Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  LXXXV. That the old brigade of British troops, which by treaty was to remain, had been directed, by the instructions of the said Hastings to the Resident Middleton and to the Resident Bristow, “not to be employed at the requisition of the Vizier any otherwise than through the Resident”; and the said direction was properly given, — it not being fit that British troops should be under the sole direction of foreign independent princes, or of any other than the British government: yet, notwithstanding the proper and necessary direction aforesaid, he, the said Warren Hastings, hath left the said troops, by his new treaty, without any local control, or even inspection, notwithstanding his powers under the treaty of Chunar, and his own repeated orders, and notwithstanding the mischiefs and dangers which the said Warren Hastings did foresee would result therefrom, if left under the sole direction of the Nabob, and their own discretion, the said Hastings having stipulated with the said Nabob not to exercise any authority, or even influence, secret or avowed, within his dominions.

  LXXXVI. That the crime of the said Warren Hastings, in attempting thus to abandon the British army to the sole discretion of the Nabob of Oude, is exceedingly aggravated by the description given by him severally of the said Nabob of Oude, and of the British army stationed for the defence of his dominions. In his letters to the Court of Directors, and in his Minutes of Consultation, and particularly in his letter of —— , immediately on the accession of the Nabob, he did inform the said Court, “that the Nabob had not, by all accounts, the qualities of the head or heart which fitted him for that office, though there was no dispute concerning his right to succeed”; and some years afterwards, when his accounts must have been rendered more certain, he did, in his Minute of Consultation of the 15th of December, 1779, (regularly transmitted to the Court of Directors,) upon a discussion for withdrawing certain troops kept up in the Nabob’s country without his consent, by him, the said Warren Hastings, strongly urge as follows,— “the necessity of maintaining the influence and force which we possess in the country; that the disorders of his state [the Nabob of Oude’s state] and dissipation of his revenues are the effects of his own conduct, which has failed, not so much from the usual effects of incapacity as from the detestable choice he has made of the ministers of his power and the participation of his confidence. I forbear to expatiate further on his character; it is sufficient that I am understood by the members of this board, who must know the truth of my allusions. Mr. Francis” (a member of the board) “surely was not aware of the injury he did me [Warren Hastings] by attributing to the spirit of party the character I gave Asoph ul Dowlah [the Nabob of Oude]; he himself knows it to be true; and it is one of those notorieties which supersede the necessity of any evidence. I was forced to the allusion I made by the imputation cast on this government, as having caused the evils which prevail in the government of the Nabob of Oude, which I could only answer by ascribing them to their true cause, the character and conduct of the Nabob of Oude.” And the Resident (appointed by the said Hastings, against the orders of the Court of Directors, as his particular confidential representative, one whom the said Nabob did himself request might be continued with him by an engagement in writing forever) did some time before, that is, on the 3d of January, 1779, assure the said Hastings and the Council-General, that “such is his Excellency’s [the Nabob of Oude’s] disposition, and so entirely has he lost the confidence and affections of his subjects, that, unless some restraint is imposed on him which would effectually secure those who live under the protection of his government from violence and oppression, I am but too well convinced that no man of reputation or property will long continue in these provinces”; and that the said Resident proceeds to an instance of oppression and rapine, “out of many of the Nabob’s, which has caused a total disaffection and want of confidence among his subjects: he hoped the board would take it into their humane consideration, and interpose their influence, and prevent an act which would inevitably bring disgrace upon himself, and a proportionable degree of discredit on the national character of the English, which I consider to be more or less concerned in every act of his administration.”

  LXXXVII. That no exception was ever taken by the said Warren Hastings to the truth of the facts, or to the justness of the observation of the said Resident, which he did transmit to the Court of Directors. And the said Warren Hastings, in his letter from Chunar, dated the 29th of November, 1781, speaking of the restraints which had been put by him, the said Hastings, on the Nabob, relative to his own mootiana, or forces for collection and police, and the necessity of giving the Resident a control in the nomination of the officers of his army, has asserted, “that the necessity of the reservation arose from a too well known defect in the Nabob’s character: if this check be withdrawn, and the choice left absolutely to the Nabob, the first commands in his army will be filled with the most worthless and abandoned of his subjects: his late commander-in-chief is a signal and scandalous instance of this.”

  LXXXVIII. And the said Warren Hastings, in his letter to the Court of Directors, dated Benares, the 15th of October, 1784, even after he had made the aforesaid renunciation of the Company’s authority and influence to the Nabob, did write, “that the Nabob, though most gentle in his manners, and endued with an understanding much above the common level, has been unfortunately bred up in habits that draw his attention too much from his own affairs, and often subject him to the guidance of insidious and unworthy confidants”; which, though more decently expressed with regard to the Nabob than in his former minutes, substantially agrees with them. And the said Warren Hastings did inform the Court of Directors, after he had solemnly covenanted to withdraw all the Company’s influence on the assurances and promises of a person so by himself described, that, for reasons grounded on his knowledge of the imbecility of the character of the Nabob, he waited in a frontier town, “that he might be at hand to counteract any attempt to defeat the effect of his proceedings at Lucknow”; and in his letter to Mr. Wheler from the same place he did write in the following words: “I am still near enough to attend to the first effects of the execution, and to interfere with my influence for the removal of any obstructions to which they are or may be liable.” He therefore found that there was none or but an insufficient security to the effect of his treaty, but in his own direct personal violation of it. What otherwise was wanting in the security for the Nabob’s engagements was to be supplied as follows: “The most respectable persons of his family will be employed to counteract every other which may tend to warp him from it; and I am sorry to say that such assistance was wanting.” And in another letter, “that he had equal ground to expect every degree of support which could be given it by the first characters of his family, who are warmly and zealously interested in it”: the principal male character of the family, and of the most influence in that family, being Salar Jung, uncle to the Nabob; and the first female characters of the family being the mother and grandmother of the reigning sovereign: all of whom, male and female, he, the said Warren Hastings, in sundry letters of his own, in the transmission of various official documents, and even in affidavits studiously collected and sworn before Sir Elijah Impey during his short residence at Lucknow and Benares, did himself represent as persons entirely disaffected to the English power in India, — as having been principal promoters, if not original contrivers, of a general rebellion and revolt for the utter extirpation of the English nation, — and as such, he, the said Warren Hastings, did compel the Nabob reluctantly to take from them their landed estates; and yet the said Warren Hastings has had the presumption to attempt to impose on the East India Company by pretending to place his reliance on those three persons for a settlement favorable to the Company’s interests, on his renunciation of all their own power, authority, and influence, and on his leaving their army to the sole and uncontrolled discretion of a stranger, meriting in his opinion the description given by him as aforesaid, as well as by him frequently asserted to be politically incapable of supporting his own power without the aid of
the forces of the Company. And the offence of the said Warren Hastings, in abandoning a considerable part of the British army in the manner aforesaid, is much increased by the description which he has himself given of the state of the said army, and particularly of that part thereof which is stationed in the Nabob of Oude’s dominions: for he did himself, on the 29th of November, 1781, transmit the information following, on that subject, to the Court of Directors, namely,— “that the remote stations of those troops, placing the commanding officers beyond the notice and control of the board [the Council-General] at Calcutta, afforded too much of opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited the contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army. A most remarkable instance and uncontrovertible proof of the prevalence of this spirit has been seen in the court-martial upon Captain Erskine, where the court, composed of officers of rank, and respectable characters, unanimously and honorably, (most honorably,) upon an acknowledged fact, acquitted him, which in times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving the severest punishment.” From which representation (if the said Warren Hastings did not falsely and unjustly accuse and slander the Company’s service) it appeared that the peculation which infected the whole army, derived from the taint which it had in Oude, and so fatal to the discipline of the troops, would be dangerously increased by his treaty and agreement aforesaid with the Nabob, and by his own said evil counsel to the Court of Directors.

  LXXXIX. That it appears, after the said Warren Hastings had, on grounds so disgraceful to the British nation and government, agreed to remove forever the British influence and interference from the government of Oude, on account of the disorders in the said government, solely produced by his own criminal acts and criminal connivances, that he did overturn his own settlement as soon as he had made it, and did, after he had abolished the Company’s Residency, as a grievance, wholly violate his own solemn agreement: for he did, for his private purposes, continue therein his own private agent, Major Palmer, with a number of officers and pensioners, at a charge to the revenues of the country greatly exceeding that of the establishment under Mr. Bristow, which he did represent as frightfully enormous, and which he pretended to remove: the former amounting to 112,950l., the latter only to 64,202l.

  XC. That his own secret agent, Major Palmer, did receive a salary or allowance, equal to 22,800l. a year, out of the distressed province of Oude; and this the said Palmer did declare not to be more than he absolutely did really and bonâ fide spend, and that he had retrenched considerably “in some of the articles since the expense has been borne by the Vizier, and in every particular he made as little parade and appearance as his station would admit,” — his station being that of the said Warren Hastings’s private agent. But if the said large salary must be considered as merely equal to the expenses, large secret emoluments must be presumed to attend it, in order to make it a place advantageous to the holder thereof. That the said Palmer did apply to the board at Calcutta for a new authority to continue the said establishments, — he conceiving their continuance, “after the period of the Governor-General’s departure, depended upon the pleasure of the board, and not upon the authority of the Governor-General, under the sanction of which they were established or confirmed.”

  XCI. That the said Warren Hastings, in order to ruin the Resident Bristow, and to justify himself for his former proceedings respecting him, did bring before the board a new charge against him, for having paid a large establishment of offices and pensions to the Company’s servants from the revenues of Oude; and the said Bristow, in making his defence against the charge aforesaid, did plead, that he had found all the allowances on his list established before his last appointment to the Residency, — that they had grown to that excess in the interval between his first removal by the said Warren Hastings and his reappointment; and having adduced many reasons to make it highly probable that the said Hastings was perfectly well acquainted with it, and did approve of the expensive establishments which he, the said Bristow, simply had paid, but not imposed, he did allege, besides the official assurances of his predecessor, Middleton, certain facts, as amounting to a direct proof that the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, was not averse to the Vizier’s granting large salaries to more than one European gentleman. And the first instance was to Mr. Thomas, a surgeon, who, exclusive of his pay from the Company, which was 1,440l. a year, claimed from the Vizier, with Mr. Hastings’s knowledge, the sum of 9,763l. a year, and upwards, making together 11,203l. per annum. The next was Mr. Trevor Wheler, who did receive, upon the same establishment, when he was Fourth Assistant at Oude, 6,000l. a year; and which last fact the said Hastings has admitted upon record “that the accusations of Mr. Bristow and Mr. Cowper did oblige and compel him to acknowledge,” — denying, at the same time, that the allowances of the Residents Middleton and Bristow, except in this single instance, were ever authorized by him; whereas his own agent, Palmer, did, in his letter of the 27th of March, 1785, represent, that the said salaries and allowances (if not more and larger) were by him authorized or confirmed.

  XCII. That the aforesaid Bristow did also produce the following letter in proof that Mr. Hastings knew and approved of large salaries to British subjects upon the revenues of Oude, and which he did declare that nothing but the necessity of self-defence could have induced him to produce.

  ‘DEAR BRISTOW, —

  “Sir Eyre Coote has some field-allowances to receive from the Vizier; they amount to Sicca Rupees 15,554 per month, and he has been paid up by the Vizier to the 20th of August, 1782. The Governor has directed me to write to you, to request you to receive what is due from the Vizier from the 20th August last, at the rate of Lucknow Sicca Rupees 15,664 per month, and send me a bill for the amount, the receipt of which I will acknowledge in the capacity of Sir Eyre Coote’s attorney; and the Governor desires that you will continue to receive Sir Eyre Coote’s field-allowances at the same rate, and remit the money to me as it comes in.

  (Signed) “CHARLES CROFTES.

  “CALCUTTA, January 25, 1783.”

  XCIII. That Sir Eyre Coote aforesaid was at the time of the said field-allowances not serving in the country of Oude, on which the said allowances were charged, but in the Carnatic.

  XCIV. That, from the declaration of the said Hastings himself, that it was the conviction of Mr. Bristow and Mr. Cowper that could alone oblige and compel him to acknowledge certain of his aforesaid practices, and that nothing but the necessity of self-defence could have induced Mr. Bristow to make public another and much stronger instance of the same, it is to be violently presumed, that, where these two, or either, or both necessities did not exist, many evil and oppressive practices of the said Hastings do remain undiscovered, — that, if it had not been for the contests between him, the said Hastings, and the Resident Bristow, not only the before-mentioned particulars, but the whole of the expensive civil establishments for English servants at Oude, would have been forever concealed from the Directors and from Parliament: and yet the said Hastings has had the audacity to pretend so complete an ignorance of the facts, that, representing the Vizier as objecting to the largeness of the payments made by Bristow, and stating a very reduced list, which he was willing to allow for, amounting to 30,000l. a year, the said Hastings did affect to be alarmed at the magnitude even of the list so curtailed, expressing himself as follows, in his minute of the 7th of December, 1784: “For my own part, when the Vizier’s minister first informed me that the amount which his master had authorized, and was willing to admit, for the charges of the Residency, and the allowances of the gentlemen at Lucknow, was 25,000 rupees per month, I own I was startled at the magnitude of the sum, and was some days hesitating in my mind whether I could with propriety admit of it”: whereas he well knew that the three sums alone of which the necessities aforesaid had compelled the discovery did greatly exceed that sum of which at the first hearing he affects to have been so exceedingly alarmed and thrown into a state of hesitation which continue
d for some days, and although he, the said Hastings, was conscious that he had at the very time authorized an establishment to more than four times the amount thereof.