⁂While these letters were reading, Mr. Sheridan, who was seized with a sudden, though flight indisposition, retired to the Managers room. He was, after some refreshment, desirous of proceeding; but his friends persuaded him to the contrary; and Mr. Fox came into the Court, and said, that Mr. Sheridan being by his indisposition prevented from doing that justice to the charge which it was his wish to do, the Managers requested that their Lordships would be pleased to adjourn, and appoint another day on which he might proceed.
Their Lordships accordingly withdrew, and sent a message to the House of Commons, that the Court will sit again on Friday the 13th.
MR. SHERIDAN’S SPEECH CONTINUED,
FRIDAY, JUNE THE 13th, 1788.
MR. SHERIDAN rose, and being in a great measure recovered from the indisposition which prevented him from proceeding on Tuesday, resumed his speech, by thanking their Lordships for the indulgence they had shewn him, and assured them that nothing but positive inability to proceed, on Tuesday, in a manner worthy of the importance, and the dignity of his cause, could have induced him to give them the trouble of sitting another day.
He then reminded their Lordships, that in commenting on the evidence respecting the resumption of the jaghires, and the plunder of the Begums, he had left off with the public and private correspondence between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton. This correspondence demanded the most minute attention, for it contained all the facts of that foul and unmanly conspiracy; it contained a true account of the cause of that conspiracy, and also the quibbles, the tricks, the mean shifts and evasions, by which it had been attempted to conceal it.
On the public correspondence, as contrasted with the private, he animadverted with the most penetrating acuteness; and exposed the gross contradictions, the laboured fallacies, and studied misrepresentations that pervaded the whole. — Their Lordships would naturally enquire with some degree of surprise, how the private letters that were thus to establish the guilt of their authors had come to light. — In the middle of December, 1782, a coldness had taken place between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton. Mr. Hastings had been hurt at the tardiness with which Middleton proceeded, and had charged him with the heinous offence of permitting two days forbearance from the Nabob to his mother. — From this moment shyness and suspicion between the principal and the agent took place. Mr. Middleton hesitated about the expediency of the measure, and began to doubt whether the advantage would be equal to the risk. Mr. Hastings, whether he apprehended that Middleton was retarded by any return of humanity or sentiments of justice, by any secret combination with the Begum and her son, or a wish to take the lion’s share of the plunder to himself, was incensed at the delay. Mr. Middleton represented the unwillingness of the Nabob to put in execution the resumption of the jaghires; the low state of his finances; that his troops were mutinous for want of pay; and that his life had been in danger from an insurrection among them. That in this moment of distress he had offered one hundred thousand pounds, in addition to a like sum paid before, as an equivalent for the resumption which was demanded of him. Of this offer, however, it appeared the Nabob knew nothing. In conferring an obligation, it was sometimes contrived, from motives of delicacy, that the name of the donor should be concealed from the person obliged; but here was delicacy of a new sort — the person conferring the favour was to be kept ignorant that he had conferred it. Yet, after the return of Middleton in 1783, there was the same friendly collusion, the same fraudulent familiarity, between him and Mr. Hastings, that had existed before this difference took place. He was brought down in December, 1782, and no charge was brought against him till April following. Then it was that Mr. Hastings, in a sudden fit of justice, preferred the charge against him, and threw down his letters on the Council-table. Whatever was the meaning of this charge, whether it was a juggle to elude enquiry, or whether it was intended to make an impression at Fyzabad; whether Mr. Hastings drew up the charge, and instructed Mr. Middleton to draw up an easy defence; or whether Middleton drew up the charge, and Mr. Hastings the defence, there appeared in the whole transaction the same habitual collusion in which they lived — and it ended in a rhapsody, a repartee, and a poetical quotation. By this act of providential folly, the private letters were produced, and the production of them was conclusive proof of the conspiracy. The private letters were the only part of the correspondence to be looked to. They were written in the confidence of private communication, without any of the motives to palliate and colour facts, to confound and mislead the judgment, which appeared on the very face of the public correspondence.
Mr. Sheridan then referred to a letter from Lucknow, written under such particular circumstances, and at such a particular period, that had the alledged rebellion of the Begums ever existed, but in imagination, it must have been mentioned in that letter. Where then was the proof of the rebellion? Not where it ought naturally to be found, but in the affidavits collected by Sir Elijah Impey — In the fabricated public correspondence between him, Mr. Hastings, and Mr. Middleton. In that letter there was no mention of rebellion. It was indeed said, that if such measures were rigorously pursued as had been set on foot, the people might be driven from murmur to resistance, and rise up in arms against their oppressors. Then indeed a little providential slaughter would substantiate the rebellion which they wished to find, and afford a pretext for premeditated plunder. But there was a clumsiness in the fraud, a coarseness in the execution which defeated its purpose, and exposed it to detection.
He animadverted with much severity on the conduct of Sir Elijah Impey, in collecting the affidavits. At one moment he appeared in Oude, at another in Chunar, at a third in Benares, collecting affidavits. The gravity of his business and the vivacity, the rapidity, the celerity of his movements, made a singular contrast. To him might have been applied the words of Hamlet to the ghost, “What, Truepenny! are you there?” Like the ghost he was heard in every quarter crying aloud, swear! But the similitude went no farther; he was never heard to give the injunction,
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother ought.
In the memorable private letter from Mr. Middleton of the 28th of December, 1781, in which he acknowledged the receipt of a private letter from Mr. Hastings, although no private letters from the prisoner had been produced — a circumstance which could only be accounted for, and arise from the habitual awe in which Middleton was kept by the domineering power and fascinating influence of his master. In this letter, Middleton told him, that in the present fermented state of the country, the resumption could not be accomplished but with infinite hazard — At the same time Mr. Johnson wrote him to the same purpose. The words of his letter were memorable. He thought it would require a campaign to carry into execution the orders for the resumption of the Jaghires. A campaign against whom! Against the officers and army of their ally, the Nabob, who had given the order. This resumption was stated to be for his good, and for the good of his country, and it was only to be accomplished by a campaign. Such was the manner in which the English, under the auspices of Mr. Hastings, protected their allies in India. The protection of the English was the misery and ruin of the protected. It was the protection of the vulture to the lamb, which covers while it devours its prey — which stretching its baleful pinions, and hovering in mid air, disperses the kites and lesser birds of prey, and saves the innocent and helpless victim from all talons but its own.
It was curious to remark, that in the correspondence of these creatures of Mr. Hastings, and in their earnest endeavours to dissuade him from the resumption of the Jaghires, not a word is mentioned of the measure’s being contrary to honour, to faith, derogatory to national character, unmanly or unprincipled. — No such thing — They knew the man to whom they were writing, and their only arguments were, that it was contrary to policy, to expediency — and that the event was not likely to prosper in the only way in which it could be worth the attempt — in the accumulation of money. Not one word did they mention of the just claims which the
Nabob had to the gratitude and friendship of the English — Not one syllable of the treaty by which we were bound to protect him — Not one syllable of the relation which subsisted between him and the ladies they were about to plunder — Not one syllable was hinted about justice or mercy — nothing was ever addressed to him but the apprehension that the money to be procured would not be worth the danger and labour with which it must be attended. Such was the source and origin of all his actions, and it was that base and profligate motive that, urging him to every species of meanness and of cruelty, did give such a stamp and impression to his acts as made them unparalleled in ancient or modern history. He would be bold to say, that nothing could be found in the history of human turpitude, nothing in the nervous delineations and penetrating brevity of Tacitus, nothing in the luminous and luxuriant pages of Gibbon, or of any other historian, dead or living, who, searching into measures and characters with the rigour of truth, presented to our abhorrence depravity in its blackest shapes, could equal, in the grossness of the guilt, in the hardness of heart with which it was conducted, or in the low and groveling motive, the acts and character of Mr. Hastings — He, who in the base desire of stripping two helpless women, could stir the son to rise up in vengeance against them — who when that son had certain touches of nature in his breast — certain feelings of an awakened conscience to indicate that he was a man — accused that son of entertaining peevish objections to the plunder and sacrifice of his mother — Who having destroyed in his bosom all thought — all reflection — all memory — all conscience — all tenderness and duty as a son — all dignity as a monarch — having destroyed his character, and depopulated his country, at length brought him to violate the dearest ties of nature, and countenance the destruction of his parents — and who having thus debauched this poor and miserable instrument of his crimes to his purpose, deceived and ruined him in turn. He — this inhuman violator of all ties, sacred and profane, had in this single crime, he would be bold to say, no parallel nor prototype in the old world, or the new, from the day of original sin to the present hour.
And yet when in this climax he thought he had got to the summit and pinnacle of his guilt, he found something still more transcendently flagitious. He particularly alluded to his famous letter, falsely dated the 15th of February, 1782, in which, at the very moment that he had given the order for the entire destruction of the Begums, and for the resumption of the jaghires, expressed to the Nabob the warm and lively interest which he took in his welfare — the sincerity and ardour of his friendship — and that though his presence was imminently wanted at Calcutta, he could not rest a moment without coming to the Nabob’s assistance, and in the mean time, he had sent four regiments to his aid. — So deliberate and cool — so hypocritical and insinuating was the villainy of this man! The heart was exasperated by the malignity of this arch treason — But at length the Nabob was on his guard — He could not be deceived by this mask — The offer of the four regiments developed the object of Mr. Hastings. — He perceived the dagger bunglingly concealed in the hand that was held out with a smile to meet him — and we accordingly heard no more from the Nabob of reliance on the friendship of Mr. Hastings. — This letter was sent at the very time when the troops had surrounded the walls of Fyzabad, and now began the scene of horrors, which, if he merely wished to rouse their Lordships feelings, he should only have occasion minutely to describe. To state the violence committed on that palace, which the piety of the kingdom had raised for the retreat and seclusion of the objects of its pride and veneration. He thought he saw innocence reposing in those shades, rendered sacred by superstition. — Venerable age and helpless infancy here found an asylum, and to the violation of this scene were sent an Impey to invigorate the flagging conscience of a Middleton; — and an Ali Khan assisted by the stouter villainy of a Hyder Beg. Rapine, outrage, and violence followed in the train, while Hastings, though standing aloof, was in fact the master general of the war, and through the whole of the dreadful scene of horror their Lordships saw him— “ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm.”
He now with an admirable accuracy and force of reasoning went over the correspondence, which then passed between Middleton and the Begums; he particularly alluded to the letter sent by the Begum to Middleton, with his answer, in which he declared himself equally the friend of the Nabob and the Begum, although he had previously sworn in the presence of God, that he thought she had hostile designs against her son and the English, and had made up his conscience to strip her of every thing she possessed. He execrated the shameless sycophancy of this conduct, that like some of the monsters of India, cringed to its prey, and fawned on the objects of its vengeance. In going over these private letters, he came to that from Mr. Middleton, which the Council for the prisoner had been anxious to have read to the end, in order to publish an anecdote which they thought would do something towards supporting the character of Mr. Middleton. It contained some expressions of earnest and anxious solicitude for the recovery of a beloved son — and which they meant to insinuate, were indications of feeling, and of his sense of the nature of the relative duty and affection which subsisted between the parent and the child. How fortunate they had been in their desire of having this anecdote heard, he knew not — He confessed he thought it did not tend to raise the character of Mr. Middleton — but on the contrary, it operated very much to his prejudice. It would not be imputed to him, that speaking abstractedly, he considered the trait of parental tenderness as a degrading feature in the human heart. Their Lordships knew well the force of the soft and endearing relation which subsisted between parent and child; but surely it would not be said, that the circumstance brought to their Lordships view by the Counsel, of the fact of Mr. Middleton’s having this sentiment and feeling in his bosom was therefore intitled to commendation, when with the feeling in his own bosom he was outraging it in others. Was it not an aggravation of his guilt, that he who felt the ardent solicitude of a parent, and who consequently must be sensible of the reciprocal feelings of a child, could bring himself to tear asunder, and to violate all those dear and sacred bonds! Did it not enhance his guilt, that his cruelty was not the result of ideotic ignorance, or of savage barbarity? — That he whose soul was thus sensible to the impressions of tenderness and love, should be so abandoned as to sacrifice those feelings to the inhuman will of the tyrant whom he served. He averred that it increased and magnified his guilt. He would have been less criminal had he been insensible of tenderness — less criminal if he had not been so thoroughly acquainted with the true quality of parental love and filial duty. [Here Mr. Sheridan gave a picture of filial duty, which, as a piece of chaste and beautiful painting in language, we know not where to equal, and which we are utterly unable to copy.]
Filial duty, he said, it was impossible by words to describe, but description by words was unnecessary. It was that duty which they all felt and understood, and which required not the powers of language to explain. It was in truth more properly to be called a principle than a duty. It required not the aid of memory — it needed not the exercise of the understanding — it awaited not the slow deliberations of reasoning. — It flowed spontaneously from the fountain of our feelings. — It was involuntary in our natures. — It was a quality of our being, innate, and coeval with life, which though afterwards cherished as a passion was independent of our mental powers. — It was earlier than all intelligence in our souls. — It displayed itself in the earliest impulses of the heart, and was an emotion of fondness that returned in smiles of gratitude the affectionate solicitude — the tender anxieties — the endearing attentions experienced before memory began, but which were not less dear for not being remembered. — It was the sacrament of nature in our hearts, by which the union of parent and child was sealed and rendered perfect in the community of love, and which, strengthening and ripening with life, acquired vigour from the understanding, and was most lively and active when most wanted — when those who had supported infancy were sinking into age, and when inf
irmity and decrepitude found their best solace in the affections of the children they had reared — But he was ashamed to take up so much of their Lordships time in attempting to give a cold picture of filial duty, when he saw so many breathing testimonies in the assembly that surrounded him — and when he saw every feature of that assembly beaming and erecting itself in confession of the universal principle.
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 84