Volume X Part 7 (2/2)
Hastings will improve our law vocabulary. The first, then, of these offences with which Mr. Hastings stands charged here is receiving bribes himself, or through his banians. Every one of these are overt acts of the general charge of bribery, and they are every one of them, separately taken, substantive crimes. But whatever the criminal nature of these acts was, (and the nature was very criminal, and the consequences to the country very dreadful,) yet we mean to prove to your Lords.h.i.+ps that they were not single acts, that they were not acts committed as opportunity offered, or as necessity tempted or urged upon the occasion, but that they are parts of a general systematic plan of corruption, for advancing his fortune at the expense of his integrity; that he has, for that purpose, not only taken the opportunity of his own power, but made whole establishments, altered and perverted others, and created complete revolutions in the country's government, for the purpose of making the power which ought to be subservient to legal government subservient to corruption; that, when he could no longer cover these fraudulent proceedings by artifice, he endeavored to justify them by principle. These artifices we mean to detect; these principles we mean to attack, and, with your Lords.h.i.+ps' aid, to demolish, destroy, and subvert forever.
My Lords, I must say, that in this business, which is a matter of collusion, concealment, and deceit, your Lords.h.i.+ps will, perhaps, not feel the same degree of interest as in the others. Hitherto you have had before you crimes of dignity: you have had before you the ruin and expulsion of great and ill.u.s.trious families, the breach of solemn public treaties, the merciless pillage and total subversion of the first houses in Asia. But the crimes which are the most striking to the imagination are not always the most pernicious in their effects: in these high, eminent acts of domineering tyranny, their very magnitude proves a sort of corrective to their virulence. The occasions on which they can be exercised are rare; the persons upon whom they can be exercised few; the persons who can exercise them, in the nature of things, are not many.
These high tragic acts of superior, overbearing tyranny are privileged crimes; they are the unhappy, dreadful prerogative, they are the distinguished and incommunicable attributes, of superior wickedness in eminent station.
But, my Lords, when the vices of low, sordid, and illiberal minds infect that high situation,--when theft, bribery, and peculation, attended with fraud, prevarication, falsehood, misrepresentation, and forgery--when all these follow in one train,--when these vices, which gender and sp.a.w.n in dirt, and are nursed in dunghills, come and pollute with their slime that throne which ought to be a seat of dignity and purity, the evil is much greater; it may operate daily and hourly; it is not only imitable, but improvable, and it will be imitated, and will be improved, from the highest to the lowest, through all the gradations of a corrupt government. They are reptile vices. There are situations in which the acts of the individual are of some moment, the example comparatively of little importance. In the other, the mischief of the example is infinite.
My Lords, when once a Governor-General receives bribes, he gives a signal to universal pillage to all the inferior parts of the service.
The bridles upon hard-mouthed pa.s.sion are removed; they are taken away; they are broken. Fear and shame, the great guards to virtue next to conscience, are gone. Shame! how can it exist?--it will soon blush away its awkward sensibility. Shame, my Lords, cannot exist long, when it is seen that crimes which naturally bring disgrace are attended with all the outward symbols, characteristics, and rewards of honor and of virtue,--when it is seen that high station, great rank, general applause, vast wealth follow the commission of peculation and bribery.
Is it to be believed that men can long be ashamed of that which they see to be the road to honor? As to fear, let a Governor-General once take bribes, there is an end of all fear in the service. What have they to fear? Is it the man whose example they follow that is to bring them before a tribunal for their punishment? Can he open any inquiry? He cannot: he that opens a channel of inquiry under these circ.u.mstances opens a high-road to his own detection. Can he make any laws to prevent it? None: for he can make no laws to restrain that practice without the breach of his own laws immediately in his own conduct. If we once can admit, for a single instant, in a Governor-General, a principle, however defended, upon any pretence whatever, to receive bribes in consequence of his office, there is an end of all virtue, an end of the laws, and no hope left in the supreme justice of the country. We are sensible of all these difficulties; we have felt them; and perhaps it has required no small degree of exertion for us to get the better of these difficulties which are thrown in our way by a Governor-General accepting bribes, and thereby screening and protecting the whole service in such iniquitous proceedings.
With regard to this matter, we are to state to your Lords.h.i.+ps, in order to bring it fully and distinctly before you, what the nature of this distemper of bribery is in the Indian government. We are to state what the laws and rules are which have been opposed to prevent it, and the utter insufficiency of all that have been proposed: to state the grievance, the instructions of the Company and government, the acts of Parliament, the constructions upon the acts of Parliament. We are to state to your Lords.h.i.+ps the particular situation of Mr. Hastings; we are to state the trust the Company had in him for the prevention of all those evils; and then we are to prove that every evil, that all those grievances which the law intended to prevent, which there were covenants to restrain, and with respect to which there were encouragements to smooth and make easy the path of duty, Mr. Hastings was invested with a special, direct, and immediate trust to prevent. We are to prove to your Lords.h.i.+ps that he is the man who, in his own person collectively, has done more mischief than all those persons whose evil practices have produced all those laws, those regulations, and even his own appointment.
The first thing that we shall do is to state, and which we shall prove in evidence, that this vice of bribery was the ancient, radical, endemical, and ruinous distemper of the Company's affairs in India, from the time of their first establishment there. Very often there are no words nor any description which can adequately convey the state of a thing like the direct evidence of the thing itself: because the former might be suspected of exaggeration; you might think that which was really fact to be nothing but the coloring of the person that explained it; and therefore I think that it will be much better to give to your Lords.h.i.+ps here a direct state of the Presidency at the time when the Company enacted those covenants which Mr. Hastings entered into, and when they took those measures to prevent the very evils from persons placed in those very stations and in those very circ.u.mstances in which we charge Mr. Hastings with having committed the offences we now bring before you.
I wish your Lords.h.i.+ps to know that we are going to read a consultation of Lord Clive's, who was sent out for the express purpose of reforming the state of the Company, in order to show the magnitude of the pecuniary corruptions that prevailed in it.
”It is from a due sense of the regard we owe and profess to your interests and to our own honor, that we think it indispensably necessary to lay open to your view a series of transactions too notoriously known to be suppressed, and too affecting to your interest, to the national character, and to the existence of the Company in Bengal, to escape unnoticed and uncensured,--transactions which seem to demonstrate that every spring of this government was smeared with corruption, that principles of rapacity and oppression universally prevailed, and that every spark of sentiment and public spirit was lost and extinguished in the unbounded l.u.s.t of unmerited wealth.
”To ill.u.s.trate these positions, we must exhibit to your view a most unpleasing variety of complaints, inquiries, accusations, and vindications, the particulars of which are entered in our Proceedings and the Appendix,--a.s.suring you that we undertake this task with peculiar reluctance, from the personal regard we entertain for some of the gentlemen whose characters will appear to be deeply affected.
”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 definite measures would be taken, either in 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 are a.s.signed as ought to have dictated a diametrically opposite resolution. Meeran's son was a minor, which circ.u.mstance alone would have naturally brought the whole administration into our hands, at a juncture when it became indispensably necessary we should realize that 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.
”This scene of corruption was first disclosed, at a visit the Nabob was paid, to Lord Clive and the gentlemen of the Committee, a few days after our arrival. He there delivered to his Lords.h.i.+p a letter filled with bitter complaints of the insults and indignities 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 princ.i.p.al agent.
”Mahomed Reza Khan, the Naib Subah, was then called upon to account for this large disburs.e.m.e.nt 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 such undeniable testimony and authentic doc.u.ments: by Juggut Seet, who himself was obliged to contribute largely to the sums demanded; by Muley Ram, who was employed by Mr. Johnstone in all those pecuniary transactions; by the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khan, who were the heaviest sufferers; and, lastly, by the confession of the gentlemen themselves whose names are specified in the distribution list.
”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 June, it fully appears that the presents from the Nabob and Mahomed Reza Khan, exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the voluntary offerings of grat.i.tude, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 facts, that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account to the amount of 228,125 pounds sterling, there was likewise to the value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roydullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Khan.
(Signed at the end)
”CLIVE.
W^M B. SUMNER.
JOHN CARNAC.
H. VERELST.
FRA^S SYKES.”
This paper cannot be denied to be a paper of weight and authenticity, because it is signed by a gentleman now in this House, who sits on one side of the gentleman at your bar, as his bail. This grievance, therefore, so authenticated, so great, and described in so many circ.u.mstances, I think it might be sufficient for me, in this part of the business, to show was, when Mr. Hastings was sent to India, a prevalent evil.
But, my Lords, it is necessary that I should show to you something more, because, _prima fronte_, this is some exculpation of Mr. Hastings: for, if he was only a partaker in a general misconduct, it was rather _vitium loci et vitium temporis_ than _vitium hominis_. This might be said in his exculpation. But I am next to show your Lords.h.i.+ps the means which the Company took for removing this grievance; and that Mr. Hastings's peculiar trust, the great specific ground of his appointment, was a confidence that he would eradicate this very evil, of which we are going to prove that he has been one of the princ.i.p.al promoters. I wish your Lords.h.i.+ps to advert to one particular circ.u.mstance,--namely, that the two persons who were bidders at this time, and at this auction of government, for the favor and countenance of the Presidency at Calcutta, were Mahomed Reza Khan and Rajah Nundcomar. I wish your Lords.h.i.+ps to recollect this by-and-by, when we shall bring before you the very same two persons, who, in the same sort of transaction, and in circ.u.mstances exactly similar, or very nearly so, were candidates for the favor of Mr.
Hastings.
My Lords, our next step will be to show you that the Company in 1768 had made a covenant expressly forbidding the taking of presents of above 400_l._ value in each present by the Governor-General. I take it for granted, this will not be much litigated. They renewed and enforced that with other covenants and other instructions; and at last came an act of Parliament, in the clearest, the most definite, the most specific words that all the wisdom of the legislature, intent upon the eradication of this evil, could use, to prevent the receiving of presents.
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