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

We have now done with Mr. Larkins's account of the bonds, and are come to the other species of Mr. Hastings's frauds, (for there is a great variety in them,) and first to Cheyt Sing's bribe. Mr. Larkins came to the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govind Sing and through Cantoo Baboo. Of this bribe he was not in the secret originally, but was afterwards made a confidant in it; it was carried to him; and the account he gives of it I will state to your Lordships.

"The fourth sum stated in Mr. Hastings's account was the produce of sundry payments made to me by Sadamund, Cheyt Sing's buckshee, who either brought or sent the gold mohurs to my house, from whence they were taken by me to Mr. Croftes, either on the same night or early in the morning after: they were made at different times, and I well remember that the same people never came twice. On the 21st June, 1780, Mr. Hastings sent for me, and desired that I would take charge of a present that had been offered to him by Cheyt Sing's buckshee, under the plea of atoning for the opposition which he had made towards the payment of the extra subsidy for defraying part of the expenses of the war, but really in the hope of its inducing Mr. Hastings to give up that claim; with which view the present had first been offered. Mr. Hastings declared, that, although he would not take this for his own use, he would apply it to that of the Company, in removing Mr. Francis's objections to the want of a fund for defraying the extra expenses of Colonel Camac's detachment. On my return to the office, I wrote down the substance of what Mr. Hastings had said to me, and requested Mr. James Miller, my deputy, to seal it up with his own seal, and write upon it, that he had then done so at my request. He was no further informed of my motive for this than merely that it contained the substance of a conversation which had passed between me and another gentleman, which, in case that conversation should hereafter become the subject of inquiry, I wished to be able to adduce the memorandum then made of it, in corroboration of my own testimony; and although that paper has remained unopened to this hour, and notwithstanding that I kept no memorandum whatever of the substance thereof, yet, as I have wrote this representation under the most scrupulous adherence to what I conceived to be truth, should it ever become necessary to refer to this paper, I am confident that it will not be found to differ materially from the substance of this representation."

I forgot to mention, that, besides these two bonds, which Mr. Hastings declared to be the Company's, and one bond his own, that he slipped into the place of the bond of his own a much better, namely, a bond of November, which he never mentioned to the Company till the 22d of May; and this bond for current rupees 1,74,000, or sicca rupees 1,50,000, was taken for the payment stated in the paper No. 1 to have been made to Mr. Croftes on the 11th Aghan, 1187, which corresponds to the 23d of November, 1780. This is the Nuddea money, and this is all that you know of it; you know that this money, for which he had taken this other bond from the Company, was not his own neither, but bribes taken from the other provinces.

I am ashamed to be troublesome to your Lordships in this dry affair, but the detection of fraud requires a good deal of patience and assiduity, and we cannot wander into anything that can relieve the mind: if it was in my power to do it, I would do it. I wish, however, to call your Lordships' attention to this last bribe before I quit these bonds. Such is the confusion, so complicated, so intricate are these bribe accounts, that there is always something left behind, glean never so much from the paragraphs of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Larkins. "I could not bring them to account," says Mr. Larkins. "They were received before the 1st and 2d of October." Why does not the running treasury account give an account of them? The Committee of the House of Commons examined whether the running treasury account had any such account of sums deposited. No such thing. They are said by Mr. Hastings to be deposited in June: they were not deposited in October, nor any account of them given till the January following. "These bonds," says he, "I could not enter as regular money, to be entered on the Company's account, or in any public way, until I had had an order of the Governor-General and Council." But why had not you an order of the Governor-General and Council? We are not calling on you, Mr. Larkins, for an account of your conduct: we are calling upon Mr. Hastings for an account of his conduct, and which he refers to you to explain. Why did not Mr. Hastings order you to carry them to the public account? "Because," says he, "there was no other way." Every one who knows anything of a treasury or public banking-place knows, that if any person brings money as belonging to the public, that the public accountant is bound, no doubt, to receive it and enter it as such. "But," says he, "I could not do it until the account could be settled, as between debtor and creditor: I did not do it till I could put on one side durbar charges, secret service, to such an amount, and balance that again with bonds to Mr. Hastings." That is, he could not make an entry regularly in the Company's books until Mr. Hastings had enabled him to commit one of the grossest frauds and violations of a public trust that ever was committed, by ordering that money of the Company's to be considered as his own, and a bond to be taken as a security for it from the Company, as if it was his own.

But to proceed with this deposit. What is the substance of Mr. Larkins's explanation of it? The substance of this explanation is, that here was a bribe received by Mr. Hastings from Cheyt Sing, guarded with such scrupulous secrecy, that it was not carried to the house of Mr. Croftes, who was to receive it finally, but to the house of Mr. Larkins, as a less suspected place; and that it was conveyed in various sums, no two people ever returning twice with the various payments which made up that sum of 23,000l. or thereabouts. Now do you want an instance of prevarication and trickery in an account? If any person should inquire whether 23,000l. had been paid by Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, there was not any one man living, or any person concerned in the transaction, except Mr.Larkins, who received it, that could give an account of how much he received, or who brought it. As no two people are ever his confidants in the same transaction in Mr. Hastings's accounts, so here no two people are permitted to have any share whatever in bringing the several fragments that make up this sum. This bribe, you might imagine, would have been entered by Mr. Larkins to some public account, at least to the fraudulent account of Mr. Hastings. No such thing. It was never entered till the November following. It was not entered till Mr. Francis had left Calcutta. All these corrupt transactions were carried on privately by Mr. Hastings alone, without any signification to his colleagues of his carrying on this patriotic traffic, as he called it. Your Lordships will also consider both the person who employs such a fraudulent accountant, and his ideas of his duty in his office. These are matters for your Lordships' grave determination; but I appeal to you, upon the face of these accounts, whether you ever saw anything so gross,—and whether any man could be daring enough to attempt to impose upon the credulity of the weakest of mankind, much more to impose upon such a court as this, such accounts as these are.

If the Company had a mind to inquire what is become of all the debts due to them, and where is the cabooleat, he refers them to Gunga Govind Sing. "Give us," say they, "an account of this balance that remains in your hands." "I know," says he, "of no balance." "Why, is there not a cabooleat?" "Where is it? What are the date and circumstances of it? There is no such cabooleat existing." This is the case even where you have the name of the person through whose hands the money passed. But suppose the inquiry went to the payments of the Patna cabooleat. "Here," they say, "we find half the money due: out of forty thousand pounds there is only twenty thousand received: give us some account of it." Who is to give an account of it? Here there is no mention made of the name of the person who had the cabooleat: whom can they call upon? Mr. Hastings does not remember; Mr. Larkins does not tell; they can learn nothing about it. If the Directors had a disposition, and were honest enough to the Proprietors and the nation to inquire into it, there is not a hint given, by either of those persons, who received the Nuddea, who received the Patna, who received the Dinagepore peshcush.

But in what court can a suit be instituted, and against whom, for the recovery of this balance of 40,000l. out of 95,000l.? I wish your Lordships to examine strictly this account,—to examine strictly every part, both of the account itself, and Mr. Larkins's explanation: compare them together, and divine, if you can, what remedy the Company could have for their loss. Can your Lordships believe that this can be any other than a systematical, deliberate fraud, grossly conducted? I will not allow Mr. Hastings to be the man he represents himself to be: he was supposed to be a man of parts; I will only suppose him to be a man of mere common sense. Are these the accounts we should expect from such a man? And yet he and Mr. Larkins are to be magnified to heaven for great financiers; and this is to be called book-keeping! This is the Bengal account saved so miraculously on the 22d of May.

Next comes the Persian account. You have heard of a present to which it refers. It has been already stated, but it must be a good deal farther explained. Mr. Larkins states that this account was taken from a paper, of which three lines, and only three lines, were read to him by a Persian moonshee; and it is not pretended that this was the whole of it. The three lines read are as follows.

Here, I say, are the three lines that were read by a Persian moonshee. Is he a man you can call to account for these particulars? No: he is an anonymous moonshee; his name is not so much as mentioned by Mr. Larkins, nor hinted at by Mr. Hastings; and you find these sums, which Mr. Hastings mentions as a sum in gross given to himself, are not so. They were given by three persons: one, six lacs, was given by the Nabob to the Governor; another, of three lacs more, by Hussein Reza Khân [and Hyder Beg Khân?]; and a third, one lac, by both of them clubbing, as a present to Mrs. Hastings. This is the first discovery that appears of Mrs. Hastings having been concerned in receiving presents for the Governor-General and others, in addition to Gunga Govind Sing, Cantoo Baboo, and Mr. Croftes. Now, if this money was not received for the Company, is it proper and right to take it from Mrs. Hastings? Is there honor and justice in taking from a lady a gratuitous present made to her? Yet Mr. Hastings says he has applied it all to the Company's service. He has done ill, in suffering it to be received at all, if she has not justly and properly received it. Whether, in fact, she ever received this money at all, she not being upon the spot, as I can find, at the time, (though, to be sure, a present might be sent her,) I neither affirm nor deny, farther than that, as Mr. Larkins says, there was a sum of 10,000l. from these ministers to Mrs. Hastings. Whether she ever received any other money than this, I also neither affirm nor deny. But in whatever manner Mrs. Hastings received this or any other money, I must say, in this grave place in which I stand, that, if the wives of Governors-General, the wives of Presidents of Council, the wives of the principal officers of the India Company, through all the various departments, can receive presents, there is an end of the covenants, there is an end of the act of Parliament, there is an end to every power of restraint. Let a man be but married, and if his wife may take presents, that moment the acts of Parliament, the covenants, and all the rest expire. There is something, too, in the manners of the East that makes this a much more dangerous practice. The people of the East, it is well known, have their zenanah, the apartment for their wives, as a sanctuary which nobody can enter,—a kind of holy of holies, a consecrated place, safe from the rage of war, safe from the fury of tyranny. The rapacity of man has here its bounds: here you shall come, and no farther. But if English ladies can go into these zenanahs and there receive presents, the natives of Hindostan cannot be said to have anything left of their own. Every one knows that in the wisest and best time of the Commonwealth of Rome, towards the latter end of it, (I do not mean the best time for morals, but the best for its knowledge how to correct evil government, and to choose the proper means for it,) it was an established rule, that no governor of a province should take his wife along with him into his province,—wives not being subject to the laws in the same manner as their husbands; and though I do not impute to any one any criminality here, I should think myself guilty of a scandalous dereliction of my duty, if I did not mention the fact to your Lordships. But I press it no further: here are the accounts, delivered in by Mr. Larkins at Mr. Hastings's own requisition.

The three lines which were read out of a Persian paper are followed by a long account of the several species in which this present was received, and converted by exchange into one common standard. Now, as these three lines of paper, which are said to have been read out of a Persian paper, contain an account of bribes to the amount of 100,000l., and as it is not even insinuated that this was the whole of the paper, but rather the contrary indirectly implied, I shall leave it for your Lordships, in your serious consideration, to judge what mines of bribery that paper might contain. For why did not Mr. Larkins get the whole of that paper read and translated? The moment any man stops in the midst of an account, he is stopping in the midst of a fraud.

My Lords, I have one farther remark to make upon these accounts. The cabooleats, or agreements for the payments of these bribes, amount, in the three specified provinces, to 95,000l. Do you believe that these provinces were thus particularly favored? Do you think that they were chosen as a little demesne for Mr. Hastings? that they were the only provinces honored with his protection, so far as to take bribes from them? Do you perceive anything in their local situation that should distinguish them from other provinces of Bengal? What is the reason why Dinagepore, Patna, Nuddea, should have the post of honor assigned them? What reason can be given for not taking bribes also from Burdwan, from Bissunpore, in short, from all the sixty-eight collections which comprise the revenues of Bengal, and for selecting only three? How came he, I say, to be so wicked a servant, that, out of sixty-eight divisions, he chose only three to supply the exigencies of the Company? He did not do his duty in making this distinction, if he thought that bribery was the best way of supplying the Company's treasury, and that it formed the most useful and effectual resource for them,—which he has declared over and over again. Was it right to lay the whole weight of bribery, extortion, and oppression upon those three provinces, and neglect the rest? No: you know, and must know, that he who extorts from three provinces will extort from twenty, if there are twenty. You have a standard, a measure of extortion, and that is all: ex pede Herculem: guess from thence what was extorted from all Bengal. Do you believe he could be so cruel to these provinces, so partial to the rest, as to charge them with that load, with 95,000l., knowing the heavy oppression they were sinking under, and leave all the rest untouched? You will judge of what is concealed from us by what we have discovered through various means that have occurred, in consequence both of the guilty conscience of the person who confesses the fact with respect to these provinces, and of the vigor, perseverance and sagacity of those who have forced from him that discovery. It is not, therefore, for me to say that the 100,000l. and 95,000l. only were taken. Where the circumstances entitle me to go on, I must not be stopped, but at the boundary where human nature has fixed a barrier.

You have now before you the true reason why he did not choose that this affair should come before a court of justice. Rather than this exposure should be made, he to-day would call for the mountains to cover him: he would prefer an inquiry into the business of the three seals, into anything foreign to the subject I am now discussing, in order to keep you from the discovery of that gross bribery, that shameful peculation, that abandoned prostitution and corruption, which he has practised with indemnity and impunity to this day, from one end of India to the other.

At the head of the only account we have of these transactions stands Dinagepore; and it now only remains for me to make some observations upon Mr. Hastings's proceedings in that province. Its name, then, and that money was taken from it, is all that appears; but from whom, by what hands, by what means, under what pretence it was taken, he has not told you, he has not told his employers. I believe, however, I can tell from whom it was taken, and I believe it will appear to your Lordships that it must have been taken from the unhappy Rajah of Dinagepore; and I shall in a very few words state the circumstances attending, and the service performed for it: from these you will be able to form a just opinion concerning this bribe.

Dinagepore, a large province, was possessed by an ancient family, the last of which, about the year 1184 of their era, the Rajah Bija Naut, had no legitimate issue. When he was at the point of death, he wished to exclude from the succession to the zemindary his half-brother, Cantoo Naut, with whom he had lived upon ill terms for many years, by adopting a son. Such an adoption, when a person has a half-brother, as he had, in my poor judgment is not countenanced by the Gentoo laws. But Gunga Govind Sing, who was placed, by the office he held, at the head of the registry, where the records were kept by which the rules of succession according to the custom of the country are ascertained, became master of these Gentoo laws; and through his means Mr. Hastings decreed in favor of the adoption. We find that immediately after this decree Gunga Govind Sing received a cabooleat on Dinagepore for the sum of 40,000l., of which it appears that he has actually exacted 30,000l., though he has paid to Mr. Hastings only 20,000l. We find, before the young Rajah had been in possession a year, his natural guardians and relations, on one pretence or another, all turned out of their offices. The peshcush, or fixed annual rent, payable to the Company for his zemindary, fell into arrear, as might naturally be expected, from the Rajah's inability to pay both his rent and this exorbitant bribe, extorted from a ruined family. Instantly, under pretext of this arrearage, Gunga Govind Sing, and the fictitious Committee which Mr. Hastings had made for his wicked purposes, composed of Mr. Anderson, Mr. Shore, and Mr. Croftes, who were but the tools, as they tell us themselves, of Gunga Govind Sing, gave that monster of iniquity, Debi Sing, the government of this family. They put this noble infant, this miserable Rajah, together with the management of the provinces of Dinagepore and Rungpore, into his wicked and abominable hands, where the ravages he committed excited what was called a rebellion, that forced him to fly from the country, and into which I do not wonder he should be desirous that a political and not a juridical inquiry should be made. The savage barbarities which were there perpetrated I have already, in the execution of my duty, brought before this House and my country; and it will be seen, when we come to the proof, whether what I have asserted was the effect either of a deluded judgment or disordered imagination, and whether the facts I state cannot be substantiated by authentic reports, and were none of my invention, and, lastly, whether the means that were taken to discredit them do not infinitely aggravate the guilt of the offenders. Mr. Hastings wanted to fly from judicial inquiry; he wanted to put Debi Sing anywhere but in a court of justice. A court of justice, where a direct assertion is brought forward, and a direct proof applied to it, is an element in which he cannot live for a moment. He would seek refuge anywhere, even in the very sanctuary of his accusers, rather than abide a trial with him in a court of justice. But the House of Commons was too just not to send him to this tribunal, whose justice they cannot doubt, whose penetration he cannot elude, and whose decision will justify those managers whose characters he attempted to defame.

But this is not all. We find, that, after the cruel sale of this infant, who was properly and directly under the guardianship of the Company, (for the Company acts as steward and dewan of the province, which office has the guardianship of minors,) after he had been robbed of 40,000l. by the hands of Gunga Govind Sing, and afterwards, under pretence of his being in debt to the Company, delivered into the hands of that monster, Debi Sing, Mr. Hastings, by way of anticipation of these charges, and in answer to them, has thought proper to produce the certificate from this unfortunate boy which I will now again read to you.

"I, Radanaut, Zemindar of Purgunnah Havelly Punjera, commonly called Dinagepore:—As it has been learnt by me, the mutsuddies, and the respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings, Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from us by deceit and force, and ruined the country; therefore we, upon the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution, civility and justice, superior to the caution of the most learned, and, by representing what is fact, wipe away the doubts that have possessed the minds of the ministers of England: that Mr. Hastings is possessed of fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to us; that he is clear of the contamination of mistrust and wrong, and his mind is free of covetousness or avarice. During the time of his administration, no one saw other conduct than that of protection to the husbandmen, and justice; no inhabitant ever experienced afflictions, no one ever felt oppression from him. Our reputations have always been guarded from attacks by his prudence, and our families have always been protected by his justice. He never omitted the smallest instance of kindness towards us, but healed the wounds of despair with the salve of consolation, by means of his benevolent and kind behavior, never permitting one of us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported every one by his goodness, overset the designs of evil-minded men by his authority, tied the hands of oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and by these means expanded the pleasing appearance of happiness and joy over us. He reëstablished justice and impartiality. We were, during his government, in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and ease, and many of us are thankful and satisfied. As Mr. Hastings was well acquainted with our manners and customs, he was always desirous, in every respect, of doing whatever would preserve our religious rites, and guard them against every kind of accident and injury, and at all times protected us. Whatever we have experienced from him, and whatever happened from him, we have written without deceit or exaggeration."

My Lords, this Radanaut, zemindar of the purgunnah, who, as your Lordships hear, bears evidence upon oath to all the great and good qualities of the Governor, and particularly to his absolute freedom from covetousness,—this person, to whom Mr. Hastings appeals, was, as the Committee state, a boy between five and six years old at the time when he was given into the hands of Debi Sing, and when Mr. Hastings left Bengal, which was in 1786 [1785?], was between eleven and twelve years old. This is the sort of testimony that Mr. Hastings produces, to prove that he was clear from all sort of extortion, oppression, and covetousness, in this very zemindary of Dinagepore. This boy, who is so observant, who is so penetrating, who is so accurate in his knowledge of the whole government of Mr. Hastings, was, I say, when he left his government, at the utmost, but eleven years and a half old. Now to what an extremity is this unhappy man at your bar driven, when, oppressed by this accumulative load of corruption charged upon him, and seeing his bribery, his prevarication, his fraudulent bonds brought before you, he gives the testimony of this child, who for the greatest part of his time lived three hundred miles from the seat of Mr. Hastings's government! Consider the miserable situation of this poor, unfortunate boy, made to swear, with all the solemnities of his religion, that Mr. Hastings was never guilty in his province of any act of rapacity! Such are the testimonies, which are there called razinamas, in favor of Mr. Hastings, with which all India is said to sound. Do we attempt to conceal them from your Lordships? No, we bring them forth, to show you the wickedness of the man, who, after he has robbed innocence, after he has divided the spoil between Gunga Govind Sing and himself, gets the party robbed to perjure himself for his sake,—if such a creature is capable of being guilty of perjury. We have another razinama sent from Nuddea, by a person nearly under the same circumstances with Radanaut, namely, Maha Rajah Dirauje Seo Chund Behadre, only made to differ in some expressions from the former, that it might not appear to originate from the same hand. These miserable razinamas he delivers to you as the collected voice of the country, to show how ill-founded the impressions are which committees of the House of Commons (for to them they allude, I suppose) have taken concerning this man, during their inquiries into the management of the affairs of the Company in India.