Volume XI Part 13 (2/2)

The proceedings are exceedingly sober, regular, and respectful, even to criminals charged with the highest crimes; and every magistrate is required to exercise his office in the prescribed manner. In the Hedaya, after declaring and discussing the propriety of the Kazi's sitting openly in the execution of his office, it is added, that there is no impropriety in the Kazi sitting in his own house to pa.s.s judgment, but it is requisite that he give orders for a free access to the people. It then proceeds thus:--”It is requisite that such people sit along with the Kazi as were used to sit with him, prior to his appointment to the office; because, if he were to sit alone in his house, he would thereby give rise to suspicion.”[98]

My Lords, having thus seen what the duty of a judge is in such a case, let us examine whether Mr. Hastings observed any part of the prescribed rules. First, with regard to the publicity of the matter. Did he ever give any notice to the Supreme Council of the charges which he says he had received against Cheyt Sing? Did he accuse the Rajah in the Council, even when it was reduced to himself and his poor, worn, down, cowed, and I am afraid bribed colleague, Mr. Wheler? Did he even then, I ask, produce any one charge against this man? He sat in Council as a judge,--as an English judge,--as a Mahometan judge,--as a judge by the Gentoo law, and by the Law of Nature. He should have summoned the party to appear in person, or by his attorney, before him, and should have there informed him of the charge against him. But, my Lords, he did not act thus. He kept the accusation secret in his own bosom. And why?

Because he did not believe it to be true. This may at least be inferred from his having never informed the Council of the matter. He never informed the Rajah of Benares of the suspicions entertained against him, during the discussions which took place respecting the multiplied demands that were made upon him. He never told this victim, as he has had the audacity to tell us and all this kingdom in the paper that is before your Lords.h.i.+ps, that he looked upon these refusals to comply with his demands to be overt acts of rebellion; nor did he ever call upon him to answer or to justify himself with regard to that imputed conspiracy or rebellion. Did he tell Sadanund, the Rajah's agent, when that agent was giving him a bribe or a present in secret, and was thus endeavoring to deprecate his wrath, that he accepted that bribe because his master was in rebellion? Never, my Lords; nor did he, when he first reached Benares, and had the Rajah in his power, suggest one word concerning this rebellion. Did he, when he met Mr. Markham at Boglipore, where they consulted about the destruction of this unhappy man, did he tell Mr.

Markham, or did Mr. Markham insinuate to him, any one thing about this conspiracy and rebellion? No, not a word there, or in his whole progress up the country. While at Boglipore, he wrote a letter to Lord Macartney upon the state of the empire, giving him much and various advice. Did he insinuate in that letter that he was going up to Benares to suppress a rebellion of the Rajah Cheyt Sing or to punish him? No, not a word. Did he, my Lords, at the eve of his departure from Calcutta, when he communicated his intention of taking 500,000_l._, which he calls a fine or penalty, from the Rajah, did he inform Mr. Wheler of it? No, not a word of his rebellion, nor anything like it. Did he inform his secret confidants, Mr. Anderson and Major Palmer, upon that subject? Not a word, there was not a word dropped from him of any such rebellion, or of any intention in the Rajah Cheyt Sing to rebel. Did he, when he had vakeels in every part of the Mahratta empire and in the country of Sujah Dowlah, when he had in most of those courts English amba.s.sadors and native spies, did he either from amba.s.sadors or spies receive anything like authentic intelligence upon this subject? While he was at Benares, he had in his hands Benaram Pundit, the vakeel of the Rajah of Berar, his own confidential friend, a person whom he took out of the service of his master, and to whom he gave a jaghire in this very zemindary of Benares. This man, so attached to Mr. Hastings, so knowing in all the transactions of India, neither accused Cheyt Sing of rebellious intentions, or furnished Mr. Hastings with one single proof that any conspiracy with any foreign power existed.

In this absence of evidence, My Lords, let us have recourse to probability. Is it to be believed that the Zemindar of Benares, a person whom Mr. Hastings describes as being of a timid, weak, irresolute, and feeble nature, should venture to make war alone with the whole power of the Company in India, aided by all the powers which Great Britain could bring to the protection of its Indian empire? Could that poor man, in his comparatively small district, possibly have formed such an intention, without giving Mr. Hastings access to the knowledge of the fact from one or other of the numerous correspondents which he had in that country?

As to the Rajah's supposed intrigues with the Nabob of Oude: this man was an actual prisoner of Mr. Hastings, and nothing else,--a mere va.s.sal, as he says himself, in effect and substance, though not in name.

Can any one believe or think that Mr. Hastings would not have received from the English Resident, or from some one of that tribe of English gentlemen and English military collectors who were placed in that country in the exercise of the most arbitrary powers, some intelligence which he could trust, if any rebellious designs had really existed previous to the rebellion which did actually break out upon his arresting Cheyt Sing?

There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called _Cui Bono_, from his having first introduced into juridical proceedings the argument, _What end or object could the party have had in the art with which he is accused?_ Surely it may be here asked, Why should Cheyt Sing wish to rebel, who held on easy and moderate terms (for such I admit they were) a very considerable territory, with every attribute of royalty attached? The tribute was paid for protection, which he had a right to claim, and which he actually received. What reason under heaven could he have to go and seek another master, to place himself under the protection of Sujah Dowlah, in whose hands Mr. Hastings tells you, in so many direct and plain words, that neither the Rajah's property, his honor, or his life could be safe? Was he to seek refuge with the Mahrattas, who, though Gentoos like himself, had reduced every nation which they subdued, except those who were originally of their own empire, to a severe servitude? Can any one believe that he wished either for the one or the other of these charges [changes?], or that he was desirous to quit the happy independent situation in which he stood under the protection of the British empire, from any loose, wild, improbable notion of mending his condition? My Lords, it is impossible. There is not one particle of evidence, not one word of this charge on record, prior to the publication of Mr. Hastings's Narrative; and all the presumptive evidence in the world would scarcely be sufficient to prove the fact, because it is almost impossible that it should be true.

But, my Lords, although Mr. Hastings swore to the truth of this charge, when he came before the House of Commons, yet in his Narrative he thus fairly and candidly avowed that he entertained no such opinion at the time. ”Every step,” says he, ”which I had taken before that fatal moment, namely, the flight of Cheyt Sing, is an incontrovertible proof that I had formed no design of seizing upon the Rajah's treasures or of deposing him. And certainly, at the time when I did form the design of making the punishment that his former ill conduct deserved subservient to the exigencies of the state by a large fine, I did not believe him guilty of that premeditated project for driving the English out of India with which I afterwards charged him.” Thus, then, he declares upon oath that the Rajah's contumacy was the ground of his suspecting him of rebellion, and yet, when he comes to make his defence before the House of Commons, he simply and candidly declares, that, long after these alleged acts of contumacy had taken place, he did not believe him to be guilty of any such thing as rebellion, and that the fine imposed upon him was for another reason and another purpose.

In page 28 of your printed Minutes he thus declares the purpose for which the fine was imposed:--”I can answer only to this formidable dilemma, that, so long as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and contumacy to have me rather than the Company for its object, at least to be merely the effect of pernicious advice or misguided folly, without any formal design of openly resisting our authority or disclaiming our sovereignty, I looked upon a considerable fine as sufficient both for his immediate punishment and for binding him to future good behavior.”

Here, my Lords, the secret comes out. He declares it was not for a rebellion or a suspicion of rebellion that he resolved, over and above all his exorbitant demands, to take from the Rajah 500,000_l._, (a good stout sum to be taken from a tributary power!)--that it was not for misconduct of this kind that he took this sum, but for personal ill behavior towards himself. I must again beg your Lords.h.i.+ps to note that he then considered the Rajah's contumacy as having for its object, not the Company, but Warren Hastings, and that he afterwards declared publicly to the House of Commons, and now before your Lords.h.i.+ps he declares finally and conclusively, that he did believe Cheyt Sing to have had the criminal intention imputed to him.

”So long,” says he, ”as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and contumacy to have _me_” (in Italics, as he ordered it to be printed,) ”rather than the Company, for its object, so long I was satisfied with a fine: I therefore entertained no serious thoughts of expelling him, or proceeding otherwise to violence. But when he and his people broke out into the most atrocious acts of rebellion and murder, when the _jus fortioris et lex ultima regum_ were appealed to on his part, and without any sufficient plea afforded him on mine, I from that moment considered him as the traitor and criminal described in the charge, and no concessions, no humiliations, could ever after induce me to settle on him the zemindary of Benares, or any other territory, upon any footing whatever.”

Thus, then, my Lords, he has confessed that the era and the only era of rebellion was when the tumult broke out upon the act of violence offered by himself to Cheyt Sing; and upon the ground of that tumult, or rebellion as he calls it, he says he never would suffer him to enjoy any territory or any right whatever. We have fixed the period of the rebellion for which he is supposed to have exacted this fine; this period of rebellion was after the exaction of the fine itself: so that the fine was not laid for the rebellion, but the rebellion broke out in consequence of the fine, and the violent measure accompanying it. We have established this, and the whole human race cannot shake it. He went up the country through malice, to revenge his own private wrongs, not those of the Company. He fixed 500,000_l._ as a mulct for an insult offered to himself, and then a rebellion broke out in consequence of his violence. This was the rebellion, and the only rebellion; it was Warren Hastings's rebellion,--a rebellion which arose from his own dreadful exaction, from his pride, from his malice and insatiable avarice,--a rebellion which arose from his abominable tyranny, from his l.u.s.t of arbitrary power, and from his determination to follow the examples of Sujah Dowlah, Asoph ul Dowlah, Cossim Ali Khan, Aliverdy Khan, and all the gang of rebels who are the objects of his imitation.

”_My patience_,” says he, ”_was exhausted_.” Your Lords.h.i.+ps have, and ought to have, a judicial patience. Mr. Hastings has none of any kind. I hold that patience is one of the great virtues of a governor; it was said of Moses, that he governed by patience, and that he was the meekest man upon earth. Patience is also the distinguis.h.i.+ng character of a judge; and I think your Lords.h.i.+ps, both with regard to us and with regard to him, have shown a great deal of it: we shall ever honor the quality, and if we pretend to say that we have had great patience in going through this trial, so your Lords.h.i.+ps must have had great patience in hearing it. But this man's patience, as he himself tells you, was soon exhausted. ”I considered,” he says, ”the light in which such behavior would have been viewed by his native sovereign, and I resolved he should feel the power he had so long insulted. Forty or fifty lacs of rupees would have been a moderate fine for Sujah ul Dowlah to exact,--he who had demanded twenty-five lacs for the mere fine of succession, and received twenty in hand, and an increased rent tantamount to considerably above thirty lacs more; and therefore I rejected the offer of twenty, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late.”

Now, my Lords, observe who his models were, when he intended to punish this man for an insult on himself. Did he consult the laws? Did he look to the Inst.i.tutes of Timour, or to those of Genghis Khan? Did he look to the Hedaya, or to any of the approved authorities in this country? No, my Lords, he exactly followed the advice which Longinus gives to a great writer:--”Whenever you have a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to.” Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his mind to the dignity of what tyranny could do, what unrighteous exaction could perform. He considered, he says, how much Sujah Dowlah would have exacted, and that he thinks would not be too much for him to exact. He boldly avows,--”I raised my mind to the elevation of Sujah Dowlah; I considered what Cossim Ali Khan would have done, or Aliverdy Khan, who murdered and robbed so many, I had all this line of great examples before me, and I asked myself what fine they would have exacted upon such an occasion.

But,” says he, ”Sujah Dowlah levied a fine of twenty lacs for a right of succession.”

Good G.o.d! my Lords, if you are not appalled with the violent injustice of arbitrary proceedings, you must feel something humiliating at the gross ignorance of men who are in this manner playing with the rights of mankind. This man confounds a fine upon succession with a fine of penalty. He takes advantage of a defect in the technical language of our law, which, I am sorry to say, is not, in many parts, as correct in its distinctions and as wise in its provisions as the Mahometan law. We use the word _fine_ in three senses: first, as a punishment and penalty; secondly, as a formal means of cutting off by one form the ties of another form, which we call levying a fine; and, thirdly, we use the word to signify a sum of money payable upon renewal of a lease or copyhold. The word has in each case a totally different sense; but such is the stupidity and barbarism of the prisoner, that he confounds these senses, and tells you Sujah Dowlah took twenty-five lacs as a fine from Cheyt Sing for the renewal of his zemindary, and therefore, as a punishment for his offences, he shall take fifty. Suppose any one of your Lords.h.i.+ps, or of us, were to be fined for a.s.sault and battery, or for anything else, and it should be said, ”You paid such a fine for a bishop's lease, you paid such a fine on the purchase of an estate, and therefore, now that you are going to be fined for a punishment, we will take the measure of the fine, not from the nature and quality of your offence, not from the law upon the subject, or from your ability to pay, but the amount of a fine you paid some years ago for an estate shall be the measure of your punishment.” My Lords, what should we say of such brutish ignorance, and such shocking confusion of ideas?

When this man had elevated his mind according to the rules of art, and stimulated himself to great things by great examples, he goes on to tell you that he rejected the offer of twenty lacs with which the Rajah would have compounded for his guilt when it was too late.

Permit me, my Lords, to say a few words here, by way of referring back all this monstrous heap of violence and absurdity to some degree of principle. Mr. Hastings having completely acquitted the Rajah of any other fault than contumacy, and having supposed even that to be only personal to himself, he thought a fine of 500,000_l._ would be a proper punishment. Now, when any man goes to exact a fine, it presupposes inquiry, charge, defence, and judgment. It does so in the Mahometan law; it does so in the Gentoo law; it does so in the law of England, in the Roman law, and in the law, I believe, of every nation under heaven, except in that law which resides in the arbitrary breast of Mr.

Hastings, poisoned by the principles and stimulated by the examples of those wicked traitors and rebels whom I have before described. He mentions his intention of levying a fine; but does he make any mention of having charged the Rajah with his offences? It appears that he held an incredible quant.i.ty of private correspondence through the various Residents, through Mr. Graham, Mr. Fowke, Mr. Markham, Mr. Benn, concerning the affairs of that country. Did he ever, upon this alleged contumacy, (for at present I put the rebellion out of the question,) inquire the progress of this personal affront offered to the Governor-General of Bengal? Did he ever state it to the Rajah, or did he call his vakeel before the Council to answer the charge? Did he examine any one person, or particularize a single fact, in any manner whatever?

No. What, then, did he do? Why, my Lords, he declared himself the person injured, stood forward as the accuser, a.s.sumed the office of judge, and proceeded to judgment without a party before him, without trial, without examination, without proof. He thus directly reversed the order of justice. He determined to fine the Rajah when his own patience, as he says, was exhausted, not when justice demanded the punishment. He resolved to fine him in the enormous sum of 500,000_l._ Does he inform the Council of this determination? No. The Court of Directors? No. Any one of his confidants? No, not one of them,--not Mr. Palmer, not Mr.

Middleton, nor any of that legion of secretaries that he had; nor did he even inform Mr. Malcolm [Markham?] of his intentions, until he met him at Boglipore.

In regard to the object of his malice, we only know that many letters came from Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, in which the unfortunate man endeavored to appease his wrath, and to none of which he ever gave an answer. He is an accuser preferring a charge and receiving apologies, without giving the party an answer, although he had a crowd of secretaries about him, maintained at the expense of the miserable people of Benares, and paid by sums of money drawn fraudulently from their pockets. Still not one word of answer was given, till he had formed the resolution of exacting a fine, and had actually by torture made his victim's servant discover where his master's treasures lay, in order that he might rob him of all his family possessed. Are these the proceedings of a British judge? or are they not rather such as are described by Lord c.o.ke (and these learned gentlemen, I dare say, will remember the pa.s.sage; it is too striking not to be remembered) as _”the d.a.m.ned and d.a.m.nable proceedings of a judge in h.e.l.l_”? Such a judge has the prisoner at your bar proved himself to be. First he determines upon the punishment, then he prepares the accusation, and then by torture and violence endeavors to extort the fine.

My Lords, I must again beg leave to call your attention to his mode of proceeding in this business. He never entered any charge. He never answered any letter. Not that he was idle. He was carrying on a wicked and clandestine plot for the destruction of the Rajah, under the pretence of this fine; although the plot was not known, I verily believe, to any European at the time. He does not pretend that he told any one of the Company's servants of his intentions of fining the Rajah; but that some hostile project against him had been formed by Mr.

Hastings was perfectly well known to the natives. Mr. Hastings tells you, that Cheyt Sing had a vakeel at Calcutta, whose business it was to learn the general transactions of our government, and the most minute particulars which could in any manner affect the interest of his employer.

I must here tell your Lords.h.i.+ps, that there is no court in Asia, from the highest to the lowest, no petty sovereign, that does not both employ and receive what they call _hircarrahs_, or, in other words, persons to collect and to communicate political intelligence. These men are received with the state and in the rank of amba.s.sadors; they have their place in the durbar; and their business, as authorized spies, is as well known there as that of amba.s.sadors extraordinary and ordinary in the courts of Europe. Mr. Hastings had a public spy, in the person of the Resident, at Benares, and he had a private spy there in another person.

The spies employed by the native powers had by some means come to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings's clandestine and wicked intentions towards this unhappy man, Cheyt Sing, and his unhappy country, and of his designs for the destruction and the utter ruin of both. He has himself told you, and he has got Mr. Anderson to vouch it, that he had received proposals for the sale of this miserable man and his country. And from whom did he receive these proposals, my Lords? Why, from the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah, to whom he threatened to transfer both the person of the Rajah and his zemindary, if he did not redeem himself by some pecuniary sacrifice. Now Asoph ul Dowlah, as appears by the minutes on your Lords.h.i.+ps' table, was at that time a bankrupt. He was in debt to the Company tenfold more than he could pay, and all his revenues were sequestered for that debt. He was a person of the last degree of indolence with the last degree of rapacity,--a man of whom Mr. Hastings declared, that he had wasted and destroyed by his misgovernment the fairest provinces upon earth, that not a person in his dominions was secure from his violence, and that even his own father could not enjoy his life and honor in safety under him. This avaricious bankrupt tyrant, who had beggared and destroyed his own subjects, and could not pay his debts to the English government, was the man with whom Mr. Hastings was in treaty to deliver up Cheyt Sing and his country, under pretence of his not having paid regularly to the Company those customary payments which the tyrant would probably have never paid at all, if he had been put in possession of the country. This I mention to ill.u.s.trate Mr.

Hastings's plans of economy and finance, without considering the injustice and cruelty of delivering up a man to the hereditary enemy of his family.

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