by Edmund Burke
“That his rank ought to be such as at least ought not to wound the Nabob’s honor, or lessen his credit in the estimation of the people, by the magisterial command which the new guardian must exercise over him, — with abilities and vigor of mind equal to the support of that authority; and the world will expect that the guardian be especially qualified by his own acquired endowments to discharge the duties of that relation in the education of his young pupil, to inspire him with sentiments suitable to his birth, and to instruct him in the principles of his religion.”
This, upon another occasion, is Mr. Hastings’s sense of the man who ought to be placed in that situation of trust in which the Company ordered him to place him. Did Mr. Hastings obey that order? No, my Lords, he appointed no man to fill that office. What, no man at all? No, he appointed no person at all in the sense which is mentioned there, which constantly describes a person at least of the male sex: he appointed a woman to fill that office; he appointed a woman, in a country where no woman can be seen, where no woman can be spoken to by any one without a curtain between them; for all these various duties, requiring all these qualifications described by himself, he appointed a woman. Do you want more proof than this violent transgression of the Company’s orders upon that occasion that some corrupt motive must have influenced him?
My Lords, it is necessary for me to state the situation of the family, that you may judge from thence of the corrupt motives of Mr. Hastings’s proceedings. The Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân had among the women of his seraglio a person called Munny Begum. She was a dancing-girl, whom he had seen at some entertainment; and as he was of a licentious turn, this dancing-girl, in the course of her profession as a prostitute, so far inveigled the Nabob, that, having a child or pretending to have had a child by him, he brought her into the seraglio; and the Company’s servants sold to that son the succession of that father. This woman had been sold as a slave, — her profession a dancer, her occupation a prostitute. And, my Lords, this woman having put her natural son, as we state, and shall prove, in the place of the legitimate offspring of the Nabob, having got him placed by the Company’s servants on the musnud, she came to be at the head of that part of the household which relates to the women: which is a large and considerable trust in a country where polygamy is admitted, and where women of great rank may possibly be attended by two thousand of the same sex in inferior situations. As soon as the legitimate son of the Nabob came to the musnud, there was no ground for keeping this woman any longer in that situation; and upon an application of the Company to Mahomed Reza Khân to know who ought to have the right of superiority, he answered, as he ought to have done, that, though all the women of the seraglio ought to have honor, yet the mother of the Nabob ought to have the superiority of it. Therefore this woman was removed, and the mother of the Nabob was placed in her situation. In that situation Mr. Hastings found the seraglio. If his duties had gone no further than the regulation of an Eastern household, he ought to have kept the Nabob’s mother there by the rules of that country.
What did he do? Not satisfied with giving to this prostitute every favor that she could desire, (and money must be the natural object of such a person,) Mr. Hastings deposes the Nabob’s own mother, turns her out of the employment, and puts at the head of the seraglio this prostitute, who at the best, in relation to him, could only be a step-mother. If you heard no more, do your Lordships want anything further to convince you that this must be a violent, atrocious, and corrupt act, — suppose it had gone no further than the seraglio? But when I call this woman a dancing-girl, I state something lower than Europeans have an idea of respecting that situation. She was born a slave, bred a dancing-girl. Her dancing was not any of those noble and majestic movements which make part of the entertainment of the most wise, of the education of the most virtuous, which improve the manners without corrupting the morals of all civilized people, and of which, among uncivilized people, the professors have their due share of admiration; but these dances were not decent to be seen nor fit to be related. I shall pass them by. Your Lordships are to suppose the lowest degree of infamy in occupation and situation, when I tell you that Munny Begum was a slave and a dancing-girl.
The history of the Munny Begum is this. “At a village called Balkonda, near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty, not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave-girl belonging to Summin Ali Khân, whose name was Bissoo. During the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah, brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg’s set of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one, and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance at the wedding. While the ceremony was celebrating, they were kept by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner has she remained in the Nabob’s family ever since.”
Now it required a very peculiar mode of selection to take such a woman, so circumstanced, (resembling whom there was not just such another,) to depose the Nabob’s own mother from the superiority of the household, and to substitute this woman. It would have been an abominable abuse, and would have implied corruption in the grossest degree, if Mr. Hastings had stopped there. He not only did this, but he put her, this woman, in the very place of Mahomed Reza Khân: he made her guardian, he made her regent, he made her viceroy, he made her the representative of the native government of the country in the eyes of strangers. There was not a trust, not a dignity in the country, which he did not put, during the minority of this unhappy person, her step-son, into the hands of this woman.
Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a man fit to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân, to exercise all the great and arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the regulation of the Nabob’s household; and then I will venture to say, that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the corruption was. Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was before heard of: a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the Nabob had sprung.
These are circumstances that leave no doubt of the grossest and most flagrant corruption. But was there no application made to Mr. Hastings upon that occasion? The Nabob’s uncle, whom Mr. Hastings declares to be a man of no dangerous ambition, no alarming parts, no one quality that could possibly exclude him from that situation, makes an application to Mr. Hastings for that place, and was by Mr. Hastings rejected. The reason he gives for his rejection is, because he cannot put any man in it without danger to the Company, who had ordered him to put a man into it. One would imagine the trust to be placed in him was such as enabled him to overturn the Company in a moment. Now the situation in which the Nabob’s uncle, Yeteram ul Dowlah, would have been placed was this: he would have had no troops, he would have had no treasury, he would have had no collections of revenue, nothing, in short, that could have made him dangerous, but he would have been an absolute pensioner and dependant upon the Company, though in high office; and the least attempt to disturb the Company, instead of increasing, would have been subversive of his own power. If Mr. Hastings should still insist that there might be danger from the appointment of a man, we shall prove that he was of opinion th
at there could be no danger from any one, — that the Nabob himself was a mere shadow, a cipher, and was kept there only to soften the English government in the eyes and opinion of the natives.
My Lords, I will detail these circumstances no further, but will bring some collateral proofs to show that Mr. Hastings was at that very time conscious of the wicked and corrupt act he was doing. For, besides this foolish principle of policy, which he gives as a reason for defying the orders of the Company, and for insulting the country, that had never before seen a woman in that situation, and his declaration to the Company, that their government cannot be supported by private justice, (a favorite maxim, which he holds upon all occasions,) besides these reasons which he gave for his politic injustice, he gives the following. The Company had ordered that 30,000l. should be given to the person appointed. He knew that the Company could never dream of giving this woman 30,000l. a year, and he makes use of that circumstance to justify him in putting her in that place: for he says, the Company, in the distressed state of its affairs, could never mean to give 30,000l. a year for the office which they order to be filled; and accordingly, upon principles of economy, as well as upon principles of prudence, he sees there could be no occasion for giving this salary, and that it will be saved to the Company. But no sooner had he given her the appointment than that appointment became a ground for giving her that money. The moment he had appointed her, he overturns the very principle upon which he had appointed her, and gives the 30,000l. to her, and the officers under her, saving not one shilling to the Company by this infamous measure, which he justified only upon the principle of economy. The 30,000l. was given, the principle of economy vanished, a shocking arrangement was made, and Bengal saw a dancing-girl administering its justice, presiding over all its remaining power, wealth, and influence, exhibiting to the natives of the country their miserable state of degradation, and the miserable dishonor of the English Company in Mr. Hastings’s abandonment of all his own pretences.
But there is a still stronger presumption. The Company ordered that this person, who was to have the management of the Nabob’s revenue, and who was to be his guardian, should keep a strict account, which account should be annually transmitted to the Presidency, and by the Presidency to Europe; and the purpose of it was, to keep a control upon the reduced expenses of the sixteen lac which were ordered in the manner I mentioned. Your Lordships will naturally imagine that that control was kept safe. No, here is the order of the Directors, and you will see how Mr. Hastings obeyed it.
“As the disbursement of the sums allotted to the Nabob for the maintenance of his household and family and the support of his dignity will pass through the hands of the minister who shall be selected by you, conformable to our preceding orders, we expect that you will require such minister to deliver annually to your board a regular and exact account of the application of the several sums paid by the Company to the Nabob. This you will strictly examine; and we trust that you will not suffer any part of the Nabob’s stipend to be appropriated to the minister’s own use, or wasted among the unnecessary dependants of the court, but that the whole amount be applied to the purposes for which it was assigned by us.”
One would have imagined, that, after Mr. Hastings had made so suspicious an arrangement, (I will not call it by any worse name,) he would have removed all suspicion with regard to money, — that he would have obeyed the Company by constituting the control which they had ordered to be placed over a man, even a fit man, and a man worthy of the trust committed to him. But what is his answer, when three years after he is desired to produce this account? His answer is,— “I can save the board the trouble of this reference by acquainting them that no such accounts have ever been transmitted, nor, as I can affirm with most certain knowledge, any orders given for that purpose, either to Gourdas, to whose office it did not properly belong, nor to the Begum, who had the actual charge and responsibility of those disbursements.”
He has given to this woman the charge of all the disbursements of the Company; the officer whom you would imagine would be responsible was not responsible, but to this prostitute and dancing-girl the whole of the revenue was given; when he was ordered to transmit that account, he not only did not produce that account, but had given no order that it should be kept: so that no doubt can be left upon your Lordships’ minds, that the sixteen lac, which were reserved for the support of the dignity of the government of that country, were employed for the purpose of Mr. Hastings’s having a constant bank, from which he should draw every corrupt emolument he should think fit for himself and his associates. Thus your Lordships see that he appointed an improper person to the trust without any control, and that the very accounts which were to be the guardians of his purity, and which were to remove suspicion from him, he never so much as directed or ordered. If any one can doubt that that transaction was in itself corrupt, I can only say that his mind must be constituted in a manner totally different from that which prevails in any of the higher or lower branches of judicature in any country in the world. The suppression of an account is a proof of corruption.
When Mr. Hastings committed these acts of violence against Mahomed Reza Khân, when he proceeded to make arrangements in the Company’s affairs of the same kind with those in which corruption had been before exercised, he was bound by a particular responsibility that there should be nothing mysterious in his own conduct, and that at least all the accounts should be well kept. He appointed a person nominally for that situation, — namely, the Rajah Gourdas. Who was he? A person acting, he says, under the influence of Rajah Nundcomar, whom he had declared was not fit to be employed or trusted: all the offices were filled by him. But had Rajah Gourdas, whose character is that of an excellent man, against whom there could lie no reasonable objection on account of his personal character, and whose want of talents was to be supplied by those of Nundcomar, (and of his parts Mr. Hastings spoke as highly as possible,) — had he, I say, the management? No: but Munny Begum. Did she keep any accounts? No.
Mr. Hastings was ordered, and a very disagreeable and harsh order it was, to take away one half of the Nabob’s allowance which he had by treaty. I do not charge Mr. Hastings with this reduction: he had nothing to do with that. Sixteen lac were cut off, and sixteen left; these two sums had been distributed, one for the support of the seraglio and the dignity of the state, the other for the court establishment and the household. The sixteen lac which was left, therefore, required to be well economized, and well administered. There was a rigor in the Company’s order relative to it, which was, that it should take place from an antedated time, that is, a whole year prior to the communication of their order to the Nabob. The order was, that the Nabob’s stipend should be reduced to sixteen lac a year from the month of January. Mr. Hastings makes this reflection upon it, in order to leave no doubt upon your mind of his integrity in administering that great trust: he says, —
“Your order for the reduction of the Nabob’s stipend was communicated to him in the month of December, 1771. He remonstrated against it, and desired it might be again referred to the Company. The board entirely acquiesced in his remonstrance, and the subsequent payments of his stipend were paid as before. I might easily have availed myself of this plea. I might have treated it as an act of the past government, with which I had no cause to interfere, and joined in asserting the impossibility of his defraying the vast expense of his court and household without it, which I could have proved by plausible arguments, drawn from the actual amount of the nizamut and bhela establishments; and both the Nabob and Begum would have liberally purchased my forbearance. Instead of pursuing this plan, I carried your orders rigidly and literally into execution. I undertook myself the laborious and reproachful task of limiting his charges, from an excess of his former stipend, to the sum of his reduced allowance.”
He says in another place,— “The stoppage of the king’s tribute was an act of mine, and I have been often reproached with it. It was certainly in my power to have continued the payment
of it, and to have made my terms with the king for any part of it which I might have chosen to reserve for my own use. He would have thanked me for the remainder.”
My Lords, I believe it is a singular thing, and what your Lordships have been very little used to, to see a man in the situation of Mr. Hastings, or in any situation like it, so ready in knowing all the resources by which sinister emolument may be made and concealed, and which, under pretences of public good, may be transferred into the pocket of him who uses those pretences. He is resolved, if he is innocent, that his innocence shall not proceed from ignorance. He well knows the ways of falsifying the Company’s accounts; he well knows the necessities of the natives, and he knows that by paying a part of their dues they will be ready to give an acquittance of the whole. These are parts of Mr. Hastings’s knowledge of which your Lordships will see he also well knows how to avail himself.
But you would expect, when he reduced the allowance to sixteen lac, and took credit to himself as if he had done the thing which he professed, and had argued from his rigor and cruelty his strict and literal obedience to the Company, that he had in reality done it. The very reverse: for it will be in proof, that, after he had pretended to reduce the Company’s allowance, he continued it a twelvemonth from the day in which he said he had entirely executed it, to the amount of 90,000l., and entered a false account of the suppression in the Company’s accounts; and when he has taken a credit as under pretence of reducing that allowance, he paid 90,000l. more than he ought. Can you, then, have a doubt, after all these false pretences, after all this fraud, fabrication, and suppression which he made use of, that that 90,000l., of which he kept no account and transmitted no account, was money given to himself for his own private use and advantage?