by Edmund Burke
This is all that I think necessary to state to your Lordships upon this monstrous part of the arrangement; and therefore, from his rigorous obedience in cases of cruelty, and, where control was directed, from his total disobedience, and from his choice of persons, from his suppression of the accounts that ought to have been produced, and falsifying the accounts that were kept, there arises a strong inference of corruption. When your Lordships see all this in proof, your Lordships will justify me in saying that there never was (taking every part of the arrangement) such a direct, open violation of any trust. — I shall say no more with regard to the appointment of Munny Begum.
My Lords, here ended the first scene, and here ends that body of presumption arising from the transaction and inherent in it. My Lords, the next scene that I am to bring before you is the positive proof of corruption in this transaction, in which I am sure you already see that corruption must exist. The charge was brought by a person in the highest trust and confidence with Mr. Hastings, a person employed in the management of the whole transaction, a person to whom the management, subordinate to Munny Begum, of all the pecuniary transactions, and all the arrangements made upon that occasion, was intrusted.
On the 11th day of March, 1775, Nundcomar gives to Mr. Francis, a member of the Council, a charge against Mr. Hastings, consisting of two parts. The first of these charges was a vast number of corrupt dealings, with respect to which he was the informer, not the witness, but to which he indicated the modes of inquiry; and they are corrupt dealings, as Mr. Hastings himself states them, amounting to millions of rupees, and in transactions every one of which implies in it the strongest degree of corruption. The next part was of those to which he was not only an informer, but a witness, in having been the person who himself transmitted the money to Mr. Hastings and the agents of Mr. Hastings; and accordingly, upon this part, which is the only part we charge, his evidence is clear and full, that he gave the money to Mr. Hastings, — he and the Begum (for I put them together). He states, that Mr. Hastings received for the appointment of Munny Begum to the rajahship two lacs of rupees, or about 22,000l., and that he received in another gross sum one lac and a half of rupees: in all making three lac and a half, or about 36,000l. This charge was signed by the man, and accompanied with the account.
Mr. Hastings, on that day, made no reflection or observation whatever upon this charge, except that he attempted to excite some suspicion that Mr. Francis, who had produced it, was concerned in the charge, and was the principal mover in it. He asks Mr. Francis that day this question: —
“The Governor-General observes, as Mr. Francis has been pleased to inform the board that he was unacquainted with the contents of the letter sent in to the board by Nundcomar, that he thinks himself justified in carrying his curiosity further than he should have permitted himself without such a previous intimation, and therefore begs leave to ask Mr. Francis whether he was before this acquainted with Nundcomar’s intention of bringing such charges against him before the board.
“Mr. Francis. — As a member of this Council, I do not deem myself obliged to answer any question of mere curiosity. I am willing, however, to inform the Governor-General, that, though I was totally unacquainted with the contents of the paper I have now delivered in to the board till I heard it read, I did apprehend in general that it contained some charge against him. It was this apprehension that made me so particularly cautious in the manner of receiving the Rajah’s letter. I was not acquainted with Rajah Nundcomar’s intention of bringing in such charges as are mentioned in the letter.
“WARREN HASTINGS.
J. CLAVERING.
GEO. MONSON.
P. FRANCIS.”
Now what the duty of Mr. Hastings and the Council was, upon receiving such information, I shall beg leave to state to your Lordships from the Company’s orders; but, before I read them, I must observe, that, in pursuance of an act of Parliament, which was supposed to be made upon account of the neglect of the Company, as well as the neglects of their servants, and for which general neglects responsibility was fixed upon the Company for the future, while for the present their authority was suspended, and a Parliamentary commission sent out to regulate their affairs, the Company did, upon that occasion, send out a general code and body of instructions to be observed by their servants, in the 35th paragraph of which it is said, —
“We direct that you immediately cause the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions which may have been committed either against the natives or Europeans, and into all abuses that may have prevailed in the collection of the revenues, or any part of the civil government of the Presidency: and that you communicate to us all information which you may be able to learn relative thereto, or to any dissipation or embezzlement of the Company’s money.”
Your Lordships see here that there is a direct duty fixed upon them to forward, to promote, to set on foot, without exception of any persons whatever, an inquiry into all manner of corruption, peculation, and oppression. Therefore this charge of Nundcomar’s was a case exactly within the Company’s orders; such a charge was not sought out, but was actually laid before them; but if it had not been actually laid before them, if they had any reason to suspect that such corruptions existed, they were bound by this order to make an active inquiry into them.
Upon that day (11th March, 1775) nothing further passed; and, on the part of Mr. Hastings, that charge, as far as we can find, might have stood upon the records forever, without his making the smallest observation upon it, or taking any one step to clear his own character. But Nundcomar was not so inattentive to his duties as an accuser as Mr. Hastings was to his duties as an inquirer; for, without a moment’s delay, upon the first board-day, two days after, Nundcomar came and delivered the following letter.
“I had the honor to lay before you, in a letter of the 11th instant, an abstracted, but true account of the Honorable Governor in the course of his administration. What is there written I mean not the least to alter: far from it. I have the strongest written vouchers to produce in support of what I have advanced; and I wish and entreat, for my honor’s sake, that you will suffer me to appear before you, to establish the fact by an additional, incontestable evidence.”
My Lords, I will venture to say, if ever there was an accuser that appeared well and with weight before any court, it was this man. He does not shrink from his charge; he offered to meet the person he charged face to face, and to make good his charge by his own evidence, and further evidence that he should produce. Your Lordships have also seen the conduct of Mr. Hastings on the first day; you have seen his acquiescence under it; you have seen the suspicion he endeavored to raise. Now, before I proceed to what Mr. Hastings thought of it, I must remark upon this accusation, that it is a specific accusation, coming from a person knowing the very transaction, and known to be concerned in it, — that it was an accusation in writing, that it was an accusation with a signature, that it was an accusation with a person to make it good, that it was made before a competent authority, and made before an authority bound to inquire into such accusation. When he comes to produce his evidence, he tells you, first, the sums of money given, the species in which they were given, the very bags in which they were put, the exchange that was made by reducing them to the standard money of the country; he names all the persons through whose hands the whole transaction went, eight in number, besides himself, Munny Begum, and Gourdas, being eleven, all referred to in this transaction. I do believe that since the beginning of the world there never was an accusation which was more deserving of inquiry, because there never was an accusation which put a false accuser in a worse situation, and that put an honest defendant in a better; for there was every means of collation, every means of comparison, every means of cross-examining, every means of control. There was every way of sifting evidence, in which evidence could be sifted. Eleven witnesses to the transaction are referred to; all the particulars of the payment, every circumstance that could give the person accused the advantage of s
howing the falsehood of the accusation, were specified. General accusations may be treated as calumnies; but particular accusations, like these, afford the defendant, if innocent, every possible means for making his defence: therefore the very making no defence at all would prove, beyond all doubt, a consciousness of guilt.
The next thing for your Lordships’ consideration is the conduct of Mr. Hastings upon this occasion. You would imagine that he would have treated the accusation with a cold and manly disdain; that he would have challenged and defied inquiry, and desired to see his accuser face to face. This is what any man would do in such a situation. I can conceive very well that a man composed, firm, and collected in himself, conscious of not only integrity, but known integrity, conscious of a whole life beyond the reach of suspicion, — that a man placed in such a situation might oppose general character to general accusation, and stand collected in himself, poised on his own base, and defying all the calumnies in the world. But as it shows a great and is a proof of a virtuous mind to despise calumny, it is the proof of a guilty mind to despise a specific accusation, when made before a competent authority, and with competent means to prove it. As Mr. Hastings’s conduct was what no man living expected, I will venture to say that no expression can do it justice but his own. Upon reading the letter, and a motion being made that Rajah Nundcomar be brought before the board to prove the charge against the Governor-General, the Governor-General enters the following minute.
“Before the question is put, I declare that I will not suffer Nundcomar to appear before the board as my accuser. I know what belongs to the dignity and character of the first member of this administration. I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the members of this board to be my judges. I am reduced on this occasion to make the declaration, that I look upon General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis as my accusers. I cannot prove this in the direct letter of the law, but in my conscience I regard them as such, and I will give my reasons for it. On their arrival at this place, and on the first formation of the Council, they thought proper to take immediate and decisive measures in contradiction and for the repeal of those which were formed by me in conjunction with the last administration. I appealed to the Court of Directors from their acts. Many subsequent letters have been transmitted both by them and by me to the Court of Directors: by me, in protestation against their conduct; by them, in justification of it. Quitting this ground, they since appear to me to have chosen other modes of attack, apparently calculated to divert my attention and to withdraw that of the public from the subject of our first differences, which regarded only the measures that were necessary for the good of the service, to attacks directly and personally levelled at me for matters which tend to draw a personal and popular odium upon me: and fit instruments they have found for their purpose, — Mr. Joseph Fowke, Mahrajah Nundcomar, Roopnarain Chowdry, and the Ranny of Burdwan.
“It appears incontestably upon the records that the charges preferred by the Ranny against me proceeded from the office of Mr. Fowke. All the papers transmitted by her came in their original form written in the English language, — some with Persian papers, of which they were supposed to be translations, but all strongly marked with the character and idiom of the English language. I applied on Saturday last for Persian originals of some of the papers sent by her, and I was refused: I am justified in declaring my firm belief that no such originals exist.
“With respect to Nundcomar’s accusations, they were delivered by the hands of Mr. Francis, who has declared that he was called upon by Rajah Nundcomar, as a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this state, to lay the packet which contained them before the board, — that he conceived that he could not, consistent with his duty, refuse such a letter at the instance of a person of the Rajah’s rank, and did accordingly receive it, and laid it before the board, — declaring at the same time that he was unacquainted with the contents of it. I believe that the Court of Directors, and those to whom those proceedings shall be made known, will think differently of this action of Mr. Francis: that Nundcomar was guilty of great insolence and disrespect in the demand which he made of Mr. Francis; and that it was not a duty belonging to the office of a councillor of this state to make himself the carrier of a letter, which would have been much more properly committed to the hands of a peon or hircarra, or delivered by the writer of it to the secretary himself.
“Mr. Francis has acknowledged that he apprehended in general that it contained some charge against me. If the charge was false, it was a libel. It might have been false for anything that Mr. Francis could know to the contrary, since he was unacquainted with the contents of it. In this instance, therefore, he incurred the hazard of presenting a libel to the board: this was not a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this state. I must further inform the board that I have been long since acquainted with Nundcomar’s intentions of making this attack upon me. Happily, Nundcomar, among whose talents for intrigue that of secrecy is not the first, has been ever too ready to make the first publication of his own intentions. I was shown a paper containing many accusations against me, which I was told was carried by Nundcomar to Colonel Monson, and that he himself was employed for some hours in private with Colonel Monson, explaining the nature of those charges.
“I mention only what I was told; but as the rest of the report which was made to me corresponds exactly with what has happened since, I hope I shall stand acquitted to my superiors and to the world in having given so much credit to it as to bring the circumstance upon record. I cannot recollect the precise time in which this is said to have happened, but I believe it was either before or at the time of the dispatch of the ‘Bute’ and ‘Pacific.’ The charge has since undergone some alteration; but of the copy of the paper which was delivered to me, containing the original charge, I caused a translation to be made; when, suspecting the renewal of the subject in this day’s consultation, I brought it with me, and I desire it may be recorded, that, when our superiors, or the world, if the world is to be made the judge of my conduct, shall be possessed of these materials, they may, by comparing the supposed original and amended list of accusations preferred against me by Nundcomar, judge how far I am justified in the credit which I give to the reports above mentioned. I do not mean to infer from what I have said that it makes any alteration in the nature of the charges, whether they were delivered immediately from my ostensible accusers, or whether they came to the board through the channel of patronage; but it is sufficient to authorize the conviction which I feel in my own mind, that those gentlemen are parties in the accusations of which they assert the right of being the judges.
“From the first commencement of this administration, every means have been tried both to deprive me of the legal authority with which I have been trusted, and to proclaim the annihilation of it to the world; but no instance has yet appeared of this in so extraordinary a degree as in the question now before the board. The chief of the administration, your superior, Gentlemen, appointed by the legislature itself, shall I sit at this board to be arraigned in the presence of a wretch whom you all know to be one of the basest of mankind? I believe I need not mention his name; but it is Nundcomar. Shall I sit here to hear men collected from the dregs of the people give evidence, at his dictating, against my character and conduct? I will not. You may, if you please, form yourselves into a committee for the investigation of these matters in any manner which you may think proper; but I will repeat, that I will not meet Nundcomar at the board, nor suffer Nundcomar to be examined at the board; nor have you a right to it, nor can it answer any other purpose than that of vilifying and insulting me to insist upon it.
“I am sorry to have found it necessary to deliver my sentiments on a subject of so important a nature in an unpremeditated minute, drawn from me at the board, which I should have wished to have had leisure and retirement to have enabled me to express myself with that degree of caution and exactness which the subject requires. I have said nothing
but what I believe and am morally certain I shall stand justified for in the eyes of my superiors and the eyes of the world; but I reserve to myself the liberty of adding my further sentiments in such a manner and form as I shall hereafter judge necessary.”
My Lords, you see here the picture of Nundcomar drawn by Mr. Hastings himself; you see the hurry, the passion, the precipitation, the confusion, into which Mr. Hastings is thrown by the perplexity of detected guilt; you see, my Lords, that, instead of defending himself, he rails at his accuser in the most indecent language, calling him a wretch whom they all knew to be the basest of mankind, — that he rails at the Council, by attributing their conduct to the worst of motives, — that he rails at everybody, and declares the accusation to be a libel: in short, you see plainly that the man’s head is turned. You see there is not a word he says upon this occasion which has common sense in it; you see one great leading principle in it, — that he does not once attempt to deny the charge. He attempts to vilify the witness, he attempts to vilify those he supposes to be his accusers, he attempts to vilify the Council; he lags upon the accusation, he mixes it with other accusations, which had nothing to do with it, and out of the whole he collects a resolution — to do what? To meet his adversary and defy him? No, — that he will not suffer him to appear before him: he says, “I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the board to be my judges.”