by Edmund Burke
Extract of the Proceedings of the Resident at Benares, under date the 26th February, at the Purgunnah of Sekunderpoor.
“The Resident now leaves Sekunderpoor to proceed to Nurgurah, the head cutchery of the purgunnah. He is sorry to observe, that, during the whole way between these two places, which are at the distance of six coss, or twelve miles, from each other, not above twenty fields of cultivated ground are to be seen; all the rest being, as far as the eye can reach, except just in the vicinity of Nuggeha, one general waste of long grass, with here and there some straggling jungly trees. This falling off in the cultivation is said to have happened in the course of but a few years, — that is, since the late Rajah’s expulsion.”
Your Lordships will observe, the date of the ruin of this country is the expulsion of Cheyt Sing.
Extract of the Proceedings of the Resident at Benares, under date the 27th February, at the Purgunnah Sekunderpoor.
“The Resident meant to have proceeded from this place to Cossimabad; but understanding that the village of Ressenda, the capital of the purgunnah of Susknesser, is situated at three coss’ distance, and that many rahdarry collections are there exacted, the zemindars and ryots being, it seems, all one body of Rajpoots, who affect to hold themselves in some sort independent of the Rajah’s government, paying only a mokurrery, or fixed jumma, (which it may be supposed is not overrated,) and managing their interior concerns as they think fit, the Resident thought it proper on this report to deviate a little from his intended route, by proceeding this day to Ressenda, where he accordingly arrived in the afternoon; and the remaining part of the country near the road through Sekunderpoor, from Nuggurha to Seundah, appearing nearly equally waste with the former part, as already noticed in the proceedings of the 26th instant.
“The Rajah is therefore desired to appoint a person to bring those waste lands into cultivation, in like manner as he has done in Khereed, with this difference or addition in his instructions, — that he subjoin in those to the Aband Kar, or manager, of the re-cultivation of Sekunderpoor, the rates at which he is authorized to grant pottahs for the various kinds of land; and it is recommended to him to make these rates even somewhat lower than he may himself think strictly conformable to justice, reporting the particulars to the Resident.
“The Rajah is also desired to prepare and transmit a table of similar rates to the Aband Kar of purgunnah Khereed.
(Signed) “JONN DUNCAN, Resident.
“BENARES, the 12th September, 1788.”
Here your Lordships find, in spite of Mr. Hastings himself, in spite of all the testimonies which he has called, and of all the other testimonies which he would have called, that his own account of the matter is confirmed against his own pretended evidence; you find his own written account confirmed in a manner not to be doubted: and the only difference between his account and this is, that the people did not fly from Mr. Duncan, when he approached, as they fled from Mr. Hastings. They did not feel any of that terror at the approach of a person from the beneficent government of Lord Cornwallis with which they had been entirely filled at the appearance of the prisoner at your bar. From him they fled in dismay. They fled from his very presence, as from a consuming pestilence, as from something far worse than drought and famine; they fled from him as a cruel, corrupt, and arbitrary governor, which is worse than any other evil that ever afflicted mankind.
You see, my Lords, in what manner the country has been wasted and destroyed; and you have seen, by the date of these measures, that they have happened within a few years, namely, since the expulsion of Rajah Cheyt Sing. There begins the era of calamity. Ask yourselves, then, whether you will or can countenance the acts which led directly and necessarily to such consequences. Your Lordships will mark what it is to oppress and expel a cherished individual from his government, and finally to subvert it. Nothing stands after him; down go all order and authority with him; ruin and desolation fall upon the country; the fields are uncultivated, the wells are dried up. The people, says Mr. Duncan, promised, indeed, some time or other, under some other government, to do something. They will again cultivate the lands, when they can get an assurance of security. My Lords, judge, I pray you, whether the House of Commons, when they had read the account which Mr. Hastings has himself given of the dreadful consequences of his proceedings, when they had read the account given by Mr. Duncan of an uncultivated country as far as the eye could reach, would not have shown themselves unworthy to represent not only the Commons of Great Britain, but the meanest village in it, if they had not brought this great criminal before you, and called upon your Lordships to punish him. This ruined country, its desolate fields and its undone inhabitants, all call aloud for British justice, all call for vengeance upon the head of this execrable criminal.
Oh! but we ought to be tender towards his personal character, — extremely cautious in our speech; we ought not to let indignation loose. — My Lords, we do let our indignation loose; we cannot bear with patience this affliction of mankind. We will neither abate our energy, relax in our feelings, nor in the expressions which those feelings dictate. Nothing but corruption like his own could enable any man to see such a scene of desolation and ruin unmoved. We feel pity for the works of God and man; we feel horror for the debasement of human nature; and feeling thus, we give a loose to our indignation, and call upon your Lordships for justice.
Strange as it may appear to your Lordships, there remains to be stated an aggravation of his crimes, and of his victims’ misery. Would you consider it possible, my Lords, that there could be an aggravation of such a case as you have heard? Would you think it possible for a people to suffer more than the inhabitants of Benares have suffered, from the noble possessor of the splendid mansion down to the miserable tenants of the cottage and the hut? Yes, there is a state of misery, a state of degradation, far below all that you have yet heard. It is, my Lords, that these miserable people should come to your Lordships’ bar, and declare that they have never felt one of those grievances of which they complain; that not one of those petitions with which they pursued Mr. Hastings had a word of truth in it; that they felt nothing under his government but ease, tranquillity, joy, and happiness; that every day during his government was a festival, and every night an illumination and rejoicing. The addresses which contain these expressions of satisfaction have been produced at your bar, and have been read to your Lordships. You must have heard with disgust, at least, these flowers of Oriental rhetoric, penned at ease by dirty hireling moonshees at Calcutta, who make these people put their seals, not to declarations of their ruin, but to expressions of their satisfaction. You have heard what he himself says of the country; you have heard what Mr. Duncan says of it; you have heard the cries of the country itself calling for justice upon him: and now, my Lords, hear what he has made these people say. “We have heard that the gentlemen in England are displeased with Mr. Hastings, on suspicion that he oppressed us, the inhabitants of this place, took our money by deceit and force, and ruined the country.” They then declare solemnly before God, according to their different religions, that Mr. Hastings “distributed protection and security to religion, and kindness and peace to all. He is free,” say they, “from the charge of embezzlement and fraud, and his heart is void of covetousness and avidity. During the period of his government no one ever experienced from him other than protection and justice, never having felt hardships from him; nor did the poor ever know the weight of an oppressive hand from him. Our characters and reputation have been always guarded in quiet from attack, by the vigilance of his prudence and foresight, and by the terror of his justice.”
Upon my word, my Lords, the paragraphs are delightful. Observe, in this translation from the Persian there is all the fluency of an English paragraph well preserved. All I can say is, that these people of Benares feel their joy, comfort, and satisfaction in swearing to the falseness of Mr. Hastings’s representation against himself. In spite of his own testimony, they say, “He secured happiness and joy to us; he reëstabli
shed the foundation of justice; and we at all times, during his government, lived in comfort and passed our days in peace.” The shame of England and of the English government is here put upon your Lordships’ records. Here you have, just following that afflicting report of Mr. Duncan’s, and that account of Mr. Hastings himself, in which he said the inhabitants fled before his face, the addresses of these miserable people. He dares to impose upon your eyesight, upon your common sense, upon the plain faculties of mankind. He dares, in contradiction to all his own assertions, to make these people come forward and swear that they have enjoyed nothing but complete satisfaction and pleasure during the whole time of his government.
My Lords, I have done with this business, for I have now reached the climax of degradation and suffering, after moving step by step through the several stages of tyranny and oppression. I have done with it, and have only to ask, In what country do we live, where such a scene can by any possibility be offered to the public eye?
Let us here, my Lords, make a pause. — You have seen what Benares was under its native government. You have seen the condition in which it was left by Cheyt Sing, and you have seen the state in which Mr. Hastings left it. The rankling wounds which he has inflicted upon the country, and the degradation to which the inhabitants have been subjected, have been shown to your Lordships. You have now to consider whether or not you will fortify with your sanction any of the detestable principles upon which the prisoner justifies his enormities.
My Lords, we shall next come to another dependent province, when I shall illustrate to your Lordships still further the effects of Mr. Hastings’s principles. I allude to the province of Oude, — a country which, before our acquaintance with it, was in the same happy and flourishing condition with Benares, and which dates its period of decline and misery from the time of our intermeddling with it. The Nabob of Oude was reduced, as Cheyt Sing was, to be a dependant on the Company, and to be a greater dependant than Cheyt Sing, because it was reserved in Cheyt Sing’s agreement that we should not interfere in his government. We interfered in every part of the Nabob’s government; we reduced his authority to nothing; we introduced a perfect scene of anarchy and confusion into the country, where there was no authority but to rob and destroy.
I have not strength at present to proceed; but I hope I shall soon be enabled to do so. Your Lordships cannot, I am sure, calculate from your own youth and strength; for I have done the best I can, and find myself incapable just at this moment of going any further.
SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY. FOURTH DAY: THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 1794.
My Lords, — When I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships from this place, my want of strength obliged me to conclude where the patience of a people and the prosperity of a country subjected by solemn treaties to British government had concluded. We have left behind us the inhabitants of Benares, after having seen them driven into rebellion by tyranny and oppression, and their country desolated by our misrule. Your Lordships, I am sure, have had the map of India before you, and know that the country so destroyed and so desolated was about one fifth of the size of England and Wales in geographical extent, and equal in population to about a fourth. Upon this scale you will judge of the mischief which has been done.
My Lords, we are now come to another devoted province: we march from desolation to desolation; because we follow the steps of Warren Hastings, Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal. You will here find the range of his atrocities widely extended; but before I enter into a detail of them, I have one reflection to make, which I beseech your Lordships to bear in mind throughout the whole of this deliberation. It is this: you ought never to conclude that a man must necessarily be innoxious because he is in other respects insignificant. You will see that a man bred in obscure, vulgar, and ignoble occupations, and trained in sordid, base, and mercenary habits, is not incapable of doing extensive mischief, because he is little, and because his vices are of a mean nature. My Lords, we have shown to you already, and we shall demonstrate to you more clearly in future, that such minds placed in authority can do more mischief to a country, can treat all ranks and distinctions with more pride, insolence, and arrogance, than those who have been born under canopies of state and swaddled in purple: you will see that they can waste a country more effectually than the proudest and most mighty conquerors, who, by the greatness of their military talents, have first subdued and afterwards plundered nations.
The prisoner’s counsel have thought proper to entertain your Lordships, and to defend their client, by comparing him with the men who are said to have erected a pyramid of ninety thousand human heads. Now look back, my Lords, to Benares; consider the extent of country laid waste and desolated, and its immense population; and then see whether famine may not destroy as well as the sword, and whether this man is not as well entitled to erect his pyramid of ninety thousand heads as any terrific tyrant of the East. We follow him now to another theatre, the territories of the Nabob of Oude.
My Lords, Oude, (together with the additions made to it by Sujah Dowlah,) in point of geographical extent, is about the size of England. Sujah Dowlah, who possessed this country as Nabob, was a prince of a haughty character, — ferocious in a high degree towards his enemies, and towards all those who resisted his will. He was magnificent in his expenses, yet economical with regard to his resources, — maintaining his court in a pomp and splendor which is perhaps unknown to the sovereigns of Europe. At the same time he was such an economist, that from an inconsiderable revenue, at the beginning of his reign, he was annually enabled to make great savings. He thus preserved, towards the end of it, his people in peace, tranquillity, and order; and though he was an arbitrary prince, he never strained his revenue to such a degree as to lose their affections while he filled his exchequer. Such appears to have been the true character of Sujah Dowlah: your Lordships have heard what is the character which the prisoner at your bar and his counsel have thought proper to give you of him.
Surely, my Lords, the situation of the great, as well as of the lower ranks in that country, must be a subject of melancholy reflection to every man. Your Lordships’ compassion will, I presume, lead you to feel for the lowest; and I hope that your sympathetic dignity will make you consider in what manner the princes of this country are treated. They have not only been treated at your Lordships’ bar with indignity by the prisoner, but his counsel do not leave their ancestors to rest quietly in their graves. They have slandered their families, and have gone into scandalous history that has no foundation in facts whatever.
Your Lordships have seen how he attempted to slander the ancestors of Cheyt Sing, to deny that they were zemindars; and yet he must have known from printed books, taken from the Company’s records, the utter falsity of his declaration. You need only look into Mr. Verelst’s Appendix, and there you will see that that country has always been called the Zemindary of Bulwant Sing. You will find him always called the Zemindar; it was the known, acknowledged name, till this gentleman thought proper at the bar of the House of Commons to deny that he was a zemindar, and to assert that he was only an aumil. He slanders the pedigree of this man as mean and base, yet he was not ashamed to take from him twenty-three thousand pounds. In like manner he takes from Asoph ul Dowlah a hundred thousand pounds, which he would have appropriated to himself, and then directs his counsel to rake up the slander of Dow’s History, a book of no authority, a book that no man values in any respect or degree. In this book they find that romantic, absurd, and ridiculous story upon which an honorable fellow Manager of mine, who is much more capable than I am of doing justice to the subject, has commented with his usual ability: I allude to that story of spitting on the beard, — the mutual compact to poison one another. That Arabian tale, fit only to form a ridiculous tragedy, has been gravely mentioned to your Lordships for the purpose of slandering the pedigree of this Vizier of Oude, and making him vile in your Lordships’ eyes. My honorable friend has exposed to you the absurdity of these stories, but he has not shown you the malice
of their propagators. The prisoner and his counsel have referred to Dow’s History, who calls this Nabob “the more infamous son of an infamous Persian peddler.” They wish that your Lordships should consider him as a person vilely born, ignominiously educated, and practising a mean trade, in order that, when it shall be proved that he and his family were treated with every kind of indignity and contempt by the prisoner at your bar, the sympathy of mankind should be weakened. Consider, my Lords, the monstrous perfidy and ingratitude of this man, who, after receiving great favors from the Nabob, is not satisfied with oppressing his offspring, but goes back to his ancestors, tears them out of their graves, and vilifies them with slanderous aspersions. My Lords, the ancestor of Sujah Dowlah was a great prince, — certainly a subordinate prince, because he was a servant of the Great Mogul, who was well called King of Kings, for he had in his service persons of high degree. He was born in Persia; but was not, as is falsely said, the more infamous son of an infamous Persian peddler. Your Lordships are not unacquainted with the state and history of India; you therefore know that Persia has been the nursery of all the Mahometan nobility of India: almost everything in that country which is not of Gentoo origin is of Persian; so much so, that the Persian language is the language of the court, and of every office from the highest to the lowest. Among these noble Persians, the family of the Nabob stands in the highest degree. His father’s ancestors were of noble descent, and those of his mother, Munny Begum, more eminently and more illustriously so. This distinguished family, on no better authority than that of the historian Dow, has been slandered by the prisoner at your bar, in order to destroy the character of those whom he had already robbed of their substance. Your Lordships will have observed with disgust how the Dows and the Hastings, and the whole of that tribe, treat their superiors, — in what insolent language they speak of them, and with what pride and indignity they trample upon the first names and the first characters in that devoted country.