The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)

"All which destruction, devastation, oppression, and ruin are solely imputable to the abovementioned and other arbitrary, illegal, unjust, and tyrannical acts of him, the said Warren Hastings, who, by all and every one of the same, was and is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors."

[Mr. Burke proceeded.]

My Lords, you have heard the charge; and you are now going to see the prisoner at your bar in a new point of view. I will now endeavor to display him in his character of a legislator in a foreign land, not augmenting the territory, honor, and power of Great Britain, and bringing the acquisition under the dominion of law and liberty, but desolating a flourishing country, that to all intents and purposes was our own,—a country which we had conquered from freedom, from tranquillity, order, and prosperity, and submitted, through him, to arbitrary power, misrule, anarchy, and ruin. We now see the object of his corrupt vengeance utterly destroyed, his family driven from their home, his people butchered, his wife and all the females of his family robbed and dishonored in their persons, and the effects which husband and parents had laid up in store for the subsistence of their families, all the savings of provident economy, distributed amongst a rapacious soldiery. His malice is victorious. He has well avenged, in the destruction of this unfortunate family, the Rajah's intended visit to General Clavering; he has well avenged the suspected discovery of his bribe to Mr. Francis.

"Thou hast it now, King, Cawdor, Glamis, all!"

Let us see, my Lords, what use he makes of this power,—how he justifies the bounty of Fortune, bestowing on him this strange and anomalous conquest. Anomalous I call it, my Lords, because it was the result of no plan in the cabinet, no operation in the field. No act or direction proceeded from him, the responsible chief, except the merciless orders, and the grant to the soldiery. He lay skulking and trembling in the fort of Chunar, while the British soldiery entitled themselves to the plunder which he held out to them. Nevertheless, my Lords, he conquers; the country is his own; he treats it as his own. Let us, therefore, see how this successor of Tamerlane, this emulator of Genghis Khân, governs a country conquered by the talents and courage of others, without assistance, guide, direction, or counsel given by himself.

My Lords, I will introduce his first act to your Lordships' notice in the words of the charge.

"The said Warren Hastings did, some time in the year 1782, enter into a clandestine correspondence with William Markham, Esquire, the then Resident at Benares; which said Markham had been by him, the said Warren Hastings, obtruded into the said office, contrary to the positive orders of the Court of Directors."

This unjustifiable obtrusion, this illegal appointment, shows you at the very outset that he defies the laws of his country,—most positively and pointedly defies them. In attempting to give a reason for this defiance, he has chosen to tell a branch of the legislature from which originated the act which wisely and prudently ordered him to pay implicit obedience to the Court of Directors, that he removed Mr. Fowke from Benares, contrary to the orders of the Court, on political grounds; because, says he, "I thought it necessary the Resident there should be a man of my own nomination and confidence. I avow the principle, and think no government can subsist without it. The punishment of the Rajah made no part of my design in Mr. Fowke's removal or Mr. Markham's appointment, nor was his punishment an object of my contemplation at the time I removed Mr. Fowke to appoint Mr. Markham: an appointment of my own choice, and a signal to notify the restoration of my own authority; as I had before removed Mr. Fowke and appointed Mr. Graham for the same purpose."

Here, my Lords, he does not even pretend that he had any view whatever, in this appointment of Mr. Markham, but to defy the laws of his country. "I must," says he, "have a man of my own nomination, because it is a signal to notify the restoration of my own authority, as I had before removed Mr. Fowke for the same purpose."

I must beg your Lordships to keep in mind that the greater part of the observations with which I shall trouble you have a reference to the principles upon which this man acts; and I beseech you to remember always that you have before you a question and an issue of law; I beseech you to consider what it is that you are disposing of,—that you are not merely disposing of this man and his cause, but that you are disposing of the laws of your country.

You, my Lords, have made, and we have made, an act of Parliament in which the Council at Calcutta is vested with a special power, distinctly limited and defined. He says, "My authority is absolute. I defy the orders of the Court of Directors, because it is necessary for me to show that I can disregard them, as a signal of my own authority." He supposes his authority gone while he obeys the laws; but, says he, "the moment I got rid of the bonds and barriers of the laws," (as if there had been some act of violence and usurpation that had deprived him of his rightful powers,) "I was restored to my own authority." What is this authority to which he is restored? Not an authority vested in him by the East India Company; not an authority sanctioned by the laws of this kingdom. It is neither of these, but the authority of Warren Hastings; an inherent divine right, I suppose, which he has thought proper to claim as belonging to himself; something independent of the laws, something independent of the Court of Directors, something independent of his brethren of the Council. It is "my own authority."

And what is the signal by which you are to know when this authority is restored? By his obedience to the Court of Directors?—by his attention to the laws of his country?—by his regard to the rights of the people? No, my Lords, no: the notification of the restoration of this authority is a formal disobedience of the orders of the Court of Directors. When you find the laws of the land trampled upon, and their appointed authority despised, then you may be sure that the authority of the prisoner is reëstablished.

There is, my Lords, always a close connection between vices of every description. The man who is a tyrant would, under some other circumstances, be a rebel; and he that is a rebel would become a tyrant. They are things which originally proceed from the same source. They owe their birth to the wild, unbridled lewdness of arbitrary power. They arise from a contempt of public order, and of the laws and institutions which curb mankind. They arise from a harsh, cruel, and ferocious disposition, impatient of the rules of law, order, and morality: and accordingly, as their relation varies, the man is a tyrant, if a superior, a rebel, if an inferior. But this man, standing in a middle point between the two relations, the superior and inferior, declares himself at once both a rebel and a tyrant. We therefore naturally expect, that, when he has thrown off the laws of his country, he will throw off all other authority. Accordingly, in defiance of that authority to which he owes his situation, he nominates Mr. Markham to the Residency at Benares, and therefore every act of Mr. Markham is his. He is responsible,—doubly responsible to what he would have been, if in the ordinary course of office he had named this agent. Every governor is responsible for the misdemeanors committed under his legal authority for which he does not punish the delinquent; but the prisoner is doubly responsible in this case, because he assumed an illegal authority, which can be justified only, if at all, by the good resulting from the assumption.

Having now chosen his principal instrument and his confidential and sole counsellor, having the country entirely in his hand, and every obstacle that could impede his course swept out of the arena, what does he do under these auspicious circumstances? You would imagine, that, in the first place, he would have sent down to the Council at Calcutta a general view of his proceedings, and of their consequences, together with a complete statement of the revenue; that he would have recommended the fittest persons for public trusts, with such other measures as he might judge to be most essential to the interest and honor of his employers. One would have imagined he would have done this, in order that the Council and the Court of Directors might have a clear view of the whole existing system, before he attempted to make a permanent arrangement for the administration of the country. But, on the contrary, the whole of his proceedings is clandestinely conducted; there is not the slightest communication with the Council upon the business, till he had determined and settled the whole. Thus the Council was placed in a complete dilemma,—either to confirm all his wicked and arbitrary acts, (for such we have proved them to be,) or to derange the whole administration of the country again, and to make another revolution as complete and dreadful as that which he had made.

The task which the Governor-General had imposed upon himself was, I admit, a difficult one; but those who pull down important ancient establishments, who wantonly destroy modes of administration and public institutions under which a country has prospered, are the most mischievous, and therefore the wickedest of men. It is not a reverse of fortune, it is not the fall of an individual, that we are here talking of. We are, indeed, sorry for Cheyt Sing and Durbege Sing, as we should be sorry for any individual under similar circumstances.

It is wisely provided in the constitution of our heart, that we should interest ourselves in the fate of great personages. They are therefore made everywhere the objects of tragedy, which addresses itself directly to our passions and our feelings. And why? Because men of great place, men of great rank, men of great hereditary authority, cannot fall without a horrible crash upon all about them. Such towers cannot tumble without ruining their dependent cottages.

The prosperity of a country, that has been distressed by a revolution which has swept off its principal men, cannot be reëstablished without extreme difficulty. This man, therefore, who wantonly and wickedly destroyed the existing government of Benares, was doubly bound to use all possible care and caution in supplying the loss of those institutions which he had destroyed, and of the men whom he had driven into exile. This, I say, he ought to have done. Let us now see what he really did do.

He set out by disposing of all the property of the country as if it was his own. He first confiscated the whole estates of the Baboos, the great nobility of the country, to the amount of six lacs of rupees. He then distributed the lands and revenue of the country according to his own pleasure; and as he had seized the lands without our knowing why or wherefore, so the portion which he took away from some persons he gave to others, in the same arbitrary manner, and without any assignable reason.

When we were inquiring what jaghires Mr. Hastings had thought proper to grant, we found, to our astonishment, (though it is natural that his mind should take this turn,) that he endowed several charities with jaghires. He gave a jaghire to some Brahmins to pray for the perpetual prosperity of the Company, and others to procure the prayers of the same class of men for himself. I do not blame his Gentoo piety, when I find no Christian piety in the man: let him take refuge in any superstition he pleases. The crime we charge is his having distributed the lands of others at his own pleasure. Whether this proceeded from piety, from ostentation, or from any other motive, it matters not. We contend that he ought not to have distributed such land at all,—that he had no right to do so; and consequently, the gift of a single acre of land, by his own private will, was an act of robbery, either from the public or some individual.

When he had thus disturbed the landed property of Benares, and distributed it according to his own will, he thought it would be proper to fix upon a person to govern the country; and of this person he himself made the choice. It does not appear that the people could have lost, even by the revolt of Cheyt Sing, the right which was inherent in them to be governed by the lawful successor of his family. We find, however, that this man, by his own authority, by the arbitrary exercise of his own will and fancy, did think proper to nominate a person to succeed the Rajah who had no legal claims to the succession. He made choice of a boy about nineteen years old; and he says he made that choice upon the principle of this boy's being descended from Bulwant Sing by the female line. But he does not pretend to say that he was the proper and natural heir to Cheyt Sing; and we will show you the direct contrary. Indeed, he confesses the contrary himself; for he argues, in his defence, that, when a new system was to be formed with the successor of Cheyt Sing who was not his heir, such successor had no claim of right.

But perhaps the want of right was supplied by the capacity and fitness of the person who was chosen. I do not say that this does or can for one moment supersede the positive right of another person; but it would palliate the injustice in some degree. Was there in this case any palliative matter? Who was the person chosen by Mr. Hastings to succeed Cheyt Sing? My Lords, the person chosen was a minor: for we find the prisoner at your bar immediately proceeded to appoint him a guardian. This guardian he also chose by his own will and pleasure, as he himself declares, without referring to any particular claim or usage,—without calling the Pundits to instruct him, upon whom, by the Gentoo laws, the guardianship devolved.

I admit, that, in selecting a guardian, he did not, in one respect, act improperly; for he chose the boy's father, and he could not have chosen a better guardian for his person. But for the administration of his government qualities were required which this man did not possess. He should have chosen a man of vigor, capacity, and diligence, a man fit to meet the great difficulties of the situation in which he was to be placed.

Mr. Hastings, my Lords, plainly tells you that he did not think the man's talents to be extraordinary, and he soon afterwards says that he had a great many incapacities. He tells you that he has a doubt whether he was capable of realizing those hopes of revenue which he (Mr. Hastings) had formed. Nor can this be matter of wonder, when we consider that he had ruined and destroyed the ancient system, the whole scheme and tenor of public offices, and had substituted nothing for them but his own arbitrary will. He had formed a plan of an entire new system, in which the practical details had no reference to the experience and wisdom of past ages. He did not take the government as he found it; he did not take the system of offices as it was arranged to his hand; but he dared to make the wicked and flagitious experiment which I have stated,—an experiment upon the happiness of a numerous people, whose property he had usurped and distributed in the manner which has been laid before your Lordships. The attempt failed, and he is responsible for the consequences.

How dared he to make these experiments? In what manner can he be justified for playing fast and loose with the dearest interests, and perhaps with the very existence, of a nation? Attend to the manner in which he justifies himself, and you will find the whole secret let out. "The easy accumulation of too much wealth," he says, "had been Cheyt Sing's ruin; it had buoyed him up with extravagant and ill-founded notions of independence, which I very much wished to discourage in the future Rajah. Some part, therefore, of the superabundant produce in the country I turned into the coffers of the sovereign by an augmentation of the tribute."—Who authorized him to make any augmentation of the tribute? But above all, who authorized him to augment it upon this principle?—"I must take care the tributary prince does not grow too rich; if he gets rich, he will get proud."—This prisoner has got a scale like that in the almanac,—"War begets poverty, poverty peace," and so on. The first rule that he lays down is, that he will keep the new Rajah in a state of poverty; because, if he grows rich, he will become proud, and behave as Cheyt Sing did. You see the ground, foundation, and spirit of the whole proceeding. Cheyt Sing was to be robbed. Why? Because he is too rich. His successor is to be reduced to a miserable condition. Why? Lest he should grow rich and become troublesome. The whole of his system is to prevent men from growing rich, lest, if they should grow rich, they should grow proud, and seek independence. Your Lordships see that in this man's opinion riches must beget pride. I hope your Lordships will never be so poor as to cease to be proud; for, ceasing to be proud, you will cease to be independent.

Having resolved that the Rajah should not grow rich, for fear he should grow proud and independent, he orders him to pay forty lacs of rupees, or 400,000l., annually to the Company. The tribute had before been 250,000l., and he all at once raised it to 400,000l. Did he previously inform the Council of these intentions? Did he inform them of the amount of the gross collections of the country, from any properly authenticated accounts procured from any public office?

I need not inform your Lordships, that it is a serious thing to draw out of a country, instead of 250,000l., an annual tribute of 400,000l. There were other persons besides the Rajah concerned in this enormous increase of revenue. The whole country is interested in its resources being fairly estimated and assessed; for, if you overrate the revenue which it is supposed to yield to the great general collector, you necessitate him to overrate every under-collector, and thereby instigate them to harass and oppress the people. It is upon these grounds that we have charged the prisoner at your bar with having acted arbitrarily, illegally, unjustly, and tyrannically: and your Lordships will bear in mind that these acts were done by his sole authority, which authority we have shown to have been illegally assumed.

My Lords, before he took the important steps which I have just stated, he consulted no one but Mr. Markham, whom he placed over the new Rajah. The Rajah was only nineteen years old: but Mr. Markham undoubtedly had the advantage of him in this respect, for he was twenty-one. He had also the benefit of five months' experience of the country: an abundant experience, to be sure, my Lords, in a country where it is well known, from the peculiar character of its inhabitants, that a man cannot anywhere put his foot without placing it upon some trap or mine, until he is perfectly acquainted with its localities. Nevertheless, he puts the whole country and a prince of nineteen, as appears from the evidence, into the hands of Mr. Markham, a man of twenty-one. We have no doubt of Mr. Markham's capacity; but he could have no experience in a country over which he possessed a general controlling power. Under these circumstances, we surely shall not wonder, if this young man fell into error. I do not like to treat harshly the errors into which a very young person may fall: but the man who employs him, and puts him into a situation for which he has neither capacity nor experience, is responsible for the consequences of such an appointment; and Mr. Hastings is doubly responsible in this case, because he placed Mr. Markham as Resident merely to show that he defied the authority of the Court of Directors.

But, my Lords, let us proceed. We find Mr. Hastings resolved to exact forty lacs from the country, although he had no proof that such a tribute could be fairly collected. He next assigns to this boy, the Rajah, emoluments amounting to about 60,000l. a year. Let us now see upon what grounds he can justify the assignment of these emoluments. I can perceive none but such as are founded upon the opinion of its being necessary to the support of the Rajah's dignity. Now, when Mr. Markham, who is the sole ostensible actor in the management of the new Rajah, as he had been a witness to the deposition of the former, comes before you to give an account of what he thought of Cheyt Sing, who appears to have properly supported the dignity of his situation, he tells you that about a lac or a lac and a half (10,000l. or 15,000l.) a year was as much as Cheyt Sing could spend. And yet this young creature, settled in the same country, and who was to pay 400,000l. a year, instead of 250,000l., tribute to the Company, was authorized by Mr. Hastings to collect and reserve to his own use 60,000l. out of the revenue. That is to say, he was to receive four times as much as was stated by Mr. Hastings, on Mr. Markham's evidence, to have been necessary to support him.

Your Lordships tread upon corruption everywhere. Why was such a large revenue given to the young Rajah to support his dignity, when, as they say, Cheyt Sing did not spend above a lac and half in support of his,—though it is known he had great establishments to maintain, that he had erected considerable buildings adorned with fine gardens, and, according to them, had made great preparations for war?

We must at length imagine that they knew the country could bear the impost imposed upon it. I ask, How did they know this? We have proved to you, by a paper presented here by Mr. Markham, that the net amount of the collections was about 360,000l. This is their own account, and was made up, as Mr. Markham says, by one of the clerks of Durbege Sing, together with his Persian moonshee, (a very fine council to settle the revenues of the kingdom!) in his private house. And with this account before them, they have dared to impose upon the necks of that unhappy people a tribute of 400,000l., together with an income for the Rajah of 60,000l. These sums the Naib, Durbege Sing, was bound to furnish, and left to get them as he could. Your Lordships will observe that I speak of the net proceeds of the collections. We have nothing to do with the gross amount. We are speaking of what came to the public treasury, which was no more than I have stated; and it was out of the public treasury that these payments were to be made, because there could be no other honest way of getting the money.

But let us now come to the main point, which is to ascertain what sums the country could really bear. Mr. Hastings maintains (whether in the speech of his counsel or otherwise I do not recollect) that the revenue of the country was 400,000l., that it constantly paid that sum, and flourished under the payment. In answer to this, I refer your Lordships, first, to Mr. Markham's declaration, and the Wassil Baakee, which is in page 1750 of the printed Minutes. I next refer your Lordships to Mr. Duncan's Reports, in page 2493. According to Mr. Duncan's public estimate of the revenue of Benares, the net collections of the very year we are speaking of, when Durbege Sing had the management, and when Mr. Markham, his Persian moonshee, and a clerk in his private house, made their estimates without any documents, or with whatever documents, or God only knows, for nothing appears on the record of the transaction,—the collections yielded in that year but 340,000l., that is, 20,000l. less than Mr. Markham's estimate. But take it which way you will, whether you take it at Mr. Markham's 360,000l., or at Mr. Duncan's 340,000l., your Lordships will see, that, after reserving 60,000l. for his own private expenses, the Rajah could not realize a sum nearly equal to the tribute demanded.

Your Lordships have also in evidence before you an account of the produce of the country for I believe full five years after this period, from which it appears that it never realized the forty lacs, or anything like it,—yielding only thirty-seven and thirty-nine lacs, or thereabouts, which is 20,000l. short of Mr. Markham's estimate, and 160,000l. short of Mr. Hastings's. On what data could the prisoner at your bar have formed this estimate? Where were all the clerks and mutsuddies, where were all the men of business in Benares, who could have given him complete information upon the subject? We do not find the trace of any of them; all our information is Mr. Markham's moonshee, and some clerk of Durbege Sing's employed in Mr. Markham's private counting-house, in estimating revenues of a country.

The disposable revenue was still further reduced by the jaghires which Mr. Hastings granted, but to what amount does not appear. He mentions the increase in the revenue by the confiscation of the estates of the Baboos, who had been in rebellion. This he rates at six lacs. But we have inspected the accounts, we have examined them with that sedulous attention which belongs to that branch of the legislature that has the care of the public revenues, and we have not found one trace of this addition. Whether these confiscations were ever actually made remains doubtful; but if they were made, the application or the receipt of the money they yielded does not appear in any account whatever. I leave your Lordships to judge of this.

But it may be said that Hastings might have been in an error. If he was in an error, my Lords, his error continued an extraordinary length of time. The error itself was also extraordinary in a man of business: it was an error of account. If his confidential agent, Mr. Markham, had originally contributed to lead him into the error, he soon perceived it. He soon informed Mr. Hastings that his expectations were erroneous, and that he had overrated the country. What, then, are we to think of his persevering in this error? Mr. Hastings might have formed extravagant and wild expectations, when he was going up the country to plunder; for we allow that avarice may often overcalculate the hoards that it is going to rob. If a thief is going to plunder a banker's shop, his avarice, when running the risk of his life, may lead him to imagine there is more money in the shop than there really is. But when this man was in possession of the country, how came he not to know and understand the condition of it better? In fact, he was well acquainted with it; for he has declared it to be his opinion that forty lacs was an overrated calculation, and that the country could not continue to pay this tribute at the very time he was imposing it. You have this admission in page 294 of the printed Minutes; but in the very face of it he says, if the Rajah will exert himself, and continue for some years the regular payment, he will then grant him a remission. Thus the Rajah was told, what he well knew, that he was overrated, but that at some time or another he was to expect a remission. And what, my Lords, was the condition upon which he was to obtain this promised indulgence? The punctual payment of that which Mr. Hastings declares he was not able to pay,—and which he could not pay without ruining the country, betraying his own honor and character, and acting directly contrary to the duties of the station in which Mr. Hastings had placed him. Thus this unfortunate man was compelled to have recourse to the most rigorous exaction, that he might be enabled to satisfy the exorbitant demand which had been made upon him.

But let us suppose that the country was able to afford the sum at which it was assessed, and that nothing was required but vigor and activity in the Rajah. Did Mr. Hastings endeavor to make his strength equal to the task imposed on him? No: the direct contrary. In proportion as he augmented the burdens of this man, in just that proportion he took away his strength and power of supporting these burdens. There was not one of the external marks of honor which attended the government of Cheyt Sing that he did not take away from the new Rajah; and still, when this new man came to his new authority, deprived of all external marks of consequence, and degraded in the opinion of his subjects, he was to extort from his people an additional revenue, payable to the Company, of fifteen lacs of rupees more than was paid by the late Rajah in all the plenitude of undivided authority. To increase this difficulty still more, the father and guardian of this inexperienced youth was a man who had no credit or reputation in the country. This circumstance alone was a sufficient drawback from the weight of his authority; but Mr. Hastings took care that he should be divested of it altogether; for, as our charge states, he placed him under the immediate direction of Mr. Markham, and consequently Mr. Markham was the governor of the country. Could a man with a reduced, divided, contemptible authority venture to strike such bold and hardy strokes as would be efficient without being oppressive? Could he or any other man, thus bound and shackled, execute such vigorous and energetic measures as were necessary to realize such an enormous tribute as was imposed upon this unhappy country?

My Lords, I must now call your attention to another circumstance, not mentioned in the charge, but connected with the appointment of the new Rajah, and of his Naib, Durbege Sing, and demonstrative of the unjust and cruel treatment to which they were exposed. It appears from a letter produced here by Mr. Markham, (upon which kind of correspondence I shall take the liberty to remark hereafter,) that the Rajah lived in perpetual apprehension of being removed, and that a person called Ussaun Sing was intended as his successor. Mr. Markham, in one part of his correspondence, tells you that the Rajah did not intend to hold the government any longer. Why? Upon a point of right, namely, that he did not possess it upon the same advantageous terms as Cheyt Sing; but he tells you in another letter, (and this is a much better key to the whole transaction,) that he was in dread of that Ussaun Sing whom I have just mentioned. This man Mr. Hastings kept ready to terrify the Rajah; and you will, in the course of these transactions, see that there is not a man in India, of any consideration, against whom Mr. Hastings did not keep a kind of pretender, to keep him in continual awe. This Ussaun Sing, whom Mr. Hastings brought up with him to Benares, was dreaded by Cheyt Sing not less than by his successor. We find that he was at first nominated Naib or acting governor of the country, but had never been put in actual possession of this high office, and Durbege Sing was appointed to it. Although Ussaun Sing was thus removed, he continued his pretensions, and constantly solicited the office. Thus the poor man appointed by Mr. Hastings, and actually in possession, was not only called upon to perform tasks beyond his strength, but was overawed by Mr. Markham, and terrified by Ussaun Sing, (the mortal enemy of the family,) who, like an accusing fiend, was continually at his post, and unceasingly reiterating his accusations. This Ussaun Sing was, as Mr. Markham tells you, one of the causes of the Rajah's continued dejection and despondency. But it does not appear that any of these circumstances were ever laid before the Council; the whole passed between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Markham.

Mr. Hastings having by his arbitrary will thus disposed of the revenue and of the landed property of Benares, we will now trace his further proceedings and their effects. He found the country most flourishing in agriculture and in trade; but not satisfied with the experiment he had made upon the government, upon the revenues, upon the reigning family, and upon all the landed property, he resolved to make as bold and as novel an experiment upon the commercial interests of the country. Accordingly he entirely changed that part of the revenue system which affects trade and commerce, the life and soul of a state. Without any advice that we know of, except Mr. Markham's, he sat down to change in every point the whole commercial system of that country; and he effected the change upon the same arbitrary principles which he had before acted upon, namely, his own arbitrary will. We are told, indeed, that he consulted bankers and merchants; but when your Lordships shall have learned what has happened from this experiment, you will easily see whether he did resort to proper sources of information or not. You will see that the mischief which has happened has proceeded from the exercise of arbitrary power. Arbitrary power, my Lords, is always a miserable creature. When a man once adopts it as the principle of his actions, no one dares to tell him a truth, no one dares to give him any information that is disagreeable to him; for all know that their life and fortune depend upon his caprice. Thus the man who lives in the exercise of arbitrary power condemns himself to eternal ignorance. Of this the prisoner at your bar affords us a striking example. This man, without advice, without assistance, and without resource, except in his own arbitrary power, stupidly ignorant in himself, and puffed up with the constant companion of ignorance, a blind presumption, alters the system of commercial imposts, and thereby ruined the whole trade of the country, leaving no one part of it undestroyed.

Let me now call your Lordships' attention to his assumption of power, without one word of communication with the Council at Calcutta, where the whole of these trading regulations might and ought to have been considered, and where they could have been deliberately examined and determined upon. By this assumption the Council was placed in the situation which I have before described: it must either confirm his acts, or again undo everything which had been done. He had provided not only against resistance, but almost against any inquiry into his wild projects. He had by his opium contracts put all vigilance asleep, and by his bullock and other contracts he had secured a variety of concealed interests, both abroad and at home. He was sure of the ratification of his acts by the Council, whenever he should please to inform them of his measures; and to his secret influence he trusted for impunity in his career of tyranny and oppression.

In bringing before you his arbitrary mode of imposing duties, I beg to remind your Lordships, that, when I examined Mr. Markham concerning the imposing of a duty of five per cent instead of the former duty of two, I asked him whether that five per cent was not laid on in such a manner as utterly to extinguish the trade, and whether it was not in effect and substance five times as much as had been paid before. What was his answer? Why, that many plans, which, when considered in the closet, look specious and plausible, will not hold when they come to be tried in practice, and that this plan was one of them. The additional duties, said he, have never since been exacted. But, my Lords, the very attempt to exact them utterly ruined the trade of the country. They were imposed upon a visionary theory, formed in his own closet, and the result was exactly what might have been anticipated. Was it not an abominable thing in Mr. Hastings to withhold from the Council the means of ascertaining the real operation of his taxes? He had no knowledge of trade himself; he cannot keep an account; he has no memory. In fact, we find him a man possessed of no one quality fit for any kind of business whatever. We find him pursuing his own visionary projects, without knowing anything of the nature or [of?] the circumstances under which the trade of the country was carried on. These projects might have looked very plausible: but when you come to examine the actual state of the trade, it is not merely a difference between five and two per cent, but it becomes a different mode of estimating the commodity, and it amounts to five times as much as was paid before. We bring this as an exemplification of this cursed mode of arbitrary proceeding, and to show you his total ignorance of the subject, and his total indifference about the event of the measure he was pursuing. When he began to perceive his blunders, he never took any means whatever to put the new regulations which these blunders had made necessary into execution, but he left all this mischievous project to rage in its full extent.

I have shown your Lordships how he managed the private property of the country, how he managed the government, and how he managed the trade. I am now to call your Lordships' attention to some of the consequences which have resulted from the instances of management, or rather gross mismanagement, which have been brought before you. Your Lordships will recollect that none of these violent and arbitrary measures, either in their conception or in the progress of their execution, were officially made known to the Council; and you will observe, as we proved, that the same criminal concealment existed with respect to the fatal consequences of these acts.

After the flight of Cheyt Sing, the revenues were punctually paid by the Naib, Durbege Sing, month by month, kist by kist, until the month of July, and then, as the country had suffered some distress, the Naib wished this kist, or instalment, to be thrown on the next month. You will ask why he wished to burden this month beyond the rest. I reply, The reason was obvious: the month of August is the last of the year, and he would, at its expiration, have the advantage of viewing the receipts of the whole year, and ascertaining the claim of the country to the remission of a part of the annual tribute which Mr. Hastings had promised, provided the instalments were paid regularly. It was well known to everybody that the country had suffered very considerably by the revolt, and by a drought which prevailed that year. The Rajah, therefore, expected to avail himself of Mr. Hastings's flattering promise, and to save by the delay the payment of one of the two kists. But mark the course that was taken. The two kists were at once demanded at the end of the year, and no remission of tribute was allowed. By the promise of remission Mr. Hastings tacitly acknowledged that the Rajah was overburdened; and he admits that the payment of the July kist was postponed at the Rajah's own desire. He must have seen the Rajah's motive for desiring delay, and he ought to have taken care that this poor man should not be oppressed and ruined by this compliance with requests founded on such motives.

So passed the year 1781. No complaints of arrears in Durbege Sing's payments appear on record before the month of April, 1782; and I wish your Lordships seriously to advert to the circumstances attending the evidence respecting these arrears, which has been produced for the first time by the prisoner in his defence here at your bar. This evidence does not appear in the Company's records; it does not appear in the book of the Benares correspondence; it does not appear in any documents to which the Commons could have access; it was unknown to the Directors, unknown to the Council, unknown to the Residents, Mr. Markham's successors, at Benares, unknown to the searching and inquisitive eye of the Commons of Great Britain. This important evidence was drawn out of Mr. Markham's pocket, in the presence of your Lordships. It consists of a private correspondence which he carried on with Mr. Hastings, unknown to the Council, after Durbege Sing had been appointed Naib, after the new government had been established, after Mr. Hastings had quitted that province, and had apparently wholly abandoned it, and when there was no reason whatever why the correspondence should not be public. This private correspondence of Mr. Markham's, now produced for the first time, is full of the bitterest complaints against Durbege Sing. These clandestine complaints, these underhand means of accomplishing the ruin of a man, without the knowledge of his true and proper judges, we produce to your Lordships as a heavy aggravation of our charge, and as a proof of a wicked conspiracy to destroy the man. For if there was any danger of his falling into arrears when the heavy accumulated kists came upon him, the Council ought to have known that danger; they ought to have known every particular of these complaints: for Mr. Hastings had then carried into effect his own plans.

I ought to have particularly marked for your Lordships' attention this second era of clandestine correspondence between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Markham. It commenced after Mr. Hastings had quitted Benares, and had nothing to do with it but as Governor-General: even after his extraordinary, and, as we contend, illegal, power had completely expired, the same clandestine correspondence was carried on. He apparently considered Benares as his private property; and just as a man acts with his private steward about his private estate, so he acted with the Resident at Benares. He receives from him and answers letters containing a series of complaints against Durbege Sing, which began in April and continued to the month of November, without making any public communication of them. He never laid one word of this correspondence before the Council until the 29th of November, and he had then completely settled the fate of this Durbege Sing.

This clandestine correspondence we charge against him as an act of rebellion; for he was bound to lay before the Council the whole of his correspondence relative to the revenue and all the other affairs of the country. We charge it not only as rebellion against the orders of the Company and the laws of the land, but as a wicked plot to destroy this man, by depriving him of any opportunity of defending himself before the Council, his lawful judges. I wish to impress it strongly on your Lordships' minds, that neither the complaints of Mr. Markham nor the exculpations of Durbege Sing were ever made known till Mr. Markham was examined in this hall.

The first intimation afforded the Council of what had been going on at Benares from April, 1782, at which time, Mr. Markham says, the complaints against Durbege Sing had risen to serious importance, was in a letter dated the 27th of November following. This letter was sent to the Council from Nia Serai, in the Ganges, where Mr. Hastings had retired for the benefit of the air. During the whole time he was in Calcutta, it does not appear upon the records that he had ever held any communication with the Council upon the subject. The letter is in the printed Minutes, page 298, and is as follows.

"The Governor-General.—I desire the Secretary to lay the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham before the board, and request that orders may be immediately sent to him concerning the subjects contained in them. It may be necessary to inform the board, that, on repeated information from Mr. Markham, which indeed was confirmed to me beyond a doubt by other channels, and by private assurances which I could trust, that the affairs of that province were likely to fall into the greatest confusion from the misconduct of Baboo Durbege Sing, whom I had appointed the Naib, fearing the dangerous consequences of a delay, and being at too great a distance to consult the members of the board, who I knew could repose that confidence in my local knowledge as to admit of this occasional exercise of my own separate authority, I wrote to Mr. Markham the letter to which he alludes, dated the 29th of September last, of which I now lay before the board a copy. The first of the accompanying letters from Mr. Markham arrived at a time when a severe return of my late illness obliged me, by the advice of my physicians, to leave Calcutta for the benefit of the country air, and prevented me from bringing it earlier before the notice of the board."

I have to remark upon this part of the letter, that he claims for himself an exercise of his own authority. He had now no delegation, and therefore no claim to separate authority. He was only a member of the board, obliged to do everything according to the decision of the majority, and yet he speaks of his own separate authority; and after complimenting himself, he requests its confirmation. The complaints of Mr. Markham had been increasing, growing, and multiplying upon him, from the month of April preceding, and he had never given the least intimation of it to the board until he wrote this letter. This was at so late a period that he then says, "The time won't wait for a remedy; I am obliged to use my own separate authority"; although he had had abundant time for laying the whole matter before the Council.

He next goes on to say,—"It had, indeed, been my intention, but for the same cause, to have requested the instructions of the board for the conduct of Mr. Markham in the difficulties which he had to encounter immediately after the date of my letter to him, and to have recommended the substance of it for an order to the board." He seems to have promised Mr. Markham, that, if the violent act which Mr. Markham proposed, and which he, Mr. Hastings, ordered, was carried into execution, an authority should be procured from the board. He, however, did not get Mr. Markham such an authority. Why? Because he was resolved, as he has told you, to act by his own separate authority; and because, as he has likewise told you, that he disobeys the orders of the Court of Directors, and defies the laws of his country, as a signal of his authority.

Now what does he recommend to the board? That it will be pleased to confirm the appointment which Mr. Markham made in obedience to his individual orders, as well as the directions which he had given him to exact from Baboo Durbege Sing with the utmost rigor every rupee of the collections, and either to confine him at Benares or send him to Chunar and imprison him there until the whole of his arrears were paid up. Here, then, my Lords, you have, what plainly appears in every act of Mr. Hastings, a feeling of resentment for some personal injury. "I feel myself," says he, "and may be allowed on such an occasion to acknowledge it, personally hurt at the ingratitude of this man, and the discredit which his ill conduct has thrown on my appointment of him. The Rajah himself, scarcely arrived at the verge of manhood, was in understanding but little advanced beyond the term of childhood; and it had been the policy of Cheyt Sing to keep him equally secluded from the world and from business." This is the character Mr. Hastings gives of a man whom he appointed to govern the country. He goes on to say of Durbege Sing,—"As he was allowed a jaghire of a very liberal amount, to enable him to maintain a state and consequence suitable both to the relation in which he stood to the Rajah and the high office which had been assigned to him, and sufficient also to free him from the temptation of little and mean peculations, it is therefore my opinion, and I recommend, that Mr. Markham be ordered to divest him of his jaghire, and reunite it to the malguzaree, or the land paying its revenue through the Rajah to the Company. The opposition made by the Rajah and the old Ranny, both equally incapable of judging for themselves, do certainly originate from some secret influence which ought to be checked by a decided and peremptory declaration of the authority of the board, and a denunciation of their displeasure at their presumption. If they can be induced to yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement, and to adopt it as a measure formed with their participation, it would be better than that it should be done by a declared act of compulsion; but at all events it ought to be done." My Lords, it had been already done: the Naib was dismissed; he was imprisoned; his jaghire was confiscated: all these things were done by Mr. Hastings's orders. He had resolved to take the whole upon himself; he had acted upon that resolution before he addressed this letter to the board.

Thus, my Lords, was this unhappy man punished without any previous trial, or any charges, except the complaints of Mr. Markham, and some other private information which Mr. Hastings said he had received. Before the poor object of these complaints could make up his accounts, before a single step was taken, judicially or officially, to convict him of any crime, he was sent to prison, and his private estates confiscated.