Volume X Part 13 (1/2)

My Lords,--Agreeably to your Lords.h.i.+ps' proclamation, which I have just heard, and the duty enjoined me by the House of Commons, I come forward to make good their charge of high crimes and misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Governor-General of Bengal, and now a prisoner at your bar.

My Lords, since I had last the honor of standing in this place before your Lords.h.i.+ps, an event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent. My Lords, I have been disavowed by those who sent me here to represent them. My Lords, I have been disavowed in a material part of that engagement which I had pledged myself to this House to perform. My Lords, that disavowal has been followed by a censure. And yet, my Lords, so censured and so disavowed, and by such an authority, I am sent here again, to this the place of my offence, under the same commission, by the same authority, to make good the same charge, against the same delinquent.

My Lords, the situation is new and awful: the situation is such as, I believe, and I am sure, has nothing like it on the records of Parliament, nor, probably, in the history of mankind. My Lords, it is not only new and singular, but, I believe, to many persons, who do not look into the true interior nature of affairs, it may appear that it would be to me as mortifying as it is unprecedented. But, my Lords, I have in this situation, and upon the consideration of all the circ.u.mstances, something more to feed my mind with than mere consolation; because, my Lords, I look upon the whole of these circ.u.mstances, considered together, as the strongest, the most decisive, and the least equivocal proof which the Commons of Great Britain can give of their sincerity and their zeal in this prosecution. My Lords, is it from a mistaken tenderness or a blind partiality to me, that, thus censured, they have sent me to this place? No, my Lords, it is because they feel, and recognize in their own b.r.e.a.s.t.s, that active principle of justice, that zeal for the relief of the people of India, that zeal for the honor of Great Britain, which characterizes me and my excellent a.s.sociates, that, in spite of any defects, in consequence of that zeal which they applaud, and while they censure its mistakes, and, because they censure its mistakes, do but more applaud, they have sent me to this place, instructed, but not dismayed, to pursue this prosecution against Warren Hastings, Esquire. Your Lords.h.i.+ps will therefore be pleased to consider this, as I consider it, not as a thing honorable to me, in the first place, but as honorable to the Commons of Great Britain, in whose honor the national glory is deeply concerned; and I shall suffer myself with pleasure to be sacrificed, perhaps, in what is dearer to me than my life, my reputation, rather than let it be supposed that the Commons should for one moment have faltered in their duty. I, my Lords, on the one hand, feeling myself supported and encouraged, feeling protection and countenance from this admonition and warning which has been given to me, will show myself, on the other hand, not unworthy so great and distinguished a mark of the favor of the Commons,--a mark of favor not the consequence of flattery, but of opinion. I shall feel animated and encouraged by so n.o.ble a reward as I shall always consider the confidence of the Commons to be: the only reward, but a rich reward, which I have received for the toils and labors of a long life.

The Commons, then, thus vindicated, and myself thus encouraged, I shall proceed to make good the charge in which the honor of the Commons, that is, the national honor, is so deeply concerned. For, my Lords, if any circ.u.mstance of weakness, if any feebleness of nerve, if any yielding to weak and popular opinions and delusions were to shake us, consider what the situation of this country would be. This prosecution, if weakly conceived, ill digested, or intemperately pursued, ought never to have been brought to your Lords.h.i.+ps' bar: but being brought to your Lords.h.i.+ps' bar, the nation is committed to it, and the least appearance of uncertainty in our minds would disgrace us forever. _Esto perpetua_, has been said. To the glory of this nation, much more be it said, _Esto perpetua_; and I will say, that, as we have raised and exhibited a theatre of justice which has excited the admiration of all Europe, there would be a sort of l.u.s.tre in our infamy, and a splendor in the disgrace that we should bring upon ourselves, if we should, just at that moment, turn that theatre of our glory into a spectacle of dishonor beyond what has ever happened to any country of the world.

The Commons of Great Britain, whilst willing to keep a strong and firm hand over all those who represent them in any business, do at the same time encourage them in the prosecution of it, by allowing them a just discretion and lat.i.tude wherever their own orders have not marked a distinction. I shall therefore go on with the more cheerful confidence, not only for the reasons that I have stated, but for another and material reason. I know and am satisfied, that, in the n.o.bleness of your judgment, you will always make a distinction between the person that gives the order and the organ that is to execute it. The House of Commons know no such thing as indiscretion, imprudence, or impropriety: it is otherwise with their instruments. Your Lords.h.i.+ps very well know, that, if you hear anything that shall appear to you to be regular, apt to bring forward the charge, just, prudent, cogent, you are to give it to the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament a.s.sembled; if you should hear from me (and it must be from me alone, and not from any other member of the Committee) anything that is unworthy of that situation, that comes feeble, weak, indigested, or ill-prepared, you are to attribute that to the instrument. Your Lords.h.i.+ps' judgment would do this without my saying it. But whilst I claim it on the part of the Commons for their dignity, I claim for myself the necessary indulgence that must be given to all weakness. Your Lords.h.i.+ps, then, will impute it where you would have imputed it without my desire. It is a distinction you would naturally have made, and the rather because what is alleged by us at the bar is not the ground upon which you are to give judgment. If not only I, but the whole body of managers, had made use of any such expressions as I made use of,--even if the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament a.s.sembled, if the collective body of Parliament, if the voice of Europe, had used them,--if we had spoken with the tongues of men and angels, you, in the seat of judicature, are not to regard what we say, but what we prove; you are to consider whether the charge is well substantiated, and proof brought out by legal inference and argument. You know, and I am sure the habits of judging which your Lords.h.i.+ps have acquired by sitting in judgment must better inform you than any other men, that the duties of life, in order to be well performed, must be methodized, separated, arranged, and harmonized in such a manner that they shall not clash with one another, but each have a department a.s.signed and separated to itself. My Lords, in that manner it is that we, the prosecutors, have nothing to do with the principles which are to guide the judgment, that we have nothing to do with the defence of the prisoner. Your Lords.h.i.+ps well know, that, when we come before you, you hear a party; that, when the accused come before you, you hear a party: that it is for you to doubt, and wait till you come to the close, before you decide; that it is for us, the prosecutors, to have decided before we came here. To act as prosecutors, we ought to have no doubt or hesitation, nothing trembling or quivering in our minds upon the occasion. We ought to be fully convinced of guilt, before we come to you. It is, then, our business to bring forward the proofs,--to enforce them with all the clearness, ill.u.s.tration, example, that we can bring forward,--that we are to show the circ.u.mstances that can aggravate the guilt,--that we are to go further, show the mischievous consequences and tendency of those crimes to society,--and that we are, if able so to do, to arouse and awaken in the minds of all that hear us those generous and n.o.ble sympathies which Providence has planted in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all men, to be the true guardians of the common rights of humanity. Your Lords.h.i.+ps know that this is the duty of the prosecutors, and that therefore we are not to consider the defence of the party, which is wisely and properly left to himself; but we are to press the accusation with all the energy of which it is capable, and to come with minds perfectly convinced before an august and awful tribunal which at once tries the accuser and the accused.

Having stated thus much with respect to the Commons, I am to read to your Lords.h.i.+ps the resolution which the Commons have come to upon this great occasion, and upon which I shall take the liberty to say a very few words.

My Lords, the Commons have resolved last night, and I did not see the resolution till this morning, ”that no direction or authority was given by this House to the committee appointed to manage the impeachment against Warren Hastings, Esquire, to make any charge or allegation against the said Warren Hastings respecting the condemnation or execution of Nundcomar; and that the words spoken by the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, one of the said managers, _videlicet_, that he (meaning Mr. Hastings) murdered that man (meaning Nundcomar) by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey, ought not to have been spoken.”

My Lords, this is the resolution of the House of Commons. Your Lords.h.i.+ps well know and remember my having used such or similar words, and the end and purpose for which I used them. I owe a few words of explanation to the Commons of Great Britain, who attend in a committee of the whole House to be the observers and spectators of my conduct. I owe it to your Lords.h.i.+ps, I owe it to this great auditory, I owe it to the present times and to posterity, to make some apology for a proceeding which has drawn upon me the disavowal of the House which I represent. Your Lords.h.i.+ps will remember that this charge which I have opened to your Lords.h.i.+ps is primarily a charge founded upon the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar; and consequently I thought myself obliged, I thought it a part of my duty, to support the credit of that person, who is the princ.i.p.al evidence to support the direct charge that is brought before your Lords.h.i.+ps. I knew that Mr. Hastings, in his antic.i.p.ated defence before the House of Commons, had attempted to shake the credit of that witness. I therefore thought myself justified in informing your Lords.h.i.+ps, and in warning him, that, if he did attempt to shake the credit of an important witness against him by an allegation of his having been condemned and executed for a forgery, I would endeavor to support his credit by attacking that very prosecution which brought on that condemnation and that execution; and that I did consider it, and would lay grounds before your Lords.h.i.+ps to prove it, to be a murder committed, instead of a justification set up, or that ought to be set up.

Now, my Lords, I am ordered by the Commons no longer to persist in that declaration; and I, who know nothing in this place, and ought to know nothing in this place, but obedience to the Commons, do mean, when Mr.

Hastings makes that objection (if he shall be advised to make it) against the credit of Rajah Nundcomar, not thus to support that credit; and therefore that objection to the credit of the witness must go unrefuted by me. My Lords, I must admit, perhaps against my private judgment, (but that is of no consideration for your Lords.h.i.+ps, when opposed to the judgment of the House of Commons,) or, at least, not contest, that a first minister of state, in a great kingdom, who had the benefit of the administration, and of the entire and absolute command of a revenue of fifteen hundred thousand pounds a year, had been guilty of a paltry forgery in Calcutta; that this man, who had been guilty of this paltry forgery, had waited for his sentence and his punishment, till a body of English judges, armed with an English statute, came to Calcutta; and that this happened at the very happy nick and moment when he was accusing Mr. Hastings of the bribery with which we now in the name of the Commons charge him; that it was owing to an entirely fortuitous concurrence of circ.u.mstances, in which Mr. Hastings had no share, or that it was owing to something beyond this, something that is rather pious than fortuitous, namely, that, as Mr. Hastings tells you himself, ”all persuasions of men were impressed with a superst.i.tious belief that a fortunate influence directed all my actions to their destined ends.”

I, not being at that time infected with the superst.i.tion, and considering what I thought Mr. Hastings's guilt to be, and what I must prove it to be as well as I can, did not believe that Providence did watch over Mr. Hastings, so as in the nick of time, like a G.o.d in a machine, to come down to save him in the moment of his imminent peril and distress: I did not think so, but I must not say so.

But now, to show that it was not weakly, loosely, or idly, that I took up this business, or that I antic.i.p.ated a defence which it was not probable for Mr. Hastings to make, (and I wish to speak to your Lords.h.i.+ps in the first instance, but to the Commons in the next,) I will read part of Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons: it is in evidence before your Lords.h.i.+ps. He says,--”My accuser” (meaning myself, then acting as a private member of Parliament) ”charges me with 'the receipt of large sums of money, corruptly taken before the promulgation of the Regulating Act of 1773, contrary to my covenants with the Company, and with the receipt of very large sums taken since, in defiance of that law, and contrary to my declared sense of its provisions.' And he ushers in this charge in the following pompous diction: 'That in March, 1775, the late Rajah Nundcomar, a native Hindoo of the highest caste in his religion, and of the highest rank in society, by the offices which he had held under the country government, did lay before the Council an account of various sums of money,' &c. It would naturally strike every person ignorant of the character of Nundcomar, that an accusation made by a person of the highest caste in his religion and of the highest rank by his offices demanded particular notice, and acquired a considerable degree of credit, from a prevalent a.s.sociation of ideas that a nice sense of honor is connected with an elevated rank of life: but when this honorable House is informed that my accuser knew (though he suppressed the facts) that this person, of high rank and high caste, had forfeited every pretension to honor, veracity, and credit,--that there are facts recorded on the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, (independent of the forgery for which he suffered death,) of the most deliberate treachery to the state, for which he was confined, by the orders of the Court of Directors, to the limits of the town of Calcutta, in order to prevent his dangerous intrigues, and of having violated every principle of common honesty in private life,--I say, when this honorable House is acquainted it is from mutilated and garbled a.s.sertions, founded on the testimony of such an evidence, without the whole matter being fairly stated, I do hope and trust it will be sufficient for them to reject _now_ these vague and unsupported charges, in like manner as they were _before_ rejected by the Court of Directors and his Majesty's ministers, when they were first made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis.--I must here interrupt the course of my defence to explain on what grounds I employed or had any connection with a man of so flagitious a character as Nundcomar.”

My Lords, I hope this was a good and reasonable ground for me to antic.i.p.ate the defence which Mr. Hastings would make in this House,--namely, on the known, recognized, infamous character of Nundcomar, with regard to certain proceedings there charged at large, with regard to one forgery for which he suffered and two other forgeries with which Mr. Hastings charged him. I, who found that the Commons of Great Britain had received that very identical charge of Nundcomar, and given it to me in trust to make it good, did naturally, I hope excusably, (for that is the only ground upon which I stand,) endeavor to support that credit upon which the House acted. I hope I did so; and I hope that the goodness of that intention may excuse me, if I went a little too far on that occasion. I would have endeavored to support that credit, which it was much Mr. Hastings's interest to shake, and which he had before attempted to shake.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will have the goodness to suppose me now making my apology, and by no manner of means intending to persist either in this, or in anything which the House of Commons shall desire me not to declare in their name. But the House of Commons has not denied me the liberty to make you this just apology: G.o.d forbid they should! for they would be guilty of great injustice, if they did. The House of Commons, whom I represent, will likewise excuse me, their representative, whilst I have been endeavoring to support their characters in the face of the world, and to make an apology, and only an humble apology, for my conduct, for having considered that act in the light that I represented it,--and which I did merely from my private opinion, without any formal instruction from the House. For there is no doubt that the House is perfectly right, inasmuch as the House did neither formally instruct me nor at all forbid my making use of such an argument; and therefore I have given your Lords.h.i.+ps the reason why it was fit to make use of such argument,--if it was right to make use of it. I am in the memory of your Lords.h.i.+ps that I did conceive it to be relevant, and it was by the poverty of the language I was led to express my private feelings under the name of a _murder_. For, if the language had furnished me, under the impression of those feelings, with a word sufficient to convey the complicated atrocity of that act, as I felt it in my mind, I would not have made use of the word _murder_. It was on account of the language furnis.h.i.+ng me with no other I was obliged to use that word. Your Lords.h.i.+ps do not imagine, I hope, that I used that word in any other than a moral and popular sense, or that I used it in the legal and technical sense of the word _murder_. Your Lords.h.i.+ps know that I could not bring before this bar any commoner of Great Britain on a charge for murder. I am not so ignorant of the laws and const.i.tution of my country.

I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime. What led me into that error? Nine years' meditation upon that subject.

My Lords, the prisoner at the bar in the year 1780 sent a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons complaining of that very chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey. The House of Commons, who then had some trust in me, as they have some trust still, did order me, along with persons more wise and judicious than myself, several of whom stand near me, to make an inquiry into the state of the justice of that country. The consequence of that inquiry was, that we began to conceive a very bad opinion both of the complainant and defendant in that business,--that we found the English justice to be, as we thought it, and reported it to the House, a grievance, instead of a redress, to the people of India. I could bring before your Lords.h.i.+ps, if I did not spare your patience, whole volumes of reports, whole bodies of evidence, which, in the progress we have made in the course of eight or nine years, brought to my mind such a conviction as will never be torn from my heart but with my life; and I should have no heart that was fit to lodge any honest sentiment, if I departed from my opinion upon that occasion. But when I declare my own firm opinion upon it,--when I declare the reasons that led me to it,--when I mention the long meditation that preceded my founding a judgment upon it, the strict inquiry, the many hours and days spent in consideration, collation, and comparison,--I trust that infirmity which could be actuated by no malice to one party or the other may be excused; I trust that I shall meet with this indulgence, when your Lords.h.i.+ps consider, that, as far as you know me, as far as my public services for many years account for me, I am a man of a slow, laborious, inquisitive temper, that I do seldom leave a pursuit without leaving marks, perhaps of my weakness, but leaving marks of that labor, and that, in consequence of that labor, I made that affirmation, and thought the nature of the cause obliged me to support and substantiate it. It is true that those who sent me here have sagacity to decide upon the subject in a week; they can in one week discover the errors of my labors for nine years.

Now that I have made this apology to you, I a.s.sure you, you shall never hear me, either in my own name here, much less in the name of the Commons, urge one thing to you in support of the credit of Nundcomar grounded upon that judgment, until the House shall instruct and order me otherwise; because I know, that, when I can discover their sentiments, I ought to know nothing here but what is in strict and literal obedience to them.

My Lords, another thing might make me, perhaps, a little willing to be admitted to the proof of what I advanced, and that is, the very answer of Mr. Hastings to this charge, which the House of Commons, however, have adopted, and therefore in some degree purified. ”To the malicious part of this charge, which is the condemnation of Nundcomar for a forgery, I do declare, in the most solemn and unreserved manner, that I had no concern, either directly or indirectly, in the apprehending, prosecuting, or executing of Nundcomar. He suffered for a crime of forgery which he had committed in a private trust that was delegated to him, and for which he had been prosecuted in the dewanny courts of the country before the inst.i.tution of the Supreme Court of Judicature. To adduce this circ.u.mstance, therefore, as a confirmation of what was before suspicious from his general depravity of character, is just as reasonable as to a.s.sert that the accusations of Empson and Dudley were confirmed because they suffered death for their atrocious acts.”

My Lords, this was Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons, and it is now in evidence before your Lords.h.i.+ps. In this defence, he supposes the charge which was made originally before the Commons, and which the Commons voted, (though afterwards, for the convenience of shortening it, the affair was brought before your Lords.h.i.+ps in the way in which it is,)--he supposes, I say, the whole to proceed from a malicious intention; and I hope your Lords.h.i.+ps will not think, and I hope the Commons, reconsidering this matter, will not think, that, when such an imputation of malice was made for the purpose of repelling this corroborating argument which was used in the House of Commons to prove his guilt, I was wrong in attempting to support the House of Commons against his imputation of malice.

I must observe where I am limited and where I am not. I am limited, strictly, fully, (and your Lords.h.i.+ps and my country, who hear me, will judge how faithfully I shall adhere to that limitation,) not to support the credit of Nundcomar by any allegation against Mr. Hastings respecting his condemnation or execution; but I am not at all limited from endeavoring to support his credit against Mr. Hastings's charges of other forgeries, and from showing you, what I hope to show you clearly in a few words, that Nundcomar cannot be presumed guilty of forgery with more probability than Mr. Hastings is guilty of bringing forward a light and dangerous (for I use no other words than a light and dangerous) charge of forgery, when it serves his purpose. Mr. Hastings charges Nundcomar with two other forgeries. ”These two forgeries,” he says, ”are facts recorded in the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, and of a letter from the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah”; and therefore he infers malice in those who impute anything improper to him, knowing that the proof stood so. Here he a.s.serts that there are records before the House of Commons, and on the Company's Proceedings and Consultations, proving Nundcomar to have been guilty of these two forgeries. Turn over the next page of his printed defence, and you find a very extraordinary thing. You would have imagined that this forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, which, he says, is recognized and proved on the Journals, was a forgery charged by Munny Begum herself, or by somebody on her part, or some person concerned in this business.

There is no other charge of it whatever, but the charge of Warren Hastings himself. He wants you to discredit a man for forgery upon no evidence under heaven but that of his own, who thinks proper, without any sort of authority, without any sort of reference, without any sort of collateral evidence, to charge a man with that very direct forgery.

”You are,” he says, ”well informed of the reasons which first induced me to give any share of my confidence to Nundcomar, with whose character I was acquainted by an experience of many years. The means which he himself took to acquire it were peculiar to himself. He sent a messenger to me at Madras, on the first news of my appointment to this Presidency, with pretended letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, the brother of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khan, filled with bitter invectives against Mahomed Reza Khan, and of as warm recommendations, as I recollect, of Nundcomar. I have been since informed by the Begum that the letter which bore her seal was a complete forgery, and that she was totally unacquainted with the use which had been made of her name till I informed her of it. Juggut Chund, Nundcomar's son-in-law, was sent to her expressly to entreat her not to divulge it. Mr. Middleton, whom she consulted on the occasion, can attest the truth of this story.”

Mr. Middleton is dead, my Lords. This is not the Mr. Middleton whom your Lords.h.i.+ps have heard and know well in this House, but a brother of that Mr. Middleton, who is since dead. Your Lords.h.i.+ps find, when we refer to the records of the Company for the proof of this forgery, that there is no other than the unsupported a.s.sertion of Mr. Hastings himself that he was guilty of it. Now that was bad enough; but then hear the rest. Mr.

Hastings has charged this unhappy man, whom we must not defend, with another forgery; he has charged him with a forgery of a letter from Yeteram ul Dowlah to Mr. Hastings. Now you would imagine that he would have given his own authority at least for that a.s.sertion, which he says was proved. He goes on and says, ”I have not yet had the curiosity to inquire of the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah whether his letter was of the same stamp; but I cannot doubt it.”

Now here he begins, in this very defence which is before your Lords.h.i.+ps, to charge a forgery upon the credit of Munny Begum, without supporting it even by his own testimony,--and another forgery in the name of Yeteram ul Dowlah, which he said he had not even the curiosity to inquire into, and yet desires you, at the same time, to believe it to be proved. Good G.o.d! in what condition do men of the first character and situation in that country stand, when we have here delivered to us, as a record of the Company, Mr. Hastings's own a.s.sertions, saying that these forgeries were proved, though you have for the first nothing but his own unsupported a.s.sertion, and for the second his declaration only that he had not the curiosity to inquire into it! I am not forbidden by the Commons to state how and on what slight grounds Warren Hastings charges the natives of the country with forgery; neither am I forbidden to bring forward the accusation which Mr. Hastings made against Nundcomar for a conspiracy, nor the event of it, nor any circ.u.mstance relative to it. I shall therefore proceed in the best manner I can. There was a period, among the revolutions of philosophy, when there was an opinion, that, if a man lost one limb or organ, the strength of that which was lost retired into what was left. My Lords, if we are straitened in this, then our vigor will be redoubled in the rest, and we shall use it with double force. If the top and point of the sword is broken off, we shall take the hilt in our hand, and fight with whatever remains of the weapon against bribery, corruption, and peculation; and we shall use double diligence under any restraint which the wisdom of the Commons may lay upon us, or your Lords.h.i.+ps' wisdom may oblige us to submit to.

Having gone through this business, and shown in what manner I am restrained, where I am not to repel Mr. Hastings's defence, and where I am left at large to do it, I shall submit to the strict injunction with the utmost possible humility, and enjoy the liberty which is left to me with vigor, with propriety, and with discretion, I trust.

My Lords, when the circ.u.mstance happened which has given occasion to the long parenthesis by which my discourse has been interrupted, I remember I was beginning to open to your Lords.h.i.+ps the second period of Mr.

Hastings's scheme and system of bribery. My Lords, his bribery is so extensive, and has had such a variety in it, that it must be distinguished not only with regard to its kind, but must be likewise distinguished according to the periods of bribery and the epochas of peculation committed by him. In the first of those periods we shall prove to your Lords.h.i.+ps, I believe, without the aids that we hoped for, (your Lords.h.i.+ps allowing, as I trust you will do, a good deal for our situation,)--we shall be able, I say, to prove that Mr. Hastings took, as a bribe for appointing Munny Begum, three lac and an half of rupees; we shall prove the taking at the same time the Rajeshaye bribes. Mr.

Hastings at that time followed bribery in a natural manner: he took a bribe; he took it as large as he could; he concealed it as well as he could; and he got out of it by artifice or boldness, by use of trick or use of power, just as he was enabled: he acted like a wild, natural man, void of instruction, discipline, and art.