The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)

There are other circumstances in these accounts highly auxiliary to this evidence. The lac and a half was not only attested by Rajah Gourdas, by the Begum, by Chittendur, by the Begum again upon Mr. Hastings's own question, indirectly admitted by Mr. Hastings, proved by the orders for it to be written off to expense, (such a body of proof as perhaps never existed,) but there is one proof still remaining, namely, a paper, which was produced before the Committee, and which we shall produce to your Lordships. It is an authentic paper, delivered in favor of Mr. Hastings by Major Scott, who acted at that time as Mr. Hastings's agent, to a committee of the House of Commons, and authenticated to come from Munny Begum herself. All this body of evidence we mean to produce; and we shall prove, first, that he received the two lacs,—and, secondly, that he received one lac and a half under the name of entertainment. With regard to the lac and a half, Mr. Hastings is so far from controverting it, even indirectly, that he is obliged to establish it by testimonies produced by himself, in order to sink in that, if he can, the two lacs, which he thinks he is not able to justify, but which he fears will be proved against him. The lac and a half, I do believe, he will not be advised to contest; but whether he is or no, we shall load him with it, we shall prove it beyond all doubt. But there are other circumstances further auxiliary in this business, which, from the very attempts to conceal it, prove beyond doubt the fraudulent and wicked nature of the transaction. In the account given by the Begum, a lac, which is for Mr. Hastings's entertainment, is entered in a suspicious neighborhood; for there is there entered a lac of rupees paid for the subahdarry sunnuds to the Mogul through the Rajah Shitab Roy. Upon looking into the account, and comparing it with another paper produced, the first thing we find is, that this woman charges the sum paid to be a sum due; and then she charges this one lac to have been paid when the Mogul was in the hands of the Mahrattas, when all communication with him was stopped, and when Rajah Shitab Roy, who is supposed to have paid it, was under confinement in the hands of Mr. Hastings. Thus she endeavors to conceal the lac of rupees paid to Mr. Hastings.

In order to make this transaction, which, though not in itself intricate, is in some degree made so by Mr. Hastings, clear to your Lordships, we pledge ourselves to give to your Lordships, what must be a great advantage to the culprit himself, a syllabus, the heads of all this charge, and of the proofs themselves, with their references, to show how far the proof goes to the two lacs, and then to the one lac and a half singly. This we shall put in writing, that you may not depend upon the fugitive memory of a thing not so well, perhaps, or powerfully expressed as it ought to be, and in order to give every advantage to the defendant, and to give every facility to your Lordships' judgment: and this will, I believe, be thought a clear and fair way of proceeding. Your Lordships will then judge whether Mr. Hastings's conduct at the time, his resisting an inquiry, preventing his servant appearing as an evidence, discountenancing and discouraging his colleagues, raising every obstruction to the prosecution, dissolving the Council, preventing evidence and destroying it as far as lay in his power by collateral means, be not also such presumptive proofs as give double force to all the positive proof we produce against him.

The lac and a half, I know, he means to support upon the custom of entertainment; and your Lordships will judge whether or not a man who was ordered and had covenanted never to take more than 400l. could take 16,000l. under color of an entertainment. That which he intends to produce as a justification we charge, and your Lordships and the world will think, to be the heaviest aggravation of his crime. And after explaining to your Lordships the circumstances under which this justification is made, and leaving a just impression of them upon your minds, I shall beg your Lordships' indulgence to finish this member of the business to-morrow.

It is stated and entered in the account, that an entertainment was provided for Mr. Hastings at the rate of 200l. a day. He stayed at Moorshedabad for near three months; and thus you see that visits from Mr. Hastings are pretty expensive things: it is at the rate of 73,000l. a year for his entertainment. We find that Mr. Middleton, an English gentleman who was with him, received likewise (whether under the same pretence I know not, and it does not signify) another sum equal to it; and if these two gentlemen had stayed in that country a year, their several allowances would have been 146,000l. out of the Nabob's allowance of 160,000l. a year: they would have eat up nearly the whole of it. And do you wonder, my Lords, that such guests and such hosts are difficult to be divided? Do you wonder that such visits, when so well paid for and well provided for, were naturally long? There is hardly a prince in Europe who would give to another prince of Europe from his royal hospitality what was given upon this occasion to Mr. Hastings.

Let us now see what was Mr. Hastings's business during this long protracted visit. First, he tells you that he came there to reduce all the state and dignity of the Nabob. He tells you that he felt no compunction in reducing that state; that the elephants, the menagerie, the stables, all went without mercy, and consequently all the persons concerned in them were dismissed also. When he came to the abolition of the pensions, he says,—"I proceeded with great pain, from the reflection that I was the instrument in depriving whole families, all at once, of their bread, and reducing them to a state of penury: convinced of the necessity of the measure, I endeavored to execute it with great impartiality." Here he states the work he was employed in, when he took this two hundred pounds a day for his own pay. "It was necessary to begin with reforming the useless servants of the court, and retrenching the idle parade of elephants, menageries, &c., which loaded the civil list. This cost little regret in performing; but the Resident, who took upon himself the chief share in this business, acknowledges that he suffered considerably in his feelings, when he came to touch on the pension list. Some hundreds of persons of the ancient nobility of the country, excluded, under our government, from almost all employments, civil or military, had, ever since the revolution, depended on the bounty of the Nabob; and near ten lacs were bestowed that way. It is not that the distribution was always made with judgment or impartial, and much room was left for a reform; but when the question was to cut off entirely the greatest part, it could not fail to be accompanied with circumstances of real distress. The Resident declares, that, even with some of the highest rank, he could not avoid discovering, under all the pride of Eastern manners, the manifest marks of penury and want. There was, however, no room left for hesitation: to confine the Nabob's expenses within the limited sum, it was necessary that pensions should be set aside."

Here, my Lords, is a man sent to execute one of the most dreadful offices that was ever executed by man,—to cut off, as he says himself, with a bleeding heart, the only remaining allowance made for hundreds of the decayed nobility and gentry of a great kingdom, driven by our government from the offices upon which they existed. In this moment of anxiety and affliction, when he says he felt pain and was cut to the heart to do it,—at this very moment, when he was turning over fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry of this country to downright want of bread,—just at that moment, while he was doing this act, and feeling this act in this manner, from the collected morsels forced from the mouths of that indigent and famished nobility he gorged his own ravenous maw with an allowance of two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment. As we see him in this business, this man is unlike any other: he is also never corrupt but he is cruel; he never dines without creating a famine; he does not take from the loose superfluity of standing greatness, but falls upon the indigent, the oppressed, and ruined; he takes to himself double what would maintain them. His is unlike the generous rapacity of the noble eagle, who preys upon a living, struggling, reluctant, equal victim; his is like that of the ravenous vulture, who falls upon the decayed, the sickly, the dying, and the dead, and only anticipates Nature in the destruction of its object. His cruelty is beyond his corruption: but there is something in his hypocrisy which is more terrible than his cruelty; for, at the very time when with double and unsparing hands he executes a proscription, and sweeps off the food of hundreds of the nobility and gentry of a great country, his eyes overflow with tears, and he turns the precious balm that bleeds from wounded humanity, and is its best medicine, into fatal, rancorous, mortal poison to the human race.

You have seen, that, when he takes two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, he tells you that in this very act he is starving fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry. My Lords, you have the blood of nobles,—if not, you have the blood of men in your veins: you feel as nobles, you feel as men. What would you say to a cruel Mogul exactor, by whom after having been driven from your estates, driven from the noble offices, civil and military, which you hold, driven from your bishoprics, driven from your places at court, driven from your offices as judges, and, after having been reduced to a miserable flock of pensioners, your very pensions were at last wrested from your mouths, and who, though at the very time when those pensions were wrested from you he declares them to have been the only bread of a miserable decayed nobility, takes himself two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, and continues it till it amounts to sixteen thousand pounds? I do think, that, of all the corruptions which he has not owned, but has not denied, or of those which he does in effect own, and of which he brings forward the evidence himself, the taking and claiming under color of an entertainment is ten times the most nefarious.

I shall this day only further trouble your Lordships to observe that he has never directly denied this transaction. I have tumbled over the records, I have looked at every part, to see whether he denies it. He did not deny it at the time, he did not deny it to the Court of Directors: on the contrary, he did in effect acknowledge it, when, without directly acknowledging it, he promised them a full and liberal explanation of the whole transaction. He never did give that explanation. Parliament took up the business; this matter was reported at the end of the Eleventh Report; but though the House of Commons had thus reported it, and made that public which before was upon the Company's records, he took no notice of it. Then another occasion arises: he comes before the House of Commons; he knows he is about to be prosecuted for those very corruptions; he well knows these charges exist against him; he makes his defence (if he will allow it to be his defence); but, though thus driven, he did not there deny it, because he knew, that, if he had denied it, it could be proved against him. I desire your Lordships will look at that paper which we have given in evidence, and see if you find a word of denial of it: there is much discourse, much folly, much insolence, but not one word of denial. Then, at last, it came before this tribunal against him. I desire to refer your Lordships to that part of his defence to the article in which this bribe is specifically charged: he does not deny it there; the only thing which looks like a denial is one sweeping clause inserted, (in order to put us upon the proof,) that all the charges are to be conceived as denied; but a specific denial to this specific charge in no stage of the business, from beginning to end, has he once made.

And therefore here I close that part of the charge which relates to the business of Nundcomar. Your Lordships will see such a body of presumptive proof and positive proof as never was given yet of any secret corrupt act of bribery; and there I leave it with your Lordships' justice. I beg pardon for having detained you so long; but your Lordships will be so good as to observe that no business ever was covered with more folds of iniquitous artifice than this which is now brought before you.

SECOND DAY: SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1789

My Lords,—When I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships, I endeavored to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an affair was consistent with the brevity which I endeavored to preserve, the proofs which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an inquiry instituted by an order of the Court of Directors into the corruption and peculation of persons in authority in India. My Lords, I have endeavored to show you by anterior presumptive proofs, drawn from the nature and circumstances of the acts themselves inferring guilt, that such actions and such conduct could be referable only to one cause, namely, corruption; I endeavored to show you afterwards, my Lords, what the specific nature and extent of the corruption was, as far as it could be fully proved; and lastly, the great satisfactory presumption which attended the inquiry with regard to Mr. Hastings,—namely, that, contrary to law, contrary to his duty, contrary to what is owed by innocence to itself, Mr. Hastings resisted that inquiry, and employed all the power of his office to prevent the exercise of it, either in himself or in others. These presumptions and these proofs will be brought before your Lordships, distinctly and in order, at the end of this opening.

The next point on which I thought it necessary to proceed was relative to the presumptions which his subsequent conduct gave with regard to his guilt: because, my Lords, his uniform tenor of conduct, such as must attend guilt, both in the act, at the time of the inquiry, and subsequent to it, will form such a body of satisfactory evidence as I believe the human mind is not made to resist.

My Lords, there is another reason why I choose to enter into the presumptions drawn from his conduct and the fact, taking his conduct in two parts, if it may be so expressed, omission and commission, in order that your Lordships should more fully enter into the consequences of this system of bribery. But before I say anything upon that, I wish your Lordships to be apprised, that the Commons, in bringing this bribe of three lac and a half before your Lordships, do not wish by any means to have it understood that this is the whole of the bribe that was received by Mr. Hastings in consequence of delivering up the whole management of the government of the country to that improper person whom he nominated for it. My Lords, from the proofs that will be adduced before you, there is great probability that he received very nearly a hundred thousand pounds; there is positive proof of his receiving fifty; and we have chosen only to charge him with that of which there is such an accumulated body of proof as to leave no doubt upon the minds of your Lordships. All this I say, because we are perfectly apprised of the sentiments of the public upon this point: when they hear of the enormity of Indian peculation, when they see the acts done, and compare them with the bribes received, the acts seem so enormous and the bribes comparatively so small, that they can hardly be got to attribute them to that motive. What I mean to state is this: that, from a collective view of the subject, your Lordships will be able to judge that enormous offences have been committed, and that the bribe which we have given in proof is a specimen of the nature and extent of those enormous bribes which extend to much greater sums than we are able to prove before you in the manner your Lordships would like and expect.

I have already remarked to your Lordships, that, after this charge was brought and recorded before the Council in spite of the resistance made by Mr. Hastings, in which he employed all the power and authority of his station, and the whole body of his partisans and associates in iniquity, dispersed through every part of these provinces,—after he had taken all these steps, finding himself pressed by the proof and pressed by the presumption of his resistance to the inquiry, he did think it necessary to make something like a defence. Accordingly he has made what he calls a justification, which did not consist in the denial of that fact, or any explanation of it. The mode he took for his defence was abuse of his colleagues, abuse of the witnesses, and of every person who in the execution of his duty was inquiring into the fact, and charging them with things which, if true, were by no means sufficient to support him, either in defending the acts themselves, or in the criminal means he used to prevent inquiry into them. His design was to mislead their minds, and to carry them from the accusation and the proof of it. With respect to the passion, violence, and intemperate heat with which he charged them, they were proceeding in an orderly, regular manner; and if on any occasion they seem to break out into warmth, it was in consequence of that resistance which he made to them, in what your Lordships, I believe, will agree with them in thinking was one of the most important parts of their functions. If they had been intemperate in their conduct, if they had been violent, passionate, prejudiced against him, it afforded him only a better means of making his defence; because, though in a rational and judicious mind the intemperate conduct of the accuser certainly proves nothing with regard to the truth or falsehood of his accusation, yet we do know that the minds of men are so constituted that an improper mode of conducting a right thing does form some degree of prejudice against it. Mr. Hastings, therefore, unable to defend himself upon principle, has resorted as much as he possibly could to prejudice. And at the same time that there is not one word of denial, or the least attempt at a refutation of the charge, he has loaded the records with all manner of minutes, proceedings, and letters relative to everything but the fact itself. The great aim of his policy, both then, before, and ever since, has been to divert the mind of the auditory, or the persons to whom he addressed himself, from the nature of his cause, to some collateral circumstance relative to it,—a policy to which he has always had recourse; but that trick, the last resource of despairing guilt, I trust will now completely fail him.

Mr. Hastings, however, began to be pretty sensible that this way of proceeding had a very unpromising and untoward look; for which reason he next declared that he reserved his defence for fear of a legal prosecution, and that some time or other he would give a large and liberal explanation to the Court of Directors, to whom he was answerable for his conduct, of his refusing to suffer the inquiry to proceed, of his omitting to give them satisfaction at the time, of his omitting to take any one natural step that an innocent man would have taken upon such an occasion. Under this promise he has remained from that time to the time you see him at your bar, and he has neither denied, exculpated, explained, or apologized for his conduct in any one single instance.

While he accuses the intemperance of his adversaries, he shows a degree of temperance in himself which always attends guilt in despair: for struggling guilt may be warm, but guilt that is desperate has nothing to do but to submit to the consequences of it, to bear the infamy annexed to its situation, and to try to find some consolation in the effects of guilt with regard to private fortune for the scandal it brings them into in public reputation. After the business had ended in India, the causes why he should have given the explanation grew stronger and stronger: for not only the charges exhibited against him were weighty, but the manner in which he was called upon to inquire into them was such as would undoubtedly tend to stir the mind of a man of character, to rouse him to some consideration of himself, and to a sense of the necessity of his defence. He was goaded to make this defence by the words I shall read to your Lordships from Sir John Clavering.

"In the late proceedings of the Revenue Board it will appear that there is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General has thought it reasonable to abstain." He further says, in answer to Mr. Hastings, "The malicious view with which this innuendo" (an innuendo of Mr. Hastings) "is thrown out is only worthy of a man who, having disgraced himself in the eyes of every man of honor both in Asia and in Europe, and having no imputation to lay to our charge, has dared to attempt in the dark what malice itself could not find grounds to aim at openly."

These are the charges which were made upon him,—not loosely, in the heat of conversation, but deliberately, in writing, entered upon record, and sent to his employers, the Court of Directors, those whom the law had set over him, and to whose judgment and opinion he was responsible. Do your Lordships believe that it was conscious innocence that made him endure such reproaches, so recorded, from his own colleague? Was it conscious innocence that made him abandon his defence, renounce his explanation, and bear all this calumny, (if it was calumny,) in such a manner, without making any one attempt to refute it? Your Lordships will see by this, and by other minutes with which the books are filled, that Mr. Hastings is charged quite to the brim with corruptions of all sorts, and covered with every mode of possible disgrace. For there is something so base and contemptible in the crimes of peculation and bribery, that, when they come to be urged home and strongly against a man, as here they are urged, nothing but a consciousness of guilt can possibly make a person so charged support himself under them. Mr. Hastings considered himself, as he has stated, to be under the necessity of bearing them. What is that necessity? Guilt. Could he say that Sir John Clavering (for I say nothing now of Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, who were joined with him) was a man weak and contemptible? I believe there are those among your Lordships who remember that Sir John Clavering was known before he went abroad, and better known by his conduct after, to be a man of the most distinguished honor that ever served his Majesty; he served his Majesty in a military situation for many years, and afterwards in that high civil situation in India. It is known that through every step and gradation of a high military service, until he arrived at the highest of all, there never was the least blot upon him, or doubt or suspicion of his character; that his temper for the most part, and his manners, were fully answerable to his virtues, and a noble ornament to them; that he was one of the best natured, best bred men, as well as one of the highest principled men to be found in his Majesty's service; that he had passed the middle time of life, and come to an age which makes men wise in general; so that he could be warmed by nothing but that noble indignation at guilt which is the last thing that ever was or will be extinguished in a virtuous mind. He was a man whose voice was not to be despised; but if his character had been personally as contemptible as it was meritorious and honorable in every respect, yet his situation as a commissioner named by an act of Parliament for the express purpose of reforming India gave him a weight and consequence that could not suffer Mr. Hastings, without a general and strong presumption of his guilt, to acquiesce in such recorded minutes from him. But if he had been a weak, if he had been an intemperate man, (in reality he was as cool, steady, temperate, judicious a man as ever was born,) the Court of Directors, to whom Mr. Hastings was responsible by every tie and every principle, and was made responsible at last by a positive act of Parliament obliging him to yield obedience to their commands as the general rule of his duty,—the Court of Directors, I say, perfectly approved of every part of General Clavering's, Colonel Monson's, and Mr. Francis's conduct; they approved of this inquiry which Mr. Hastings rejected; and they have declared, "that the powers and instructions vested in and given to General Clavering and the other gentlemen were such as fully authorized them in every inquiry that seems to have been their object … Europeans."2