Volume IX Part 14 (2/2)
This view of the policy which prevailed during the dynasty of Tamerlane naturally conducts me to the next, which is the fourth era in this history: I mean the era of the Emperor Akbar. He was the first of the successors of Tamerlane who obtained possession of Bengal. It is easy to show of what nature his conquest was. It was over the last Mahomedan dynasty. He, too, like his predecessor, Tamerlane, conquered the prince, not the country. It is a certain mark that it was not a conquered country in the sense in which we commonly call a country conquered, that the natives, great men and landholders, continued in every part in the possession of their estates, and of the jurisdictions annexed to them.
It is true, that, in the several wars for the succession to the Mogul empire, and in other of their internal wars, severe revenges were taken, which bore resemblance to those taken in the wars of the Roses in this country, where it was the common course, in the heat of blood,--”Off with his head!--so much for Buckingham!” Yet, where the country again recovered its form and settlement, it recovered the spirit of a mild government. Whatever rigor was used with regard to the Mahomedan adventurers from Persia, Turkey, and other parts, who filled the places of servile grandeur in the Mogul court, the Hindoos were a favored, protected, gently treated people.
The next, which is the fifth era, is a troubled and vexatious period,--the era of the independent Subahs of Bengal. Five of these subahs, or viceroys, governed from about the year 1717, or thereabouts.
They grew into independence partly by the calamities and concussions of that empire, which happened during the disputes for the succession of Tamerlane, and partly, and indeed princ.i.p.ally, by the great shook which the empire received when Thamas Kouli Khan broke into that country, carried off its revenues, overturned the throne, and ma.s.sacred not only many of the chief n.o.bility, but almost all the inhabitants of the capital city. This rude shock, which that empire was never able to recover, enabled the viceroys to become independent; but their independence led to their ruin. Those who had usurped upon their masters had servants who usurped upon them. Aliverdy Khan murdered his master, and opened a way into Bengal for a body of foreign invaders, the Mahrattas, who cruelly hara.s.sed the country for several years. Their retreat was at length purchased, and by a sum which is supposed to amount to five millions sterling. By this purchase he secured the exhausted remains of an exhausted kingdom, and left it to his grandson, Surajah Dowlah, in peace and poverty. On the fall of Surajah Dowlah, in 1756, commenced the last, which is the sixth,--the era of the British empire.
On the fifth dynasty I have only to remark to your Lords.h.i.+ps, that at its close the Hindoo chiefs were almost everywhere found in possession of the country; that, although Aliverdy Khan was a cruel tyrant, though he was an unt.i.tled usurper, though he racked and tormented the people under his government, urged, however, by an apparent necessity from an invading army of one hundred thousand horse in his dominions,--yet, under him, the rajahs still preserved their rank, their dignity, their castles, their houses, their seigniories, all the insignia of their situation, and always the right, sometimes also the means, of protecting their subordinate people, till the last and unfortunate era of 1756.
Through the whole of this sketch of history I wish to impress but one great and important truth upon your minds: namely, that, through all these revolutions in government and changes in power, an Hindoo polity, and the spirit of an Hindoo government, did more or less exist in that province with which he was concerned, until it was finally to be destroyed by Mr. Hastings.
My Lords, I have gone through all the eras precedent to those of the British power in India, and am come to the first of those eras. Mr.
Hastings existed in India, and was a servant of the Company before that era, and had his education between both. He is an antediluvian with regard to the British dominion in Bengal. He was coexistent with all the acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small share in all the abuses of that abusive period which preceded his actual government. Bat as it was during that transit from Eastern to Western power that most of the abuses had their origin, it will not be perfectly easy for your Lords.h.i.+ps thoroughly to enter into the nature and circ.u.mstances of them without an explanation of the princ.i.p.al events that happened from the year 1756 until the commencement of Mr. Hastings's government,--during a good part of which time we do not often lose sight of him. If I find it agreeable to your Lords.h.i.+ps, if I find that you wish to know these annals of Indian suffering and British delinquency, if you desire that I should unfold the series of the transactions from 1756 to the period of Mr. Hastings's government in 1771, that you may know how far he promoted what was good, how far he rectified what was evil, how far he abstained from innovation in tyranny, and contented himself with the old stock of abuse, your Lords.h.i.+ps will have the goodness to consult the strength which from late indisposition, begins almost to fail me. And if you think the explanation is not time lost in this new world and in this new business, I shall venture to sketch out, as briefly and with as much perspicuity as I can give them, the leading events of that obscure and perplexed period which intervened between the British settlement in 1757 and Mr. Hastings's government. If I should be so happy as to succeed in that attempt, your Lords.h.i.+ps' minds will be prepared for hearing this cause. Then your Lords.h.i.+ps will have a clear view of the origin and nature of the abuses which prevailed in that government before Mr.
Hastings obtained his greatest power, and since that time; and then we shall be able to enter fully and explicitly into the nature of the cause: and I should hope that it will pave the way and make everything easy for your subsequent justice.
I therefore wish to stop at this period, in which Mr. Hastings became active in the service, pretty near the time when he began his political career: and here, my Lords, I pause, wis.h.i.+ng your indulgence at such time as will suit your convenience for pursuing the rest of this eventful history.
SPEECH
IN
OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT.
SECOND DAY: SAt.u.r.dAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1788.
My Lords,--In what I had the honor of laying before your Lords.h.i.+ps yesterday, and in what I may further trouble you with to-day, I wish to observe a distinction, which if I did not lay down so perfectly as I ought, I hope I shall now be able to mark it out with sufficient exactness and perspicuity.
First, I beg leave to observe that what I shall think necessary to state, as matter of preliminary explanation, in order to give your Lords.h.i.+ps a true idea of the scene of action, of the instruments which Mr. Hastings employed, and the effects which they produced,--all this I wish to be distinguished from matter brought to criminate. Even the matter, as stated by me, which may be hereafter brought to criminate, so far as it falls to my share at present, is only to be considered, in this stage of the business, as merely ill.u.s.trative. Your Lords.h.i.+ps are to expect, as undoubtedly you will require, substantial matter of crimination to be laid open for that purpose at the moment when the evidence to each charge is ready to be produced to you. Thus your Lords.h.i.+ps will easily separate historical ill.u.s.tration from criminal opening. For instance, if I stated yesterday to your Lords.h.i.+ps, as I did, the tyranny and cruelty of one of the usurping viceroys, whose usurpation and whose vices led the way to the destruction of his country and the introduction of a foreign power, I do not mean to charge Mr.
Hastings with any part of that guilt: what bears upon Mr. Hastings is his having avowedly looked to such a tyrant and such a usurper as his model, and followed that pernicious example with a servile fidelity.
When I have endeavored to lay open to your Lords.h.i.+ps anything abusive, or leading to abuse, from defects or errors in the const.i.tution of the Company's service, I did not mean to criminate Mr. Hastings on any part of those defects and errors: I state them to show that he took advantage of the imperfections of the inst.i.tution to lot in his abuse of the power with which he was intrusted. If, for a further instance, I have stated that in general the service of the India Company was insufficient in legal pay or emolument and abundant in the means of illegal profit, I do not state that defect as owing to Mr. Hastings; but I state it as a fact, to show in what manner and on what pretences he did, fraudulently, corruptly, and for the purposes of his own ambition, take advantage of that defect, and, under color of reformation, make an illegal, partial, corrupt rise of emoluments to certain favored persons without regard to the interests of the service at large,--increasing rather than lessening the means of illicit emolument, as well as loading the Company with many heavy and ruinous expenses in avowed salaries and allowances.
Having requested your Lords.h.i.+ps to keep in mind, which I trust you would do even without my taking the liberty of suggesting it to you, these necessary distinctions, I shall revert to the period at which I closed yesterday, that great and memorable period which has remotely given occasion to the trial of this day.
My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.
Hitherto we have not furnished our contingent to the records of honor.
We have been confounded with the herd of conquerors. Our dominion has been a vulgar thing. But we begin to emerge; and I hope that a severe inspection of ourselves, a purification of our own offences, a l.u.s.tration of the exorbitances of our own power, is a glory reserved to this time, to this nation, and to this august tribunal.
The year 1756 is a memorable era in the history of the world: it introduced a new nation from the remotest verge of the Western world, with new manners, new customs, new inst.i.tutions, new opinions, new laws, into the heart of Asia.
My Lords, if, in that part of Asia whose native regular government was then broken up,--if, at the moment when it had fallen into darkness and confusion from having become the prey and almost the sport of the ambition of its home-born grandees,--if, in that gloomy season, a star had risen from the West, that would prognosticate a better generation, and would shed down the sweet influences of order, peace, science, and security to the natives of that vexed and hara.s.sed country, we should have been covered with genuine honor. It would have been a beautiful and n.o.ble spectacle to mankind.
Indeed, something might have been expected of the kind, when a new dominion emanated from a learned and enlightened part of the world in the most enlightened period of its existence. Still more might it have been expected, when that dominion was found to issue from the bosom of a free country, that it would have carried with it the full benefit of the vital principle of the British liberty and Const.i.tution, though its munic.i.p.al forms were not communicable, or at least the advantage of the liberty and spirit of the British Const.i.tution. Had this been the case, (alas! it was not,) you would have been saved the trouble of this day.
<script>