Volume XII Part 14 (2/2)
I have read this letter to your Lords.h.i.+ps, that you may contrast it with the conduct of the prisoner, as stated by us, and proved by the evidence we have adduced. We have stated and proved that Mr. Hastings did enter upon a systematic connivance at the peculation of the Company's servants, that he refused to inst.i.tute any check whatever for the purpose of preventing corruption, and that he carried into execution no one measure of government agreeably to the positive and solemn engagements into which he had entered with the Directors. We therefore charge him, not only with his own corruptions, but with a systematic, premeditated corruption of the whole service, from the time when he was appointed, in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year 1785, when he left it. He never attempted to detect any one single abuse whatever; he never endeavored once to put a stop to any corruption in any man, black or white, in any way whatever. And thus he has acted in a government of which he himself declares the nature to be such that it is almost impossible so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence of it, though a man should be declared by the cries of the whole people to be guilty.
My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the Company's servants to be given to him. G.o.d forbid arbitrary power should be given into the hands of any man! At the same time, G.o.d forbid, if by power be meant the ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to prosecute, and punish delinquency by law! But honesty only, and not arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose. We well know, indeed, that a government requiring arbitrary power has been the situation in which this man has attempted to place us.
We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in which the act of the delinquent may be of consequence, while the example of the criminal, from the obscurity of his situation, is of little importance: in other cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no great importance, but the consequences of the example dreadful. We know that crimes of great magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white, from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree of momentary authority, that cannot imitate the acts of such a Governor-General. Consider, then, what the consequences will be, when it is laid down as a principle of the service, that no man is to be called to account according to the existing laws, and that you must either give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government to be destroyed.
We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of every farmer of the revenue did not forbid him from giving any presents to any persons, or taking any. He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the memory of this gentleman is very indifferent, though the matter was in his own particular province,) but he thought it did; and he referred us to the record of it. I cannot get at the record; and therefore you must take it as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without a reference to the record,--that the farmers were forbidden to take or give any money to any person whatever, beyond their engagements. Now, if a Governor-General comes to that farmer, and says, ”You must give a certain sum beyond your engagements,” he lets him loose to prey upon the landholders and cultivators; and thus a way is prepared for the final desolation of the whole country, by the malversation of the Governor, and by the consequent oppressive conduct of the farmers.
Mr. Hastings being now put over the whole country to regulate it, let us see what he has done. He says, ”Let me have an arbitrary power, and I will regulate it.” He a.s.sumed arbitrary power, and turned in and out every servant at his pleasure. But did he by that arbitrary power correct any one corruption? Indeed, how could he? He does not say he did. For when a man gives ill examples in himself, when he cannot set on foot an inquiry that does not terminate in his own corruption, of course he cannot inst.i.tute any inquiry into the corruption of the other servants.
But again, my Lords, the subordinate servant will say, ”I cannot rise”
(properly here, as Mr. Hastings has well observed) ”to the height of greatness, power, distinction, rank, or honor in the government; but I can make my fortune, according to my degree, my measure, and my place.”
His views will be then directed so to make it. And when he sees that the Governor-General is actuated by no other views,--when he himself, as a farmer, is confidently a.s.sured of the corruptions of his superior,--when he knows it to be laid down as a principle by the Governor-General, that no corruption is to be inquired into, and that, if it be not expressly laid down, yet that his conduct is such as to make it the same as if he had actually so laid it down,--then, I say, every part of the service is instantly and totally corrupted.
I shall next refer your Lords.h.i.+ps to the article of contracts. Five contracts have been laid before you, the extravagant and corrupt profits of which have been proved to amount to 500,000_l._ We have shown you, by the strongest presumptive evidence, that these contracts were given for the purpose of corrupting the Company's servants in India, and of corrupting the Company itself in England. You will recollect that 40,000_l._ was given in one morning for a contract which the contractor was never to execute: I speak of Mr. Sulivan's contract. You will also recollect that he was the son of the princ.i.p.al person in the Indian direction, and who, in or out of office, was known to govern it, and to be supported by the whole Indian interest of Mr. Hastings. You have seen the corruption of Sir Eyre Coote, in giving to Mr. Croftes the bullock contract. You have seen the bullock contracts stated to Mr. Hastings's face, and not denied, to have been made for concealing a number of corrupt interests. You have seen Mr. Auriol's contract, given to the secretary of the Company by Mr. Hastings in order that he might have the whole records and registers of the Company under his control. You have seen that the contract and commission for the purchase of stores and provisions, an enormous job, was given to Mr. Belli, an obscure man, for whom Mr. Hastings offers himself as security, under circ.u.mstances that went to prove that Mr. Belli held this commission for Mr. Hastings.
These, my Lords, are things that cannot be slurred over. The Governor-General is corrupt; he corrupts all about him; he does it upon system; he will make no inquiry.
My Lords, I have stated the amount of the sums which he has squandered away in these contracts; but you will observe that we have brought forward but five of them. Good G.o.d! when you consider the magnitude and multiplicity of the Company's dealings, judge you what must be the enormous ma.s.s of that corruption of which he has been the cause, and in the profits of which he has partaken. When your Lords.h.i.+ps shall have considered this doc.u.ment, his defence, which I have read in part to you, see whether you are not bound, when he imputes to us and throws upon us the cause of all his corruption, to throw back the charge by your decision, and hurl it with indignation upon himself.
But there is another shameless and most iniquitous circ.u.mstance, which I have forgotten to mention, respecting these contracts. He not only considered them as means of present power, and therefore protected his favorites without the least inquiry into their conduct, and with flagrant suspicion of a corrupt partic.i.p.ation in their delinquency, but he goes still farther: he declares, that, if he should be removed from his government, he will give them a lease in these exorbitant profits, for the purpose of securing a corrupt party to support and bear him out by their evidence, upon the event of any inquiry into his conduct,--to give him a _razinama_, to give him a flouris.h.i.+ng character, whenever he should come upon his trial. Hear what his principles are; hear what the man himself avows.
”_Fort William, October 4, 1779._
”In answer to Mr. Francis's insinuation, that it is natural enough for the agent to wish to secure himself before the expiration of the present government, I avow the fact as to myself as well as the agent. When I see a systematic opposition to every measure proposed by me for the service of the public, by which an individual may eventually benefit, I cannot hesitate a moment to declare it to be my firm belief, that, should the government of this country be placed in the hands of the present minority, they would seek the ruin of every man connected with me; it is therefore only an act of common justice in me to wish to secure them, as far as I legally can, from the apprehension of future oppression.”
Here is the principle avowed. He takes for granted, and he gives it the name of oppression, that the person who should succeed him would take away those unlawful and wicked emoluments, and give them to some other.
”But,” says he, ”I will put out of the Company's power the very means of redress.”
The doc.u.ment which I am now going to read to your Lords.h.i.+ps contains a declaration by Mr. Hastings of another mean which he used of corrupting the whole Company's service.
_Minute of the Governor-General.--Extract from that Minute._
”Called upon continually by persons of high rank and station, both in national and in the Company's councils, to protect and prefer their friends in the army, and by the merits and services which have come under my personal knowledge and observation, I suffer both pain and humiliation at the want of power to reward the meritorious, or to show a proper attention to the wishes of my superiors, without having recourse to means which must be considered as incompatible with the dignity of my station. The slender relief which I entreat of the board from this state of mortification is the authority to augment the number of my staff, which will enable me to show a marked and particular attention in circ.u.mstances such as above stated, and will be no considerable burden to the Company.”
My Lords, you here see what he has been endeavoring to effect, for the express purpose of enabling him to secure himself a corrupt influence in England. But there is another point much more material, which brings the matter directly home to this court, and puts it to you either to punish him or to declare yourselves to be accomplices in the corruption of the whole service. Hear what the man himself says. I am first to mention to your Lords.h.i.+ps the occasion upon which the pa.s.sage which I shall read to you was written. It was when he was making his enormous and shameful establishment of a Revenue Board, in the year 1781,--of which I shall say a few words hereafter, as being a gross abuse in itself: he then felt that the world would be so much shocked at the enormous prodigality and corrupt profusion of what he was doing, that he at last spoke out plainly.
_A Minute of Mr. Hastings, transmitted in a Letter by Mr. Wheler._
”In this, as it must be the case in every reformation, the interest of individuals has been our princ.i.p.al, if not our only impediment.
We could not at once deprive so large a body of our fellow-servants of their bread, without feeling that reluctance which humanity must dictate,--not unaccompanied, perhaps, with some concern for the consequence which our own credit might suffer by an act which involved the fortunes of many, and extended its influence to all their connections. This, added to the justice which was due to your servants, who were removed for no fault of theirs, but for the public convenience, induced us to continue their allowances until other offices could be provided for them, and the more cheerfully to submit to the expediency of leaving others in a temporary or partial charge of the internal collections. In effect, the civil officers [offices?] of this government might be reduced to a very scanty number, were their exigency alone to determine the list of your covenanted servants, which at this time consist of no less a number than two hundred and fifty-two,--many of them the sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pa.s.s the prime of their lives at home, as mult.i.tudes have done before them. Neither will the revenues of this country suffice for such boundless pretensions, nor are they compatible with yours and the national interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a ruin from the effects of private compet.i.tion and the claims of patronage as from the more dreaded calamities of war, or the other ordinary causes which lead to the decline of dominion.”
My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage, which he avows to be one of the principles of his government, and to be the principle of the last of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine,--and that all these calamities together might not be so effectual as this patronage in wasting and destroying the country. And at what time does he tell you this? He tells it you when he himself had just wantonly destroyed an old regular establishment for the purpose of creating a new one, in which he says he was under the necessity of pensioning the members of the old establishment from motives of mere humanity. He here confesses himself to be the author of the whole mischief. ”I could,”
says he, ”have acted better; I might have avoided desolating the country by peculation; but,” says he, ”I had sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty.” I hope your Lords.h.i.+ps will stigmatize the falsehood of this a.s.sertion. Consider, my Lords, what he has said,--two hundred and fifty men at once, and in succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of their youth with _lacs_. You cannot take _lacs_ to be less than two; we cannot make a plural less than two. Two lacs make 20,000_l._ Then multiply that, by 252, and you will find more than 2,500,000_l._ to be provided for that set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the other causes which lead to decline of dominion.
My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the Company's servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company, for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences of any change in the Company's government. ”I dare not,” says he, ”be honest: if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than by bribing the House of Peers.” What a shameful avowal this to be made in the face of the world! Your Lords.h.i.+ps' judgment upon this great cause will obliterate it from the memory of man.
But his apprehension of some change in the Company's government is not his only pretext for some of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also to the opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues, as another circ.u.mstance which drove him to adopt others of these scandalous expediences. Now there was a period when he had no longer to contend with, or to fear, that opposition.
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