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

Well, there was an end to this tragic entertainment, this feast of Tantalus. The few left on the pension-list, the poor remnants that had escaped, were they paid by his administratrix and deputy, Munny Begum? Not a shilling. No fewer than forty-nine petitions, mostly from the widows of the greatest and most splendid houses of Bengal, came before the Council, praying in the most deplorable manner for some sort of relief out of the pittance assigned them. His colleagues, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, men who, when England is reproached for the government of India, will, I repeat it, as a shield be held up between this nation and infamy, did, in conformity to the strict orders of the Directors, appoint Mahomed Reza Khân to his old offices, that is, to the general superintendency of the household and the administration of justice, a person who by his authority might keep some order in the ruling family and in the state. The Court of Directors authorized them to assure those offices to him, with a salary reduced indeed to 30,000l. a year, during his good behavior. But Mr. Hastings, as soon as he obtained a majority by the death of the two best men ever sent to India, notwithstanding the orders of the Court of Directors, in spite of the public faith solemnly pledged to Mahomed Reza Khân, without a shadow of complaint, had the audacity to dispossess him of all his offices, and appoint his bribing patroness, the old dancing-girl, Munny Begum, once more to the viceroyalty and all its attendant honors and functions.

The pretence was more insolent and shameless than the act. Modesty does not long survive innocence. He brings forward the miserable pageant of the Nabob, as he called him, to be the instrument of his own disgrace, and the scandal of his family and government. He makes him to pass by his mother, and to petition us to appoint Munny Begum once more to the administration of the viceroyalty. He distributed Mahomed Reza Khân's salary as a spoil.

When the orders of the Court to restore Mahomed Reza Khân, with their opinion on the corrupt cause of his removal, and a second time to pledge to him the public faith for his continuance, were received, Mr. Hastings, who had been just before a pattern of obedience, when the despoiling, oppressing, imprisoning, and persecuting this man was the object, yet, when the order was of a beneficial nature, and pleasant to a well-formed mind, he at once loses all his old principles, he grows stubborn and refractory, and refuses obedience. And in this sullen, uncomplying mood he continues, until, to gratify Mr. Francis, in an agreement on some of their differences, he consented to his proposition of obedience to the appointment of the Court of Directors. He grants to his arrangement of convenience what he had refused to his duty, and replaces that magistrate. But mark the double character of the man, never true to anything but fraud and duplicity. At the same time that he publicly replaces this magistrate, pretending compliance with his colleague and obedience to his masters, he did, in defiance of his own and the public faith, privately send an assurance to the Nabob, that is, to Munny Begum,—informs her that he was compelled by necessity to the present arrangement in favor of Mahomed Reza Khân, but that on the first opportunity he would certainly displace him again. And he kept faith with his corruption; and to show how vainly any one sought protection in the lawful authority of this kingdom, he displaced Mahomed Reza Khân from the lieutenancy and controllership, leaving him only the judicial department miserably curtailed.

But does he adhere to his old pretence of freedom to the Nabob? No such thing. He appoints an absolute master to him under the name of Resident, a creature of his personal favor, Sir John D'Oyly, from whom there is not one syllable of correspondence and not one item of account. How grievous this yoke was to that miserable captive appears by a paper of Mr. Hastings, in which he acknowledges that the Nabob had offered, out of the 160,000l. payable to him yearly, to give up to the Company no less than 40,000l. a year, in order to have the free disposal of the rest. On this all comment is superfluous. Your Lordships are furnished with a standard by which you may estimate his real receipt from the revenue assigned to him, the nature of the pretended Residency, and its predatory effects. It will give full credit to what was generally rumored and believed, that substantially and beneficially the Nabob never received fifty out of the one hundred and sixty thousand pounds; which will account for his known poverty and wretchedness, and that of all about him.

Thus by his corrupt traffic of bribes with one scandalous woman he disgraced and enfeebled the native Mahomedan government, captived the person of the sovereign, and ruined and subverted the justice of the country. What is worse, the steps taken for the murder of Nundcomar, his accuser, have confirmed and given sanction not only to the corruptions then practised by the Governor-General, but to all of which he has since been guilty. This will furnish your Lordships with some general idea which will enable you to judge of the bribe for which he sold the country government.

Under this head you will have produced to you full proof of his sale of a judicial office to a person called Khân Jehan Khân, and the modes he took to frustrate all inquiry on that subject, upon a wicked and false pretence, that, according to his religious scruples, he could not be sworn.

The great end and object I have in view is to show the criminal tendency, the mischievous nature of these crimes, and the means taken to elude their discovery. I am now giving your Lordships that general view which may serve to characterize Mr. Hastings's administration in all the other parts of it.

It was not true in fact, as Mr. Hastings gives out, that there was nothing now against him, and that, when he had got rid of Nundcomar and his charge, he got rid of the whole. No such thing. An immense load of charges of bribery remained. They were coming afterwards from every part of the province; and there was no office in the execution of justice which he was not accused of having sold in the most flagitious manner.

After all this thundering the sky grew calm and clear, and Mr. Hastings sat with recorded peculation, with peculation proved upon oath on the minutes of that very Council,—he sat at the head of that Council and that board where his peculations were proved against him. These were afterwards transmitted and recorded in the registers of his masters, as an eternal monument of his corruption, and of his high disobedience, and flagitious attempts to prevent a discovery of the various peculations of which he had been guilty, to the disgrace and ruin of the country committed to his care.

Mr. Hastings, after the execution of Nundcomar, if he had intended to make even a decent and commonly sensible use of it, would naturally have said, "This man is justly taken away who has accused me of these crimes; but as there are other witnesses, as there are other means of a further inquiry, as the man is gone of whose perjuries I might have reason to be afraid, let us now go into the inquiry." I think he did very ill not to go into the inquiry when the man was alive; but be it so, that he was afraid of him, and waited till he was removed, why not afterwards go into such an inquiry? Why not go into an inquiry of all the other peculations and charges upon him, which were innumerable, one of which I have just mentioned in particular, the charge of Munny Begum, of having received from her, or her adopted son, a bribe of 40,000l.?

Is it fit for a governor to say, will Mr. Hastings say before this august assembly, "I may be accused in a court of justice,—I am upon my defence,—let all charges remain against me,—I will not give you an account"? Is it fit that a governor should sit with recorded bribery upon him at the head of a public board and the government of a great kingdom, when it is in his power by inquiry to do it away? No: the chastity of character of a man in that situation ought to be as dear to him as his innocence. Nay, more depended upon it. His innocence regarded himself; his character regarded the public justice, regarded his authority, and the respect due to the English in that country. I charge it upon him, that not only did he suppress the inquiry to the best of his power, (and it shall be proved,) but he did not in any one instance endeavor to clear off that imputation and reproach from the English government. He went further; he never denied hardly any of those charges at the time. They are so numerous that I cannot be positive; some of them he might meet with some sort of denial, but the most part he did not.

The first thing a man under such an accusation owes to the world is to deny the charge; next, to put it to the proof; and lastly, to let inquiry freely go on. He did not permit this, but stopped it all in his power. I am to mention some exceptions, perhaps, hereafter, which will tend to fortify the principle tenfold.

He promised, indeed, the Court of Directors (to whom he never denied the facts) a full and liberal explanation of these transactions; which full and liberal explanation he never gave. Many years passed; even Parliament took notice of it; and he never gave them a liberal explanation, or any explanation at all of them. A man may say, "I am threatened with a suit in a court, and it may be very disadvantageous to me, if I disclose my defence." That is a proper answer for a man in common life, who has no particular character to sustain; but is that a proper answer for a governor accused of bribery, that accusation transmitted to his masters, and his masters giving credit to it? Good God! is that a state in which a man is to say, "I am upon the defensive—I am on my guard,—I will give you no satisfaction,—I have promised it, but I have already deferred it for seven or eight years"? Is not this tantamount to a denial?

Mr. Hastings, with this great body of bribery against him, was providentially freed from Nundcomar, one of his accusers, and, as good events do not come alone, (I think there is some such proverb,) it did so happen that all the rest, or a great many of them, ran away. But, however, the recorded evidence of the former charges continued; no new evidence came in; and Mr. Hastings enjoyed that happy repose which branded peculation, fixed and eternized upon the records of the Company, must leave upon a mind conscious of its own integrity.

My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character. It is the grace, undoubtedly, of a virtuous, firm mind often to despise common, vulgar calumny; but if ever there is an occasion in which it does become such a mind to disprove it, it is the case of being charged in high office with pecuniary malversation, pecuniary corruption. There is no case in which it becomes an honest man, much less a great man, to leave upon record specific charges against him of corruption in his government, without taking any one step whatever to refute them.

Though Mr. Hastings took no step to refute the charges, he took many steps to punish the authors of them; and those miserable people who had the folly to make complaints against Mr. Hastings, to make them under the authority of an act of Parliament, under every sanction of public faith, yet, in consequence of those charges, every person concerned in them has been, as your Lordships will see, since his restoration to power, absolutely undone, brought from the highest situation to the lowest misery, so that they may have good reason to repent they ever trusted an English Council, that they ever trusted a Court of Directors, that they ever trusted an English act of Parliament, that they ever dared to make their complaints.

And here I charge upon Mr. Hastings, that, by never taking a single step to defeat or detect the falsehood of any of those charges against him, and by punishing the authors of them, he has been guilty of such a subversion of all the principles of British government as will deserve, and will I dare say meet, your Lordships' most severe animadversion.

In the course of this inquiry we find a sort of pause in his peculations, a sort of gap in the history, as if pages were torn out. No longer we meet with the same activity in taking money that was before found; not even a trace of complimentary presents is to be found in the records during the time whilst General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis formed the majority of the Council. There seems to have been a kind of truce with that sort of conduct for a while, and Mr. Hastings rested upon his arms. However, the very moment Mr. Hastings returned to power, peculation began again just at the same instant; the moment we find him free from the compulsion and terror of a majority of persons otherwise disposed than himself, we find him at his peculation again.

My Lords, at this time very serious inquiries had begun in the House of Commons concerning peculation. They did not go directly to Bengal, but they began upon the coast of Coromandel, and with the principal governors there. There was, however, an universal opinion (and justly founded) that these inquiries would go to far greater lengths. Mr. Hastings was resolved, then, to change the whole course and order of his proceeding. Nothing could persuade him, upon any account, to lay aside his system of bribery: that he was resolved to persevere in. The point was now to reconcile it with his safety. The first thing he did was to attempt to conceal it; and accordingly we find him depositing very great sums of money in the public treasury through the means of the two persons I have already mentioned, namely, the deputy-treasurer and the accountant,—paying them in and taking bonds for them as money of his own, and bearing legal interest. This was his method of endeavoring to conceal some at least of his bribes: for I would not suggest, nor have your Lordships to think, that I believe that these were his only bribes,—for there is reason to think there was an infinite number besides; but it did so happen that they were those bribes which he thought might be discovered, some of which he knew were discovered, and all of which he knew might become the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Hastings said he might have concealed them forever. Every one knows the facility of concealing corrupt transactions everywhere, in India particularly. But this is by himself proved not to be universally true, at least not to be true in his own opinion; for he tells you, in his letter from Cheltenham, that he would have concealed the Nabob's 100,000l., but that the magnitude rendered it easy of discovery. He, therefore, avows an intention of concealment.

But it happens here, very singularly, that this sum, which his fears of discovery by others obliged him to discover himself, happens to be one of those of which no trace whatsoever appears, except merely from the operation of his own apprehensions. There is no collateral testimony: Middleton knew nothing of it; Anderson knew nothing of it; it was not directly communicated to the faithful Larkins or the trusty Croftes;—which proves, indeed, the facility of concealment. The fact is, you find the application always upon the discovery. But concealment or discovery is a thing of accident.

The bribes which I have hitherto brought before your Lordships belong to the first period of his bribery, before he thought of the doctrine on which he has since defended it. There are many other bribes which we charge him with having received during this first period, before an improving conversation and close virtuous connection with great lawyers had taught him how to practise bribes in such a manner as to defy detection, and instead of punishment to plead merit. I am not bound to find order and consistency in guilt: it is the reign of disorder. The order of the proceeding, as far as I am able to trace such a scene of prevarication, direct fraud, falsehood, and falsification of the public accounts, was this. From bribes he knew he could never abstain; and his then precarious situation made him the more rapacious. He knew that a few of his former bribes had been discovered, declared, recorded,—that for the moment, indeed, he was secure, because all informers had been punished and all concealers rewarded. He expected hourly a total change in the Council, and that men like Clavering and Monson might be again joined to Francis, that some great avenger should arise from their ashes,—"Exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,"—and that a more severe investigation and an infinitely more full display would be made of his robbery than hitherto had been done. He therefore began, in the agony of his guilt, to cast about for some device by which he might continue his offence, if possible, with impunity,—and possibly make a merit of it. He therefore first carefully perused the act of Parliament forbidding bribery, and his old covenant engaging him not to receive presents. And here he was more successful than upon former occasions. If ever an act was studiously and carefully framed to prevent bribery, it is that law of the 13th of the King, which he well observes admits no latitudes of construction, no subterfuge, no escape, no evasion. Yet has he found a defence of his crimes even in the very provisions which were made for their prevention and their punishment. Besides the penalty which belongs to every informer, the East India Company was invested with a fiction of property in all such bribes, in order to drag them with more facility out of the corrupt hands which held them. The covenant, with an exception of one hundred pounds, and the act of Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General and Council should receive no presents for their own use. He therefore concluded that the system of bribery and extortion might be clandestinely and safely carried on, provided the party taking the bribes had an inward intention and mental reservation that they should be privately applied to the Company's service in any way the briber should think fit, and that on many occasions this would prove the best method of supply for the exigencies of their service.

He accordingly formed, or pretended to form, a private bribe exchequer, collateral with and independent of the Company's public exchequer, though in some cases administered by those whom for his purposes he had placed in the regular official department. It is no wonder that he has taken to himself an extraordinary degree of merit. For surely such an invention of finance, I believe, never was heard of,—an exchequer wherein extortion was the assessor, fraud the cashier, confusion the accountant, concealment the reporter, and oblivion the remembrancer: in short, such as I believe no man, but one driven by guilt into frenzy, could ever have dreamed of.

He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers. He is an eccentric book-keeper, a Pindaric accountant. I have heard of "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling." Here was a revenue exacted from whom he pleased, at what times he pleased, in what proportions he pleased, through what persons he pleased, by what means he pleased, to be accounted for or not, at his discretion, and to be applied to what service he thought proper. I do believe your Lordships stand astonished at this scheme; and indeed I should be very loath to venture to state such a scheme at all, however I might have credited it myself, to any sober ears, if, in his defence before the House of Commons, and before the Lords, he had not directly admitted the fact of taking the bribes or forbidden presents, and had not in those defences, and much more fully in his correspondence with the Directors, admitted the fact, and justified it upon these very principles.

As this is a thing so unheard-of and unexampled in the world, I shall first endeavor to account as well as I can for his motives to it, which your Lordships will receive or reject, just as you shall find them tally with the evidence before you: I say, his motives to it; because I contend that public valid reasons for it he could have none; and the idea of making the corruption of the Governor-General a resource to the Company never did or could for a moment enter into his thoughts. I shall then take notice of the juridical constructions upon which he justifies his acting in this extraordinary manner; and lastly, show you the concealments, prevarications, and falsehoods with which he endeavors to cover it. Because wherever you find a concealment you make a discovery. Accounts of money received and paid ought to be regular and official.

He wrote over to the Court of Directors, that there were certain sums of money he had received and which were not his own, but that he had received them for their use. By this time his intercourse with gentlemen of the law became more considerable than it had been before. When first attacked for presents, he never denied the receipt of them, or pretended to say they were for public purposes; but upon looking more into the covenants, and probably with better legal advice, he found that no money could be legally received for his own use; but as these bribes were directly given and received as for his own use, yet (says he) "there was an inward destination of them in my own mind to your benefit, and to your benefit have I applied them."

Now here is a new system of bribery, contrary to law, very ingenious in the contrivance, but, I believe, as unlikely to produce its intended effect upon the mind of man as any pretence that was ever used. Here Mr. Hastings changes his ground. Before, he was accused as a peculator; he did not deny the fact; he did not refund the money; he fought it off; he stood upon the defensive, and used all the means in his power to prevent the inquiry. That was the first era of his corruption,—a bold, ferocious, plain, downright use of power. In the second, he is grown a little more careful and guarded,—the effect of subtilty. He appears no longer as a defendant; he holds himself up with a firm, dignified, and erect countenance, and says, "I am not here any longer as a delinquent, a receiver of bribes, to be punished for what I have done wrong, or at least to suffer in my character for it. No: I am a great inventive genius, who have gone out of all the ordinary roads of finance, have made great discoveries in the unknown regions of that science, and have for the first time established the corruption of the supreme magistrate as a principle of resource for government."

There are crimes, undoubtedly, of great magnitude, naturally fitted to create horror, and that loudly call for punishment, that have yet no idea of turpitude annexed to them; but unclean hands, bribery, venality, and peculation are offences of turpitude, such as, in a governor, at once debase the person and degrade the government itself, making it not only horrible, but vile and contemptible in the eyes of all mankind. In this humiliation and abjectness of guilt, he comes here not as a criminal on his defence, but as a vast fertile genius who has made astonishing discoveries in the art of government,—"Dicam insigne, recens, alio indictum ore"—who, by his flaming zeal and the prolific ardor and energy of his mind, has boldly dashed out of the common path, and served his country by new and untrodden ways; and now he generously communicates, for the benefit of all future governors and all future governments, the grand arcanum of his long and toilsome researches. He is the first, but, if we do not take good care, he will not be the last, that has established the corruption of the supreme magistrate among the settled resources of the state; and he leaves this principle as a bountiful donation, as the richest deposit that ever was made in the treasury of Bengal. He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced. It has been said of an ambassador, that he is a person employed to tell lies for the advantage of the court that sends him. His is patriotic bribery, and public-spirited corruption. He is a peculator for the good of his country. It has been said that private vices are public benefits. He goes the full length of that position, and turns his private peculation into a public good. This is what you are to thank him for. You are to consider him as a great inventor upon this occasion. Mr. Hastings improves on this principle. He is a robber in gross, and a thief in detail,—he steals, he filches, he plunders, he oppresses, he extorts,—all for the good of the dear East India Company,—all for the advantage of his honored masters, the Proprietors,—all in gratitude to the dear perfidious Court of Directors, who have been in a practice to heap "insults on his person, slanders on his character, and indignities on his station,—who never had the confidence in him that they had in the meanest of his predecessors."