Volume X Part 9 (2/2)
”With respect to Nundcomar's accusations, they were delivered by the hands of Mr. Francis, who has declared that he was called upon by Rajah Nundcomar, as a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this state, to lay the packet which contained them before the board,--that he conceived that he could not, consistent with his duty, refuse such a letter at the instance of a person of the Rajah's rank, and did accordingly receive it, and laid it before the board,--declaring at the same time that he was unacquainted with the contents of it. I believe that the Court of Directors, and those to whom those proceedings shall be made known, will think differently of this action of Mr. Francis: that Nundcomar was guilty of great insolence and disrespect in the demand which he made of Mr. Francis; and that it was not a duty belonging to the office of a councillor of this state to make himself the carrier of a letter, which would have been much more properly committed to the hands of a peon or hircarra, or delivered by the writer of it to the secretary himself.
”Mr. Francis has acknowledged that he apprehended in general that it contained some charge against me. If the charge was false, it was a libel. It might have been false for anything that Mr. Francis could know to the contrary, since he was unacquainted with the contents of it. In this instance, therefore, he incurred the hazard of presenting a libel to the board: this was not a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this state. I must further inform the board that I have been long since acquainted with Nundcomar's intentions of making this attack upon me. Happily, Nundcomar, among whose talents for intrigue that of secrecy is not the first, has been ever too ready to make the first publication of his own intentions. I was shown a paper containing many accusations against me, which I was told was carried by Nundcomar to Colonel Monson, and that he himself was employed for some hours in private with Colonel Monson, explaining the nature of those charges.
”I mention only what I was told; but as the rest of the report which was made to me corresponds exactly with what has happened since, I hope I shall stand acquitted to my superiors and to the world in having given so much credit to it as to bring the circ.u.mstance upon record. I cannot recollect the precise time in which this is said to have happened, but I believe it was either before or at the time of the dispatch of the 'Bute' and 'Pacific.' The charge has since undergone some alteration; but of the copy of the paper which was delivered to me, containing the original charge, I caused a translation to be made; when, suspecting the renewal of the subject in this day's consultation, I brought it with me, and I desire it may be recorded, that, when our superiors, or the world, if the world is to be made the judge of my conduct, shall be possessed of these materials, they may, by comparing the supposed original and amended list of accusations preferred against me by Nundcomar, judge how far I am justified in the credit which I give to the reports above mentioned. I do not mean to infer from what I have said that it makes any alteration in the nature of the charges, whether they were delivered immediately from my ostensible accusers, or whether they came to the board through the channel of patronage; but it is sufficient to authorize the conviction which I feel in my own mind, that those gentlemen are parties in the accusations of which they a.s.sert the right of being the judges.
”From the first commencement of this administration, every means have been tried both to deprive me of the legal authority with which I have been trusted, and to proclaim the annihilation of it to the world; but no instance has yet appeared of this in so extraordinary a degree as in the question now before the board. The chief of the administration, your superior, Gentlemen, appointed by the legislature itself, shall I sit at this board to be arraigned in the presence of a wretch whom you all know to be one of the basest of mankind? I believe I need not mention his name; but it is Nundcomar. Shall I sit here to hear men collected from the dregs of the people give evidence, at his dictating, against my character and conduct? I will not. You may, if you please, form yourselves into a committee for the investigation of these matters in any manner which you may think proper; but I will repeat, that I will not meet Nundcomar at the board, nor suffer Nundcomar to be examined at the board; nor have you a right to it, nor can it answer any other purpose than that of vilifying and insulting me to insist upon it.
”I am sorry to have found it necessary to deliver my sentiments on a subject of so important a nature in an unpremeditated minute, drawn from me at the board, which I should have wished to have had leisure and retirement to have enabled me to express myself with that degree of caution and exactness which the subject requires. I have said nothing but what I believe and am morally certain I shall stand justified for in the eyes of my superiors and the eyes of the world; but I reserve to myself the liberty of adding my further sentiments in such a manner and form as I shall hereafter judge necessary.”
My Lords, you see here the picture of Nundcomar drawn by Mr. Hastings himself; you see the hurry, the pa.s.sion, the precipitation, the confusion, into which Mr. Hastings is thrown by the perplexity of detected guilt; you see, my Lords, that, instead of defending himself, he rails at his accuser in the most indecent language, calling him a wretch whom they all knew to be the basest of mankind,--that he rails at the Council, by attributing their conduct to the worst of motives,--that he rails at everybody, and declares the accusation to be a libel: in short, you see plainly that the man's head is turned. You see there is not a word he says upon this occasion which has common sense in it; you see one great leading principle in it,--that he does not once attempt to deny the charge. He attempts to vilify the witness, he attempts to vilify those he supposes to be his accusers, he attempts to vilify the Council; he lags upon the accusation, he mixes it with other accusations, which had nothing to do with it, and out of the whole he collects a resolution--to do what? To meet his adversary and defy him?
No,--that he will not suffer him to appear before him: he says, ”I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the board to be my judges.”
He was not called upon to acknowledge them to be his judges. Both he and they were called upon to inquire into all corruptions without exception.
It was his duty not merely [not?] to traverse and oppose them while inquiring into acts of corruption, but he was bound to take an active part in it,--that if they had a mind to let such a thing sleep upon their records, it was his duty to have brought forward the inquiry. They were not his judges, they were not his accusers; they were his fellow-laborers in the inquiry ordered by the Court of Directors, their masters, and by which inquiry he might be purged of that corruption with which he stood charged.
He says, ”Nundcomar is a wretch whom you all know to be the basest of mankind.” I believe they did not know the man to be a wretch, or the basest of mankind; but if he was a wretch, and if he was the basest of mankind, if he was guilty of all the crimes with which we charge Mr.
Hastings, (not one of which was ever proved against him,)--if any of your Lords.h.i.+ps were to have the misfortune to be before this tribunal, before any inquest of the House of Commons, or any other inquest of this nation, would you not say that it was the greatest possible advantage to you that the man who accused you was a miscreant, the vilest and basest of mankind, by the confession of all the world? Do mankind really, then, think that to be accused by men of honor, of weight, of character, upon probable charges, is an advantage to them, and that to be accused by the basest of mankind is a disadvantage? No: give me, if ever I am to have accusers, miscreants, as he calls him,--wretches, the basest and vilest of mankind. ”The board,” says he, ”are my accusers.” If they were, it was their duty; but they were not his accusers, but were inquiring into matters which it was equally his duty to inquire into. He would not suffer Nundcomar to be produced; he would not suffer Nundcomar to be examined; he rather suffered such an accusation to stand against his name and character than permit it to be inquired into. Do I want any other presumption of his guilt, upon such an occasion, than such conduct as this?
This man, whom he calls a wretch, the basest and vilest of mankind, was undoubtedly, by himself, in the records of the Company, declared to be one of the first men of that country, everything that a subject could be, a person ill.u.s.trious for his birth, sacred with regard to his caste, opulent in fortune, eminent in situation, who had filled the very first offices in that country; and that he was, added to all this, a man of most acknowledged talents, and of such a superiority as made the whole people of Bengal appear to be an inferior race of beings compared to him,--a man whose outward appearance and demeanor used to cause reverence and awe, and who at that time was near seventy years of age, which, without any other t.i.tle, generally demands respect from mankind.
And yet this man he calls the basest of mankind, a name which no man is ent.i.tled to call another till he has proved something to justify him in so doing; and notwithstanding his opulence, his high rank, station, and birth, he despises him, and will not suffer him to be heard as an accuser before him. I will venture to say that Mr. Hastings, in so doing, whether elevated by philosophy or inflated by pride, is not like the rest of mankind. We do know, that, in all accusations, a great part of their weight and authority comes from the character, the situation, the name, the description, the office, the dignity of the persons who bring them; mankind are so made, we cannot resist this prejudice; and it has weight, and ever will have _prima facie_ weight, in all the tribunals in the world. If, therefore, Rajah Nundcomar was a man who (it is not degrading to your Lords.h.i.+ps to say) was equal in rank, according to the idea of his country, to any peer in this House, as sacred as a bishop, of as much gravity and authority as a judge, and who was prime-minister in the country in which he lived, with what face can Mr.
Hastings call this man a wretch, and say that he will not suffer him to be brought before him? If, indeed, joined with such circ.u.mstances, the accuser be a person of bad morals, then, I admit, those bad morals take away from their weight; but for a proof of that you must have some other grounds than the charges and the railing of the culprit against him.
I might say that his pa.s.sion is a proof of his guilt; and there is an action which is more odious than the crimes he attempts to cover,--_for he has murdered this man by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey_; and if his counsel should be unwise enough to endeavor to detract from the credit of this man by the pretended punishment to which he was brought, we will open that dreadful scene to your Lords.h.i.+ps, and you will see that it does not detract from his credit, but brings an eternal stain and dishonor upon the justice of Great Britain: I say nothing further of it.
As he stood there, as he gave that evidence that day, the evidence was to be received; it stands good, and is a record against Mr.
Hastings,--with this addition, that he would not suffer it to be examined. He railed at his colleagues. He says, if the charge was false, they were guilty of a libel. No: it might have been the effect of conspiracy, it might be punished in another way; but if it was false, it was no libel. And all this is done to discountenance inquiry, to bring odium upon his colleagues for doing their duty, and to prevent that inquiry which could alone clear his character.
Mr. Hastings had himself forgotten the character which he had given of Nundcomar; but he says that his colleagues were perfectly well acquainted with him, and knew that he was a wretch, the basest of mankind. But before I read to you the character which Mr. Hastings gave of him, when he recommended him to the Presidency, (to succeed Mahomed Reza Khan,) I am to let your Lords.h.i.+ps understand fully the purpose for which Mr. Hastings gave it. Upon that occasion, all the Council, whom he stated to lie under suspicion of being bought by Mahomed Reza Khan, all those persons with one voice cried out against Nundcomar; and as Mr.
Hastings was known to be of the faction the most opposite to Nundcomar, they charged him with direct inconsistency in raising Nundcomar to that exalted trust,--a charge which Mr. Hastings could not repel any other way than by defending Nundcomar. The weight of their objections chiefly lay to Nundcomar's political character; his moral character was not discussed in that proceeding. Mr. Hastings says,--
”The President does not take upon him to vindicate the moral character of Nundcomar; his sentiments of this man's former political conduct are not unknown to the Court of Directors, who, he is persuaded, will be more inclined to attribute his present countenance of him to motives of zeal and fidelity to the service, in repugnance perhaps to his own inclinations, than to any predilection in his favor. He is very well acquainted with most of the facts alluded to in the minute of the majority, having been a princ.i.p.al instrument in detecting them: nevertheless he thinks it but justice to make a distinction between the violation of a trust and an offence committed against our government by a man who owed it no allegiance, nor was indebted to it for protection, but, on the contrary, was the minister and actual servant of a master whose interest naturally suggested that kind of policy which sought, by foreign aids, and the diminution of the power of the Company, to raise his own consequence, and to reestablish his authority. He has never been charged with any instance of infidelity to the Nabob Mir Jaffier, the constant tenor of whose politics, from his first accession to the nizamut till his death, corresponded in all points so exactly with the artifices which were detected in his minister that they may be as fairly ascribed to the one as to the other: their immediate object was beyond question the aggrandizement of the former, though the latter had ultimately an equal interest in their success. The opinion which the Nabob himself entertained of the services and of the fidelity of Nundcomar evidently appeared in the distinguished marks which he continued to show him of his favor and confidence to the latest hour of his life.
”His conduct in the succeeding administration appears not only to have been dictated by the same principles, but, if we may be allowed to speak favorably of any measures which opposed the views of our own government and aimed at the support of an adverse interest, surely it was not only not culpable, but even praiseworthy. He endeavored, as appears by the abstracts before us, to give consequence to his master, and to pave the way to his independence, by obtaining a firman from the king for his appointment to the subahs.h.i.+p; and he opposed the promotion of Mahomed Reza Khan, because he looked upon it as a supersession of the rights and authority of the Nabob. He is now an absolute dependant and subject of the Company, on whose favor he must rest all his hopes of future advancement.”
The character here given of him is that of an excellent patriot, a character which all your Lords.h.i.+ps, in the several situations which you enjoy or to which you may be called, will envy,--the character of a servant who stuck to his master against all foreign encroachments, who stuck to him to the last hour of his life, and had the dying testimony of his master to his services.
Could Sir John Clavering, could Colonel Monson, could Mr. Francis know that this man, of whom Mr. Hastings had given that exalted character upon the records of the Company, was the basest and vilest of mankind?
No, they ought to have esteemed him the contrary: they knew him to be a man of rank, they knew him to be a man perhaps of the first capacity in the world, and they knew that Mr. Hastings had given this honorable testimony of him on the records of the Company but a very little time before; and there was no reason why they should think or know, as he expresses it, that he was the basest and vilest of mankind. From the account, therefore, of Mr. Hastings himself, he was a person competent to accuse, a witness fit to be heard; and that is all I contend for. Mr.
Hastings would not hear him, he would not suffer the charge he had produced to be examined into.
It has been shown to your Lords.h.i.+ps that Mr. Hastings employed Nundcomar to inquire into the conduct and to be the princ.i.p.al manager of a prosecution against Mahomed Reza Khan. Will you suffer this man to qualify and disqualify witnesses and prosecutors agreeably to the purposes which his own vengeance and corruption may dictate in one case, and which the defence of those corruptions may dictate in another? Was Nundcomar a person fit to be employed in the greatest and most sacred trusts in the country, and yet not fit to be a witness to the sums of money which he paid Mr. Hastings for those trusts? Was Nundcomar a fit witness to be employed and a fit person to be used in the prosecution of Mahomed Reza Khan, and yet not fit to be employed against Mr. Hastings, who himself had employed him in the very prosecution of Mahomed Reza Khan?
If Nundcomar was an enemy to Mr. Hastings, he was an enemy to Mahomed Reza Khan; and Mr. Hastings employed him, avowedly and professedly on the records of the Company, on account of the very qualification of that enmity. Was he a wretch, the basest of mankind, when opposed to Mr.
Hastings? Was he not as much a wretch, and as much the basest of mankind, when Mr. Hastings employed him in the prosecution of the first magistrate and Mahometan of the first descent in Asia? Mr. Hastings shall not qualify and disqualify men at his pleasure; he must accept them such as they are; and it is a presumption of his guilt accompanying the charge, (which I never will separate from it,) that he would not suffer the man to be produced who made the accusation. And I therefore contend, that, as the accusation was so made, so witnessed, so detailed, so specific, so entered upon record, and so entered upon record in consequence of the inquiries ordered by the Company, his refusal and rejection of inquiry into it is a presumption of his guilt.
He is full of his idea of dignity. It is right for every man to preserve his dignity. There is a dignity of station, which a man has in trust to preserve; there is a dignity of personal character, which every man by being made man is bound to preserve. But you see Mr. Hastings's idea of dignity has no connection with integrity; it has no connection with honest fame; it has no connection with the reputation which he is bound to preserve. What, my Lords, did he owe nothing to the Company that had appointed him? Did he owe nothing to the legislature,--did he owe nothing to your Lords.h.i.+ps, and to the House of Commons, who had appointed him? Did he owe nothing to himself? to the country that bore him? Did he owe nothing to the world, as to its opinion, to which every public man owes a reputation? What an example was here held out to the Company's servants!
Mr. Hastings says, ”This may come into a court of justice; it will come into a court of justice: I reserve my defence on the occasion till it comes into a court of justice, and here I make no opposition to it.” To this I answer, that the Company did not order him so to reserve himself, but ordered him to be an inquirer into those things. Is it a lesson to be taught to the inferior servants of the Company, that, provided they can escape out of a court of justice by the back-doors and sally-ports of the law, by artifice of pleading, by those strict and rigorous rules of evidence which have been established for the protection of innocence, but which by them might be turned to the protection and support of guilt, that such an escape is enough for them? that an Old Bailey acquittal is enough to establish a fitness for trust? and if a man shall go acquitted out of such a court, because the judges are bound to acquit him against the conviction of their own opinion, when every man in the market-place knows that he is guilty, that he is fit for a trust? Is it a lesson to be held out to the servants of the Company, that, upon the first inquiry which is made into corruption, and that in the highest trust, by the persons authorized to inquire into it, he uses all the powers of that trust to quash it,--vilifying his colleagues, vilifying his accuser, abusing everybody, but never denying the charge? His a.s.sociates and colleagues, astonished at this conduct, so wholly unlike everything that had ever appeared of innocence, request him to consider a little better. They declare they are not his accusers; they tell him they are not his judges; that they, under the orders of the Company, are making an inquiry which he ought to make. He declares he will not make it. Being thus driven to the wall, he says, ”Why do you not form yourselves into a committee? I won't suffer these proceedings to go on as long as I am present.” Mr. Hastings plainly had in view, that, if the proceedings had been before a committee, there would have been a doubt of their authenticity, as not being before a regular board; and he contended that there could be no regular board without his own presence in it: a poor, miserable scheme for eluding this inquiry; partly by saying that it was carried on when he was not present, and partly by denying the authority of this board.
<script>