Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  XXXI. That the said Warren Hastings did also advance another dangerous and pernicious principle in justification of his violent, arbitrary, and iniquitous actings aforesaid: namely, “that, if he had acted with an unwarrantable rigor, and even injustice, towards Cheyt Sing, yet, first, if he did believe that extraordinary means were necessary, and those exerted with a strong hand, to preserve the Company’s interests from sinking under the accumulated weight that oppressed them, or, secondly, if he saw a political necessity for curbing the overgrown power of a great member of their dominion, and to make it contribute to the relief of their pressing exigencies, that his error would be excusable, as prompted by an excess of zeal for their [the Company’s] interest, operating with too strong a bias on his judgment; but that much stronger is the presumption, that such acts are founded on just principles than that they are the result of a misguided judgment.” That the said doctrines are, in both the members thereof, subversive of all the principles of just government, by empowering a governor with delegated authority, in the first case, on his own private belief concerning the necessities of the state, not to levy an impartial and equal rate of taxation suitable to the circumstances of the several members of the community, but to select any individual from the same as an object of arbitrary and unmeasured imposition, — and, in the second case, enabling the same governor, on the same arbitrary principles, to determine whose property should be considered as overgrown, and to reduce the same at his pleasure.

  PART IV. SECOND REVOLUTION IN BENARES.

  That the said Warren Hastings, after he had, in the manner aforesaid, unjustly and violently expelled the Rajah Cheyt Sing, the lord or zemindar of Benares, from his said lordship or zemindary, did, of his own mere usurped authority, and without any communication with the other members of the Council of Calcutta, appoint another person, of the name of Mehip Narrain, a descendant by the mother from the late Rajah, Bulwant Sing, to the government of Benares; and on account or pretence of his youth and inexperience (the said Mehip Narrain not being above twenty years old) did appoint his father, Durbege Sing, to act as his representative or administrator of his affairs; but did give a controlling authority to the British Resident over both, notwithstanding his declarations before mentioned of the mischiefs likely to happen to the said country from the establishment of a Resident, and his opinion since declared in a letter to the Court of Directors, dated from this very place (Benares) the 1st of October, 1784, to the same or stronger effect, in case “agents are sent into the country, and armed with authority for the purposes of vengeance and corruption, — for to no other will they be applied.”

  That the said Warren Hastings did, by the same usurped authority, entirely set aside all the agreements made between the late Rajah and the Company (which were real agreements with the state of Benares, in the person of the lord or prince thereof, and his heirs); and without any form of trial, inquisition, or other legal process, for forfeiture of the privileges of the people to be governed by magistrates of their own, and according to their natural laws, customs, and usages, did, contrary to the said agreement, separate the mint and the criminal justice from the said government, and did vest the mint in the British Resident, and the criminal justice in a Mahomedan native of his own appointment; and did enhance the tribute to be paid from the province, from two hundred and fifty thousand pounds annually, limited by treaty, or thereabouts, to three hundred and thirty thousand pounds for the first year, and to four hundred thousand for every year after; and did compel the administrator aforesaid (father to the Rajah) to agree to the same; and did, by the same usurped authority, illegally impose, and cause to be levied, sundry injudicious and oppressive duties on goods and merchandise, which did greatly impair the trade of the province, and threaten the utter ruin thereof; and did charge several pensions on the said revenues, of his own mere authority; and did send and keep up various bodies of the Company’s troops in the said country; and did perform sundry other acts with regard to the said territory, in total subversion of the rights of the sovereign and the people, and in violation of the treaties and agreements aforesaid.

  That the said Warren Hastings, being absent, on account of ill health, from the Presidency of Calcutta, at a place called Nia Serai, about forty miles distant therefrom, did carry on a secret correspondence with the Resident at Benares, and, under color that the instalments for the new rent or tribute were in arrear, did of his own authority make, in about one year, a second revolution in the government of the territory aforesaid, and did order and direct that Durbege Sing aforesaid, father of the Rajah, and administrator of his authority, should be deprived of his office and of his lands, and thrown into prison, and did threaten him with death: although he, the said Warren Hastings, had, at the time of the making his new arrangement, declared himself sensible that the rent aforesaid might require abatement; although he was well apprised that the administrator had been for two months of his administration in a weak and languid state of body, and wholly incapable of attending to the business of the collections; though a considerable drought had prevailed in the said province, and did consequently affect the regularity and produce of the collections; and though he had other sufficient reason to believe that the said administrator had not himself received from the collectors of government and the cultivators of the soil the rent in arrear: yet he, the said Warren Hastings, without any known process, or recording any answer, defence, plea, exculpation, or apology from the party, or recording any other grounds of rigor against him, except the following paragraph of a letter from the Resident, not only gave the order as aforesaid, but did afterwards, without laying any other or better ground before the Council-General, persuade them to, and did procure from them, a confirmation of the aforesaid cruel and illegal proceedings, the correspondence concerning which had not been before communicated: he pleading his illness for not communicating the same, though that illness did not prevent him from carrying on correspondence concerning the deposition of the said administrator, and other important affairs in various places.

  That in the letter to the Council requiring the confirmation of his acts aforesaid the said Warren Hastings did not only propose the confinement of the said administrator at Benares, although by his imprisonment he must have been in a great measure disabled from recovering the balances due to him, and for the non-payment of which he was thus imprisoned, but did propose, as an alternative, his imprisonment at a remote fortress, out of the said territory, and in the Company’s provinces, called Chunar: desiring them to direct the Resident at Benares “to exact from Baboo Durbege Sing every rupee of the collections which it shall appear that he has made and not brought to account, and either to confine him at Benares, or to send him a prisoner to Chunar, and to keep him in confinement until he shall have discharged the whole of the amount due from him.” And the said Warren Hastings did assign motives of passion and personal resentment for the said unjust and rigorous proceedings, as follows: “I feel myself, and may be allowed on such an occasion to acknowledge it, personally hurt at the ingratitude of this man, and at the discredit which his ill conduct has thrown on my appointment of him. He has deceived me; he has offended against the government which I then represented.” And as a further reason for depriving him of his jaghire, (or salary out of land,) he did insinuate in the said letter, but without giving or offering any proof, “that the said Rajah had been guilty of little and mean peculations, although the appointments assigned to him had been sufficient to free him from the temptations thereto.”

  That it appears, as it might naturally have been expected, that the wife of the said administrator, the daughter of Bulwant Sing, the late Rajah of Benares, and her son, the reigning Rajah, did oppose to the best of their power, but by what remonstrances or upon what plea the said Warren Hastings did never inform the Court of Directors, the deposition, imprisonment, and confiscation of the estates of the husband of the one and the father of the other; but that the said Hastings, persisting in his malice, did declare to the said
Council as follows: “The opposition made by the Rajah and the old Rannee, both equally incapable of judging for themselves, does certainly originate from some secret influence, which ought to be checked by a decided and peremptory declaration of the authority of the board, and a denunciation of their displeasure at their presumption.”

  That the said Warren Hastings, not satisfied with the injuries done and the insults and disgraces offered to the family aforesaid, did, in a manner unparalleled, except by an act of his own on another occasion, fraudulently and inhumanly endeavor to make the wife and son of the said administrator, contrary to the sentiments and the law of Nature, the instruments of his oppressions: directing, “that, if they” (the mother and son aforesaid) “could be induced to yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement, and to adopt it as a measure formed with their participation, it would be better than that it should be done by a declared act of compulsion; but that at all events it ought to be done.”

  That, in consequence of the pressing declarations aforesaid, the said Warren Hastings did on his special recommendation appoint, in opposition to the wishes and desires of the Rajah and his mother, another person to the administration of his affairs, called Jagher Deo Seo.

  That, the Company having sent express orders for the sending the Resident by them before appointed to Benares, the said Warren Hastings did strongly oppose himself to the same, and did throw upon the person appointed by the Company (Francis Fowke, Esquire) several strong, but unspecified, reflections and aspersions, contrary to the duty he owed to the Company, and to the justice he owed to all its servants.

  That the said Resident, being appointed by the votes of the rest of the Council, in obedience to the reiterated orders of the Company, and in despite of the opposition of the said Hastings, did proceed to Benares, and, on the representation of the parties, and the submission of the accounts of the aforesaid Durbege Sing to an arbitrator, did find him, the said Durbege Sing, in debt to the Company for a sum not considerable enough to justify the severe treatment of the said Durbege Sing: his wife and son complaining, at or about the same time, that the balances due to him from the aumils, or sub-collectors, had been received by the new administrator, and carried to his own credit, in prejudice and wrong to the said Durbege Sing; which representation, the only one that has been transmitted on the part of the said sufferers, has not been contradicted.

  That it appears that the said Durbege Sing did afterwards go to Calcutta for the redress of his grievances, and that it does not appear that the same were redressed, or even his complaints heard, but he received two peremptory orders from the Supreme Council to leave the said city and to return to Benares; that, on his return to Benares, and being there met by Warren Hastings aforesaid, he, the said Warren Hastings, although he had reason to be well assured that the said Durbege Sing was in possession of small or no substance, did again cruelly and inhumanly, and without any legal authority, order the said Durbege Sing to be strictly imprisoned; and the said Durbege Sing, in consequence of the vexations, hardships, and oppressions aforesaid, died in a short time after, insolvent, but whether in prison or not does not appear.

  PART V. THIRD REVOLUTION IN BENARES.

  That the said Warren Hastings, having, in the manner before recited, divested Durbege Sing of the administration of the province of Benares, did, of his own arbitrary will and pleasure, and against the remonstrances of the Rajah and his mother, (in whose name and in whose right the said Durbege Sing, father of the one, and husband of the other, had administered the affairs of the government,) appoint a person called Jagher Deo Seo to administer the same.

  That the new administrator, warned by the severe example made of his predecessor, is represented by the said Warren Hastings as having made it his “avowed principle” (as it might be expected it should be) “that the sum fixed for the revenue must be collected.” And he did, upon the principle aforesaid, and by the means suggested by a principle of that sort, accordingly levy from the country, and did regularly discharge to the British Resident at Benares, by monthly payments, the sums imposed by the said Warren Hastings, as it is asserted by the Resident, Fowke; but the said Warren Hastings did assert that his annual collections did not amount to more than Lac 37,37,600, or thereabouts, which he says is much short of the revenues of the province, and is by about twenty-four thousand pounds short of his agreement.

  That it further appears, that, notwithstanding the new administrator aforesaid was appointed two months, or thereabouts, after the beginning of the Fusseli year, that is to say, about the middle of November, 1782, and the former administrator had collected a certain portion of the revenues of that year, amounting to 17,000l. and upwards, yet he, the said new administrator, upon the unjust and destructive principle aforesaid, suggested by the cruel and violent proceedings of the said Warren Hastings towards his predecessor, did levy on the province, within the said year, the whole amount of the revenues to be collected, in addition to the sum collected by his predecessor aforesaid.

  That, on account of a great drought which prevailed in the province aforesaid, a remission of certain duties in grain was proposed by the chief criminal judge at Benares; but the administrator aforesaid, being fearful that the revenue should fall short in his hands, did strenuously oppose himself to the necessary relief to the inhabitants of the said city.

  That, notwithstanding the cantonment of several bodies of the Company’s troops within the province, since the abolition of the native government, it became subject in a particular manner to the depredations of the Rajahs upon the borders; insomuch that in one quarter no fewer than thirty villages had been sacked and burned, and the inhabitants reduced to the most extreme distress.

  That the Resident, in his letter to the board at Calcutta, did represent that the collection of the revenue was become very difficult, and, besides the extreme drought, did assign for a cause of that difficulty the following. “That there is also one fund which in former years was often applied in this country to remedy temporary inconveniences in the revenue, and which in the present year does not exist. This was the private fortunes of merchants and shroffs [bankers] resident in Benares, from whom aumils [collectors] of credit could obtain temporary loans to satisfy the immediate calls of the Rajah. These sums, which used to circulate between the aumil and the merchant, have been turned into a different channel, by bills of exchange to defray the expenses of government, both on the west coast of India, and also at Madras.” To which representation it does not appear that any answer was given, or that any mode of redress was adopted in consequence thereof.

  That the said Warren Hastings, having passed through the province of Benares (Gazipore) in his progress towards Oude, did, in a letter dated from the city of Lucknow, the 2d of April, 1784, give to the Council Board at Calcutta an account, highly dishonorable to the British government, of the effect of the arrangements made by himself in the years 1781 and 1782, in the words following. “Having contrived, by making forced stages, while the troops of my escort marched at the ordinary rate, to make a stay of five days at Benares, I was thereby furnished with the means of acquiring some knowledge of the state of the province, which I am anxious to communicate to you. Indeed, the inquiry, which was in a great degree obtruded upon me, affected me with very mortifying reflections on my inability to apply it to any useful purpose. From the confines of Buxar to Benares I was followed and fatigued by the clamors of the discontented inhabitants. It was what I expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of it. The distresses which were produced by the long-continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration. Of a multitude of petitions which were presented to me, and of which I took minutes, every one that did not relate to a personal grievance contained the representation of one and the same species of oppression, which is
in its nature of an influence most fatal to the future cultivation. The practice to which I allude is this. It is affirmed that the aumils and renters exact from the proprietors of the actual harvest a large increase in kind on their stipulated rent: that is, from those who hold their pottah by the tenure of paying one half of the produce of their crops, either the whole without subterfuge, or a large proportion of it by a false measurement or other pretexts; and from those whose engagements are for a fixed rent in money, the half, or a greater proportion, is taken in kind. This is in effect a tax upon the industry of the inhabitants: since there is scarce a field of grain in the province, I might say not one, which has not been preserved by the incessant labor of the cultivator, by digging wells for their supply, or watering them from the wells of masonry with which their country abounds, or from the neighboring tanks, rivers, and nullahs. The people who imposed on themselves this voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended with expense, did it on the expectation of reaping the profits of it; and it is certain they would not have done it, if they had known that their rulers, from whom they were entitled to an indemnification, would take from them what they had so hardly earned. If the same administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a want of rain, every field will be abandoned, the revenue fail, and thousands perish through want of subsistence: for who will labor for the sole benefit of others, and to make himself the subject of exaction? These practices are to be imputed to the Naib himself” (the administrator forced by the said Warren Hastings on the present Rajah of Benares). “The avowed principle on which he acts, and which he acknowledged to myself, is, that the whole sum fixed for the revenue of the province must be collected, — and that, for this purpose, the deficiency arising in places where the crops have failed, or which have been left uncultivated, must be supplied from the resources of others, where the soil has been better suited to the season, or the industry of the cultivators hath been more successfully exerted: a principle which, however specious and plausible it may at first appear, certainly tends to the most pernicious and destructive consequences. If this declaration of the Naib had been made only to myself, I might have doubted my construction of it; but it was repeated by him to Mr. Anderson, who understood it exactly in the same sense. In the management of the customs, the conduct of the Naib, or of the officer under him, was forced also upon my attention. The exorbitant rates exacted by an arbitrary valuation of the goods, the practice of exacting duties twice on the same goods, (first from the seller, and afterwards from the buyer,) and the vexations, disputes, and delays drawn on the merchants by these oppressions, were loudly complained of; and some instances of this kind were said to exist at the very time I was at Benares. Under such circumstances, we are not to wonder, if the merchants of foreign countries are discouraged from resorting to Benares, and if the commerce of that province should annually decay. Other evils, or imputed evils, have accidentally come to my knowledge, which I will not now particularize, as I hope, that, with the assistance of the Resident, they may be in part corrected. One evil I must mention, because it has been verified by my own observation, and is of that kind which reflects an unmerited reproach on our general and national character. When I was at Buxar, the Resident, at my desire, enjoined the Naib to appoint creditable people to every town through which our route lay, to persuade and encourage the inhabitants to remain in their houses, promising to give them guards as I approached, and they required it for their protection; and that he might perceive how earnest I was for his observation of this precaution, I repeated it to him in person, and dismissed him that he might precede me for that purpose. But, to my great disappointment, I found every place through which I passed abandoned; nor had there been a man left in any of them for their protection. I am sorry to add, that, from Buxar to the opposite boundary, I have seen nothing but traces of complete devastation in every village: whether caused by the followers of the troops which have lately passed, for their natural relief, (and I know not whether my own may not have had their share,) or from the apprehensions of the inhabitants left to themselves, and of themselves deserting their houses. I wish to acquit my own countrymen of the blame of these unfavorable appearances, and in my own heart I do acquit them; for at one encampment a crowd of people came to me complaining that their new aumil (collector), on the approach of any military detachment, himself first fled from the place; and the inhabitants, having no one to whom they could apply for redress, or for the representation of their grievances, and being thus remediless, fled also; so that their houses and effects became a prey to any person who chose to plunder them. The general conclusion appeared to me an inevitable consequence from such a state of facts; and my own senses bore testimony to it in this specific instance: nor do I know how it is possible for any officer commanding a military party, how attentive soever he may be to the discipline and forbearance of his people, to prevent disorders, when there is neither opposition to hinder nor evidence to detect them. These and many other irregularities I impute solely to the Naib, and recommend his instant removal. I cannot help remarking, that, except the city of Benares, the province is in effect without a government. The administration of the province is misconducted, and the people oppressed, trade discouraged, and the revenue in danger of a rapid decline, from the violent appropriation of its means.”