Volume XI Part 12 (2/2)
But, my Lords, the prisoner defends himself by example; and, good G.o.d!
what are the examples which he has chosen? Not the local usages and const.i.tutions of Oude or of any other province; not the general practice of a respectable emperor, like Akbar, which, if it would not fatigue your Lords.h.i.+ps, I could show to be the very reverse of this man's. No, my Lords, the prisoner, his learned counsel here, and his unlearned Cabinet Council, who wrote this defence, have ransacked the tales of travellers for examples, and have selected materials from that ma.s.s of loose remarks and crude conceptions, to prove that the natives of India have neither rights, laws, orders, or distinction.
I shall now proceed to show your Lords.h.i.+ps that the people of India have a keen sense and feeling of disgrace and dishonor. In proof of this I appeal to well-known facts. There have been women tried in India for offences, and acquitted, who would not survive the disgrace even of acquittal. There have been Hindoo soldiers, condemned at a court-martial, who have desired to be blown from the mouth of a cannon, and have claimed rank and precedence at the last moment of their existence. And yet these people are said to have no sense of dishonor!
Good G.o.d! that we should be under the necessity of proving, in this place, all these things, and of disproving that all India was given in slavery to this man!
But, my Lords, they will show you, they say, that Genghis Khan, Kouli Khan, and Tamerlane destroyed ten thousand times more people in battle than this man did. Good G.o.d! have they run mad? Have they lost their senses in their guilt? Did they ever expect that we meant to compare this man to Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, or Kouli Khan?--to compare a clerk at a bureau, to compare a fraudulent bullock-contractor, (for we could show that his first elementary malversations were in carrying on fraudulent bullock-contracts; which contracts were taken from him with shame and disgrace, and restored with greater shame and disgrace,) to compare him with the conquerors of the world? We never said he was a tiger and a lion: no, we have said he was a weasel and a rat. We have said that he has desolated countries by the same means that plagues of his description have produced similar desolations. We have said that he, a fraudulent bullock-contractor, exalted to great and unmerited powers, can do more mischief than even all the tigers and lions in the world. We know that a swarm of locusts, although individually despicable, can render a country more desolate than Genghis Khan or Tamerlane. When G.o.d Almighty chose to humble the pride and presumption of Pharaoh, and to bring him to shame, He did not effect His purpose with tigers and lions; but He sent lice, mice, frogs, and everything loathsome and contemptible, to pollute and destroy the country. Think of this, my Lords, and of your listening here to these people's long account of Tamerlane's camp of two hundred thousand persons, and of his building a pyramid at Bagdad with the heads of ninety thousand of his prisoners!
We have not accused Mr. Hastings of being a great general, and abusing his military powers: we know that he was nothing, at the best, but a creature of the bureau, raised by peculiar circ.u.mstances to the possession of a power by which incredible mischief might be done. We have not accused him of the vices of conquerors: when we see him signalized by any conquests, we may then make such an accusation; at present we say that he has been trusted with power much beyond his deserts, and that trust he has grossly abused.--But to proceed.
His counsel, according to their usual audacious manner, (I suppose they imagine that they are counsel for Tamerlane, or for Genghis Khan,) have thought proper to accuse the Managers for the Commons of wandering [wantoning?] in all the fabulous regions of Indian mythology. My Lords, the Managers are sensible of the dignity of their place; they have never offered anything to you without reason. We are not persons of an age, of a disposition, of a character, representative or natural, to _wanton_, as these counsel call it,--that is, to invent fables concerning Indian antiquity. That they are not ashamed of making this charge I do not wonder. But we are not to be thus diverted from our course.
I have already stated to your Lords.h.i.+ps a material circ.u.mstance of this case, which I hope will never be lost sight of,--namely, the different situation in which India stood under the government of its native princes and its own original laws, and even under the _dominion_ of Mahometan conquerors, from that in which it has stood under the government of a series of tyrants, foreign and domestic, particularly of Mr. Hastings, by whom it has latterly been oppressed and desolated. One of the books which I have quoted was written by Mr. Halhed; and I shall not be accused of wantoning in fabulous antiquity, when I refer to another living author, who wrote from what he saw and what he well knew.
This author says,--”In truth, it would be almost cruelty to molest these happy people” (speaking of the inhabitants of one of the provinces near Calcutta); ”for in this district are the only vestiges of the beauty, purity, piety, regularity, equity, and strictness of the ancient Hindostan government: here the property as well as the liberty of the people is inviolate.” My Lords, I do not refer you to this writer because I think it necessary to our justification, nor from any fear that your Lords.h.i.+ps will not do us the justice to believe that we have good authority for the facts which we state, and do not (as persons with their licentious tongues dare to say) wanton in fabulous antiquity. I quote the works of this author, because his observations and opinions could not be unknown to Mr. Hastings, whose a.s.sociate he was in some acts, and whose adviser he appears to have been in that dreadful transaction, the deposition of Cossim Ali Khan. This writer was connected with the prisoner at your bar in bribery, and has charged him with detaining his bribe. To this Mr. Hastings has answered, that he had paid him long ago. How they have settled that corrupt transaction I know not. I merely state all this to prove that we have not dealt in fabulous history, and that, if anybody has dealt in falsehood, it is Mr.
Hastings's companion and a.s.sociate in guilt, who must have known the country, and who, however faulty he was in other respects, had in this case no interest whatever in misrepresentation.
I might refer your Lords.h.i.+ps, if it were necessary, to Scrafton's account of that ancient government, in order to prove to you the happy comparative state of that country, even under its former usurpers. Our design, my Lords, in making such references, is not merely to disprove the prisoner's defence, but to vindicate the rights and privileges of the people of India. We wish to reinstate them in your sympathy. We wish you to respect a people as respectable as yourselves,--a people who know as well as you what is rank, what is law, what is property,--a people who know how to feel disgrace, who know what equity, what reason, what proportion in punishments, what security of property is, just as well as any of your Lords.h.i.+ps; for these are things which are secured to them by laws, by religion, by declarations of all their sovereigns. And what, my Lords, is opposed to all this? The practice of tyrants and usurpers, which Mr. Hastings takes for his rule and guidance. He endeavors to find deviations from legal government, and then instructs his counsel to say that I have a.s.serted there is no such thing as arbitrary power in the East. Good G.o.d! if there was no such thing in any other part of the world, Mr. Hastings's conduct might have convinced me of the existence of arbitrary power, and have taught me much of its mischief.
But, my Lords, we all know that there has been arbitrary power in India,--that tyrants have usurped it,--and that, in some instances, princes otherwise meritorious have violated the liberties of the people, and have been lawfully deposed for such violation. I do not deny that there are robberies on Hounslow Heath,--that there are such things as forgeries, burglaries, and murders; but I say that these acts are against law, and that whoever commit them commit illegal acts. When a man is to defend himself against a charge of crime, it is not instances of similar violation of law that is to be the standard of his defence. A man may as well say, ”I robbed upon Hounslow Heath, but hundreds robbed there before me”: to which I answer, ”The law has forbidden you to rob there; and I will hang you for having violated the law, notwithstanding the long list of similar violations which you have produced as precedents.” No doubt princes have violated the law of this country: they have suffered for it. n.o.bles have violated the law: their privileges have not protected them from punishment. Common people have violated the law: they have been hanged for it. I know no human being exempt from the law. The law is the security of the people of England; it is the security of the people of India; it is the security of every person that is governed, and of every person that governs. There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity,--the Law of Nature and of Nations. So far as any laws fortify this primeval law, and give it more precision, more energy, more effect by their declarations, such laws enter into the sanctuary, and partic.i.p.ate in the sacredness of its character. But the man who quotes as precedents the abuses of tyrants and robbers pollutes the very fountain of justice, destroys the foundations of all law, and thereby removes the only safeguard against evil men, whether governors or governed,--the guard which prevents governors from becoming tyrants, and the governed from becoming rebels.
I hope your Lords.h.i.+ps will not think that I have unnecessarily occupied your time in disproving the plea of arbitrary power, which has been brought forward at our bar, has been repeated at your Lords.h.i.+ps' bar, and has been put upon the records of both Houses. I hope your Lords.h.i.+ps will not think that such monstrous doctrine should be pa.s.sed over, without all possible pains being taken to demonstrate its falsehood and to reprobate its tendency. I have not spared myself in exposing the principles avowed by the prisoner. At another time I will endeavor to show you the manner in which he acted upon these principles. I cannot command strength to proceed further at present; and you, my Lords, cannot give me greater bodily strength than I have.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] Inst.i.tutes of Timour, p. 165.
[96] Hedaya, Vol. II. p. 34.
[97] Hedaya, Vol. II. pp. 247, 248.
SPEECH
IN
GENERAL REPLY.
SECOND DAY: FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1794.
My lords,--On the last day of the sitting of this court, when I had the honor of appearing before you by the order of my fellow Managers, I stated to you their observations and my own upon two great points: one the demeanor of the prisoner at the bar during his trial, and the other the principles of his defence. I compared that demeanor with the behavior of some of the greatest men in this kingdom, who have, on account of their offences, been brought to your bar, and who have seldom escaped your Lords.h.i.+ps' justice. I put the decency, humility, and propriety of the most distinguished men's behavior in contrast with the shameless effrontery of this prisoner, who has presumptuously made a recriminatory charge against the House of Commons, and answered their impeachment by a counter impeachment, explicitly accusing them of malice, oppression, and the blackest ingrat.i.tude.
My Lords, I next stated that this recriminatory charge consisted of two distinct parts,--injustice and delay. To the injustice we are to answer by the nature and proof of the charges which we have brought before you; and to the delay, my Lords, we have answered in another place. Into one of the consequences of the delay, the ruinous expense which the prisoner complains of, we have desired your Lords.h.i.+ps to make an inquiry, and have referred you to facts and witnesses which will remove this part of the charge.
With regard to ingrat.i.tude, there will be a proper time for animadversion on this charge. For in considering the merits that are intended to be set off against his crimes, we shall have to examine into the nature of those merits, and to ascertain how far they are to operate, either as the prisoner designs they shall operate in his favor, as presumptive proofs that a man of such merits could not be guilty of such crimes, or as a sort of set-off to be pleaded in mitigation of his offences. In both of these lights we shall consider his services, and in this consideration we shall determine the justice of his charge of ingrat.i.tude.
My Lords, we have brought the demeanor of the prisoner before you for another reason. We are desirous that your Lords.h.i.+ps may be enabled to estimate, from the proud presumption and audacity of the criminal at your bar, when he stands before the most awful tribunal in the world, accused by a body representing no less than the sacred voice of his country, what he must have been when placed in the seat of pride and power. What must have been the insolence of that man towards the natives of India, who, when called here to answer for enormous crimes, presumes to behave, not with the firmness of innocence, but with the audacity and hardness of guilt!
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