by Edmund Burke
“As the advantages which the Company may receive from the appointment of such minister will depend on his readiness to promote our views and advance our interest, we are willing to allow him so liberal a gratification as may excite his zeal and secure his attachment to the Company; we therefore empower you to grant to the person whom you shall think worthy of this trust an annual allowance not exceeding three lacs of rupees, (thirty thousand pounds,) which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him to support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we must add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the active minister of the Nabob’s government, we hope and trust that you will show yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in you, by being actuated therein, by no other motives than those of the public good and the safety and interest of the Company.”
Here, my Lords, a person was to be named fit to fill the office and supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân, who was deputy-viceroy of Bengal, at the head of the criminal justice of the country, and, in short, at the head of the whole ostensible Mahometan government; he was also to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân as naib dewan, from which Reza Khân was to be removed: for you will observe, the Directors always speak of a man fit to perform all the duties of Mahomed Reza Khân; and amongst these he was to be as the guardian of the Nabob’s person, and the representative of his authority and government.
Mr. Hastings, having received these orders from the Court of Directors, did — what? He alleges in his defence, that no positive commands were given him. But a very sufficient description was given of the person who ought to succeed Mahomed Reza Khân, in whom the Company had before recognized all the necessary qualities; and they therefore desire him to name a similar person. But what does Mr. Hastings do in consequence of this authority? He names no man at all. He searches into the seraglio of the Nabob, and names a woman to be the viceroy of the province, to be the head of the ostensible government, to be the guardian of the Nabob’s person, the conservator of his authority, and a proper representative of the remaining majesty of that government.
Well, my Lords, he searched the seraglio. When you have to take into consideration the guardianship of a person of great dignity, there are two circumstances to be attended to: one, a faithful and affectionate guardianship of his person; and the other, a strong interest in his authority, and the means of exercising that authority in a proper and competent manner. Mr. Hastings, when he was looking for a woman in the seraglio, (for he could find women only there,) must have found actually in authority there the Nabob’s own mother: certainly a person who by nature was most fit to be his guardian; and there is no manner of doubt of her being sufficiently competent to that duty. Here, then, was a legitimate wife of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân, a woman of rank and distinction, fittest to take care of the person and interests, as far as a woman could take care of them, of her own son. In this situation she had been placed before, during the administration of Mahomed Reza Khân, by the direct orders of the Governor, Sir John Cartier. She had, I say, been put in possession of that trust which it was natural and proper to give to such a woman. But what does Mr. Hastings do? He deposes this woman. He strips her of her authority with which he found her invested under the sanction of the English government. He finds out a woman in the seraglio, called Munny Begum, who was bound to the Nabob by no tie whatever of natural affection. He makes this woman the guardian of the young Nabob’s person. She had a son who had been placed upon the musnud after the death of his father, Sujah Dowlah, and had been appointed his guardian. This young Nabob died soon afterwards, and was succeeded by Nujim ul Dowlah, another natural son of Sujah Dowlah. This prince being left without a mother, this woman was suffered to retain the guardianship of the Nabob till his death. When Mobarek ul Dowlah, a legitimate son of Sujah Dowlah, succeeded him, Sir John Cartier did what his duty was: he put the Nabob’s own mother into the place which she was naturally entitled to hold, the guardianship of her own son, and displaced Munny Begum. The whole of the arrangement by which Munny Begum was appointed guardian of the two preceding Nabobs stands in the Company’s records stigmatized as a transaction base, wicked, and corrupt. We will read to your Lordships an extract from a letter which has the signature of Mr. Sumner, the gentleman who sits here by the side of Mr. Hastings, and from which you will learn what the Company and the Council thought of the original nomination of Munny Begum and of her son. You will find that they considered her as a great agent and instrument of all the corruption there; and that this whole transaction, by which the bastard son of Munny Begum was brought forward to the prejudice of the legitimate son of the Nabob, was considered to be, what it upon the very face of it speaks itself to be, corrupt and scandalous.
Extract of a General Letter from the President and Council at Calcutta, Bengal, to the Select Committee of the Directors.
Paragraph 5.— “At Fort St. George we received the first advices of the demise of Mir Jaffier, and of Sujah Dowlah’s defeat. It was there firmly imagined that no definitive measures would be taken, either with respect to a peace or filling the vacancy in the nizamut, before our arrival, — as the ‘Lapwing’ arrived in the month of January with your general letter, and the appointment of a committee with express powers to that purpose, for the successful exertion of which the happiest occasion now offered. However, a contrary resolution prevailed in the Council. The opportunity of acquiring immense fortunes was too inviting to be neglected, and the temptation too powerful to be resisted. A treaty was hastily drawn up by the board, — or rather, transcribed, with few unimportant additions, from that concluded with Mir Jaffier, — and a deputation, consisting of Messrs. Johnstone, senior, Middleton, and Leycester, appointed to raise the natural son of the deceased Nabob to the subahdarry, in prejudice of the claim of the grandson; and for this measure such reasons assigned as ought to have dictated a diametrically opposite resolution. Meeran’s son was a minor, which circumstance alone would have naturally brought the whole administration into our hands at a juncture when it became indispensably necessary we should realize the shadow of power and influence, which, having no solid foundation, was exposed to the danger of being annihilated by the first stroke of adverse fortune. But this inconsistence was not regarded, nor was it material to the views for precipitating the treaty, which was pressed on the young Nabob at the first interview, in so earnest and indelicate a manner as highly disgusted him and chagrined his ministers, while not a single rupee was stipulated for the Company, whose interests were sacrificed that their servants might revel in the spoils of a treasury, before impoverished, but now totally exhausted.
“6. This scene of corruption was first disclosed at a visit the Nabob paid to Lord Clive and the gentlemen of the Committee a few days after our arrival. He there delivered to his Lordship a letter filled with bitter complaints of the insults and indignity he had been exposed to, and the embezzlement of near twenty lacs of rupees issued from his treasury for purposes unknown during the late negotiations. So public a complaint could not be disregarded, and it soon produced an inquiry. We referred the letter to the board in expectation of obtaining a satisfactory account of the application of this money, and were answered only by a warm remonstrance entered by Mr. Leycester against that very Nabob in whose elevation he boasts of having been a principal agent.
“7. Mahomed Reza Khân, the naib subah, was then called upon to account for this large disbursement from the treasury; and he soon delivered to the Committee the very extraordinary narrative entered in our Proceedings the 6th of June, wherein he specifies the several names and sums, by whom paid, and to whom, whether in cash, bills, or obligations. So precise, so accurate an account as this of money for secret and venal services was never, we believe, before this period, exhibited to the Honorable Court of Directors, at least never vouched by undeniable testimony and authentic documents: by Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute largely to the sums deman
ded; by Muley Ram, who was employed by Mr. Johnstone in all these pecuniary transactions; by the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khân, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly, by the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose names are specified in the distribution list.
“8. Juggut Seet expressly declared in his narrative, that the sum which he agreed to pay the deputation, amounting to 125,000 rupees, was extorted by menaces; and since the close of our inquiry, and the opinions we delivered in the Proceedings of the 21st of June, it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khân, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the dependent state and timid disposition of the minister. The charge, indeed, is denied on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the other. Your honorable board must therefore determine how far the circumstance of extortion may aggravate the crime of disobedience to your positive orders, — the exposing the government in a manner to sale, and receiving the infamous wages of corruption from opposite parties and contending interests. We speak with boldness, because we speak from conviction founded upon indubitable evidence, that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account, to the amount of 228,125l. sterling, there was likewise to the value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roy Dullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Khân.
(Signed at the end,)
“CLIVE.
WM B. SUMNER.
JOHN CARNAC.
H. VERELST.
FRAS SYKES.”
My Lords, the persons who sign this letter are mostly the friends, and one of them is the gentleman who is bail for and sits near Mr. Hastings. They state to you this horrible and venal transaction, by which the government was set to sale, by which a bastard son was elevated to the wrong of the natural and legitimate heir, and in which a prostitute, his mother, was put in the place of the honorable and legitimate mother of the representative of the family.
Now, if there was one thing more than another under heaven, which Mr. Hastings ought to have shunned, it was the suspicion of being concerned in any such infamous transaction as that which is here recorded to be so, — a transaction in which the country government had before been sold to this very woman and her offspring, and in which two great candidates for power in that country fought against each other, and perhaps the largest offerer carried it.
When a Governor-General sees the traces of corruption in the conduct of his predecessors, the traces of injustice following that corruption, the traces of notorious irregularity in setting aside the just claimants in favor of those that have no claim at all, he has that before his eyes which ought to have made him the more scrupulously avoid, and to keep at the farthest distance possible from, the contagion and even the suspicion of being corrupted by it. Moreover, my Lords, it was in consequence of these very transactions that the new covenants were made, which bind the servants of the Company never to take a present of above two hundred pounds, or some such sum of money, from any native in circumstances there described. This covenant I shall reserve for consideration in another part of this business. It was in pursuance of this idea, and to prevent the abuse of the prevailing custom of visiting the governing powers of that country with a view of receiving presents from them, that the House of Commons afterwards, in its inquiries, took up this matter and passed the Regulating Act in 1773.
But to return to Munny Begum. — This very person, that had got into power by the means already mentioned, did Mr. Hastings resort to, knowing her to be well skilled in the trade of bribery, — knowing her skilful practice in business of this sort, — knowing the fitness of her eunuchs, instruments, and agents, to be dealers in this kind of traffic. This very woman did Mr. Hastings select, stigmatized as she was in the Company’s record, stigmatized by the very gentleman who sits next to him, and whose name you have heard read to you as one of those members of the Council that reprobated the horrible iniquity of the transaction in which this woman was a principal agent. For though neither the young Nabob nor his mother ought to have been raised to the stations in which they were placed, and were placed there for the purpose of facilitating the receipt of bribes, yet the order of Nature was preserved, and the mother was made the guardian of her own son: for though she was a prostitute and he a bastard, yet still she was a mother and he a son; and both Nature and legitimate disposition with regard to the guardianship of a son went together.
But what did Mr. Hastings do? Improving upon the preceding transaction, improving on it by a kind of refinement in corruption, he drives away the lawful mother from her lawful guardianship; the mother of nature he turns out, and he delivers her son to the stepmother to be the guardian of his person. That your Lordships may see who this woman was, we shall read to you a paper from your Lordships’ minutes, produced before Mr. Hastings’s face, and never contradicted by him from that day to this.
At a Consultation, 24th July, 1775.— “Shah Chanim, deceased, was sister to the Nabob Mahub ul Jung by the same father, but different mothers; she married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân, by whom she had a son and a daughter; the name of the former was Mir Mahomed Sadduc Ali Khân, and the latter was married to Mir Mahomed Cossim Khân Sadduc. Ali Khân had two sons and two daughters; the sons’ names are Mir Sydoc and Mir Sobeem, who are now living; the daughters were married to Sultan Mirza Daood.
“Baboo Begum, the mother of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah, was the daughter of Summin Ali Khân, and married Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân. The history of Munny Begum is this. At a village called Balkonda, near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty, not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave girl belonging to Summin Ali Khân, whose name was Bissoo. During the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah, brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg’s set of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one, and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance at the wedding. While this ceremony was celebrating, they were kept by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner she has remained in the Nabob’s family ever since.”
My Lords, I do not mean to detain you long upon this part of the business, but I have thought it necessary to advert to these particulars. As to all the rest, the honorable and able Manager who preceded me has sufficiently impressed upon your Lordships’ minds the monstrous nature of the deposing of the Nabob’s mother from the guardianship of her son, for the purpose of placing this woman there at the head of all his family and of his domestic concerns in the seraglio within doors, and at the head of the state without, together with the disposal of the whole of the revenue that was allowed him. Mr. Hastings pretends, indeed, to have appointed at the same time a trusty mutsuddy to keep the accounts of the revenue; but he has since declared that no account had been kept, and that it was in vain to desire it or to call for it. This is the state of the case with respect to the appointment of Munny Begum.
With regard to the reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khân, you have heard from my worthy fellow Manager that he was acquitted of the charges that had been brought against him by Mr. Hastings, after a long and lingering trial. The Company was perfectly satisfied with the acquittal, and declared that he was not only acquitted, but honorably acquitted; and they also declared that he had a fair claim to a compensation for his sufferings. They not only declared him innocent, but meritorious. They gave orders that he should be considered as a person who was to be placed in offic
e again upon the first occasion, and that he had entitled himself to this favor by his conduct in the place which he had before filled.
The Council of the year 1775, (whom I can never mention nor shall mention without honor,) who complied faithfully with the act of Parliament, who never disobeyed the orders of the Company, and to whom no man has imputed even the shadow of corruption, found that this Munny Begum had acted in the manner which my honorable fellow Manager has stated: that she had dissipated the revenue, that she had neglected the education of the Nabob, and had thrown the whole judicature of the country into confusion. They ordered that she should be removed from her situation; that the Nabob’s own mother should be placed at the head of the seraglio, a situation to which she was entitled; and with regard to the rest of the offices, that Mahomed Reza Khân should be employed to fill them.
Mr. Hastings resisted these propositions with all his might; but they were by that happy momentary majority carried against him, and Mahomed Reza Khân was placed in his former situation. But Mr. Hastings, though thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the fortunate moment for returning again to his corrupt, vicious, tyrannical, and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khân had met with the fullest approbation of the Company; and they directed, that, as long as his good behavior entitled him to it, he should continue in the office. Mr. Hastings, however, without alleging any ill behavior, and for no reason that can be assigned, but his corrupt engagement with Munny Begum, overturned (upon the pretence of restoring the Nabob to his rights) the whole of the Company’s arrangement, as settled by the late majority, and approved by the Court of Directors.
I have now to show you what sort of a man the Nabob was, who was thus set up in defiance of the Company’s authority; what Mr. Hastings himself thought of him; what the judges thought of him; and what all the world thought of him.