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

Now the first thing that will occur to your Lordships upon such an affair will be a desire to know what it was that induced the Nabob to make this offer. It was but in the September preceding that Mr. Hastings had received, for his private use, as the Nabob conceived, so bountiful a present as 100,000l.; what motive, then, could he have had in February to offer him another 100,000l.? This man, at the time, was piercing heaven itself with the cries of despondency, despair, beggary, and ruin. You have seen that he was forced to rob his own family, in order to satisfy the Company's demands upon him; and yet this is precisely the time when he thinks proper to offer 100,000l. to Mr. Hastings. Does not the mind of every man revolt, whilst he exclaims, and say, "What! another 100,000l. to Mr. Hastings?" What reason had the Nabob to think Mr. Hastings so monstrously insatiable, that, having but the September before received 100,000l., he must give him another in February? My Lords, he must, in the interval, have threatened the Nabob with some horrible catastrophe, from which he was to redeem himself by this second present. You can assign no other motive for his giving it. We know not what answer Mr. Hastings made to Mr. Middleton upon that occasion, but we find that in the year 1783 Mr. Hastings asserts that he sent up Major Palmer and Major Davy to persuade the Nabob to transfer this present, which the Nabob intended for him, to the Company's service. Remark, my Lords, the progress of this affair. In a formal accusation preferred against Mr. Middleton, he charges him with obstructing this design of his. In this accusation, my Lords, you find him at once in the curious character of prosecutor, witness, and judge.

Let us see how he comports himself. I shall only state to you one of the articles of his impeachment; it is the third charge; it is in page 1267 of your Lordships' Minutes.

"For sending repeatedly to the Vizier, and to his minister, Hyder Beg Khân, to advise them against transferring the ten lacs of rupees intended as a present to the Governor-General to the Company's account; as it would be a precedent for further demands, which if the Vizier did not refuse in the first instance, the government would never cease to harass him for money."

The first thing that will occur to your Lordships is an assertion of the accuser's:—"I am morally certain, that jaidads or assets for ten lacs, either in assignment of land or in bills, had been prepared, and were in the charge or possession of Mr. Middleton, before Major Palmer's arrival, and left with Mr. Johnson on Mr. Middleton's departure."

My Lords, here is an accusation that Mr. Middleton had actually received money, either in bills or assets of some kind or other,—and that, upon quitting his Residency, he had handed it over to his successor, Mr. Johnson. Here are, then, facts asserted, and we must suppose substantiated. Here is a sum of money to be accounted for, in which there is a gross malversation directly charged as to these particulars, in Mr. Hastings's opinion. Mr. Macpherson, another member of the Council, has declared, that he understood at the time that the ten lacs were actually deposited in bills, and that it was not a mere offer made by the Nabob to pay such a sum from the future revenue of the country. Mr. Hastings has these facts disclosed to him. He declares that he was "morally certain" of it,—that is, as certain as a man can be of anything; because physical certitude does not belong to such matters. The first thing you will naturally ask is, "Why does he not ask Mr. Johnson how he had disposed of that money which Mr. Middleton had put in his hands?" He does no such thing; he passes over it totally, as if it were no part of the matter in question, and the accusation against Mr. Middleton terminates in the manner you will there find stated. When Mr. Johnson is asked, "Why was not that money applied to the Company's service?" he boldly steps forward, and says, "I prevented it from being so applied. It never was, it never ought to have been, so applied; such an appropriation of money to be taken from the Nabob would have been enormous upon that occasion."

What, then, does Mr. Hastings do? Does he examine Mr. Middleton upon the subject, who charges himself with having received the money? Mr. Middleton was at that very time in Calcutta, called down thither by Mr. Hastings himself. One would naturally expect that he would call upon him to explain for what purpose he left the money with Mr. Johnson. He did no such thing. Did he examine Mr. Johnson himself, who was charged with having received the money from Mr. Middleton? Did he ask him what he had done with that money? Not one word. Did he send for Major Palmer and Major Davy to account for it? No. Did he call any shroff, any banker, any one person concerned in the payment of the money, or any one person in the management of the revenue? No, not one. Directly in the face of his own assertions, directly contrary to his moral conviction of the fact that the money had been actually deposited, he tries Mr. Johnson collusively and obliquely, not upon the account of what was done with the money, but why it was prevented from being applied to the Company's service; and he acquits him in a manner that (taking the whole of it together) will give your Lordships the finest idea possible of a Bengal judicature, as exercised by Mr. Hastings.

"I am not sorry," says he, "that Mr. Johnson chose to defeat my intentions; since it would have added to the Nabob's distresses, but with no immediate relief to the Company. If, in his own breast, he can view the secret motives of this transaction, and on their testimony approve it, I also acquit him."

Merciful God! Here is a man accused by regular articles of impeachment. The accuser declares he is morally certain that the money had been received, but was prevented from being applied to its destination by the person accused; and he acquits him. Does he acquit him from his own knowledge, or from any evidence? No: but he applies to the man's conscience, and says, "If you in your conscience can acquit yourself, I acquit you."

Here, then, is a proceeding the most astonishing and shameless that perhaps was ever witnessed: a court trying a man for a delinquency and misapplication of money, destined, in the first instance, for the use of the judge, but which he declares ought, in his own opinion, to be set apart for the public use, and which he was desirous of applying to the Company's service, without regard to his own interest, and then the judge declaring he is not sorry that his purpose had been defeated by the party accused. Instead, however, of censuring the accused, he applies to the man's own conscience. "Does your conscience," says he, "acquit you of having acted wrong?" The accused makes no reply; and then Mr. Hastings, by an hypothetical conclusion, acquits him.

Mr. Hastings is accused by the Commons for that, having a moral certainty of the money's being intended for his use, he would not have ceased to inquire into the actual application of it but from some corrupt motive and intention. With this he is charged. He comes before you to make his defence. Mr. Middleton is in England. Does he call Mr. Middleton to explain it here? Does he call upon Mr. Johnson, who was the other day in this court, to account for it? Why did he not, when he sent for these curious papers and testimonials to Major Palmer, (the person authorized, as he pretends, by him, to resign all his pretensions to the money procured,) send for Major Palmer, who is the person that accused him in this business,—why not send for him to bear some testimony respecting it? No: he had time enough, but at no one time and in no place did he do this; therefore the imputation of the foulest corruption attaches upon him, joined with the infamy of a collusive prosecution, instituted for the sake of a collusive acquittal.

Having explained to your Lordships the nature, and detailed the circumstances, as far as we are acquainted with them, of this fraudulent transaction, we have only further to remind you, that, though Mr. Middleton was declared guilty of five of the six charges brought against him by Mr. Hastings, yet the next thing you hear is, that Mr. Hastings, after declaring that this conduct of Mr. Middleton had been very bad, and that the conduct of the other servants of the Company concerned with him had been ten times worse, he directly appoints him to one of the most honorable and confidential offices the Company had to dispose of: he sends him ambassador to the Nizam,—to give to all the courts of India a specimen of the justice, honor, and decency of the British government.

My Lords, with regard to the bribe for the entertainment, I only beg leave to make one observation to you upon that article. I could say, if the time would admit it, a great deal upon that subject; but I wish to compress it, and I shall therefore only recommend it in general to your Lordships' deliberate consideration. The covenant subsisting between the Company and its servants was made for the express purpose of putting an end to all such entertainments. By this convention it is ordered that no presents exceeding 200l. [400l.?] shall be accepted upon any pretence for an entertainment. The covenant was intended to put an end to the custom of receiving money for entertainments, even when visiting an independent Oriental prince. But your Lordships know that the Nabob was no prince, but a poor, miserable, undone dependant upon, the Company. The present was also taken by Mr. Hastings at a time when he went upon the cruel commission of cutting down the Nabob's allowance from 400,000l. to 260,000l. [160,000l.?], and when he was reducing to beggary thousands of persons who were dependent for bread upon the Nabob, and ruining, perhaps, forty thousand others. I shall say no more upon that subject, though, in truth, it is a thing upon which much observation might be made.

I shall now pass on to another article connected with, though not making a direct part of, that of corrupt bribery: I mean the swindling subterfuges by which he has attempted to justify his corrupt practices. At one time, he defends them by pleading the necessities of his own affairs,—as when he takes presents and entertainments avowedly for his own profits. At another time he defends them by pleading the goodness of his intentions: he intended, he says, to give the money to the Company. His last plea has something in it (which shall I say?) of a more awful or of a more abandoned character, or of both. In the settlement of his public account, before he left India, he takes credit for a bond which he had received from Nobkissin upon some account or other. He then, returns to England, and what does he do? Pay off? No. Give up the bond to the Company? No. He says, "I will account to the Company for this money." And when he comes to give this account of the expenditure of this money, your Lordships will not be a little astonished at the items of it. One is for founding a Mahometan college. It is a very strange thing that Rajah Nobkissin, who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr. Hastings to found a Mahometan college. We will allow Mr. Hastings, who is a Christian, or would be thought a Christian, to grow pious at last, and, as many others have done, who have spent their lives in fraud, rapacity, and peculation, to seek amends and to expiate his crimes by charitable foundations. Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken it into his head to turn Mahometan, (Gentoo he could not,) and to have designed by a Mahometan foundation to expiate his offences. Be it so; but why should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over this also. But when your Lordships shall hear of what nature that foundation was, I believe you will allow that a more extraordinary history never did appear in the world.

In the first place, he stated to the Council, on the 18th of April, 1781, that in the month of November, 1780, a petition was presented to him by a considerable number of Mussulmen, in compliance with which this Mahometan college appears to have been founded. It next appears from his statement, that in the April following, (that is, within about six months after the foundation,) many students had finished their education. You see what a hot-bed bribery and corruption is. Our universities cannot furnish an education in six years: in India they have completed it within six months, and have taken their degrees.

Mr. Hastings says, "I have supported this establishment to this time at my own expense; I desire the Company will now defray the charge of it." He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates that the building would cost about 6,000l., and he gets from the Company a bond to raise money for paying this 6,000l. You apparently have the building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings still stands charged with the expense of the college for six months. He then proposes that a tract of land should be given for the college, to the value of about three thousand odd pounds a year,—and that in the mean time there should be a certain sum allotted for its expenses. After this Mr. Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company, in which he says not a word about the expense of the building, but says that the college was founded and maintained at his own expense, though it was thought to be maintained by the Company; and he fixes the commencement of the expense in September, 1779. But, after all, we find that the very professor who was to be settled there never so much as arrived in Calcutta, or showed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look at Mr. Larkins's private accounts, and you will find that he charges the expense to have commenced not until October, 1781. It is no error, because it runs through and is so accounted in the whole: and it thus appears that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year more for that establishment than it cost him.

At last, then, when he was coming away, (for I hasten to the conclusion of an affair ludicrous indeed in some respects, but not unworthy of your Lordships' consideration,) "after remarking that he had experienced for three years the utility of this institution, he recommends that they will establish a fund for 3,000l. a year for it, and give it to the master." He had left Gunga Govind Sing as a Gentoo legacy, and he now leaves the Mussulman as a Mahometan legacy to the Company.

Your Lordships shall now hear what was the upshot of the whole. The Company soon afterwards hearing that this college was become the greatest nuisance in Calcutta, and that it had raised the cries of all the inhabitants against it, one of their servants, a Mr. Chapman, was deputed by the Governor, Sir John Shore, to examine into it, and your Lordships will find the account he gives of it in your minutes. In short, my Lords, we find that this was a seminary of robbers, housebreakers, and every nuisance to society; so that the Company was obliged to turn out the master, and to remodel the whole. Your Lordships will now judge of the merits and value of this, one of the sets-off brought forward by the prisoner against the charges which we have brought forward against him: it began in injustice and peculation, and ended in a seminary for robbers and housebreakers.

Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon your Lordships' consideration, but the account given by the late Governor-General, Earl Cornwallis, of the state in which he found the country left by his predecessor, Mr. Hastings, the prisoner at your bar. But, patient as I know your Lordships to be, I also know that your strength is not inexhaustible; and though what I have farther to add will not consume much of your Lordships' time, yet I conceive that there is a necessity for deferring it to another day.