by Edmund Burke
“Notwithstanding the great benefit which the Company would have derived from such an augmentation of their military force as these troops constituted, ready to act on any emergency, prepared and disciplined without any charge on the Company, as the institution professed, until their actual services should be required, I have observed some evils growing out of the system, which, in my opinion, more than counterbalanced those advantages, had they been realized in their fullest effect. The remote stations of these troops, placing the commanding officers beyond the notice and control of the board, afforded too much opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited the contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army. A most remarkable and incontrovertible proof of the prevalence of this spirit has been seen in the court-martial upon Captain Erskine, where the court, composed of officers of rank and respectable characters, unanimously and honorably, most honorably, acquitted him upon an acknowledged fact which in times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving the severest punishment.”
I will now call your Lordships’ attention to another extract from the same comment of Mr. Hastings, with respect to the removal of the Company’s servants, civil and military, from the court and service of the Vizier.
“I was actuated solely by motives of justice to him and a regard to the honor of our national character. In removing those gentlemen I diminish my own influence, as well as that of my colleagues, by narrowing the line of patronage; and I expose myself to obloquy and resentment from those who are immediately affected by the arrangement, and the long train of their friends and powerful patrons. But their numbers, their influence, and the enormous amount of their salaries, pensions, and emoluments, were an intolerable burden on the revenues and authority of the Vizier, and exposed us to the envy and resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the Vizier from the rewards of their services and attachment.”
My Lords, you have here Mr. Hastings’s opinion of the whole military service. You have here the authority and documents by which he supports his opinion. He states that the contagion of peculation had tainted all the frontier stations, which contain much the largest part of the Company’s army. He states that this contagion had tainted the whole army, everywhere: so that, according to him, there was, throughout the Indian army, an universal taint of peculation. My Lords, peculation is not a military vice. Insubordination, want of attention to duty, want of order, want of obedience and regularity, are military vices; but who ever before heard of peculation being a military vice? In the case before you, it became so by employing military men as farmers of revenue, as masters of markets and of gunges. This departure from the military character and from military duties introduced that peculation which tainted the army, and desolated the dominions of the Nabob Vizier.
I declare, when I first read the passage which has been just read to your Lordships, in the infancy of this inquiry, it struck me with astonishment that peculation should at all exist as a military vice; but I was still more astonished at finding Warren Hastings charging the whole British army with being corrupted by this base and depraved spirit, to a degree which tainted even their judicial character. This, my Lords, is a most serious matter. The judicial functions of military men are of vast importance in themselves; and, generally speaking, there is not any tribunal whose members are more honorable in their conduct and more just in their decisions than those of a court-martial. Perhaps there is not a tribunal in this country whose reputation is really more untainted than that of a court-martial. It stands as fair, in the opinion both of the army and of the public, as any tribunal, in a country where all tribunals stand fair. But in India, this unnatural vice of peculation, which has no more to do with the vices of a military character than with its virtues, this venomous spirit, has pervaded the members of military tribunals to such an extent, that they acquit, honorably acquit, most honorably acquit a man, “upon an acknowledged fact which in times of stricter discipline would have been deemed a crime deserving the severest punishment.”
Who says all this, my Lords? Do I say it? No: it is Warren Hastings who says it. He records it. He gives you his vouchers and his evidence, and he draws the conclusion. He is the criminal accuser of the British army. He who sits in that box accuses the whole British army in India. He has declared them to be so tainted with peculation, from head to foot, as to have been induced to commit the most wicked perjuries, for the purpose of bearing one another out in their abominable peculations. In this unnatural state of things, and whilst there is not one military man on these stations of whom Mr. Hastings does not give this abominably flagitious character, yet every one of them have joined to give him the benefit of their testimony for his honorable intentions and conduct.
In this tremendous scene, which he himself exposes, are there no signs of this captain-generalship which I have alluded to? Are there no signs of this man’s being a captain-general of iniquity, under whom all the spoilers of India were paid, disciplined, and supported? I not only charge him with being guilty of a thousand crimes, but I assert that there is not a soldier or a civil servant in India whose culpable acts are not owing to this man’s example, connivance, and protection. Everything which goes to criminate them goes directly against the prisoner. He puts them in a condition to plunder; he suffered no native authority or government to restrain them; and he never called a man to an account for these flagitious acts which he has thought proper to bring before his country in the most solemn manner and upon the most solemn occasion.
I verily believe, in my conscience, his accusation is not true, in the excess, in the generality and extravagance in which he charges it. That it is true in a great measure we cannot deny; and in that measure we, in our turn, charge him with being the author of all the crimes which he denounces; and if there is anything in the charge beyond the truth, it is he who is to answer for the falsehood.
I will now refer your Lordships to his opinion of the civil service, as it is declared and recorded in his remarks upon the removal of the Company’s civil servants by him from the service of the Vizier.— “I was,” says he, “actuated solely by motives of justice to him [the Nabob of Oude], and a regard to the honor of our national character.” — Here, you see, he declares his opinion that in Oude the civil servants of the Company had destroyed the national character, and that therefore they ought to be recalled.— “By removing these people,” he adds, “I diminish my patronage.” — But I ask, How came they there? Why, through this patronage. He sent them there to suck the blood which the military had spared. He sent these civil servants to do ten times more mischief than the military ravagers could do, because they were invested with greater authority.— “If,” says he, “I recall them from thence, I lessen my patronage.” — But who, my Lords, authorized him to become a patron? What laws of his country justified him in forcing upon the Vizier the civil servants of the Company? What treaty authorized him to do it? What system of policy, except his own wicked, arbitrary system, authorized him to act thus?
He proceeds to say, “I expose myself to obloquy and resentment from those who are immediately affected by the arrangement, and the long train of their friends and powerful patrons.” — My Lords, it is the constant burden of his song, that he cannot do his duty, that he is fettered in everything, that he fears a thousand mischiefs to happen to him, — not from his acting with carefulness, economy, frugality, and in obedience to the laws of his country, but from the very reverse of all this. Says he, “I am afraid I shall forfeit the favor of the powerful patrons of those servants in England, namely, the Lords and Commons of England, if I do justice to the suffering people of this country.”
In the House of Commons there are undoubtedly powerful people who may be supposed to be influenced by patronage; but the higher and more powerful part of the country is more directly represented by your Lordships than by us, although we have of the first blood of England in the House of Commons. We do, indeed, represent,
by the knights of the shires, the landed interest; by our city and borough members we represent the trading interest; we represent the whole people of England collectively. But neither blood nor power is represented so fully in the House of Commons as that order which composes the great body of the people, — the protection of which is our peculiar duty, and to which it is our glory to adhere. But the dignities of the country, the great and powerful, are represented eminently by your Lordships. As we, therefore, would keep the lowest of the people from the contagion and dishonor of peculation and corruption, and above all from exercising that vice which, among commoners, is unnatural as well as abominable, the vice of tyranny and oppression, so we trust that your Lordships will clear yourselves and the higher and more powerful ranks from giving the smallest countenance to the system which we have done our duty in denouncing and bringing before you.
My Lords, you have heard the account of the civil service. Think of their numbers, think of their influence, and the enormous amount of their salaries, pensions, and emoluments! They were, you have heard, an intolerable burden on the revenues and authority of the Vizier; and they exposed us to the envy and resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the prince from the just reward of their services and attachments. Here, my Lords, is the whole civil service brought before you. They usurp the country, they destroy the revenues, they overload the prince, and they exclude all the nobility and eminent persons of the country from the just reward of their service.
Did Mr. Francis, whom I saw here a little while ago, send these people into that country? Did General Clavering, or Colonel Monson, whom he charges with this system, send them there? No, they were sent by himself; and if one was sent by anybody else for a time, he was soon recalled: so that he is himself answerable for all the peculation which he attributes to the civil service. You see the character given of that service; you there see their accuser, you there see their defender, who, after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished the guilty in either, and now receives the prodigal praises of both.
I defy the ingenuity of man to show that Mr. Hastings is not the defamer of the service. I defy the ingenuity of man to show that the honor of Great Britain has not been tarnished under his patronage. He engaged to remove all these bloodsuckers by the treaty of Chunar; but he never executed that treaty. He proposed to take away the temporary brigade; but he again established it. He redressed no grievance; he formed no improvements in the government; he never attempted to provide a remedy without increasing the evil tenfold. He was the primary and sole cause of all the grievances, civil and military, to which the unhappy natives of that country were exposed; and he was the accuser of all the immediate authors of those grievances, without having punished any one of them. He is the accuser of them all. But the only person whom he attempted to punish was that man who dared to assert the authority of the Court of Directors, and to claim an office assigned to him by them.
I will now read to your Lordships the protest of General Clavering against the military brigade.— “Taking the army from the Nabob is an infringement of the rights of an independent prince, leaving only the name and title of it without the power. It is taking his subjects from him, against every law of Nature and of nations.”
I will next read to your Lordships a minute of Mr. Francis’s.— “By the foregoing letter from Mr. Middleton it appears that he has taken the government of the Nabob’s dominions directly upon himself. I was not a party to the resolutions which preceded that measure, and will not be answerable for the consequences of it.”
The next paper I will read is one introduced by the Managers, to prove that a representation was made by the Nabob respecting the expenses of the gentlemen resident at his court, and written after the removal before mentioned.
Extract of a Letter from the Vizier to Mr. Macpherson, received the 21st April, 1785.
“With respect to the expenses of the gentlemen who are here, I have before written in a covered manner; I now write plainly, that I have no ability to give money to the gentlemen, because I am indebted many lacs of rupees to the bankers for the payment of the Company’s debt. At the time of Mr. Hastings’s departure, I represented to him that I had no resources for the expenses of the gentlemen. Mr. Hastings, having ascertained my distressed situation, told me that after his arrival in Calcutta he would consult with the Council, and remove from hence the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every person except the gentlemen in office here. At this time that all the concerns are dependent upon you, and you have in every point given ease to my mind, according to Mr. Hastings’s agreement, I hope that the expenses of the gentlemen maybe removed from me, and that you may recall every person residing here beyond the gentlemen in office. Although Major Palmer does not at this time demand anything for the gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them anything, yet the custom of the English gentlemen is, when they remain here, they will in the end ask for something. This is best, that they should be recalled.”
I think so, too; and your Lordships will think so with me; but Mr. Hastings, who says that he himself thought thus in September, 1781, and engaged to recall these gentlemen, was so afraid of their powerful friends and patrons here, that he left India, and left all that load of obloquy upon his successors. He left a Major Palmer there, in the place of a Resident: a Resident of his own, as your Lordships must see; for Major Palmer was no Resident of the Company’s. This man received a salary of about 23,000l. a year, which he declared to be less than his expenses; by which we may easily judge of the enormous salaries of those who make their fortunes there. He was left by Mr. Hastings as his representative of peculation, his representative of tyranny. He was the second agent appointed to control all power ostensible and unostensible, and to head these gentlemen whose “custom,” the Nabob says, “was in the end to ask for money.” Money they must have; and there, my Lords, is the whole secret.
I have this day shown your Lordships the entire dependence of Oude on the British empire. I have shown you how Mr. Hastings usurped all power, reduced the prince to a cipher, and made of his minister a mere creature of his own, — how he made the servants of the Company dependent on his own arbitrary will, and considered independence a proof of corruption. It has been likewise proved to your Lordships that he suffered the army to become an instrument of robbery and oppression, and one of its officers to be metamorphosed into a farmer-general to waste the country and embezzle its revenues. You have seen a clandestine and fraudulent system, occasioning violence and rapine; and you have seen the prisoner at the bar acknowledging and denouncing an abandoned spirit of rapacity without bringing its ministers to justice, and pleading as his excuse the fear of offending your Lordships and the House of Commons. We have shown you the government, revenue, commerce, and agriculture of Oude ruined and destroyed by Mr. Hastings and his creatures. And to wind up all, we have shown you an army so corrupted as to pervert the fundamental principles of justice, which are the elements and basis of military discipline. All this, I say, we have shown you; and I cannot believe that your Lordships will consider that we have trifled with your time, or strained our comments one jot beyond the strict measure of the text. We have shown you a horrible scene, arising from an astonishing combination of horrible circumstances. The order in which you will consider these circumstances must be left to your Lordships.
At present I am not able to proceed further. My next attempt will be to bring before you the manner in which Mr. Hastings treated movable and immovable property in Oude, and by which he has left nothing undestroyed in that devoted country.
SPEECH IN GENERAL REPLY. FIFTH DAY: SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 1794.
My Lords, — We will now resume the consideration of the remaining part of our charge, and of the prisoner’s attempts to defend himself against it.
Mr. Hastings, well knowing (what your Lordships must also by this time be perfectly satisfied was the case) that this unfortunate Nabob had no will of his own, draws down
his poor victim to Chunar by an order to attend the Governor-General. If the Nabob ever wrote to Mr. Hastings, expressing a request or desire for this meeting, his letter was unquestionably dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid a ground of direct proof before you, that the Nabob’s being at Chunar, that his proceedings there, and that all his acts were so dictated, and consequently must be so construed.
I shall now proceed to lay before your Lordships the acts of oppression committed by Mr. Hastings through his two miserable instruments: the one, his passive instrument, the Nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton, his active instrument, in his subsequent plans for the entire destruction of that country. In page 513 of the printed Minutes you have Mr. Middleton’s declaration of his promptitude to represent everything agreeably to Mr. Hastings’s wishes.
“My dear Sir, — I have this day answered your public letter in the form you seemed to expect. I hope there is nothing in it that may to you appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise understood than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say I shall be ready to conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to take upon myself any share of the blame of the hitherto non-performance of the stipulations made on behalf of the Nabob; though I do assure you I myself represented to his Excellency and the ministers, conceiving it to be your desire, that the apparent assumption of the reins of his government, (for in that light he undoubtedly considered it at the first view,) as specified in the agreement executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally enforced, but that it was necessary you should have something to show on your side, as the Company were deprived of a benefit without a requital; and upon the faith of this assurance alone, I believe I may safely affirm, his Excellency’s objections to signing the treaty were given up. If I have understood the matter wrong, or misconceived your design, I am truly sorry for it. However, it is not too late to correct the error; and I am ready to undertake, and, God willing, to carry through, whatever you may, on the receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final resolve.