by Edmund Burke
Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to the manner in which he defends himself and these proceedings. He says, “I rejected this offer of twenty lacs, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late.” If by these words he means too late to answer the purpose for which he has said the fine was designed, namely, the relief of the Company, the ground of his defence is absolutely false; for it is notorious that at the time referred to the Company’s affairs were in the greatest distress.
I will next call your Lordships’ attention to the projected sale of Benares to the Nabob of Oude. “If,” says Mr. Hastings, “I ever talked of selling the Company’s sovereignty over Benares to the Nabob of Oude, it was but in terrorem; and no subsequent act of mine warrants the supposition of my having seriously intended it.” And in another place he says, “If I ever threatened” (your Lordships will remark, that he puts hypothetically a matter the reality of which he has got to be solemnly declared on an affidavit, and in a narrative to the truth of which he has deposed upon oath)— “if I ever threatened,” says he, “to dispossess the Rajah of his territories, it is no more than what my predecessors, without rebuke from their superiors, or notice taken of the expression, had wished and intended to have done to his father, even when the Company had no pretensions to the sovereignty of the country. It is no more than such a legal act of sovereignty as his behavior justified, and as I was justified in by the intentions of my predecessors. If I pretended to seize upon his forts, it was in full conviction that a dependant on the Company, guarantied, maintained, and protected in his country by the Company’s arms, had no occasion for forts, had no right to them, and could hold them for no other than suspected and rebellious purposes. None of the Company’s other zemindars are permitted to maintain them; and even our ally, the Nabob of the Carnatic, has the Company’s troops in all his garrisons. Policy and public safety absolutely require it. What state could exist that allowed its inferior members to hold forts and garrisons independent of the superior administration? It is a solecism in government to suppose it.”
Here, then, my Lords, he first declares that this was merely done in terrorem; that he never intended to execute the abominable act. And will your Lordships patiently endure that such terrific threats as these shall be hung by your Governor in India over the unhappy people that are subject to him and protected by British faith? Will you permit, that, for the purpose of extorting money, a Governor shall hold out the terrible threat of delivering a tributary prince and his people, bound hand and foot, into the power of their perfidious enemies?
The terror occasioned by threatening to take from him his forts can only be estimated by considering, that, agreeably to the religion and prejudices of Hindoos, the forts are the places in which their women are lodged, in which, according to their notions, their honor is deposited, and in which is lodged all the wealth that they can save against an evil day to purchase off the vengeance of an enemy. These forts Mr. Hastings says he intended to take, because the Rajah could hold them for no other than rebellious and suspected purposes. Now I will show your Lordships that the man who has the horrible audacity to make this declaration did himself assign to the Rajah these very forts. He put him in possession of them, and, when there was a dispute about the Nabob’s rights to them on the one side and the Company’s on the other, did confirm them to this man. The paper shall be produced, that you may have before your eyes the gross contradictions into which his rapacity and acts of arbitrary power have betrayed him. Thank God, my Lords, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. I repeat it, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. In their defence of one crime they are sure to meet the ghost of some former defence, which, like the spectre in Virgil, drives them back. The prisoner at your bar, like the hero of the poet, when he attempts to make his escape by one evasion, is stopped by the appearance of some former contradictory averment. If he attempts to escape by one door, there his criminal allegations of one kind stop him; if he attempts to escape at another, the facts and allegations intended for some other wicked purpose stare him full in the face.
Quacunque viam sibi fraude petivit,
Successum Dea dira negat.
The paper I hold in my hand contains Nundcomar’s accusation of Mr. Hastings. It consists of a variety of charges; and I will first read to you what is said by Nundcomar of these forts, which it is pretended could be held for none but suspicious and rebellious purposes.
“At the time Mr. Hastings was going to Benares, he desired me to give him an account in writing of any lands which, though properly belonging to the Subah of Bahar, might have come under the dominion of Bulwant Sing, that they might be recovered from his son, Rajah Cheyt Sing. The purgunnahs of Kera, Mungrora, and Bidjegur were exactly in this situation, having been usurped by Bulwant Sing from the Subah of Bahar. I accordingly delivered to Mr. Hastings the accounts of them, from the entrance of the Company upon the dewanny to the year 1179 of the Fusseli era, stated at twenty-four lacs. Mr. Hastings said, ‘Give a copy of this to Roy Rada Churn, that, if Cheyt Sing is backward in acknowledging this claim, Rada Churn may answer and confute him.’ Why Mr. Hastings, when he arrived at Benares, and had called Rajah Cheyt Sing before him, left these countries still in the Rajah’s usurpations it remains with Mr. Hastings to explain.”
This is Nundcomar’s charge. Here follows Mr. Hastings’s reply.
“I recollect an information given me by Nundcomar concerning the pretended usurpations made by the Rajah of Benares, of the purgunnahs of Kera, Mungrora, and Bidjegur.” (Your Lordships will recollect that Bidjegur is one of those very forts which he declares could not be held but for suspicious and rebellious purposes.) “I do not recollect his mentioning it again, when I set out for Benares; neither did I ever intimate the subject, either to Cheyt Sing or his ministers, because I knew I could not support the claim; and to have made it and dropped it would have been in every sense dishonorable. Not that I passed by it with indifference or inattention. I took pains to investigate the foundation of this title, and recommended it to the particular inquiry of Mr. Vansittart, who was the Chief of Patna, at the time in which I received the first intimation. The following letter and voucher, which I received from him, contain a complete statement of this pretended usurpation.”
These vouchers will answer our purpose, fully to establish that in his opinion the claim of the English government upon those forts was at that time totally unfounded, and so absurd that he did not even dare to mention it. This fort of Bidjegur, the most considerable in the country, and of which we shall have much to say hereafter, is the place in which Cheyt Sing had deposited his women and family. That fortress did Mr. Hastings himself give to this very man, deciding in his favor as a judge, upon an examination and after an inquiry: and yet he now declares that he had no right to it, and that he could not hold it but for wicked and rebellious purposes. But, my Lords, when he changed this language, he had resolved to take away these forts, — to destroy them, — to root the Rajah out of every place of refuge, out of every secure place in which he could hide his head, or screen himself from the rancor, revenge, avarice, and malice of his ruthless foe. He was resolved to have them, although he had, upon the fullest conviction of the Rajah’s right, given them to this very man, and put him into the absolute possession of them.
Again, my Lords, did he, when Cheyt Sing, in 1775, was put in possession by the pottah of the Governor-General and Council, which contains an enumeration of the names of all the places which were given up to him, and consequently of this among the rest, — did he, either before he put the question in Council upon that pottah, or afterwards, tell the Council they were going to put forts into the man’s hands to which he had no right, and which could be held only for rebellious and suspected purposes? We refer your Lordships to the places in which all these transactions are mentioned, and you will there find Mr. Hastings took no one exception whatever against them; nor, till he was resolved upon the destruction of this unhappy man, did he ever
so much as mention them. It was not till then that he discovers the possession of these forts by the Rajah to be a solecism in government.
After quoting the noble examples of Sujah Dowlah, and the other persons whom I have mentioned to you, he proceeds to say, that some of his predecessors, without any pretensions to sovereign authority, endeavored to get these forts into their possession; and “I was justified,” says he, “by the intention of my predecessors.” Merciful God! if anything can surpass what he has said before, it is this: “My predecessors, without any title of sovereignty, without any right whatever, wished to get these forts into their power; I therefore have a right to do what they wished to do; and I am justified, not by the acts, but by the intentions of my predecessors.” At the same time he knows that these predecessors had been reprobated by the Company for this part of their proceedings; he knew that he was sent there to introduce a better system, and to put an end to this state of rapacity. Still, whatever his predecessors wished, however unjust and violent it might be, when the sovereignty came into his hands, he maintains that he had a right to do all which they were desirous of accomplishing. Thus the enormities formerly practised, which the Company sent him to correct, became a sacred standard for his imitation.
Your Lordships will observe that he slips in the word sovereignty and forgets compact; because it is plain, and your Lordships must perceive it, that, wherever he uses the word sovereignty, he uses it to destroy the authority of all compacts; and accordingly in the passage now before us he declares that there is an invalidity in all compacts entered into in India, from the nature, state, and constitution of that empire. “From the disorderly form of its government,” says he, “there is an invalidity in all compacts and treaties whatever.” “Persons who had no treaty with the Rajah wished,” says he, “to rob him: therefore I, who have a treaty with him, and call myself his sovereign, have a right to realize all their wishes.”
But the fact is, my Lords, that his predecessors never did propose to deprive Bulwant Sing, the father of Cheyt Sing, of his zemindary. They, indeed, wished to have had the dewanny transferred to them, in the manner it has since been transferred to the Company. They wished to receive his rents, and to be made an intermediate party between him and the Mogul emperor, his sovereign. These predecessors had entered into no compact with the man: they were negotiating with his sovereign for the transfer of the dewanny or stewardship of the country, which transfer was afterwards actually executed; but they were obliged to give the country itself back again to Bulwant Sing, with a guaranty against all the pretensions of Sujah Dowlah, who had tyrannically assumed an arbitrary power over it. This power the predecessors of Mr. Hastings might also have wished to assume; and he may therefore say, according to the mode of reasoning which he has adopted,— “Whatever they wished to do, but never succeeded in doing, I may and ought to do of my own will. Whatever fine Sujah Dowlah would have exacted I will exact. I will penetrate into that tiger’s bosom, and discover the latent seeds of rapacity and injustice which lurk there, and I will make him the subject of my imitation.”
These are the principles upon which, without accuser, without judge, without inquiry, he resolved to lay a fine of 500,000l. on Cheyt Sing!
In order to bind himself to a strict fulfilment of this resolution, he has laid down another very extraordinary doctrine. He has laid it down as a sort of canon, (in injustice and corruption,) that, whatever demand, whether just or unjust, a man declares his intention of making upon another, he should exact the precise sum which he has determined upon, and that, if he takes anything less, it is a proof of corruption. “I have,” says he, “shown by this testimony that I never intended to make any communication to Cheyt Sing of taking less than the fifty lacs which in my own mind I had resolved to exact.” And he adds,— “I shall make my last and solemn appeal to the breast of every man who shall read this, whether it is likely, or morally possible, that I should have tied down my own future conduct to so decided a process and series of acts, if I had secretly intended to threaten, or to use a degree of violence, for no other purpose than to draw from the object of it a mercenary atonement for my own private emolument, and suffer all this tumult to terminate in an ostensible and unsubstantial submission to the authority which I represented.”
He had just before said, “If I ever talked of selling the Company’s sovereignty to the Nabob of Oude, it was only in terrorem.” In the face of this assertion, he here gives you to understand he never held out anything in terrorem, but what he intended to execute. But we will show you that in fact he had reserved to himself a power of acting pro re nata, and that he intended to compound or not, just as answered his purposes upon this occasion. “I admit,” he says, “that I did not enter it [the intention of fining Cheyt Sing] on the Consultations, because it was not necessary; even this plan itself of the fine was not a fixed plan, but to be regulated by circumstances, both as to the substantial execution of it and the mode.” Now here is a man who has given it in a sworn narrative, that he did not intend to have a farthing less. Why? “Because I should have menaced and done as in former times has been done, — made great and violent demands which I reduce afterwards for my own corrupt purposes.” Yet he tells you in the course of the same defence, but in another paper, that he had no fixed plan, that he did not know whether he should exact a fine at all, or what should be his mode of executing it.
My Lords, what shall we say to this man, who declares that it would be a proof of corruption not to exact the full sum which he had threatened to exact, but who, finding that this doctrine would press hard upon him, and be considered as a proof of cruelty and injustice, turns round and declares he had no intention of exacting anything? What shall we say to a man who thus reserves his determination, who threatens to sell a tributary prince to a tyrant, and cannot decide whether he should take from him his forts and pillage him of all he had, whether he should raise 500,000l. upon him, whether he should accept the 220,000l. offered, (which, by the way, we never knew of till long after the whole transaction,) whether he should do any or all of those things, and then, by his own account, going up to Benares without having resolved anything upon this important subject?
My Lords, I will now assume the hypothesis that he at last discovered sufficient proof of rebellious practices; still even this gave him no right to adduce such rebellion in justification of resolutions which he had taken, of acts which he had done, before he knew anything of its existence. To such a plea we answer, and your Lordships will every one of you answer,— “You shall not by a subsequent discovery of rebellious practices, which you did not know at the time, and which you did not even believe, as you have expressly told us here, justify your conduct prior to that discovery.” If the conspiracy which he falsely imputes to Cheyt Sing, if that wild scheme of driving the English out of India, had existed, think in what miserable circumstances we stand as prosecutors, and your Lordships as judges, if we admit a discovery to be pleaded in justification of antecedent acts founded upon the assumed existence of that which he had no sort of proof, knowledge, or belief of!
My Lords, we shall now proceed to another circumstance, not less culpable in itself, though less shocking to your feelings, than those to which I have already called your attention: a circumstance which throws a strong presumption of guilt upon every part of the prisoner’s conduct. Having formed all these infernal plots in his mind, but uncertain which of them he should execute, uncertain what sums of money he should extort, whether he should deliver up the Rajah to his enemy or pillage his forts, he goes up to Benares; but he first delegates to himself all the powers of government, both civil and military, in the countries which he was going to visit.
My Lords, we have asserted in our charge that this delegation and division of power was illegal. He invested himself with this authority; for he was the majority in the Council: Mr. Wheler’s consent or dissent signifying nothing. He gave himself powers which the act of Parliament did not give him. He went up to Benares with an illegal c
ommission, civil and military; and to prove this I shall beg leave to read the provisions of the act of Parliament. I shall show what the creature ought to be, by showing the law of the creator: what the legislature of Great Britain meant that Governor Hastings should be, not what he made himself.
[Mr. Burke then read the seventh section of the act.]
Now we do deny that there is by this act given, or that under this act there can be given, to the government of India, a power of dividing its unity into two parts, each of which shall separately be a unity and possess the power given to the whole. Yet, my Lords, an agreement was made between him and Mr. Wheler, that he (Mr. Hastings) should have every power, civil and military, in the upper provinces, and that Mr. Wheler should enjoy equal authority in the lower ones.
Now, to show you that it is impossible for such an agreement to be legal, we must refer you to the constitution of the Company’s government. The whole power is vested in the Council, where all questions are to be decided by a majority of voices, and the members are directed to record in the minutes of their proceedings not only the questions decided, but the grounds upon which each individual member founds his vote. Now, although the Council is competent to delegate its authority for any specific purpose to any servant of the Company, yet to admit that it can delegate its authority generally, without reserving the means of deliberation and control, would be to change the whole constitution. By such a proceeding the government may be divided into a number of independent governments, without a common deliberative Council and control. This deliberative capacity, which is so strictly guarded by the obligation of recording its consultations, would be totally annihilated, if the Council divided itself into independent parts, each acting according to its own discretion. There is no similar instance in law, there is no similar instance in policy. The conduct of these men implies a direct contradiction; and you will see, by the agreement they made to support each other, that they were themselves conscious of the illegality of this proceeding.