarily imposed upon him the tasks which he wished him to execute, and he engaged to bear out his acts by his own power. "From your long residence at Benares," says he, "and from the part you have had in the business of that zemindary, you must certainly best know the men who are most capable and deserving of public employment. From among these I authorize you to nominate a Naib to the Rajah, in the room of Durbege Sing, whom, on account of his ill conduct, I think it necessary to dismiss from that office. It will be hardly necessary to except Ussaun Sing from the description of men to whom I have limited your choice, yet it may not be improper to apprise you that I will on no terms consent to his being Naib. In forming the arrangements consequent upon this new appointment, I request you will, as far as you can with propriety, adopt those which were in use during the life of Bulwant Sing,--so far, at least, as to have distinct offices for distinct purposes, independent of each other, and with proper men at the head of each; so that one office may detect or prevent any abuses or irregularities in the others, and together form a system of reciprocal checks. Upon that principle, I desire you will in particular establish, under whatever names, one office of receipts, and another of treasury. The officers of both must be responsible for the truth and regularity of their respective accounts, but not subject in the statement of them to the control or interference of the Rajah or Naib; nor should they be removable at pleasure, but for manifest misconduct only. At the head of one or other of these offices I could wish to see the late Buckshee, Rogoober Dyall. His conduct in his former office, his behavior on the revolt of Cheyt Sing, and particularly at the fall of Bidjegur, together with his general character, prove him worthy of employment, and of the notice of our government. It is possible that he may have objections to holding an office under the present Rajah: offer him one, however, and let him know that you do so by my directions." He then goes on to say,--"Do not wholly neglect the Rajah; consult with him in appearance, but in appearance only. His situation requires that you should do that much; but his youth and inexperience forbid that you should do more."

You see, my Lords, he has completely put the whole government into the hands of a man who had no name, character, or official situation, but that of the Company's Resident at that place. Let us now see what is the office of a Resident. It is to reside at the court of the native prince, to give the Council notice of the transactions that are going on there, and to take care that the tribute be regularly paid, kist by kist. But we have seen that Mr. Markham, the Resident at Benares, was invested by Mr. Hastings with supreme authority in this unhappy country. He was to name whoever he pleased to its government, with the exception of Ussaun Sing, and to drive out the person who had possessed it under an authority which could only be revoked by the Council. Thus Mr. Hastings delegated to Mr. Markham an authority which he himself did not really possess, and which could only be legally exercised through the medium of the Council.

With respect to Durbege Sing, he adds,--"He has dishonored my choice of him." _My_ choice of him! "It now only remains to guard against the ill effects of his misconduct, to detect and punish it. To this end I desire that the officers to be appointed in consequence of these instructions do, with as much accuracy and expedition as possible, make out an account of the receipts, disbursements, and transactions of Durbege Sing, during the time he has acted as Naib of the zemindary of Benares; and I desire you will, in my name, assure him, that, unless he pays at the limited time every rupee of the revenue due to the Company, his life shall answer for the default. I need not caution you to provide against his flight, and the removal of his effects." He here says, my Lords, that he will detect and punish him; but the first thing he does, without any detection, even before the accounts he talks of are made up, and without knowing whether he has got the money or not, he declares that he will have every rupee paid at the time, or otherwise the Naib's life shall pay for it.

Is this the language of a British governor,--of a person appointed to govern _by law_ nations subject to the dominion and under the protection of this kingdom? Is he to order a man to be first imprisoned and deprived of his property, then, for an inquiry to be made, and to declare, during that inquiry, that, if every rupee of a presumed embezzlement be not paid up, the life of his victim shall answer for it? And accordingly this man's life did answer for it,--as I have already had occasion to mention to your Lordships.

I will now read Mr. Markham's letter to the Council, in which he enters into the charges against Durbege Sing, after this unhappy man had been imprisoned.

Benares, 24th of October, 1782.--"I am sorry that my duty obliges me to mention to your Honorable Board my apprehensions of a severe loss accruing to the Honorable Company, if Baboo Durbege Sing is continued in the Naibut during the present year. I ground my fears on the knowledge I have had of his mismanagement, the bad choice he has made of his aumils, the mistrust which they have of him, and the several complaints which have been preferred to me by the ryots of almost every purgunnah in the zemindary. I did not choose to waste the time of your Honorable Board in listening to my representations of his inattention to the complaints of oppression which were made to him by his ryots, as I hoped that a letter he received from the Honorable Governor-General would have had weight sufficient to have made him more regular in his business, and more careful of his son's interest."

My Lords, think of the condition of your government in India! Here is a Resident at Benares exercising power not given to him by virtue of his office, but given only by the private orders of the prisoner at your bar. And what is it he does? He says, he did not choose to trouble the Council with a particular account of his reasons for removing a man who possessed an high office under their immediate appointment. The Council was not to know them: he did not choose to waste the time of their honorable board in listening to the complaints of the people. No: the honorable board is not to have its time wasted in that improper manner; therefore, without the least inquiry or inquisition, the man must be imprisoned, and deprived of his office; he must have all his property confiscated, and be threatened with the loss of his life.

These are crimes, my Lords, for which the Commons of Great Britain knock at the breasts of your consciences, and call for justice. They would think themselves dishonored forever, if they had not brought these crimes before your Lordships, and with the utmost energy demanded your vindictive justice, to the fullest extent in which it can be rendered.