Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  That, besides the sums charged to have been paid to the said Warren Hastings by the said Nundcomar and Munny Begum and Khân Jehan Khân, and besides the sum of one hundred and ten thousand pounds already mentioned to have been accepted without hesitation by him, as a present on the part of the Nabob of Oude and that of his ministers, the circumstances of which have been particularly reported to the House of Commons, it appears by the confession of the said Warren Hastings, that he has at different times since the promulgation of the act of 1773, received various other sums, contrary to the express prohibition of the said act, and his own declared sense of the evident intent and obligation thereof. — That in the month of June, 1780, the said Warren Hastings made to the Council what he called “a very unusual tender, by offering to exonerate the Company from the expense of a particular measure, and to take it upon himself; declaring that he had already deposited two lacs of rupees [or twenty-three thousand pounds] in the hands of the Company’s sub-treasurer for that service.” That in a subsequent letter, dated the 29th of November, 1780, he informed the Court of Directors, that “this money, by whatever means it came into their possession, was not his own”; but he did not then, nor has he at any time since, made known to the Court of Directors from whom or on what account he received that money, as it was his duty to have done in the first instance, and notwithstanding the said Directors signified to him their expectation that he should communicate to them “immediate information of the channel by which this money came into his possession, with a complete illustration of the cause or causes of so extraordinary an event.” But, from evidence examined in England, it has been discovered that this money was received by the said Warren Hastings from Cheyt Sing, the Rajah of Benares, who was soon after dispossessed of all his property and driven from his country and government by the said Warren Hastings. That, notwithstanding the declaration made by the said Warren Hastings, that he had actually deposited the sum above mentioned in the hands of the Company’s sub-treasurer for their service, it does not appear that “any entry whatsoever of that or any other payment by the Governor-General was made in the Treasury accounts at or about the time,” nor is there any trace in the Company’s books of its being actually paid into their treasury. It appears, then, by the confession of the said Warren Hastings, that this money was received by him; but it does not appear that he has converted it to the property and use of the Company.

  That in a letter from the said Warren Hastings to the said Court of Directors, dated the 22d of May, 1782, but not dispatched, as it might and ought to have been, at that time, but detained and kept back by the said Warren Hastings till the 16th of December following, he has confessed the receipt of various other sums, amounting (with that which he accepted from the Nabob of Oude) to nearly two hundred thousand pounds, which sums he affirmed had been converted to the Company’s property through his means, but without discovering from whom or on what account he received the same. That, instead of converting this money to the Company’s property, as he affirmed he had done, it appears that he had lent the greater part of it to the Company upon bonds bearing interest, which bonds were demanded and received by him, and, for aught that yet appears, have never been given up or cancelled. That for another considerable part of the above-mentioned sum he has taken credit to himself, as for a deposit of his own property, and therefore demandable by him out of the Company’s treasury at his discretion. That all sums so lent or deposited are not alienated from the person who lends or deposits the same; consequently, that the declaration made by the said Warren Hastings, that he had converted the whole of these sums to the Company’s property, was not true. Nor would such a transfer, if it had really been made, have justified the said Warren Hastings in originally receiving the money, which, being in the first instance contrary to law, could not be rendered legal by any subsequent disposition or application thereof; much less would it have justified the said Warren Hastings in delaying to make a discovery of these transactions to the Court of Directors until he had heard of the inquiries then begun and proceeding in Parliament, in finally making a discovery, such as it is, in terms the most intricate, obscure, and contradictory. That, instead of that full and clear explanation of his conduct which the Court of Directors demanded, and which the said Warren Hastings was bound to give them, he has contented himself with telling the said Directors, that, “if this matter was to be exposed to the view of the public, his reasons for acting as he had done might furnish a variety of conjectures to which it would be of little use to reply; that he either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which his memory could at that distance of time verify; and that he could have concealed them from their eye and that of the public forever.” That the discovery, as far as it goes, establishes the guilt of the said Warren Hastings in taking money against law, but does not warrant a conclusion that he has discovered all that he may have taken; that, on the contrary, such discovery, not being made in proper time, and when made being imperfect, perplexed, and wholly unsatisfactory, leads to a just and reasonable presumption that other facts of the same nature have been concealed, since those which he has confessed might have been forever, and that this partial confession was either extorted from the said Warren Hastings by the dread of detection, or made with a view of removing suspicion, and preventing any further inquiry into his conduct.

  That the said Warren Hastings, in a letter to the Court of Directors dated 21st of February, 1784, has confessed his having privately received another sum of money, the amount of which he has not declared, but which, from the application he says he has made of it, could not be less than thirty-four thousand pounds sterling. That he has not informed the Directors from whom he received this money, at what time, nor on what account; but, on the contrary, has attempted to justify the receipt of it, which was illegal, by the application of it, which was unauthorized and unwarrantable, and which, if admitted as a reason for receiving money privately, would constitute a precedent of the most dangerous nature to the Company’s service. That, in attempting to justify the receipt and application of the said money, he has endeavored to establish principles of conduct in a Governor which tend to subvert all order and regularity in the conduct of public business, to encourage and facilitate fraud and corruption in all offices of pecuniary trust, and to defeat all inquiry into the misconduct of any person in whom pecuniary trust is reposed. — That the said Warren Hastings, in his letter above mentioned, has made a declaration to the Court of Directors in the following terms: “Having had occasion to disburse from my own cash many sums, which, though required to enable me to execute the duties of my station, I have hitherto omitted to enter in my public accounts, and my own fortune being unequal to so heavy a charge, I have resolved to reimburse myself in a mode the most suitable to the situation of your affairs, by charging the same in my Durbar accounts of the present year, and crediting them by a sum privately received, and appropriated to your service in the same manner with other sums received on account of the Honorable Company, and already carried to their account.” That at the time of writing this letter the said Warren Hastings had been in possession of the government of Fort William about twelve years, with a clear salary, or avowed emoluments, at no time less than twenty-five thousand pounds sterling a year, exclusive of which all the principal expenses of his residence were paid for by the Company. That, if the services mentioned by him were required to enable him to execute the duties of his station, he ought not to have omitted to enter them in his public accounts at the times when the expenses were incurred. That, if it was true, as he affirms, that, when he first engaged in these expenses, he had no intention to carry them to the account of the Company, there was no subsequent change in his situation which could justify his departing from that intention. That, if his own fortune in the year 1784 was unequal to so heavy a charge, the state of his fortune at any earlier period must have been still more unequal to so heavy a charge.
That the fact so asserted by the said Warren Hastings leads directly to an inference palpably false and absurd, viz., that, the longer a Governor-General holds that lucrative office, the poorer he must become. That neither would the assertion, if it were true, nor the inference, if it were admitted, justify the conduct avowed by the said Warren Hastings in resolving to reimburse himself out of the Company’s property without their consent or knowledge. — That the account transmitted in this letter is styled by himself an aggregate of a contingent account of twelve years; that all contingent accounts should be submitted to those who ought to have an official control over them, at annual or other shorter periods, in order that the expense already incurred may be checked and examined, and similar expenses, if disapproved of, may be prohibited in time; that, after a very long period is elapsed, all check and control over such expenses is impracticable, and, if it were practicable in the present instance, would be completely useless, since the said Warren Hastings, without waiting for the consent of the Directors, did resolve to reimburse himself. That the conduct of the said Warren Hastings, in withholding these accounts for twelve years together, and then resolving to reimburse himself without the consent of his employers, has been fraudulent in the first instance, and in the second amounts to a denial and mockery of the authority placed over him by law; and that he has thereby set a dangerous example to his successors, and to every man in trust or office under him. — That the mode in which he has reimbursed himself is a crime of a much higher order, and greatly aggravates whatever was already criminal in the other parts of this transaction. That the said Warren Hastings, in declaring that he should reimburse himself by crediting the Company by a sum privately received, has acknowledged himself guilty of an illegal act in receiving money privately. That he has suppressed or withheld every particular which could throw any light on a conduct so suspicious in a Governor as the private receipt of money. That the general confession of the private receipt of a large sum in gross, in which no circumstance of time, place, occasion, or person, nor even the amount, is specified, tends to cover or protect any act of the same nature (as far as a general confession can protect such acts) which may be detected hereafter, and which in fact may not make part of the gross sum so confessed, and that it tends to perplex and defeat all inquiry into such practices. — That the said Warren Hastings, in stating to the Directors that he has resolved to reimburse himself in a mode the most suitable to the situation of their affairs, viz., by receiving money privately against law, has stated a presumption highly injurious to the integrity of the said Directors, viz., that they will not object to, or even inquire into, any extraordinary expenses incurred and charged by their Governors in India, provided such expenses are reimbursed by money privately and illegally received. That he has not explained what that situation of their affairs was or could be to which so dangerous and corrupt a principle was or might be applied. — That no evidence has been produced to prove that it was true, nor any ground of argument stated to show that it might be credible, that any native of India had voluntarily and gratuitously given money privately to the said Warren Hastings, that is, without some prospect of a benefit in return, or some dread of his resentment, if he refused. That it is not a thing to be believed, that any native would give large sums privately to a Governor, which he refused to give or lend publicly to government, unless it were to derive some adequate secret advantage from the favor, or to avoid some mischief from the enmity of such Governor. — That the late confessions made by the said Warren Hastings of money received against law are no proof that he did not originally intend to appropriate the same to his own use, such confessions having been made at a suspicious moment, when, and not before, he was apprised of the inquiries commenced in the House of Commons, and when a dread of the consequence of those inquiries might act upon his mind. That such confessions, from the obscure, intricate, and contradictory manner in which they are made, imply guilt in the said Warren Hastings, as far as they go; that they do not furnish any color of reason to conclude that he has confessed all the money which he may have corruptly received; but that, on the contrary, they warrant a just and reasonable presumption, that, in discovering some part of the bribes he had received, he hoped to lull suspicion, and thereby conceal and secure the rest.

  That the Court of Directors, when the former accounts of these transactions came before them, did show an evident disposition not to censure the said Warren Hastings, but to give the most favorable construction to his conduct; that, nevertheless, they found themselves obliged “to confess that the statement of those transactions appeared to them in many parts so unintelligible, that they felt themselves under the necessity of calling on the Governor-General for an explanation, agreeably to his promise voluntarily made to them.” That their letter, containing this requisition, was received in Bengal in the month of August, 1784, and that the said Warren Hastings did not embark for England until the 2d of February, 1785, but made no reply to that letter before his departure, owing, as he has since said, to a variety of other more important occupations. That, under pretence of such occupations, he neglected to transmit to the Court of Directors a copy of a paper which, he says, contained the only account he ever kept of the transaction. That such a paper, or a copy of it, might have been transmitted without interrupting other important occupations, if any could be more important than that of giving a clear and satisfactory answer to the requisition of the Directors. That since his arrival in England he has written a letter to the chairman of that court, professedly in answer to their letter above mentioned, but in fact giving no explanation or satisfaction whatsoever on the points which they had declared to be unintelligible. That the terms of his letter are ambiguous and obscure, such as a guilty man might have recourse to in order to cover his guilt, but such as no innocent man, from whom nothing was required but to clear his innocence by giving plain answers to plain questions, could possibly have made use of. That in his letter of the 11th of July, 1785, he says, “that he has been kindly apprised that the information required as above was yet expected from him: that the submission which his respect would have enjoined him to pay to the command imposed on him was lost to his recollection, perhaps from the stronger impression which the first and distant perusal of it had left on his mind that it was rather intended as a reprehension for something which had given offence in his report of the original transaction than as expressive of any want of a further elucidation of it.”