Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  A man might be convicted as a conspirator, and yet afterwards live; he might put the matter into other hands, and go on with his information; nothing less than stone-dead would do the business. And here happened an odd concurrence of circumstances. Long before Nundcomar preferred his charge, he knew that Mr. Hastings was plotting his ruin, and that for this purpose he had used a man whom he, Nundcomar, had turned out of doors, called Mohun Persaud. Mr. Hastings had seen papers put upon the board, charging him with this previous plot for the destruction of Nundcomar; and this identical person, Mohun Persaud, whom Nundcomar had charged as Mr. Hastings’s associate in plotting his ruin, was now again brought forward as the principal evidence against him. I will not enter (God forbid I should!) into the particulars of the subsequent trial of Nundcomar; but you will find the marks and characters of it to be these. You will find a close connection between Mr. Hastings and the chief-justice, which we shall prove. We shall prove that one of the witnesses who appeared there was a person who had been before, or has since been, concerned with Mr. Hastings in his most iniquitous transactions. You will find, what is very odd, that in this trial for forgery with which this man stood charged, forgery in a private transaction, all the persons who were witnesses or parties to it had been, before or since, the particular friends of Mr. Hastings, — in short, persons from that rabble with whom Mr. Hastings was concerned, both before and since, in various transactions and negotiations of the most criminal kind. But the law took its course. I have nothing more to say than that the man is gone, — hanged justly, if you please; and that it did so happen, — luckily for Mr. Hastings, — it so happened, that the relief of Mr. Hastings, and the justice of the court, and the resolution never to relax its rigor, did all concur just at a happy nick of time and moment; and Mr. Hastings, accordingly, had the full benefit of them all.

  His accuser was supposed to be what men may be, and yet very competent for accusers, namely, one of his accomplices in guilty actions, — one of those persons who may have a great deal to say of bribes. All that I contend for is, that he was in the closest intimacy with Mr. Hastings, was in a situation for giving bribes, — and that Mr. Hastings was proved afterwards to have received a sum of money from him, which may be well referred to bribes.

  This example had its use in the way in which it was intended to operate, and in which alone it could operate. It did not discourage forgeries: they went on at their usual rate, neither more nor less: but it put an end to all accusations against all persons in power for any corrupt practice. Mr. Hastings observes, that no man in India complains of him. It is generally true. The voice of all India is stopped. All complaint was strangled with the same cord that strangled Nundcomar. This murdered not only that accuser, but all future accusation; and not only defeated, but totally vitiated and reversed all the ends for which this country, to its eternal and indelible dishonor, had sent out a pompous embassy of justice to the remotest parts of the globe.

  But though Nundcomar was put out of the way by the means by which he was removed, a part of the charge was not strangled with him. Whilst the process against Nundcomar was carrying on before Sir Elijah Impey, the process was continuing against Mr. Hastings in other modes; the receipt of a part of those bribes from Munny Begum, to the amount of 15,000l., was proved against him, and that a sum to the same amount was to be paid to his associate, Mr. Middleton. As it was proved at Calcutta, so it will be proved at your Lordships’ bar to your entire satisfaction by records and living testimony now in England. It was, indeed, obliquely admitted by Mr. Hastings himself.

  The excuse for this bribe, fabricated by Mr. Hastings, and taught to Munny Begum, when he found that she was obliged to prove it against him, was, that it was given to him for his entertainment, according to some pretended custom, at the rate of 200l. sterling a day, whilst he remained at Moorshedabad. My Lords, this leads me to a few reflections on the apology or defence of this bribe. We shall certainly, I hope, render it clear to your Lordships that it was not paid in this manner as a daily allowance, but given in a gross sum. But take it in his own way, it was no less illegal, and no less contrary to his covenant; but if true under the circumstances, it was an horrible aggravation of his crime. The first thing that strikes is, that visits from Mr. Hastings are pretty severe things, and hospitality at Moorshedabad is an expensive virtue, though for provision it is one of the cheapest countries in the universe. No wonder that Mr. Hastings lengthened his visit, and made it extend near three months. Such hosts and such guests cannot be soon parted. Two hundred pounds a day for a visit! It is at the rate of 78,000l. a year for himself; and as I find his companion was put on the same allowance, it will be 146,000l. a year for hospitality to two English gentlemen. I believe that there is not a prince in Europe who goes to such expensive hospitality of splendor.

  But that you may judge of the true nature of this hospitality of corruption, I must bring before you the business of the visitor and the condition of the host, as stated by Mr. Hastings himself, who best knows what he was doing. He was, then, at the old capital of Bengal at the time of this expensive entertainment, on a business of retrenchment, and for the establishment of a most harsh, rigorous, and oppressive economy. He wishes the task were assigned to spirits of a less gentle kind. By Mr. Hastings’s account, he was giving daily and hourly wounds to his humanity in depriving of their sustenance hundreds of persons of the ancient nobility of a great fallen kingdom. Yet it was in the midst of this galling duty, it was at that very moment of his tender sensibility, that, from the collected morsels plucked from the famished mouths of hundreds of decayed, indigent, and starving nobility, he gorged his ravenous maw with 200l. a day for his entertainment. In the course of all this proceeding your Lordships will not fail to observe he is never corrupt, but he is cruel; he never dines with comfort, but where he is sure to create a famine. He never robs from the loose superfluity of standing greatness; he devours the fallen, the indigent, the necessitous. His extortion is not like the generous rapacity of the princely eagle, who snatches away the living, struggling prey; he is a vulture, who feeds upon the prostrate, the dying, and the dead. As his cruelty is more shocking than his corruption, so his hypocrisy has something more frightful than his cruelty; for whilst his bloody and rapacious hand signs proscriptions, and now sweeps away the food of the widow and the orphan, his eyes overflow with tears, and he converts the healing balm that bleeds from wounded humanity into a rancorous and deadly poison to the race of man.

  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 miserabl
e 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 o
f 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.