Volume X Part 1 (1/2)
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
Vol. X.
by Edmund Burke.
SPEECH
IN
OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT.
THIRD DAY: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1788.
My Lords,--The gentlemen who are appointed by the Commons to manage this prosecution, have directed me to inform your Lords.h.i.+ps, that they have very carefully and attentively weighed the magnitude of the subject which they bring before you with the time which the nature and circ.u.mstances of affairs allow for their conducting it.
My Lords, on that comparison, they are very apprehensive, that, if I should go very largely into a preliminary explanation of the several matters in charge, it might be to the prejudice of an early trial of the substantial merits of each article. We have weighed and considered this maturely. We have compared exactly the time with the matter, and we have found that we are obliged to do as all men must do who would manage their affairs practicably, to make our opinion of what might be most advantageous to the business conform to the time that is left to perform it in. We must, as all men must, submit affairs to time, and not think of making time conform to our wishes; and therefore, my Lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India,--to bring before your Lords.h.i.+ps the direct articles, to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your Lords.h.i.+ps' decision in that manner which the confidence we have in the justice of our cause demands from the Commons of Great Britain.
My Lords, these are the opinions of those with whom I have the honor to act, and in their opinions I readily acquiesce. For I am far from wis.h.i.+ng to waste any of your Lords.h.i.+ps' time upon any matter merely through any opinion I have of the nature of the business, when at the same time I find that in the opinion of others it might militate against the production of its full, proper, and (if I may so say) its immediate effect.
It was my design to cla.s.s the crimes of the late Governor of Bengal,--to show their mutual bearings,--how they were mutually aided and grew and were formed out of each other. I proposed first of all to show your Lords.h.i.+ps that they have their root in that which is the origin of all evil, avarice and rapacity,--to show how that led to prodigality of the public money,--and how prodigality of the public money, by wasting the treasures of the East India Company, furnished an excuse to the Governor-General to break its faith, to violate all its most solemn engagements, and to fall with a hand of stern, ferocious, and unrelenting rapacity upon all the allies and dependencies of the Company. But I shall be obliged in some measure to abridge this plan; and as your Lords.h.i.+ps already possess, from what I had the honor to state on Sat.u.r.day, a general view of this matter, you will be in a condition to pursue it when the several articles are presented.
My Lords, I have to state to-day the root of all these misdemeanors,--namely, the pecuniary corruption and avarice which gave rise and primary motion to all the rest of the delinquencies charged to be committed by the Governor-General.
My Lords, pecuniary corruption forms not only, as your Lords.h.i.+ps will observe in the charges before you, an article of charge by itself, but likewise so intermixes with the whole, that it is necessary to give, in the best manner I am able, a history of that corrupt system which brought on all the subsequent acts of corruption. I will venture to say there is no one act, in which tyranny, malice, cruelty, and oppression can be charged, that does not at the same time carry evident marks of pecuniary corruption.
I stated to your Lords.h.i.+ps on Sat.u.r.day last the principles upon which Mr. Hastings governed his conduct in India, and upon which he grounds his defence. These may all be reduced to one short word,--_arbitrary power_. My Lords, if Mr. Hastings had contended, as other men have often done, that the system of government which he patronizes, and on which he acted, was a system tending on the whole to the blessing and benefit of mankind, possibly something might be said for him for setting up so wild, absurd, irrational, and wicked a system,--something might be said to qualify the act from the intention; but it is singular in this man, that, at the time he tells you he acted on the principles of arbitrary power, he takes care to inform you that he was not blind to the consequences. Mr. Hastings foresaw that the consequences of this system was corruption. An arbitrary system, indeed, must always be a corrupt one. My Lords, there never was a man who thought he had no law but his own will, who did not soon find that he had no end but his own profit.
Corruption and arbitrary power are of natural unequivocal generation, necessarily producing one another. Mr. Hastings foresees the abusive and corrupt consequences, and then he justifies his conduct upon the necessities of that system. These are things which are new in the world; for there never was a man, I believe, who contended for arbitrary power, (and there have been persons wicked and foolish enough to contend for it,) that did not pretend, either that the system was good in itself, or that by their conduct they had mitigated or had purified it, and that the poison, by pa.s.sing through their const.i.tution, had acquired salutary properties. But if you look at his defence before the House of Commons, you will see that that very system upon which he governed, and under which he now justifies his actions, did appear to himself a system pregnant with a thousand evils and a thousand mischiefs.
The next thing that is remarkable and singular in the principles upon which the Governor-General acted is, that, when he is engaged in a vicious system which clearly leads to evil consequences, he thinks himself bound to realize all the evil consequences involved in that system. All other men have taken a directly contrary course: they have said, ”I have been engaged in an evil system, that led, indeed, to mischievous consequences, but I have taken care, by my own virtues, to prevent the evils of the system under which I acted.”
We say, then, not only that he governed arbitrarily, but corruptly,--that is to say, that he was a giver and receiver of bribes, and formed a system for the purpose of giving and receiving them. We wish your Lords.h.i.+ps distinctly to consider that he did not only give and receive bribes accidentally, as it happened, without any system and design, merely as the opportunity or momentary temptation of profit urged him to it, but that he has formed plans and systems of government for the very purpose of acc.u.mulating bribes and presents to himself.
This system of Mr. Hastings's government is such a one, I believe, as the British nation in particular will disown; for I will venture to say, that, if there is any one thing which distinguishes this nation eminently above another, it is, that in its offices at home, both judicial and in the state, there is less suspicion of pecuniary corruption attaching to them than to any similar offices in any part of the globe, or that have existed at any time: so that he who would set up a system of corruption, and attempt to justify it upon the principle of utility, that man is staining not only the nature and character of office, but that which is the peculiar glory of the official and judicial character of this country; and therefore, in this House, which is eminently the guardian of the purity of all the offices of this kingdom, he ought to be called eminently and peculiarly to account.
There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make them frightful and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of a great empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people, this is what makes government itself base, contemptible, and odious in the eyes of mankind.
My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find some specious color, and appear as a more severe and rigid execution of justice.
Religious persecution may s.h.i.+eld itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety. Conquest may cover its baldness with its own laurels, and the ambition of the conqueror may be hid in the secrets of his own heart under a veil of benevolence, and make him imagine he is bringing temporary desolation upon a country only to promote its ultimate advantage and his own glory. But in the principles of that governor who makes nothing but money his object there can be nothing of this. There are here none of those specious delusions that look like virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor. If you look at Mr.
Hastings's merits, as he calls them, what are they? Did he improve the internal state of the government by great reforms? No such thing. Or by a wise and incorrupt administration of justice? No. Has he enlarged the boundary of our government? No: there are but too strong proofs of his lessening it. But his pretensions to merit are, that he squeezed more money out of the inhabitants of the country than other persons could have done,--money got by oppression, violence, extortion from the poor, or the heavy hand of power upon the rich and great.
These are his merits. What we charge as his demerits are all of the same nature; for, though there is undoubtedly oppression, breach of faith, cruelty, perfidy, charged upon him, yet the great ruling principle of the whole, and that from which you can never have an act free, is money,--it is the vice of base avarice, which never is, nor ever appears even to the prejudices of mankind to be, anything like a virtue. Our desire of acquiring sovereignty in India undoubtedly originated first in ideas of safety and necessity; its next step was a step of ambition.
That ambition, as generally happens in conquest, was followed by gains of money; but afterwards there was no mixture at all; it was, during Mr.
Hastings's time, altogether a business of money. If he has extirpated a nation, I will not say whether properly or improperly, it is because (says he) you have all the benefit of conquest without expense; you have got a large sum of money from the people, and you may leave them to be governed by whom and as they will. This is directly contrary to the principles of conquerors. If he has at any time taken any money from the dependencies of the Company, he does not pretend that it was obtained from their zeal and affection to our cause, or that it made their submission more complete: very far from it. He says they ought to be independent, and all that you have to do is to squeeze money from them.
In short, money is the beginning, the middle, and the end of every kind of act done by Mr. Hastings: pretendedly for the Company, but really for himself.
Having said so much about the origin, the first principle, both of that which he makes his merit and which we charge as his demerit, the next step is, that I should lay open to your Lords.h.i.+ps, as clearly as I can, what the sense of his employers, the East India Company, and what the sense of the legislature itself, has been upon those merits and demerits of money.
My Lords, the Company, knowing that these money transactions were likely to subvert that empire which was first established upon them, did, in the year 1765, send out a body of the strongest and most solemn covenants to their servants, that they should take no presents from the country powers, under any name or description, except those things which were publicly and openly taken for the use of the Company,--namely, _territories_ or _sums of money_ which might be obtained by treaty. They distinguished such presents as were taken from any persons privately, and unknown to them, and without their authority, from subsidies: and that this is the true nature and construction of their order I shall contend and explain afterwards to your Lords.h.i.+ps. They have said, nothing shall be taken for their private use; for though in that and in every state there may be subsidiary treaties by which sums of money may be received, yet they forbid their servants, their governors, whatever application they might pretend to make of them, to receive, under any other name or pretence, more than a certain, marked, simple sum of money, and this not without the consent and permission of the Presidency to which they belong. This is the substance, the principle, and the spirit of the covenants, and will show your Lords.h.i.+ps how radicated an evil this of bribery and presents was judged to be.
When these covenants arrived in India, the servants refused at first to execute them,--and suspended the execution of them, till they had enriched themselves with presents. Eleven months elapsed, and it was not till Lord Clive reached the place of his destination that the covenants were executed: and they were not executed then without some degree of force. Soon afterwards the treaty was made with the country powers by which Sujah ul Dowlah was reestablished in the province of Oude, and paid a sum of 500,000_l._ to the Company for it. It was a public payment, and there was not a suspicion that a single s.h.i.+lling of private emolument attended it. But whether Mr. Hastings had the example of others or not, their example could not justify his briberies. He was sent there to put an end to all those examples. The Company did expressly vest him with that power. They declared at that time, that the whole of their service was totally corrupted by bribes and presents, and by extravagance and luxury, which partly gave rise to them, and these, in their turn, enabled them to pursue those excesses. They not only reposed trust in the integrity of Mr. Hastings, but reposed trust in his remarkable frugality and order in his affairs, which they considered as things that distinguished his character. But in his defence we have him quite in another character,--no longer the frugal, attentive servant, bred to business, bred to book-keeping, as all the Company's servants are; he now knows nothing of his own affairs, knows not whether he is rich or poor, knows not what he has in the world. Nay, people are brought forward to say that they know better than he does what his affairs are. He is not like a careful man bred in a counting-house, and by the Directors put into an office of the highest trust on account of the regularity of his affairs; he is like one buried in the contemplation of the stars, and knows nothing of the things in this world. It was, then, on account of an idea of his great integrity that the Company put him into this situation. Since that he has thought proper to justify himself, not by clearing himself of receiving bribes, but by saying that no bad consequences resulted from it, and that, if any such evil consequences did arise from it, they arose rather from his inattention to money than from his desire of acquiring it.
I have stated to your Lords.h.i.+ps the nature of the covenants which the East India Company sent out. Afterwards, when they found their servants had refused to execute these covenants, they not only very severely reprehended even a moment's delay in their execution, and threatened the exacting the most strict and rigorous performance of them, but they sent a commission to enforce the observance of them more strongly; and that commission had it specially in charge never to receive presents. They never sent out a person to India without recognizing the grievance, and without ordering that presents should not be received, as the main fundamental part of their duty, and upon which all the rest depended, as it certainly must: for persons at the head of government should not encourage that by example which they ought by precept, authority, and force to restrain in all below them. That commission failing, another commission was preparing to be sent out with the same instructions, when an act of Parliament took it up; and that act, which gave Mr. Hastings power, did mould in the very first stamina of his power this principle, in words the most clear and forcible that an act of Parliament could possibly devise upon the subject. And that act was made not only upon a general knowledge of the grievance, but your Lords.h.i.+ps will see in the reports of that time that Parliament had directly in view before them the whole of that monstrous head of corruption under the name of presents, and all the monstrous consequences that followed it.