by Edmund Burke
But supposing it perfectly true that this man was “the more infamous son of an infamous Persian peddler,” he had risen to be the secondary sovereign of that country. He had a revenue of three millions six hundred thousand pounds sterling: a vast and immense revenue; equal, perhaps, to the clear revenue of the King of England. He maintained an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men. He had a splendid court; and his country was prosperous and happy. Such was the situation of Sujah Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude, and such the condition of Oude under his government. With his pedigree, I believe, your Lordships will think we have nothing to do in the cause now before us. It has been pressed upon us; and this marks the indecency, the rancor, the insolence, the pride and tyranny which the Dows and the Hastings, and the people of that class and character, are in the habit of exercising over the great in India.
My Lords, I shall be saved a great deal of trouble in proving to you the flourishing state of Oude, because the prisoner admits it as largely as I could wish to state it; and what is more, he admits, too, the truth of our statement of the condition to which it is now reduced, — but I shall not let him off so easily upon this point. He admits, too, that it was left in this reduced and ruined state at the close of his administration. In his Defence he attributes the whole mischief generally to a faulty system of government. My Lords, systems never make mankind happy or unhappy, any further than as they give occasions for wicked men to exercise their own abominable talents, subservient to their own more abominable dispositions. “The system,” says Mr. Hastings, “was bad; but I was not the maker of it.” Your Lordships have seen him apply this mode of reasoning to Benares, and you will now see that he applies it to Oude. “I came,” says he, “into a bad system; that system was not of my making, but I was obliged to act according to the spirit of it.”
Now every honest man would say,— “I came to a bad system: I had every facility of abusing my power, I had every temptation to peculate, I had every incitement to oppress, I had every means of concealment, by the defects of the system; but I corrected that evil system by the goodness of my administration, by the prudence, the energy, the virtue of my conduct.” This is what all the rest of the world would say: but what says Mr. Hastings? “A bad system was made to my hands; I had nothing to do in making it. I was altogether an involuntary instrument, and obliged to execute every evil which that system contained.” This is the line of conduct your Lordships are called to decide upon. And I must here again remind you that we are at an issue of law. Mr. Hastings has avowed a certain set of principles upon which he acts; and your Lordships are therefore to judge whether his acts are justifiable because he found an evil system to act upon, or whether he and all governors upon earth have not a general good system upon which they ought to act.
The prisoner tells you, my Lords, that it was in consequence of this evil system, that the Nabob, from being a powerful prince, became reduced to a wretched dependant on the Company, and subject to all the evils of that degraded state, — subject to extortion, to indignity, to oppression. All these your Lordships are called upon to sanction; and because they may be connected with an existing system, you are to declare them to be an allowable part of a code for the government of British India.
In the year 1775, that powerful, magnificent, and illustrious prince, Sujah Dowlah, died in possession of the country of Oude. He had long governed a happy and contented people, and, if we except the portion of tyranny which we admit he really did exercise towards some few individuals who resisted his power, he was a wise and beneficent governor. This prince died in the midst of his power and fortune, leaving somewhere about fourscore children. Your Lordships know that the princes of the East have a great number of wives; and we know that these women, though reputed of a secondary rank, are yet of a very high degree, and honorably maintained according to the customs of the East. Sujah Dowlah had but one lawful wife: he had by her but one lawful child, Asoph ul Dowlah. He had about twenty-one male children, the eldest of whom was a person whom you have heard of very often in these proceedings, called Saadut Ali. Asoph ul Dowlah, being the sole legitimate son, had all the pretensions to succeed his father, as Subahdar of Oude, which could belong to any person under the Mogul government.
Your Lordships will distinguish between a Zemindar, who is a perpetual landholder, the hereditary proprietor of an estate, and a Subahdar, who derives from his master’s will and pleasure all his employments, and who, instead of having the jaghiredars subject to his supposed arbitrary will, is himself a subject, and must have his sovereign’s patent for his place. Therefore, strictly and properly speaking, there is no succession in the office of Subahdar. At this time the Company, who alone could obtain the sunnuds [sunnud?], or patent, from the Great Mogul, upon account of the power they possessed in India, thought, and thought rightly, that with an officer who had no hereditary power there could be no hereditary engagements, — and that in their treaty with Asoph ul Dowlah, for whom they had procured the sunnud from the Great Mogul, they were at liberty to propose their own terms, which, if honorable and mutually advantageous to the new Subahdar and to the Company, they had a right to insist upon. A treaty was therefore concluded between the Company and Asoph ul Dowlah, in which the latter stipulated to pay a fixed subsidy for the maintenance of a certain number of troops, by which the Company’s finances were greatly relieved and their military strength greatly increased.
This treaty did not contain one word which could justify any interference in the Nabob’s government. That evil system, as Mr. Hastings calls it, is not even mentioned or alluded to; nor is there, I again say, one word which authorized Warren Hastings, or any other person whatever, to interfere in the interior affairs of his country. He was legally constituted Viceroy of Oude; his dignity of Vizier of the Empire, with all the power which that office gave him, derived from and held under the Mogul government, he legally possessed; and this evil system, which Mr. Hastings says led him to commit the enormities of which you shall hear by-and-by, was neither more nor less than what I have now stated.
But, my Lords, the prisoner thinks, that, when, under any pretence, any sort of means could be furnished of interfering in the government of the country, he has a right to avail himself of them, to use them at his pleasure, and to govern by his own arbitrary will. The Vizier, he says, by this treaty was reduced to a state of vassalage; and he makes this curious distinction in proof of it. It was, he says, an optional vassalage: for, if he chose to get rid of our troops, he might do so and be free; if he had not a mind to do that, and found a benefit in it, then he was a vassal. But there is nothing less true. Here is a person who keeps a subsidiary body of your troops, which he is to pay for you; and in consequence of this Mr. Hastings maintains that he becomes a vassal. I shall not dispute whether vassalage is optional or by force, or in what way Mr. Hastings considered this prince as a vassal of the Company. Let it be as he pleased. I only think it necessary that your Lordships should truly know the actual state of that country, and the ground upon which Mr. Hastings stood. Your Lordships will find it a fairy land, in which there is a perpetual masquerade, where no one thing appears as it really is, — where the person who seems to have the authority is a slave, while the person who seems to be the slave has the authority. In that ambiguous government everything favors fraud, everything favors peculation, everything favors violence, everything favors concealment. You will therefore permit me to show to you what were the principles upon which Mr. Hastings appears, according to the evidence before you, to have acted, — what the state of the country was, according to his conceptions of it; and then you will see how he applied those principles to that state.
“The means by which our government acquired this influence,” says Mr. Hastings, “and its right to exercise it, will require a previous explanation.” He then proceeds,— “With his death [Sujah Dowlah’s] a new political system commenced, and Mr. Bristow was constituted the instrument of its formation, and the trustee for the management of it. The Nabob Asoph ul
Dowlah was deprived of a large part of his inheritance, — I mean the province of Benares, attached by a very feeble and precarious tenure to our dominions; the army fixed to a permanent station in a remote line of his frontier, with an augmented and perpetual subsidy; a new army, amphibiously composed of troops in his service and pay, commanded by English officers of our own nomination, for the defence of his new conquests; and his own natural troops annihilated, or alienated by the insufficiency of his revenue for all his disbursements, and the prior claims of those which our authority or influence commanded: in a word, he became a vassal of the government; but he still possessed an ostensible sovereignty. His titular rank of Vizier of the Empire rendered him a conspicuous object of view to all the states and chiefs of India; and on the moderation and justice with which the British government in Bengal exercised its influence over him many points most essential to its political strength and to the honor of the British name depended.”
Your Lordships see that the system which is supposed to have reduced him to vassalage did not make, as he contends, a violent exercise of our power necessary or proper; but possessing, as the Nabob did, that high nominal dignity, and being in that state of vassalage, as Mr. Hastings thought proper to term it, though there is no vassalage mentioned in the treaty, — being, I say, in that situation of honor, credit, and character, sovereign of a country as large as England, yielding an immense revenue, and flourishing in trade, certainly our honor depended upon the use we made of that influence which our power gave us over him; and we therefore press it upon your Lordships, that the conduct of Mr. Hastings was such as dishonored this nation.
He proceeds,— “This is not a place, nor have I room in it, to prove, what I shall here content myself with affirming, that, by a sacred and undeviating observance of every principle of public faith, the British dominion might have by this time acquired the means of its extension, through a virtual submission to its authority, to every region of Hindostan and Deccan. I am not sure that I should advise such a design, were it practicable, which at this time it certainly is not; and I very much fear that the limited formation of such equal alliances as might be useful to our present condition, and conduce to its improvement, is become liable to almost insurmountable difficulties: every power in India must wish for the support of ours, but they all dread the connection. The subjection of Bengal, and the deprivation of the family of Jaffier Ali Khân, though an effect of inevitable necessity, the present usurpations of the rights of the Nabob Wallau Jau in the Carnatic, and the licentious violations of the treaty existing between the Company and the Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah, though checked by the remedial interposition of this government, stand as terrible precedents against us; the effects of our connection with the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah had a rapid tendency to the same consequences, and it has been my invariable study to prevent it.”
Your Lordships will remember that the counsel at the bar have said that they undertook the defence of Warren Hastings, not in order to defend him, but to rescue the British character from the imputations which have been laid upon it by the Commons of Great Britain. They have said that the Commons of Great Britain have slandered their country, and have misrepresented its character; while, on the contrary, the servants of the Company have sustained and maintained the dignity of the English character, have kept its public faith inviolate, preserved the people from oppression, reconciled every government to it in India, and have made every person under it prosperous and happy.
My Lords, you see what this man says himself, when endeavoring to prove his own innocence. Instead of proving it by the facts alleged by his counsel, he declares that by preserving good faith you might have conquered India, the most glorious conquest that was ever made in the world; that all the people want our assistance, but dread our connection. Why? Because our whole conduct has been one perpetual tissue of perfidy and breach of faith with every person who has been in alliance with us, in any mode whatever. Here is the man himself who says it. Can we bear that this man should now stand up in this place as the assertor of the honor of the British nation against us, who charge this dishonor to have fallen upon us by him, through him, and during his government?
But all the mischief, he goes on to assert, was in the previous system, in the formation of which he had no share, — the system of 1775, when the first treaty with the Nabob was made. “That system,” says he, “is not mine; it was made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis.” So it was, my Lords. It did them very great honor, and I believe it ever will do them honor, in the eyes of the British nation, that they took an opportunity, without the violation of faith, without the breach of any one treaty, and without injury to any person, to do great and eminent services to the Company. But Mr. Hastings disclaims it, unnecessarily disclaims it, for no one charges him with it. What we charge him with is the abuse of that system. To one of these abuses I will now call your Lordships’ attention. Finding, soon after his appointment to the office of Governor-General, that the Nabob was likely to get into debt, he turns him into a vassal, and resolves to treat him as such. You will observe that this is not the only instance in which, upon a failure of payment, the defaulter becomes directly a vassal. You remember how Durbege Sing, the moment he fell into an arrear of tribute, became a vassal, and was thrown into prison, without any inquiry into the causes which occasioned that arrear. With respect to the Nabob of Oude, we assert, and can prove, that his revenue was 3,600,000l. at the day of his father’s death; and if the revenue fell off afterwards, there was abundant reason to believe that he possessed in abundance the means of paying the Company every farthing.
Before I quit this subject, your Lordships will again permit me to reprobate the malicious insinuations by which Mr. Hastings has thought proper to slander the virtuous persons who are the authors of that system which he complains of. They are men whose characters this country will ever respect, honor, and revere, both the living and the dead, — the dead for the living, and the living for the dead. They will altogether be revered for a conduct honorable and glorious to Great Britain, whilst their names stand as they now do, unspotted by the least imputation of oppression, breach of faith, perjury, bribery, or any other fraud whatever. I know there was a faction formed against them upon that very account. Be corrupt, you have friends; stem the torrent of corruption, you open a thousand venal mouths against you. Men resolved to do their duty must be content to suffer such opprobrium, and I am content; in the name of the living and of the dead, and in the name of the Commons, I glory in our having appointed some good servants at least to India.
But to proceed. “This system was not,” says he, “of my making.” You would, then, naturally imagine that the persons who made this abominable system had also made some tyrannous use of it. Let us see what use they made of it during the time of their majority in the Council. There was an arrear of subsidy due from the Nabob. How it came into arrear we shall consider hereafter. The Nabob proposed to pay it by taxing the jaghires of his family, and taking some money from the Begum. This was consented to by Mr. Bristow, at that time Resident for the Company in Oude; and to this arrangement Asoph ul Dowlah and his advisers lent a willing ear. What did Mr. Hastings then say of this transaction? He called it a violent assumption of power on the part of the Council. He did not, you see, then allow that a bad system justified any persons whatever in an abuse of it. He contended that it was a violent attack upon the rights and property of the parties from whom the money was to be taken, that it had no ground or foundation in justice whatever, and that it was contrary to every principle of right and equity.
Your Lordships will please to bear in mind, that afterwards, by his own consent, and the consent of the rest of the Council, this business was compromised between the son, the mother, and their relations. A very great sum of money, which was most useful to the Company at that period, was raised by a family compact and arrangement among themselves. This proceeding was sanctioned by the Company, Mr. Hastings himself consenting; and a pledge wa
s given to the Begums and family of the Nabob, that this should be the last demand made upon them, — that it should be considered, not as taken compulsively, but as a friendly and amicable donation. They never admitted, nor did the Nabob ever contend, that he had any right at all to take this money from them. At that time it was not Mr. Hastings’s opinion that the badness of the system would justify any violence as a consequence of it; and when the advancement of the money was agreed to between the parties, as a family and amicable compact, he was as ready as anybody to propose and sanction a regular treaty between the parties, that all claims on one side and all kind of uneasiness on the other should cease forever, under the guardianship of British faith.
Mr. Hastings, as your Lordships remember, has conceded that British faith is the support of the British empire; that, if that empire is to be maintained, it is to be maintained by good faith; that, if it is to be propagated, it is to be propagated by public faith; and that, if the British empire falls, it will be through perfidy and violence. These are the principles which he assumes, when he chooses to reproach others. But when he has to defend his own perfidy and breaches of faith, then, as your Lordships will find set forth in his defence before the House of Commons on the Benares charge, he denies, or at least questions, the validity of any treaty that can at present be made with India. He declares that he considers all treaties as being weakened by a considerable degree of doubt respecting their validity and their binding force, in such a state of things as exists in India.
Whatever was done, during that period of time to which I have alluded, by the majority of the Council, Mr. Hastings considered himself as having nothing to do with, on the plea of his being a dissentient member: a principle which, like other principles, I shall take some notice of by-and-by. Colonel Monson and General Clavering died soon after, and Mr. Hastings obtained a majority in the Council, and was then, as he calls it, restored to his authority; so that any evil that could be done by evil men under that evil system could have lasted but for a very short time indeed. From that moment, Mr. Hastings, in my opinion, became responsible for every act done in Council, while he was there, which he did not resist, and for every engagement which he did not oppose. For your Lordships will not bear that miserable jargon which you have heard, shameful to office and to official authority, that a man, when, he happens not to find himself in a majority upon any measure, may think himself excusable for the total neglect of his duty; that in such a situation he is not bound to propose anything that it might be proper to propose, or to resist anything that it might be proper to resist. What would be the inference from such an assumption? That he can never act in a commission; that, unless a man has the supreme power, he is not responsible for anything he does or neglects to do. This is another principle which your Lordships will see constantly asserted and constantly referred to by Mr. Hastings. Now I do contend, that, notwithstanding his having been in a minority, if there was anything to be done that could prevent oppressive consequences, he was bound to do that thing; and that he was bound to propose every possible remedial measure. This proud, rebellious proposition against the law, that any one individual in the Council may say that he is responsible for nothing, because he is not the whole Council, calls for your Lordships’ strongest reprobation.