by Edmund Burke
In the mean time a majority of the Supreme Council, consisting of members who had generally differed in opinion from Mr. Hastings, had transmitted their advice to the Court of Directors, recommending some changes in the system of Provincial Councils. The Directors, in their reply to this recommendation, did in 1777 order the Supreme Council to form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit it to them for their consideration.
No such plan was transmitted; but in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings having obtained a majority in the Council, he again changed the whole system, both of collection of the revenue and of the executive administration of civil and criminal justice. And who were the persons substituted in the place of those whom he removed? Names, my Lords, with which you are already but too well acquainted. At their head stands Munny Begum; then comes his own domestic, and private bribe-agent, Gunga Govind Sing; then his banian, Cantoo Baboo; then that instrument of all evil, Debi Sing; then the whole tribe of his dependants, white and black, whom he made farmers of the revenue, with Colonel Hannay at their head; and, lastly, his confidential Residents, secret agents, and private secretaries, Mr. Middleton, Major Palmer, &c., &c. Can your Lordships doubt, for a single instant, of the real spirit of these proceedings? Can you doubt of the whole design having originated and ended in corruption and peculation?
We have fully stated to you, from the authority of these parties themselves, the effects and consequences of these proceedings, — namely, the dilapidation of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have been expected or designed by this sweeping subversion of the control of the Company’s servants over the collections of the revenue, and the vesting of it in a black dewan, but fraud and peculation? What else, I say, was to be expected, in the inextricable turnings and windings of that black mystery of iniquity, but the concealment of every species of wrong, violence, outrage, and oppression?
Your Lordships, then, have seen that the whole country was put into the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and when you remember who this Gunga Govind Sing was, and how effectually Mr. Hastings had secured him against detection, in every part of his malpractices and atrocities, can you for a moment hesitate to believe that the whole project was planned and executed for the purpose of putting all Bengal under contribution to Mr. Hastings? But if you are resolved, after all this, to entertain a good opinion of Mr. Hastings, — if you have taken it into your heads, for reasons best known to yourselves, to imagine that he has some hidden virtues, which in the government of Bengal he has not displayed, and which, to us of the House of Commons, have not been discernible in any one single instance, — these virtues may be fit subjects for paragraphs in newspapers, they may be pleaded for him by the partisans of his Indian faction, but your Lordships will do well to remember that it is not to Mr. Hastings himself that you are trusting, but to Gunga Govind Sing. If the Committee were tools in his hands, must not Mr. Hastings have also been a tool in his hands? If they with whom he daily and hourly had to transact business, and whose office it was to control and restrain him, were unable so to do, is this control and restraint to be expected from Mr. Hastings, who was his confidant, and whose corrupt transactions he could at any time discover to the world? My worthy colleague has traced the whole of Mr. Hastings’s bribe account, in the most clear and satisfactory manner, to Gunga Govind Sing, — him first, him last, him midst, and without end. If we fail of the conviction of the prisoner at your bar, your Lordships will not have acquitted Mr. Hastings merely, but you will confirm all the robberies and rapines of Gunga Govind Sing. You will recognize him as a faithful governor of India. Yes, my Lords, let us rejoice in this man! Let us adopt him as our own! Let our country, let this House, be proud of him! If Mr. Hastings can be acquitted, we must admit Gunga Govind Sing’s government to be the greatest blessing that ever happened to mankind. But if Gunga Govind Sing’s government be the greatest curse that ever befell suffering humanity, as we assert it to have been, there is the man that placed him in it; there is his father, his godfather, the first author and origin of all these evils and, calamities. My Lords, remember Dinagepore; remember the bribe of 40,000l. which Gunga Govind Sing procured for Mr. Hastings in that province, and the subsequent horror of that scene.
But, my Lords, do you extend your confidence to Gunga Govind Sing? Not even the face of this man, to whom the revenues of the Company, together with the estates, fortunes, reputations, and lives of the inhabitants of that country were delivered over, is known in those provinces. He resides at Calcutta, and is represented by a variety of under-agents. Do you know Govind Ghose? Do you know Nundulol? Do you know the whole tribe of peculators, whom Mr. Hastings calls his faithful domestic servants? Do you know all the persons that Gunga Govind Sing must employ in the various ramifications of the revenues throughout all the provinces? Are you prepared to trust all these? The Board of Revenue has confessed that it could not control them. Mr. Hastings himself could not control them. The establishment of this system was like Sin’s opening the gates of Hell: like her, he could open the gate, — but to shut, as Milton says, exceeded his power. The former establishments, if defective, or if abuses were found in them, might have been corrected. There was at least the means of detecting and punishing abuse. But Mr. Hastings destroyed the means of doing either, by putting the whole country into the hands of Gunga Govind Sing.
Now, having seen all these things done, look to the account. Your Lordships will now be pleased to look at this business as a mere account of revenue. You will find, on comparing the three years in which Mr. Hastings was in the minority with the three years after the appointment of this Committee, that the assessment upon the country increased, but that the revenue was diminished; and you will also find, which is a matter that ought to astonish you, that the expenses of the collections were increased by no less a sum than 500,000l. You may judge from this what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both amongst the European and native agents, but chiefly amongst the natives: for Mr. Hastings did not divide the greatest part of this spoil among the Company’s servants, but among this gang of black dependants. These accounts are in pages 1273 and 1274 of your Minutes.
My Lords, weighty indeed would have been the charge brought before your Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain against the prisoner at your bar, if they had fixed upon no other crime or misdemeanor than that which I am now pressing upon you, — his throwing off the allegiance of the Company, his putting a black master over himself, and his subjecting the whole of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, the whole of the Company’s servants, the Company’s revenues, the Company’s farms, to Gunga Govind Sing. But, my Lords, it is a very curious and remarkable thing, that we have traced this man as Mr. Hastings’s bribe-broker up to the time of the nomination of this Committee; we have traced him through a regular series of bribery; he is Mr. Hastings’s bribe-broker at Patna; he is Mr. Hastings’s bribe-broker at Nuddea; he is his bribe-broker at Dinagepore; we find him his bribe-broker in all these places; but from the moment that this Committee was constituted, it became a gulf in which the prevention, the detection, and the correction of all kind of abuses were sunk and lost forever. From the time when this Committee and Gunga Govind Sing were appointed, you do not find one word more of Mr. Hastings’s bribes. Had he then ceased to receive any? or where are you to look for them? You are to look for them in that 500,000l. excess of expense in the revenue department, and in the rest of all that corrupt traffic of Gunga Govind Sing of which we gave you specimens at the time we proved his known bribes to you. These are nothing but index-hands to point out to you the immense mass of corruption which had its origin, and was daily accumulating in these provinces, under the protection of Mr. Hastings. And can you think, and can we talk of such transactions, without feeling emotions of indignation and horror not to be described? Can we contemplate such scenes as these, — can we look upon those desolated provinces, upon a country so ravaged, a people so subdued, — Mahometans, Gentoos, our own countrymen, all t
rampled under foot by this tyrant, — can we do this; without giving expression to those feelings which, after animating us in this life, will comfort us when we die, and will form our best part in another?
My Lords, I am now at the last day of my endeavors to inspire your Lordships with a just sense of these unexampled atrocities. I have had a great encyclopedia of crimes to deal with; I will get through them as soon as I can; and I pray your Lordships to believe, that, if I omit anything, it is to time I sacrifice it, — that it is to want of strength I sacrifice it, — that it is to necessity, and not from any despair of making, from the records and from the evidence, matter so omitted as black as anything that I have yet brought before you.
The next thing of which I have to remind your Lordships respecting these black agents of the prisoner is, that we find him, just before his departure from India, recommending three of them, Gunga Govind Sing, Gunga Ghose, and Nundulol, as persons fit and necessary to be rewarded for their services by the Company. Now your Lordships will find, that, of these faithful domestic servants, there is not one of them who was not concerned in these enormous briberies, and in betraying their own native and natural master. If I had time for it, I believe I could trace every person to be, in proportion to Mr. Hastings’s confidence in him, the author of some great villany. These persons he thinks had not been sufficiently rewarded, and accordingly he recommends to the board, as his dying legacy, provision for these faithful attached servants of his, and particularly for Gunga Govind Sing. The manner in which this man was to be rewarded makes a part of the history of these transactions, as curious, perhaps, as was ever exhibited to the world. Your Lordships will find it in page 2841 of your Minutes.
The Rajah of Dinagepore was a child at that time about eleven years old, and had succeeded to the Rajahship (by what means I shall say nothing) when he was about five years old. He is made to apply to Mr. Hastings for leave to grant a very considerable part of his estate to Gunga Govind Sing, as a reward for his services. These services could only be known to the Rajah’s family by having robbed it of at least 40,000l., the bribe given to Mr. Hastings. But the Rajah’s family is so little satisfied with this bountiful and liberal donation to Gunga Govind Sing, that they desire that several purgunnahs, or farms, that are mentioned in the application made to the Council, should be separated from the family estate and given to this man. Such was this extraordinary gratitude: gratitude, not for money received, but for money taken away, — a species of gratitude unknown in any part of the world but in India; gratitude pervading every branch of the family; his mother coming forward and petitioning likewise that her son should be disinherited; his uncle, the natural protector and guardian of his minority, coming forward and petitioning most earnestly that his nephew should be disinherited: all the family join in one voice of supplication to Mr. Hastings, that Gunga Govind Sing may have a very large and considerable part of their family estate given to him. Mr. Hastings, after declaring that certain circumstances respecting this property, which are mentioned in his minutes, were to his knowledge true, but which your Lordships, upon examination, will find to be false, and falsified in every particular, recommends, in the strongest manner, to the board, a compliance with this application. He was at this time on the eve of his departure from India, in haste to provide for his faithful servants; and he well knew that this his last act would be held binding upon his successors, who were devoted to him.
Here, indeed, is genuine and heroic gratitude, — gratitude for money received, not for money taken away; and yet this gratitude was towards a person who had paid himself out of the benefit which had been conferred, at the expense of a third party. For Gunga Govind Sing had kept for himself 20,000l. out of 40,000l. taken from the Rajah. For this cheat, stated by Mr. Larkins to be such, and allowed by Mr. Hastings himself to be such, he, with a perfect knowledge of that fraud and cheat committed upon the public, (for he pretends that the money was meant for the Company,) makes this supplication to his colleagues, and departs.
After his departure, Gunga Govind Sing, relying upon the continuance of the corrupt influence which he had gained, had the impudence to come forward and demand the confirmation of this grant by the Council-General. The Council, though willing to accede to Mr. Hastings’s proposition, were stopped in a moment by petitions much more natural, but of a direct contrary tenor. The poor infant Rajah raises his cries not to be deprived of his inheritance; his mother comes forward and conjures the Council not to oppress her son and wrong her family; the uncle comes and supplicates the board to save from ruin these devoted victims which were under his protection. All these counter-petitions come before the Council while the ink is hardly dry upon the petitions which Mr. Hastings had left behind him, as proofs of the desire of this family to be disinherited in favor of Gunga Govind Sing. Upon the receipt of these remonstrances, the board could not proceed in the business, and accordingly Gunga Govind Sing was defeated.
But Gunga Govind Sing was unwilling to quit his prey. And what does he do? I desire your Lordships to consider seriously the reply of Gunga Govind Sing, as it appears upon your minutes. It is a bold answer. He denies the right of the Rajah to these estates. “Why,” says he, “all property in this country depends upon the will of your government. How came this Rajah’s family into possession of this great zemindary? Why, they got it at first by the mere favor of government. The whole was an iniquitous transaction. This is a family that in some former age has robbed others; and now let me rob them.” In support of this claim, he adds the existence of other precedents, namely, “that many clerks or mutsuddies and banians at Calcutta had,” as he says, “got possession of the lands of other people without any pretence of right; — why should not I?” Good God! what precedents are these!
Your Lordships shall now hear the razinama, or testimonial, which, since Mr. Hastings’s arrival in England, this Rajah has been induced to send to the Company from India, and you will judge then of the state in which Mr. Hastings has left that country. Hearken, my Lords, I pray you, to the razinama of this man, from whom 40,000l. was taken by Mr. Hastings and Gunga Govind Sing, and against whom an attempt was made by the same persons to deprive him of his inheritance. Listen to this razinama, and then judge of all the other testimonials which have been produced on the part of the prisoner at your bar. His counsel rest upon them, they glory in them, and we shall not abate them one of these precious testimonials. They put the voice of grateful India against the voice of ungrateful England. Now hear what grateful India says, after our having told you for what it was so grateful.
“I, Radanaut, Zemindar of Purgunnah Havelly Punjera, commonly called Dinagepore: — As it has been learnt by me, the mutsuddies and respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings, Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from us by deceit and force, and ruined the country, therefore we, upon the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution, civility and justice, superior to the conduct of the most learned, and by representing what is fact wipe away the doubts that have possessed the minds of the ministers of England; that Mr. Hastings is possessed of fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to us; that he is clear from the contamination of mistrust and wrong, and his mind is free of covetousness and avarice. During the time of his administration, no one saw other conduct than that of protection to the husbandmen, and justice; no inhabitant ever experienced affliction, no one ever felt oppression from him. Our reputations have always been guarded from attacks by his prudence, and our families have always been protected by his justice.”
Good God! my Lords, “our families protected by his justice”! What! after Gunga Govind Sing, in concert with Mr. Hastings, had first robbed him of 40,000l., and then had attempted to snatch, as it were, out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings the inheritance of their fathers, and to deprive this infant of a great part of his family estate? Here is a child, eleven years old, who never could have seen Mr. Hastings, who could know nothing of him but from the heavy hand of oppression, affliction, wrong, and robbery, brought to bear testimony to the virtues of Mr. Hastings before a British Parliament! Such is the confidence they repose in their hope of having bribed the English nation by the millions and millions of money, the countless lacs of rupees, poured into it from India, that they had dared to bring this poor robbed infant to bear testimony to the character of Mr. Hastings! These are the things which are to be opposed to the mass of evidence which the House of Commons bring against this man, — evidence which they bring from his own acts, his own writing, and his own records, — a cloud of testimony furnished by himself in support of charges brought forward and urged by us agreeably to the magnitude of his crimes, with the horror which is inspired by them, and with the contempt due to this paltry attempt towards his defence, which they had dared to produce from the hands of an infant but eleven years old when Mr. Hastings quitted that country!