Volume XII Part 13 (1/2)

My Lords, here is a man who is to administer his own affairs, who has arrived at sufficient age to supersede the counsel and advice of the great Mahometan doctors and the great n.o.bility of the country, and he is put under the most absolute guardians.h.i.+p of Sir John D'Oyly. But Mr.

Hastings has given Sir John D'Oyly a great character. I cannot confirm it, because I can confirm the character of none of Mr. Hastings's instruments. They must stand forth here, and defend their own character before you.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will now be pleased to advert to another circ.u.mstance in this transaction. You see here 40,000_l._ a year offered by this man for his redemption. ”I will give you,” he says, ”40,000_l._ a year to have the management of my own affairs.” Good heavens! Here is a man, who, according to Mr. Hastings's a.s.sertion, had an indisputable right to the management of his own affairs, but at the same time was notoriously so little fit to have the management of them as to be always under some corrupt tyranny or other, offers 40,000_l._ a year out of his own revenues to be left his own master, and to be permitted to have the disposal of the remainder. Judge you of the bribery, rapine, and peculation which here stare you in the face. Judge of the nature and character of that government for the management of which 40,000_l._, out of 160,000_l._ a year of its revenue, is offered by a subordinate to the supreme authority of the country. This offer shows that at this time the Nabob had it not himself. Who had it? Sir John D'Oyly; he is brought forward as the person to whom is given the management of the whole.

Munny Begum had the management before. But, whether it be an Englishman, a Mussulman, a white man or a black man, a white woman or a black woman, it is all Warren Hastings.

With respect to the four lacs of rupees, he gets Sir John D'Oyly, in the narrative that he makes before the House of Commons, positively to deny in the strongest manner, and he says the Nabob would give oath of it, that the Nabob never gave a commission to any one to make such an offer. That such an offer was made had been long published and long in print, with the remarks such as I have made upon it in the Ninth Report of the Select Committee; that the Committee had so done was well known to Mr. Hastings and Sir John D'Oyly; not one word on the part of Mr.

Hastings, not one word on the part of Sir John D'Oyly was said to contradict it, until the appearance of the latter before the House of Commons. But, my Lords, there is something much more serious in this transaction. It is this,--that the evidence produced by Mr. Hastings is the evidence of witnesses who are mere phantoms; they are persons who could not, under Mr. Hastings's government, eat a bit of bread but upon his own terms, and they are brought forward to give such evidence as may answer his purposes.

You would naturally have imagined, that, in the House of Commons, where clouds of witnesses had been before produced by the friends and agents of Mr. Hastings, he would then have brought forward Sir John to contradict this reported offer; but not a word from Sir John D'Oyly. At last he is examined before the Committee of Managers. He refuses to answer. Why? Because his answers might criminate himself. My Lords, every answer that most of them have been required to make they are sensible they cannot make without danger of criminating themselves, being all involved in the crimes of the prisoner. He has corrupted and ruined the whole service; there is not one of them that dares appear and give a fair and full answer in any case, as you have seen in Mr.

Middleton, and many others at your bar. ”I will not answer this question,” they say, ”because it tends to criminate myself.” How comes it that the Company's servants are not able to give evidence in the affairs of Mr. Hastings, without its tending to criminate themselves?

Well,--Sir John D'Oyly is in England,--why is he not called now? I have not the honor of being intimately acquainted with him, but he is a man of a reputable and honorable family. Why is he not called by Mr.

Hastings to verify the a.s.sertion, and why do they suffer this black record to stand before your Lords.h.i.+ps to be urged by us, and to press it as we do against him? If he knows that Sir John D'Oyly can acquit him of this part of our accusation, he would certainly bring him as a witness to your bar; but he knows he cannot. When, therefore, I see upon your records that Sir John D'Oyly and Mr. Hastings received such an offer for the redemption of the Nabob's affairs out of their hands, I conclude, first, that at the time of this offer the Nabob had not the disposal of his own affairs,--and, secondly, that those who had the disposal of them disposed of them so corruptly and prodigally that he thought they could hardly be redeemed at too high a price. What explanation of this matter has been attempted? There is no explanation given of it at all. It stands clear, full, bare in all its nakedness before you. They have not attempted to produce the least evidence against it. Therefore in that state I leave it with you; and I shall only add, that Mr. Hastings continued to make Munny Begum the first object of his attention, and that, though he could not entirely remove Mahomed Reza Khan from the seat of justice, he was made a cipher in it. All his other offices were taken out of his hands and put into the hands of Sir John D'Oyly, directly contrary to the orders of the Company, which certainly implied the rest.i.tution of Mahomed Reza Khan to all the offices which he had before held. He was stripped of everything but a feeble administration of justice, which, I take for granted, could not, under the circ.u.mstances, have been much better in his hands than it had been in Sudder ul Huk Khan's.

Mr. Hastings's protection of this woman continued to the last; and when he was going away, on the 3d of November, 1783, he wrote a sentimental letter to the Court of Directors in her praise. This letter was transmitted without having been communicated to the Council. You have heard of delicate affidavits; here you have a sentimental official despatch: your Lords.h.i.+ps will find it in page 1092 and 1093 of your printed Minutes. He writes in such a delicate, sentimental strain of this woman, that I will venture to say you will not find in all the ”Arcadia,” in all the novels and romances that ever were published, an instance of a greater, a more constant, and more ardent affection, defying time, ugliness, and old age, did ever exist, than existed in Mr.

Hastings towards this old woman, Munny Begum. As cases of this kind, cases of gallantry abounding in sentimental expressions, are rare in the Company's records, I recommend it as a curiosity to your Lords.h.i.+ps'

reading, as well as a proof of what is the great spring and movement of all the prisoner's actions. On this occasion he thus speaks of Munny Begum.

”She, too, became the victim of your policy, and of the resentments which succeeded. Something, too, she owed of the source of her misfortunes to the belief of the personal grat.i.tude which she might entertain for the public attention which I had shown to her.

Yet, exposed as she was to a treatment which a ruffian would have shuddered at committing, and which no recollection of past enmities shall compel me to believe, even for a moment, proceeded from any commission of authority, she still maintained the decorum of her character; nor even then, nor before, nor since that period, has the malice of calumny ever dared to breathe on her reputation.”--Delicate! sentimental!--”Pardon, honorable Sirs, this freedom of expostulation. I must in honest truth repeat, that your commands laid the first foundation of her misfortunes; to your equity she has now recourse through me for their alleviation, that she may pa.s.s the remainder of her life in a state which may at least efface the remembrance of the years of her affliction; and to your humanity she and an unseen mult.i.tude of the most helpless of her s.e.x cry for subsistence.”

Moving and pathetic!--I wish to recommend every word of this letter to your Lords.h.i.+ps' consideration, as a model and pattern of perfection.

Observe his pity for a woman who had suffered such treatment from the servants of the Company (a parcel of ruffians!)--treatment that a ruffian would be ashamed of! Your Lords.h.i.+ps have seen, in the evidence, what this ruffianism was. It was neither more nor less than what was necessary in order to get at the accounts, which she concealed, as his own corrupt transactions. She was told, indeed, that she must privately remove to another house whilst her papers were examining. Mr. Hastings can never forget this. He cannot believe that anybody dare send such an order; and he calls upon you to consider the helplessness of their s.e.x, and the affronts offered to women.

For Heaven's sake, my Lords, recollect the manner in which Mr. Hastings and his creatures treated the Begums of Oude, and consider that this woman was only threatened (for the threat was never attempted to be executed) that she must, if she did not deliver up the accounts, probably be removed to another house, and leave the accounts behind her.

This blot can never be effaced; and for this he desires the Court of Directors to make her a large allowance to comfort her in her old age.

In this situation Mr. Hastings leaves her. He leaves in the situation I have described the justice of the country. The only concern he has at parting is, that this woman may have a large allowance.

But I have yet to tell your Lords.h.i.+ps, and it appears upon your printed Minutes, that this woman had a way of comforting herself:--for old ladies of that description, who have pa.s.sed their youth in amus.e.m.e.nts, in dancing, and in gallantries, in their old age are apt to take comfort in brandy. This lady was a smuggler, and had influence enough to avoid payment of the duty on spirits, in which article she is the largest dealer in the district,--as, indeed, she is in almost every species of trade. Thus your Lords.h.i.+ps see that this sentimental lady, whom Mr.

Hastings recommends to the Directors, had ways of comforting herself.

She carried on, notwithstanding her dignity, a trade in spirits. Now a Mahometan of distinction never carries on any trade at all,--it is an unknown thing,--very few Mahometans of any rank carry on any trade at all; but that a Mahometan should carry on a trade in spirits is a prodigy never heard of before; for a woman of quality, for a woman of sentiment, to become a dealer in spirits is, my Lords, a thing reserved for the sentimental age of Mr. Hastings; and I will venture to say that no man or woman could attempt any such a trade in India, without being dishonored, ruined in character, and disgraced by it. But she appears not only to have been a dealer in it, but, through the influence which Mr. Hastings gave her, to have monopolized the trade in brandy, and to have evaded the duties. This, then, is the state in which we leave the two sentimental lovers,--the one consoling herself with brandy, the other wheedling and whining; and, as Swift describes the progress of an intrigue in some respects similar, which he calls ”The Progress of Love,” whereas this is the Progress of Sentiment,

”They keep at Staines the Old Blue Boar, Are cat and dog, and rogue and wh.o.r.e.”

Here they set up the sign of the Old Blue Boar. Munny Begum monopolizes the trade in spirits; and hence she and Mr. Hastings commence their sentimental correspondence.--And now, having done with this progress of love, we return to the progress of justice.

We have seen how Sudder ul Huk Khan, the chief-justice of Mr. Hastings's own nomination, was treated. Now you shall see how justice was left to s.h.i.+ft for herself under Mahomed Reza Khan. In page 1280 of your Lords.h.i.+ps' Minutes you will see the progress of all these enormities,--of Munny Begum's dealing in spirits, of her engrossing the trade, of her evading duties,--and, lastly, the extinction of all order in that country, and the funeral of justice itself. Mr. Sh.o.r.e's evidence respecting this state of the country will admit of no doubt.

_Mr. Sh.o.r.e's Remarks accompanying the Governor-General's Minutes of the 18th May, 1785._

”Foujdarry jurisdiction.--Of the foujdarry jurisdiction nothing has yet been said. In this department criminal justice is administered, and it is the only office left to the Nabob. I do not see any particular reason for changing the system itself, and perhaps it would on many accounts be improper; but some regulations are highly necessary. Mahomed Reza is at the head of this department, and is the only person I know in the country qualified for it. If he were left to himself, I have not a doubt but he would conduct it well; but he is so circ.u.mscribed by recommendations of particular persons, and by the protection held out to his officers by Europeans, that to my knowledge he has not been able to punish them, even when they have been convicted of the greatest enormities; and he has often on this account been blamed, where his hands were tied up.”

My Lords, you now see in this minute of Sir John Sh.o.r.e, now Governor-General of Bengal, one of Mr. Hastings's own committee for drawing up his defence, the review which he had just then taken of the ruins of the government which had been left to him by Mr. Hastings. You see here not the little paltry things which might deserve in their causes the animadversion of a rough satirist like Doctor Swift, whom I have just quoted, but you see things ten thousand times more serious, things that deserve the thunderbolt of vindictive justice upon the head of the prisoner at your bar. For you see, that, after he had ostensibly restored Mahomed Reza Khan, the man who could and would have executed his office with fidelity and effect, the man who was fit for and disposed to do his duty, there was still neither law, order, nor justice in the country. Why? Because of the interposition of Europeans, and men who must have been patronized and supported by Europeans. All this happened before Mr. Hastings's departure: so that the whole effect of the new arrangement of government was known to him before he left Calcutta. The same pretended remedy was applied. But in fact he left this woman in the full possession of her power. His last thoughts were for her; for the justice of the country, for the peace and security of the people of Bengal, he took no kind of care; these great interests were left to the mercy of the woman and her European a.s.sociates.