Volume X Part 9 (1/2)
”Your order for the reduction of the Nabob's stipend was communicated to him in the month of December, 1771. He remonstrated against it, and desired it might be again referred to the Company. The board entirely acquiesced in his remonstrance, and the subsequent payments of his stipend were paid as before. I might easily have availed myself of this plea. I might have treated it as an act of the past government, with which I had no cause to interfere, and joined in a.s.serting the impossibility of his defraying the vast expense of his court and household without it, which I could have proved by plausible arguments, drawn from the actual amount of the nizamut and bhela establishments; and both the Nabob and Begum would have liberally purchased my forbearance. Instead of pursuing this plan, I carried your orders rigidly and literally into execution. I undertook myself the laborious and reproachful task of limiting his charges, from an excess of his former stipend, to the sum of his reduced allowance.”
He says in another place,--”The stoppage of the king's tribute was an act of mine, and I have been often reproached with it. It was certainly in my power to have continued the payment of it, and to have made my terms with the king for any part of it which I might have chosen to reserve for my own use. He would have thanked me for the remainder.”
My Lords, I believe it is a singular thing, and what your Lords.h.i.+ps have been very little used to, to see a man in the situation of Mr. Hastings, or in any situation like it, so ready in knowing all the resources by which sinister emolument may be made and concealed, and which, under pretences of public good, may be transferred into the pocket of him who uses those pretences. He is resolved, if he is innocent, that his innocence shall not proceed from ignorance. He well knows the ways of falsifying the Company's accounts; he well knows the necessities of the natives, and he knows that by paying a part of their dues they will be ready to give an acquittance of the whole. These are parts of Mr.
Hastings's knowledge of which your Lords.h.i.+ps will see he also well knows how to avail himself.
But you would expect, when he reduced the allowance to sixteen lac, and took credit to himself as if he had done the thing which he professed, and had argued from his rigor and cruelty his strict and literal obedience to the Company, that he had in reality done it. The very reverse: for it will be in proof, that, after he had pretended to reduce the Company's allowance, he continued it a twelvemonth from the day in which he said he had entirely executed it, to the amount of 90,000_l._, and entered a false account of the suppression in the Company's accounts; and when he has taken a credit as under pretence of reducing that allowance, he paid 90,000_l._ more than he ought. Can you, then, have a doubt, after all these false pretences, after all this fraud, fabrication, and suppression which he made use of, that that 90,000_l._, of which he kept no account and transmitted no account, was money given to himself for his own private use and advantage?
This is all that I think necessary to state to your Lords.h.i.+ps upon this monstrous part of the arrangement; and therefore, from his rigorous obedience in cases of cruelty, and, where control was directed, from his total disobedience, and from his choice of persons, from his suppression of the accounts that ought to have been produced, and falsifying the accounts that were kept, there arises a strong inference of corruption.
When your Lords.h.i.+ps see all this in proof, your Lords.h.i.+ps will justify me in saying that there never was (taking every part of the arrangement) such a direct, open violation of any trust.--I shall say no more with regard to the appointment of Munny Begum.
My Lords, here ended the first scene, and here ends that body of presumption arising from the transaction and inherent in it. My Lords, the next scene that I am to bring before you is the positive proof of corruption in this transaction, in which I am sure you already see that corruption must exist. The charge was brought by a person in the highest trust and confidence with Mr. Hastings, a person employed in the management of the whole transaction, a person to whom the management, subordinate to Munny Begum, of all the pecuniary transactions, and all the arrangements made upon that occasion, was intrusted.
On the 11th day of March, 1775, Nundcomar gives to Mr. Francis, a member of the Council, a charge against Mr. Hastings, consisting of two parts.
The first of these charges was a vast number of corrupt dealings, with respect to which he was the informer, not the witness, but to which he indicated the modes of inquiry; and they are corrupt dealings, as Mr.
Hastings himself states them, amounting to millions of rupees, and in transactions every one of which implies in it the strongest degree of corruption. The next part was of those to which he was not only an informer, but a witness, in having been the person who himself transmitted the money to Mr. Hastings and the agents of Mr. Hastings; and accordingly, upon this part, which is the only part we charge, his evidence is clear and full, that he gave the money to Mr. Hastings,--he and the Begum (for I put them together). He states, that Mr. Hastings received for the appointment of Munny Begum to the rajahs.h.i.+p two lacs of rupees, or about 22,000_l._, and that he received in another gross sum one lac and a half of rupees: in all making three lac and a half, or about 36,000_l._ This charge was signed by the man, and accompanied with the account.
Mr. Hastings, on that day, made no reflection or observation whatever upon this charge, except that he attempted to excite some suspicion that Mr. Francis, who had produced it, was concerned in the charge, and was the princ.i.p.al mover in it. He asks Mr. Francis that day this question:--
”The Governor-General observes, as Mr. Francis has been pleased to inform the board that he was unacquainted with the contents of the letter sent in to the board by Nundcomar, that he thinks himself justified in carrying his curiosity further than he should have permitted himself without such a previous intimation, and therefore begs leave to ask Mr. Francis whether he was before this acquainted with Nundcomar's intention of bringing such charges against him before the board.
”_Mr. Francis._--As a member of this Council, I do not deem myself obliged to answer any question of mere curiosity. I am willing, however, to inform the Governor-General, that, though I was totally unacquainted with the contents of the paper I have now delivered in to the board till I heard it read, I did apprehend in general that it contained some charge against him. It was this apprehension that made me so particularly cautious in the manner of receiving the Rajah's letter. I was not acquainted with Rajah Nundcomar's intention of bringing in such charges as are mentioned in the letter.
”Warren Hastings.
J. Clavering.
Geo. Monson.
P. Francis.”
Now what the duty of Mr. Hastings and the Council was, upon receiving such information, I shall beg leave to state to your Lords.h.i.+ps from the Company's orders; but, before I read them, I must observe, that, in pursuance of an act of Parliament, which was supposed to be made upon account of the neglect of the Company, as well as the neglects of their servants, and for which general neglects responsibility was fixed upon the Company for the future, while for the present their authority was suspended, and a Parliamentary commission sent out to regulate their affairs, the Company did, upon that occasion, send out a general code and body of instructions to be observed by their servants, in the 35th paragraph of which it is said,--
”We direct that you immediately cause the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions which may have been committed either against the natives or Europeans, and into all abuses that may have prevailed in the collection of the revenues, or any part of the civil government of the Presidency: and that you communicate to us all information which you may be able to learn relative thereto, or to any dissipation or embezzlement of the Company's money.”
Your Lords.h.i.+ps see here that there is a direct duty fixed upon them to forward, to promote, to set on foot, without exception of any persons whatever, an inquiry into all manner of corruption, peculation, and oppression. Therefore this charge of Nundcomar's was a case exactly within the Company's orders; such a charge was not sought out, but was actually laid before them; but if it had not been actually laid before them, if they had any reason to suspect that such corruptions existed, they were bound by this order to make an active inquiry into them.
Upon that day (11th March, 1775) nothing further pa.s.sed; and, on the part of Mr. Hastings, that charge, as far as we can find, might have stood upon the records forever, without his making the smallest observation upon it, or taking any one step to clear his own character.
But Nundcomar was not so inattentive to his duties as an accuser as Mr.
Hastings was to his duties as an inquirer; for, without a moment's delay, upon the first board-day, two days after, Nundcomar came and delivered the following letter.
”I had the honor to lay before you, in a letter of the 11th instant, an abstracted, but true account of the Honorable Governor in the course of his administration. What is there written I mean not the least to alter: far from it. I have the strongest written vouchers to produce in support of what I have advanced; and I wish and entreat, for my honor's sake, that you will suffer me to appear before you, to establish the fact by an additional, incontestable evidence.”
My Lords, I will venture to say, if ever there was an accuser that appeared well and with weight before any court, it was this man. He does not shrink from his charge; he offered to meet the person he charged face to face, and to make good his charge by his own evidence, and further evidence that he should produce. Your Lords.h.i.+ps have also seen the conduct of Mr. Hastings on the first day; you have seen his acquiescence under it; you have seen the suspicion he endeavored to raise. Now, before I proceed to what Mr. Hastings thought of it, I must remark upon this accusation, that it is a specific accusation, coming from a person knowing the very transaction, and known to be concerned in it,--that it was an accusation in writing, that it was an accusation with a signature, that it was an accusation with a person to make it good, that it was made before a competent authority, and made before an authority bound to inquire into such accusation. When he comes to produce his evidence, he tells you, first, the sums of money given, the species in which they were given, the very bags in which they were put, the exchange that was made by reducing them to the standard money of the country; he names all the persons through whose hands the whole transaction went, eight in number, besides himself, Munny Begum, and Gourdas, being eleven, all referred to in this transaction. I do believe that since the beginning of the world there never was an accusation which was more deserving of inquiry, because there never was an accusation which put a false accuser in a worse situation, and that put an honest defendant in a better; for there was every means of collation, every means of comparison, every means of cross-examining, every means of control. There was every way of sifting evidence, in which evidence could be sifted. Eleven witnesses to the transaction are referred to; all the particulars of the payment, every circ.u.mstance that could give the person accused the advantage of showing the falsehood of the accusation, were specified. General accusations may be treated as calumnies; but particular accusations, like these, afford the defendant, if innocent, every possible means for making his defence: therefore the very making no defence at all would prove, beyond all doubt, a consciousness of guilt.
The next thing for your Lords.h.i.+ps' consideration is the conduct of Mr.
Hastings upon this occasion. You would imagine that he would have treated the accusation with a cold and manly disdain; that he would have challenged and defied inquiry, and desired to see his accuser face to face. This is what any man would do in such a situation. I can conceive very well that a man composed, firm, and collected in himself, conscious of not only integrity, but known integrity, conscious of a whole life beyond the reach of suspicion,--that a man placed in such a situation might oppose general character to general accusation, and stand collected in himself, poised on his own base, and defying all the calumnies in the world. But as it shows a great and is a proof of a virtuous mind to despise calumny, it is the proof of a guilty mind to despise a specific accusation, when made before a competent authority, and with competent means to prove it. As Mr. Hastings's conduct was what no man living expected, I will venture to say that no expression can do it justice but his own. Upon reading the letter, and a motion being made that Rajah Nundcomar be brought before the board to prove the charge against the Governor-General, the Governor-General enters the following minute.
”Before the question is put, I declare that I will not suffer Nundcomar to appear before the board as my accuser. I know what belongs to the dignity and character of the first member of this administration. I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the members of this board to be my judges. I am reduced on this occasion to make the declaration, that I look upon General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis as my accusers. I cannot prove this in the direct letter of the law, but in my conscience I regard them as such, and I will give my reasons for it. On their arrival at this place, and on the first formation of the Council, they thought proper to take immediate and decisive measures in contradiction and for the repeal of those which were formed by me in conjunction with the last administration. I appealed to the Court of Directors from their acts.
Many subsequent letters have been transmitted both by them and by me to the Court of Directors: by me, in protestation against their conduct; by them, in justification of it. Quitting this ground, they since appear to me to have chosen other modes of attack, apparently calculated to divert my attention and to withdraw that of the public from the subject of our first differences, which regarded only the measures that were necessary for the good of the service, to attacks directly and personally levelled at me for matters which tend to draw a personal and popular odium upon me: and fit instruments they have found for their purpose,--Mr. Joseph Fowke, Mahrajah Nundcomar, Roopnarain Chowdry, and the Ranny of Burdwan.
”It appears incontestably upon the records that the charges preferred by the Ranny against me proceeded from the office of Mr. Fowke. All the papers transmitted by her came in their original form written in the English language,--some with Persian papers, of which they were supposed to be translations, but all strongly marked with the character and idiom of the English language. I applied on Sat.u.r.day last for Persian originals of some of the papers sent by her, and I was refused: I am justified in declaring my firm belief that no such originals exist.