by Edmund Burke
Here is the principle avowed. He takes for granted, and he gives it the name of oppression, that the person who should succeed him would take away those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give them to some other. “But,” says he, “I will put out of the Company’s power the very means of redress.”
The document which I am now going to read to your Lordships contains a declaration by Mr. Hastings of another mean which he used of corrupting the whole Company’s service.
Minute of the Governor-General. — Extract from that Minute.
“Called upon continually by persons of high rank and station, both in national and in the Company’s councils, to protect and prefer their friends in the army, and by the merits and services which have come under my personal knowledge and observation, I suffer both pain and humiliation at the want of power to reward the meritorious, or to show a proper attention to the wishes of my superiors, without having recourse to means which must be considered as incompatible with the dignity of my station. The slender relief which I entreat of the board from this state of mortification is the authority to augment the number of my staff, which will enable me to show a marked and particular attention in circumstances such as above stated, and will be no considerable burden to the Company.”
My Lords, you here see what he has been endeavoring to effect, for the express purpose of enabling him to secure himself a corrupt influence in England. But there is another point much more material, which brings the matter directly home to this court, and puts it to you either to punish him or to declare yourselves to be accomplices in the corruption of the whole service. Hear what the man himself says. I am first to mention to your Lordships the occasion upon which the passage which I shall read to you was written. It was when he was making his enormous and shameful establishment of a Revenue Board, in the year 1781, — of which I shall say a few words hereafter, as being a gross abuse in itself: he then felt that the world would be so much shocked at the enormous prodigality and corrupt profusion of what he was doing, that he at last spoke out plainly.
A Minute of Mr. Hastings, transmitted in a Letter by Mr. Wheler.
“In this, as it must be the case in every reformation, the interest of individuals has been our principal, if not our only impediment. We could not at once deprive so large a body of our fellow-servants of their bread, without feeling that reluctance which humanity must dictate, — not unaccompanied, perhaps, with some concern for the consequence which our own credit might suffer by an act which involved the fortunes of many, and extended its influence to all their connections. This, added to the justice which was due to your servants, who were removed for no fault of theirs, but for the public convenience, induced us to continue their allowances until other offices could be provided for them, and the more cheerfully to submit to the expediency of leaving others in a temporary or partial charge of the internal collections. In effect, the civil officers [offices?] of this government might be reduced to a very scanty number, were their exigency alone to determine the list of your covenanted servants, which at this time consist of no less a number than two hundred and fifty-two, — many of them the sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pass the prime of their lives at home, as multitudes have done before them. Neither will the revenues of this country suffice for such boundless pretensions, nor are they compatible with yours and the national interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a ruin from the effects of private competition and the claims of patronage as from the more dreaded calamities of war, or the other ordinary causes which lead to the decline of dominion.”
My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage, which he avows to be one of the principles of his government, and to be the principle of the last of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine, — and that all these calamities together might not be so effectual as this patronage in wasting and destroying the country. And at what time does he tell you this? He tells it you when he himself had just wantonly destroyed an old regular establishment for the purpose of creating a new one, in which he says he was under the necessity of pensioning the members of the old establishment from motives of mere humanity. He here confesses himself to be the author of the whole mischief. “I could,” says he, “have acted better; I might have avoided desolating the country by peculation; but,” says he, “I had sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty.” I hope your Lordships will stigmatize the falsehood of this assertion. Consider, my Lords, what he has said, — two hundred and fifty men at once, and in succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of their youth with lacs. You cannot take lacs to be less than two; we cannot make a plural less than two. Two lacs make 20,000l. Then multiply that, by 252, and you will find more than 2,500,000l. to be provided for that set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the other causes which lead to decline of dominion.
My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the Company’s servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company, for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences of any change in the Company’s government. “I dare not,” says he, “be honest: if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than by bribing the House of Peers.” What a shameful avowal this to be made in the face of the world! Your Lordships’ judgment upon this great cause will obliterate it from the memory of man.
But his apprehension of some change in the Company’s government is not his only pretext for some of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also to the opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues, as another circumstance which drove him to adopt others of these scandalous expediences. Now there was a period when he had no longer to contend with, or to fear, that opposition.
When he had got rid of the majority in the Council, which thwarted him, what did he do? Did he himself correct any of the evils and disorders which had prevailed in the service, and which his hostile majority had purposed to reform? No, not one, — notwithstanding the Court of Directors had supported the majority in all their declarations, and had accused him of corruption and rebellion in every part of his opposition to them. Now that he was free from the yoke of all the mischief of that cursed majority which he deprecates, and which I have heard certain persons consider as a great calamity, (a calamity indeed it was to patronage,) — as soon, I say, as he was free from this, you would imagine he had undertaken some great and capital reformation; for all the power which the Company could give was in his hands, — total, absolute, and unconfined.
I must here remind your Lordships, that the Provincial Councils was an establishment made by Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own opinion of the expediency of them, that he transmitted to the Court of Directors a draught of an act of Parliament to confirm them. By this act it was his intention to place them beyond the possibility of mutation. Whatever opinion others might entertain of their weakness, inefficacy, or other defects, Mr. Hastings found no such things in them. He had declared in the beginning that he considered them as a sort of experiment, but that in the progress he found them answer so perfectly well that he proposed even an act of Parliament to support them. The Court of Directors, knowing the mischiefs that innovation had produced in their service, and the desolations which it had brought on the country, commanded him not to take any step for changing them, without their orders. Contrary, however, to his own declarations, contrary to the sketch of an act of Parliament, which, for aught he knew, the legislature might then have passed, (I know that it was in contemplation to
pass, about that time, several acts for regulating the Company’s affairs, and, for one, I should have been, as I always have been, a good deal concerned in whatever tended to fix some kind of permanent and settled government in Bengal,) — in violation, I say, of his duty, and in contradiction to his own opinion, he at that time, without giving the parties notice, turns out of their employments, situations, and bread, the Provincial Councils.
And who were the members of those Provincial Councils? They were of high rank in the Company’s service; they were not junior servants, boys of a day, but persons who had gone through some probation, who knew something of the country, who were conversant in its revenues and in the course of its business; they were, in short, men of considerable rank in the Company’s service. What did he do with these people? Without any regard to their rank in the service, — no more than he had regarded the rank of the nobility of the country, — he sweeps them all, in one day, from their independent situations, without reference to the Directors, and turns them all into pensioners upon the Company. And for what purpose was this done? It was done in order to reduce the Company’s servants, who, in their independent situations, were too great a mass and volume for him to corrupt, to an abject dependence upon his absolute power. It was, that he might tell them, “You have lost your situations; you have nothing but small alimentary pensions, nothing more than a maintenance; and you must depend upon me whether you are to have anything more or not.” Thus at one stroke a large division of the Company’s servants, and one of the highest orders of them, were reduced, for their next bread, to an absolute, submissive dependence upon his will; and the Company was loaded with the pensions of all these discarded servants. Thus were persons in an honorable, independent situation, earned by long service in that country, and who were subject to punishment for their crimes, if proved against them, all deprived, unheard, of their employments. You would imagine that Mr. Hastings had at least charged them with corruption. No, you will see upon your minutes, that, when he abolished the Provincial Councils, he declared at the same time that he found no fault with the persons concerned in them.
Thus, then, he has got rid, as your Lordships see, of one whole body of the Company’s servants; he has systematically corrupted the rest, and provided, as far as lay in his power, for the perpetuation of their corruption; he has connived at all their delinquencies, and has destroyed the independence of all the superior orders of them.
Now hear what he does with regard to the Council-General itself. They had, by the act that made Mr. Hastings Governor, the management of the revenues vested in them. You have been shown by an honorable and able fellow Manager of mine, that he took the business of this department wholly out of the hand of the Council; that he named a committee for the management of it, at an enormous expense, — committee made up of his own creatures and dependants; and that, after destroying the Provincial Councils, he brought down the whole management of the revenue to Calcutta. This committee took this important business entirely out of the hands of the Council, in which the act had vested it, and this committee he formed without the orders of the Court of Directors, and directly contrary to the act, which put the superintendence in the hands of the Council.
Oh, but he reserved a superintendence over them. — You shall hear what the superintendence was; you shall see, feel, smell, touch; it shall enter into every avenue and pore of your soul. It will show you what was the real principle of Mr. Hastings’s government. We will read to you what Sir John Shore says of that institution, and of the only ends and purposes which it could answer; your Lordships will then see how far he was justifiable in violating an act of Parliament, and giving out of the Council’s hands the great trust which the laws of his country had vested in them. It is part of a paper written in 1785 by Mr. Shore, who was sole acting president of this committee to which all Bengal was delivered. He was an old servant of the Company, and he is now at the head of the government of that country. He was Mr. Hastings’s particular friend, and therefore you cannot doubt either of his being a competent evidence, or that he is a favorable evidence for Mr. Hastings, and that he would not say one word against the establishment of which he himself was at the head, that was not perfectly true, and forced out of him by the truth of the case. There is not a single part of it that does not point out some abuse.
“In the actual collection of the revenues, nothing is more necessary than to give immediate attention to all complaints, which are preferred daily without number, and to dispatch them in a summary manner. This cannot be done where the control is remote. In every purgunnah throughout Bengal there are some distinct usages, which cannot be clearly known at a distance; yet in all complaints of oppression or extortion, these must be known before a decision can be pronounced. But to learn at Calcutta the particular customs of a district of Rajeshahye or Dacca is almost impossible; and considering the channel through which an explanation must pass, and through which the complaint is made, any coloring may be given to it, and oppression and extortion, to the ruin of a district, may be practised with impunity. This is a continual source of embarrassment to the Committee of Revenue in Calcutta.
“One object of their institution was to bring the revenues without the expenses of agency to the Presidency, and to remove all local control over the farmers, who were to pay their rents at Calcutta. When complaints are made against farmers by the occupiers of the lands, it is almost impossible to discriminate truth from falsehood; but to prevent a failure in the revenue, it is found necessary, in all doubtful cases, to support the farmer, — a circumstance which may give rise to and confirm the most cruel acts of oppression. The real state of any district cannot be known by the Committee. An occupier or zemindar may plead, that an inundation has ruined him, or that his country is a desert through want of rain. An aumeen is sent to examine the complaint. He returns with an exaggerated account of losses, proved in volumes of intricate accounts, which the Committee have no time to read, and for which the aumeen is well paid. Possibly, however, the whole account is false. Suppose no aumeen is employed, and the renter is held to the tenor of his engagement, the loss, if real, must occasion his ruin, unless his assessment is very moderate indeed.
“I may venture to pronounce that the real state of the districts is now less known, and the revenue less understood, than in the year 1774. Since the natives have had the disposal of accounts, since they have been introduced as agents and trusted with authority, intricacy and confusion have taken place. The records and accounts which have been compiled are numerous, yet, when any particular account is wanted, it cannot be found. It is the business of all, from the ryots to the dewan, to conceal and deceive. The simplest matters of fact are designedly covered with a veil through which no human understanding can penetrate.
“With respect to the present Committee of Revenue, it is morally impossible for them to execute the business they are intrusted with. They are invested with a general control, and they have an executive authority larger than ever was before given to any board or body of men. They may and must get through the business; but to pretend to assert that they really execute it would be folly and falsehood.
“The grand object of the native dewannies was to acquire independent control, and for many years they have pursued this with wonderful art. The farmers and zemindars under the Committee prosecute the same plan, and have already objections to anything that has the least appearance of restriction. All control removed, they can plunder as they please.
“The Committee must have a dewan, or executive officer, call him by what name you please. This man, in fact, has all the revenues paid at the Presidency at his disposal, and can, if he has any abilities, bring all the renters under contribution. It is of little advantage to restrain the Committee themselves from bribery or corruption, when their executive officer has the power of protecting [practising?] both undetected.
“To display the arts employed by a native on such an occasion would fill a volume. He discovers the secret resources of the zeminda
rs and renters, their enemies and competitors, and by the engines of hope and fear raised upon these foundations he can work them to his purpose. The Committee, with the best intentions, best abilities, and steadiest application, must, after all, be a tool in the hand of their dewan.”
Here is the account of Mr. Hastings’s new Committee of Revenue, substituted in the place of an establishment made by act of Parliament. Here is what he has substituted for Provincial Councils. Here is what he has substituted in the room of the whole regular order of the service, which he totally subverted. Can we add anything to this picture? Can we heighten it? Can we do anything more than to recommend it to your Lordships’ serious consideration?
But before I finally dismiss this part of our charge, I must request your Lordships’ most earnest attention to the true character of these atrocious proceedings, as they now stand proved before you, by direct or the strongest presumptive evidence, upon the Company’s records, and by his own confessions and declarations, and those of his most intimate friends and avowed agents.
Your Lordships will recollect, that, previously to the appointment of Mr. Hastings to be the Governor-General, in 1772, the collection of the revenues was committed to a naib dewan, or native collector, under the control of the Supreme Council, — and that Mr. Hastings did at that time, and upon various occasions afterwards, declare it to be his decided and fixed opinion, that nothing would be so detrimental to the interests of the Company, and to the happiness and welfare of the inhabitants of their provinces, as changes, and more especially sudden changes, in the collection of their revenues. His opinion was also most strongly and reiteratedly pressed upon him by his masters, the Court of Directors. The first step taken after his appointment was to abolish the office of naib dewan, and to send a committee through the provinces, at the expense of 50,000l. a year, to make a settlement of rents to be paid by the natives for five years. At the same time he appointed one of the Company’s servants to be the collector in each province, and he abolished the General Board of Revenue, which had been established at Moorshedabad, chiefly for the following reasons: that, by its exercising a separate control, the members of the Supreme Council at Calcutta were prevented from acquiring that intimate acquaintance with the revenues which was necessary to persons in their station; and because many of the powers necessary for the collection of the revenues could not be delegated to a subordinate council. In consideration of these opinions, orders, and declarations, he, in 1773, abolished the office of collector, and transferred the management of the revenues to several councils of revenue, called Provincial Councils, and recommended their perpetual establishment by act of Parliament. In the year 1774, in contradiction of his former opinion respecting the necessity of the Supreme Council possessing all possible means of becoming acquainted with the details of the revenue, he again recommended the continuance of the Provincial Councils in all their parts. This he again declared to be his deliberate opinion in 1775 and in 1776.