by Edmund Burke
“I am sorry that I am under the necessity of writing in this pressing manner. I trust implicitly to your integrity, I am certain of your attachment to myself, and I know that your capacity is equal to any service; but I must express my doubts of your firmness and activity, and above all of your recollection of my instructions, and of their importance. My conduct in the late arrangements will be arraigned with all the rancor of disappointed rapacity, and my reputation and influence will suffer a mortal wound from the failure of them. They have already failed in a degree, since no part of them has yet taken place, but the removal of our forces from the Dooab and Rohilcund, and of the British officers and pensioners from the service of the Nabob, and the expenses of the former thrown without any compensation on the Company.
“I expect a supply of money equal to the discharge of all the Nabob’s arrears, and am much disappointed and mortified that I am not now able to return with it.
“Give me an immediate answer to the question which I have herein proposed, that I may lose no more time in fruitless inaction.”
About this time Mr. Hastings had received information of our inquiries in the House of Commons into his conduct; and this is the manner in which he prepares to meet them. “I must get money. I must carry with me that great excuse for everything, that salve for every sore, that expiation for every crime: let me provide that, all is well. You, Mr. Middleton, try your nerves: are you equal to these services? Examine yourself; see what is in you: are you man enough to come up to it?” says the great robber to the little robber, says Roland the Great to his puny accomplice. “Are you equal to it? Do you feel yourself a man? If not, send messengers and dawks to me, and I, the great master tyrant, will come myself, and put to shame all the paltry delegate tools of despotism, that have not edge enough to cut their way through and do the services I have ordained for them.”
I have already stated to your Lordships his reason and motives for this violence, and they are such as aggravated his crime by attempting to implicate his country in it. He says he was afraid to go home without having provided for the payment of the Nabob’s debt. Afraid of what? Was he afraid of coming before a British tribunal, and saying, “Through justice, through a regard for the rights of an allied sovereign, through a regard to the rights of his people, I have not got so much as I expected”? Of this no man could be afraid. The prisoner’s fear had another origin. “I have failed,” says he to himself, “in my first project. I went to Benares to rob; I have lost by my violence the fruits of that robbery. I must get the money somewhere, or I dare not appear before a British House of Commons, a British House of Lords, or any other tribunal in the kingdom; but let me get money enough, and they won’t care how I get it. The estates of whole bodies of nobility may be confiscated; a people who had lived under their protection may be given up into the hands of foreign usurers: they will care for none of these things; they will suffer me to do all this, and to employ in it the force of British troops, whom I have described as a set of robbers, provided I can get money.” These were Mr. Hastings’s views; and, in accordance with them, the jaghires were all confiscated, the jaghiredars with their families were all turned out, the possessions delivered up to the usurer, in order that Mr. Hastings might have the excuse of money to plead at the bar of the House of Commons, and afterwards at the bar of the House of Lords. If your Lordships, in your sacred character of the first tribunal in the world, should by your judgment justify those proceedings, you will sanction the greatest wrongs that have been ever known in history.
But to proceed. The next thing to be asked is, Were the promised pensions given to the jaghiredars? I suppose your Lordships are not idle enough to put that question to us. No compensation, no consideration, was given or stipulated for them. If there had been any such thing, the prisoner could have proved it, — he would have proved it. The means were easy to him. But we have saved him the trouble of the attempt. We have proved the contrary, and, if called upon, we will show you the place where this is proved.
I have now shown your Lordships how Mr. Hastings, having with such violent and atrocious circumstances usurped the government of Oude, (I hope I need not use any farther proof that the Nabob was in effect non-existent in the country,) treated all the landed property. The next question will be, How has he treated whatever moneyed property was left in the country? My Lords, he looked over that immense waste of his own creating, not as Satan viewed the kingdoms of the world and saw the power and glory of them, — but he looked over the waste of Oude with a diabolical malice which one could hardly suppose existed in the prototype himself. He saw nowhere above-ground one single shilling that he could attach, — no, not one; every place had been ravaged; no money remained in sight. But possibly some might be buried in vaults, hid from the gripe of tyranny and rapacity. “It must be so,” says he. “Where can I find it? how can I get at it? There is one illustrious family that is thought to have accumulated a vast body of treasures, through a course of three or four successive reigns. It does not appear openly; but we have good information that very great sums of money are bricked up and kept in vaults under ground, and secured under the guard and within the walls of a fortress”: the residence of the females of the family, a guard, as your Lordships know, rendered doubly and trebly secure by the manners of the country, which make everything that is in the hands of women sacred. It is said that nothing is proof against gold, — that the strongest tower will not be impregnable, if Jupiter makes love in a golden shower. This Jupiter commences making love; but he does not come to the ladies with gold for their persons, he comes to their persons for their gold. This impetuous lover, Mr. Hastings, who is not to be stayed from the objects of his passion, would annihilate space and time between him and his beloved object, the jaghires of these ladies, had now, first, their treasure’s affection.
Your Lordships have already had a peep behind the curtain, in the first orders sent to Mr. Middleton. In the treaty of Chunar you see a desire, obliquely expressed, to get the landed estates of all these great families. But even while he was meeting with such reluctance in the Nabob upon this point, and though he also met with some resistance upon the part even of Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings appears to have given him in charge some other still more obnoxious and dreadful acts. “While I was meditating,” says Mr. Middleton, in one of his letters, “upon this [the resumption of the jaghires], your orders came to me through Sir Elijah Impey.” What these orders were is left obscure in the letter: it is yet but as in a mist or cloud. But it is evident that Sir Elijah Impey did convey to him some project for getting at more wealth by some other service, which was not to supersede the first, but to be concurrent with that upon which Mr. Hastings had before given him such dreadful charges and had loaded him with such horrible responsibility. It could not have been anything but the seizure of the Begum’s treasures. He thus goaded on two reluctant victims, — first the reluctant Nabob, then the reluctant Mr. Middleton, — forcing them with the bayonet behind them, and urging on the former, as at last appears, to violate the sanctity of his mother’s house.
Your Lordships have been already told by one of my able fellow Managers, that Sir Elijah Impey is the person who carried up the message alluded to in Mr. Middleton’s letter. We have charged it, as an aggravation of the offences of the prisoner at your bar, that the Chief-Justice, who, by the sacred nature of his office, and by the express provisions of the act of Parliament under which he was sent out to India to redress the wrongs of the natives, should be made an instrument for destroying the property, real and personal, of this people. When it first came to our knowledge that all this private intrigue for the destruction of these high women was carried on through the intrigue of a Chief-Justice, we felt such shame and such horror, both for the instrument and the principal, as I think it impossible to describe, or for anything but complete and perfect silence to express.
But by Sir Elijah Impey was that order carried up to seize and confiscate the treasures of the Begums. We know that neither th
e Company nor the Nabob had any claim whatever upon these treasures. On the contrary, we know that two treaties had been made for the protection of them. We know that the Nabob, while he was contesting about some elephants and carriages, and some other things that he said were in the hands of their steward, did allow that the treasures in the custody of his grandmother and of his mother’s principal servants were their property. This is the Nabob who is now represented by Mr. Hastings and his counsel to have become the instrument of destroying his mother and grandmother, and everything else that ought to be dear to mankind, throughout the whole train of his family.
Mr. Hastings, having resolved to seize upon the treasures of the Begums, is at a loss for some pretence of justifying the act. His first justification of it is on grounds which all tyrants have ready at their hands. He begins to discover a legal title to that of which he wished to be the possessor, and on this title sets up a claim to these treasures. I say Mr. Hastings set up this claim, because by this time I suppose your Lordships will not bear to hear the Nabob’s name on such an occasion. The prisoner pretended, that, by the Mahometan law, these goods did belong to the Nabob; but whether they did or did not, he had himself been an active instrument in the treaty for securing their possession to the Begums, — a security which he attempts to unlock by his constructions of the Mahometan law. Having set up this title, the guaranty still remained; and how is he to get rid of that? In his usual way. “You have rebelled, you have taken up arms against your own son,” (for that is the pretext,) “and therefore my guaranty is gone, and your goods, whether you have a title to them or not, are to be confiscated for your rebellion.” This is his second expedient by way of justification.
Your Lordships will observe the strange situation in which we are here placed. If the fact of the rebellion can be proved, the discussion of the title to the property in question will be totally useless; for, if the ladies had actually taken up arms to cut the Nabob’s throat, it would require no person to come from the dead to prove to us that the Nabob, but not Mr. Hastings, had a right, for his own security and for his own indemnification, to take those treasures, which, whether they belonged to him or not, were employed in hostilities against him. The law of self-defence is above every other law; and if any persons draw the sword against you, violence on your part is justified, and you may use your sword to take from them that property by which they have been enabled to draw their sword against you.
But the prisoner’s counsel do not trust to this justification; they set up a title of right to these treasures: but how entirely they have failed in their attempts to substantiate either the one or the other of these his alleged justifications your Lordships will now judge. And first with regard to the title. The treasure, they say, belonged to the state. The grandmother and mother have robbed the son, and kept him out of his rightful inheritance. They then produce the Hedaya to show you what proportion of the goods of a Mussulman, when he dies, goes to his family; and here, certainly, there is a question of law to be tried. But Mr. Hastings is a great eccentric genius, and has a course of proceeding of his own: he first seizes upon the property, and then produces some Mahometan writers to prove that it did not belong to the persons who were in possession of it. You would naturally expect, that, when he was going to seize upon those goods, he would have consulted his Chief-Justice, (for, as Sir Elijah Impey went with him, he might have consulted him,) and have thus learnt what was the Mahometan law: for, though Sir Elijah had not taken his degree at a Mahometan college, though he was not a mufti or a moulavy, yet he had always muftis and moulavies near him, and he might have consulted them. But Mr. Hastings does not even pretend that such consultations or conferences were ever had. If he ever consulted Sir Elijah Impey, where is the report of the case? When were the parties before him? Where are the opinions of the moulavies? Where is the judgment of the Chief-Justice? Was he fit for nothing but to be employed as a messenger, as a common tipstaff? Was he not fit to try these rights, or to decide upon them? He has told you here, indeed, negatively, that he did not know any title Mr. Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of the reputation of the Chief-Justice. For Sir Elijah Impey, though a very good man to write a letter, or take an affidavit in a corner, or run on a message, to do the business of an under-sheriff, tipstaff, or bum-bailiff, was not fit to give an opinion on a question of Mahometan law.
You have heard Ali Ibrahim Khân referred to. This Mahometan lawyer was carried by Mr. Hastings up to Benares, to be a witness of the vast good he had done in that province, and was made Chief-Justice there. All, indeed, that we know of him, except the high character given of him by Mr. Hastings, is, I believe, that he is the Ali Ibrahim Khân whom in the Company’s records I find mentioned as a person giving bribes upon some former occasion to Mr. Hastings; but whatever he was besides, he was a doctor of the Mahometan law, he was a mufti, and was made by Mr. Hastings the principal judge in a criminal court, exercising, as I believe, likewise a considerable civil jurisdiction, and therefore he was qualified as a lawyer; and Mr. Hastings cannot object to his qualifications either of integrity or of knowledge. This man was with him. Why did not he consult him upon this law? Why did he not make him out a case of John Doe and Richard Roe, of John Stokes and John à Nokes? Why not say, “Sinub possesses such things, under such and such circumstances: give me your opinion upon the legality of the possession”? No, he did no such thing.
Your Lordships, I am sure, will think it a little extraordinary, that neither this chief-justice made by himself, nor that other chief-justice whom he led about with him in a string, — the one an English chief-justice, with a Mahometan suit in his court, the other a Mahometan chief-justice of the country, — that neither of them was consulted as lawyers by the prisoner. Both of them were, indeed, otherwise employed by him. For we find Ali Ibrahim Khân employed in the same subservient capacity in which Sir Elijah Impey was, — in order, I suppose, to keep the law of England and the law of Mahomet upon a just par: for upon this equality Mr. Hastings always values himself. Neither of these two chief-justices, I say, was ever consulted, nor one opinion taken; but they were both employed in the correspondence and private execution of this abominable project, when the prisoner himself had not either leisure or perhaps courage to give his public order in it till things got to greater ripeness.
To Sir Elijah Impey, indeed, he did put a question; and, upon my word, it did not require an Œdipus or a Sphinx to answer it. Says he, “I asked Sir Elijah Impey.” What? a question on the title between the Nabob and his mother? No such thing. He puts an hypothetical question. “Supposing,” says he, “a rebellion to exist in that country; will the Nabob be justified in seizing the goods of the rebels?” That is a question decided in a moment; and I must have a malice to Sir Elijah Impey of which I am incapable, to deny the propriety of his answer. But observe, I pray you, my Lords, there is something peculiarly good and correct in it. He does not take upon him to say one word of the actual existence of a rebellion, though he was at the time in the country, and, if there had been any, he must have been a witness to it; but, so chaste was his character as a judge, that he would not touch upon the juries’ office. “I am chief-justice here,” says he, “though a little wandering out of my orbit; yet still the sacred office of justice is in me. Do you take upon you the fact; I find the law.” Were it not for this sacred attention to separate jurisdictions, he might have been a tolerable judge of the fact, — just as good a judge as Mr. Hastings: for neither of them knew it any other way, as it appears afterwards, but by rumor and reports, —
reports, I believe, of Mr. Hastings’s own raising; for I do not know that Sir Elijah Impey had anything to do with them.
But to proceed. With regard to the title of these ladies, according to the Mahometan law, you have nothing laid before you by the prisoner’s counsel but a quotation cut out with the scissors from a Mahometan law-book, (which I suspect very much the learned gentlemen have never read through,) declaring how a Mahometan’s effects are to be distributed. But Mr. Hastings could not at the time have consulted that learned counsel who now defends him upon the principles of the Hedaya, the Hedaya not having been then published in English; and I will venture to say, that neither Sir Elijah Impey nor Ali Ibrahim Khân, nor any other person, high or low, in India, ever suggested this defence, and that it was never thought of till lately found by the learned counsel in the English translation of the Hedaya. “God bless me!” now says Mr. Hastings, “what ignorance have I been in all this time! I thought I was seizing this unjustly, and that the pretence of rebellion was necessary; but my counsel have found out a book, since published, and from it they produce the law upon that subject, and show that the Nabob had a right to seize upon the treasures of his mother.” But are your Lordships so ignorant — (your Lordships are not ignorant of anything) — are any men so ignorant as not to know that in every country the common law of distribution of the estate of an intestate amongst private individuals is no rule with regard to the family arrangements of great princes? Is any one ignorant, that, from the days of the first origin of the Persian monarchy, the laws of which have become rules ever since for almost all the monarchs of the East, the wives of great men have had, independent of the common distribution of their goods, great sums of money and great estates in land, one for their girdle, one for their veil, and so on, going through the rest of their ornaments and attire, — and that they held great estates and other effects over which the reigning monarch or his successor had no control whatever? Indeed, my Lords, a more curious and extraordinary species of trial than this of a question of right never was heard of since the world began. Mr. Hastings begins with seizing the goods of the Begums at Fyzabad, nine thousand miles from you, and fourteen years after tries the title in an English court, without having one person to appear for these miserable ladies. I trust you will not suffer this mockery; I hope this last and ultimate shame will be spared us: for I declare to God, that the defence, and the principles of it, appear to me ten thousand times worse than the act itself.