The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)

There is another circumstance which serves to show that in the persecution of these great men, and the persons employed by them, he could have no other view than to extort money from them. There was a person of the name of Shitab Roy, who had a great share in the conduct of the revenues of Bahar. Mr. Hastings, in the letter to the Company, complaining of the state of their affairs, and saying that there were great and suspicious balances in the kingdom of Bahar, does not even name the name of Shitab Roy. There was an English counsellor, a particular friend of Mr. Hastings's, there, under whose control Shitab Roy acted. Without any charges, without any orders from the Company, Mr. Hastings dragged down that same Shitab Roy, and in the same ignominious prison he kept him the same length of time, that is, one year and three months, without trial; and when the trial came on, there was as much appearance of collusion in the trial as there was of rigor in the previous process. This is the manner in which Mr. Hastings executed the command of the Company for removing Mahomed Reza Khân.

When a successor to Mahomed Reza Khân was to be appointed, your Lordships naturally expect, from the character I have given of him, and from the nature of his functions, that Mr. Hastings would be particularly precise, would use the utmost possible care in nominating a person to succeed him, who might fulfil the ends and objects of his employment, and be at the same time beyond all doubt and suspicion of corruption in any way whatever. Let us now see how he fills up that office thus vacant. When the Company ordered Mahomed Reza Khân to be dispossessed of his office, they ordered at the same time that the salary of his successor should be reduced: that 30,000l. was a sufficient recompense for that office. Your Lordships will see by the allowance for the office, even reduced as it was, that they expected some man of great eminence, of great consequence, and fit for those great and various trusts. They cut off the dewanny from it, that is, the collection of the revenues; and having lessened his labors, they lessened his reward.—They ordered that this person, who was to be guardian of the Nabob in his minority, and who was to represent the government, should have but 30,000l. The order they give is this.

"And that as Mahomed Reza Khân can no longer be considered by us as one to whom such a power can safely be committed, we trust to your local knowledge the selection of some person well qualified for the affairs of government, and of whose attachment to the Company you shall be well assured. Such person you will recommend to the Nabob, to succeed Mahomed Reza, as minister of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's minority; and we persuade ourselves that the Nabob will pay such regard to your recommendation as to invest him with the necessary power and authority.

"As the advantages which the Company may receive from the appointment of such minister will depend on his readiness to promote our views and advance our interest, we are willing to allow him so liberal a gratification as may excite his zeal and insure his attachment to the Company; we therefore empower you to grant to the person whom you shall think worthy of this trust an annual allowance not exceeding three lacs of rupees, which we consider not only as a munificent reward for any services he shall render the Company, but sufficient to enable him to support his station with suitable rank and dignity. And here we must add, that, in the choice you shall make of a person to be the active minister of the Nabob's government, we hope and trust that you will show yourselves worthy of the confidence we have placed in you by being actuated therein by no other motives than those of the public good and the safety and interest of the Company."

My Lords, here they have given a reward, and they have described a person fit to succeed in all capacities the man whom they had thought fit to depose. Now, as we have seen how Mr. Hastings obeyed the Company's orders in the manner of removing Mahomed Reza Khân from his office, let us see how he obeyed their order for filling it up. Your Lordships will naturally suppose that he made all the orders of Mahometan and Hindoo princes to pass in strict review before him; that he had considered their age, authority, dignity, the goodness of their manners; and upon the collation of all these circumstances had chosen a person fit to be a regent to guard the Nabob's minority from all rapacity whatever, and fit to instruct him in everything. I will give your Lordships Mr. Hastings's own idea of the person necessary to fill such offices.

"That his rank ought to be such as at least ought not to wound the Nabob's honor, or lessen his credit in the estimation of the people, by the magisterial command which the new guardian must exercise over him,—with abilities and vigor of mind equal to the support of that authority; and the world will expect that the guardian be especially qualified by his own acquired endowments to discharge the duties of that relation in the education of his young pupil, to inspire him with sentiments suitable to his birth, and to instruct him in the principles of his religion."

This, upon another occasion, is Mr. Hastings's sense of the man who ought to be placed in that situation of trust in which the Company ordered him to place him. Did Mr. Hastings obey that order? No, my Lords, he appointed no man to fill that office. What, no man at all? No, he appointed no person at all in the sense which is mentioned there, which constantly describes a person at least of the male sex: he appointed a woman to fill that office; he appointed a woman, in a country where no woman can be seen, where no woman can be spoken to by any one without a curtain between them; for all these various duties, requiring all these qualifications described by himself, he appointed a woman. Do you want more proof than this violent transgression of the Company's orders upon that occasion that some corrupt motive must have influenced him?

My Lords, it is necessary for me to state the situation of the family, that you may judge from thence of the corrupt motives of Mr. Hastings's proceedings. The Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân had among the women of his seraglio a person called Munny Begum. She was a dancing-girl, whom he had seen at some entertainment; and as he was of a licentious turn, this dancing-girl, in the course of her profession as a prostitute, so far inveigled the Nabob, that, having a child or pretending to have had a child by him, he brought her into the seraglio; and the Company's servants sold to that son the succession of that father. This woman had been sold as a slave,—her profession a dancer, her occupation a prostitute. And, my Lords, this woman having put her natural son, as we state, and shall prove, in the place of the legitimate offspring of the Nabob, having got him placed by the Company's servants on the musnud, she came to be at the head of that part of the household which relates to the women: which is a large and considerable trust in a country where polygamy is admitted, and where women of great rank may possibly be attended by two thousand of the same sex in inferior situations. As soon as the legitimate son of the Nabob came to the musnud, there was no ground for keeping this woman any longer in that situation; and upon an application of the Company to Mahomed Reza Khân to know who ought to have the right of superiority, he answered, as he ought to have done, that, though all the women of the seraglio ought to have honor, yet the mother of the Nabob ought to have the superiority of it. Therefore this woman was removed, and the mother of the Nabob was placed in her situation. In that situation Mr. Hastings found the seraglio. If his duties had gone no further than the regulation of an Eastern household, he ought to have kept the Nabob's mother there by the rules of that country.

What did he do? Not satisfied with giving to this prostitute every favor that she could desire, (and money must be the natural object of such a person,) Mr. Hastings deposes the Nabob's own mother, turns her out of the employment, and puts at the head of the seraglio this prostitute, who at the best, in relation to him, could only be a step-mother. If you heard no more, do your Lordships want anything further to convince you that this must be a violent, atrocious, and corrupt act,—suppose it had gone no further than the seraglio? But when I call this woman a dancing-girl, I state something lower than Europeans have an idea of respecting that situation. She was born a slave, bred a dancing-girl. Her dancing was not any of those noble and majestic movements which make part of the entertainment of the most wise, of the education of the most virtuous, which improve the manners without corrupting the morals of all civilized people, and of which, among uncivilized people, the professors have their due share of admiration; but these dances were not decent to be seen nor fit to be related. I shall pass them by. Your Lordships are to suppose the lowest degree of infamy in occupation and situation, when I tell you that Munny Begum was a slave and a dancing-girl.

The history of the Munny Begum is this. "At a village called Balkonda, near Sekundra, there lived a widow, who, from her great poverty, not being able to bring up her daughter Munny, gave her to a slave-girl belonging to Summin Ali Khân, whose name was Bissoo. During the space of five years she lived at Shahjehanabad, and was educated by Bissoo after the manner of a dancing-girl. Afterwards the Nabob Shamut Jung, upon the marriage of Ikram ul Dowlah, brother to the Nabob Surajah ul Dowlah, sent for Bissoo Beg's set of dancing-girls from Shahjehanabad, of which Munny Begum was one, and allowed them ten thousand rupees for their expenses, to dance at the wedding. While the ceremony was celebrating, they were kept by the Nabob; but some months afterwards he dismissed them, and they took up their residence in this city. Mir Mahomed Jaffier Khân then took them into keeping, and allowed Munny and her set five hundred rupees per month, till at length, finding that Munny was pregnant, he took her into his own house. She gave birth to the Nabob Nujim ul Dowlah, and in this manner has she remained in the Nabob's family ever since."

Now it required a very peculiar mode of selection to take such a woman, so circumstanced, (resembling whom there was not just such another,) to depose the Nabob's own mother from the superiority of the household, and to substitute this woman. It would have been an abominable abuse, and would have implied corruption in the grossest degree, if Mr. Hastings had stopped there. He not only did this, but he put her, this woman, in the very place of Mahomed Reza Khân: he made her guardian, he made her regent, he made her viceroy, he made her the representative of the native government of the country in the eyes of strangers. There was not a trust, not a dignity in the country, which he did not put, during the minority of this unhappy person, her step-son, into the hands of this woman.

Reject, if you please, the strong presumption of corruption in disobeying the order of the Company directing him to select a man fit to supply the place of Mahomed Reza Khân, to exercise all the great and arduous functions of government and of justice, as well as the regulation of the Nabob's household; and then I will venture to say, that neither your Lordships, nor any man living, when he hears of this appointment, does or can hesitate a moment in concluding that it is the result of corruption, and that you only want to be informed what the corruption was. Here is such an arrangement as I believe never was before heard of: a secluded woman in the place of a man of the world; a fantastic dancing-girl in the place of a grave magistrate; a slave in the place of a woman of quality; a common prostitute made to superintend the education of a young prince; and a step-mother, a name of horror in all countries, made to supersede the natural mother from whose body the Nabob had sprung.

These are circumstances that leave no doubt of the grossest and most flagrant corruption. But was there no application made to Mr. Hastings upon that occasion? The Nabob's uncle, whom Mr. Hastings declares to be a man of no dangerous ambition, no alarming parts, no one quality that could possibly exclude him from that situation, makes an application to Mr. Hastings for that place, and was by Mr. Hastings rejected. The reason he gives for his rejection is, because he cannot put any man in it without danger to the Company, who had ordered him to put a man into it. One would imagine the trust to be placed in him was such as enabled him to overturn the Company in a moment. Now the situation in which the Nabob's uncle, Yeteram ul Dowlah, would have been placed was this: he would have had no troops, he would have had no treasury, he would have had no collections of revenue, nothing, in short, that could have made him dangerous, but he would have been an absolute pensioner and dependant upon the Company, though in high office; and the least attempt to disturb the Company, instead of increasing, would have been subversive of his own power. If Mr. Hastings should still insist that there might be danger from the appointment of a man, we shall prove that he was of opinion that there could be no danger from any one,—that the Nabob himself was a mere shadow, a cipher, and was kept there only to soften the English government in the eyes and opinion of the natives.

My Lords, I will detail these circumstances no further, but will bring some collateral proofs to show that Mr. Hastings was at that very time conscious of the wicked and corrupt act he was doing. For, besides this foolish principle of policy, which he gives as a reason for defying the orders of the Company, and for insulting the country, that had never before seen a woman in that situation, and his declaration to the Company, that their government cannot be supported by private justice, (a favorite maxim, which he holds upon all occasions,) besides these reasons which he gave for his politic injustice, he gives the following. The Company had ordered that 30,000l. should be given to the person appointed. He knew that the Company could never dream of giving this woman 30,000l. a year, and he makes use of that circumstance to justify him in putting her in that place: for he says, the Company, in the distressed state of its affairs, could never mean to give 30,000l. a year for the office which they order to be filled; and accordingly, upon principles of economy, as well as upon principles of prudence, he sees there could be no occasion for giving this salary, and that it will be saved to the Company. But no sooner had he given her the appointment than that appointment became a ground for giving her that money. The moment he had appointed her, he overturns the very principle upon which he had appointed her, and gives the 30,000l. to her, and the officers under her, saving not one shilling to the Company by this infamous measure, which he justified only upon the principle of economy. The 30,000l. was given, the principle of economy vanished, a shocking arrangement was made, and Bengal saw a dancing-girl administering its justice, presiding over all its remaining power, wealth, and influence, exhibiting to the natives of the country their miserable state of degradation, and the miserable dishonor of the English Company in Mr. Hastings's abandonment of all his own pretences.

But there is a still stronger presumption. The Company ordered that this person, who was to have the management of the Nabob's revenue, and who was to be his guardian, should keep a strict account, which account should be annually transmitted to the Presidency, and by the Presidency to Europe; and the purpose of it was, to keep a control upon the reduced expenses of the sixteen lac which were ordered in the manner I mentioned. Your Lordships will naturally imagine that that control was kept safe. No, here is the order of the Directors, and you will see how Mr. Hastings obeyed it.

"As the disbursement of the sums allotted to the Nabob for the maintenance of his household and family and the support of his dignity will pass through the hands of the minister who shall be selected by you, conformable to our preceding orders, we expect that you will require such minister to deliver annually to your board a regular and exact account of the application of the several sums paid by the Company to the Nabob. This you will strictly examine; and we trust that you will not suffer any part of the Nabob's stipend to be appropriated to the minister's own use, or wasted among the unnecessary dependants of the court, but that the whole amount be applied to the purposes for which it was assigned by us."

One would have imagined, that, after Mr. Hastings had made so suspicious an arrangement, (I will not call it by any worse name,) he would have removed all suspicion with regard to money,—that he would have obeyed the Company by constituting the control which they had ordered to be placed over a man, even a fit man, and a man worthy of the trust committed to him. But what is his answer, when three years after he is desired to produce this account? His answer is,—"I can save the board the trouble of this reference by acquainting them that no such accounts have ever been transmitted, nor, as I can affirm with most certain knowledge, any orders given for that purpose, either to Gourdas, to whose office it did not properly belong, nor to the Begum, who had the actual charge and responsibility of those disbursements."

He has given to this woman the charge of all the disbursements of the Company; the officer whom you would imagine would be responsible was not responsible, but to this prostitute and dancing-girl the whole of the revenue was given; when he was ordered to transmit that account, he not only did not produce that account, but had given no order that it should be kept: so that no doubt can be left upon your Lordships' minds, that the sixteen lac, which were reserved for the support of the dignity of the government of that country, were employed for the purpose of Mr. Hastings's having a constant bank, from which he should draw every corrupt emolument he should think fit for himself and his associates. Thus your Lordships see that he appointed an improper person to the trust without any control, and that the very accounts which were to be the guardians of his purity, and which were to remove suspicion from him, he never so much as directed or ordered. If any one can doubt that that transaction was in itself corrupt, I can only say that his mind must be constituted in a manner totally different from that which prevails in any of the higher or lower branches of judicature in any country in the world. The suppression of an account is a proof of corruption.

When Mr. Hastings committed these acts of violence against Mahomed Reza Khân, when he proceeded to make arrangements in the Company's affairs of the same kind with those in which corruption had been before exercised, he was bound by a particular responsibility that there should be nothing mysterious in his own conduct, and that at least all the accounts should be well kept. He appointed a person nominally for that situation,—namely, the Rajah Gourdas. Who was he? A person acting, he says, under the influence of Rajah Nundcomar, whom he had declared was not fit to be employed or trusted: all the offices were filled by him. But had Rajah Gourdas, whose character is that of an excellent man, against whom there could lie no reasonable objection on account of his personal character, and whose want of talents was to be supplied by those of Nundcomar, (and of his parts Mr. Hastings spoke as highly as possible,)—had he, I say, the management? No: but Munny Begum. Did she keep any accounts? No.

Mr. Hastings was ordered, and a very disagreeable and harsh order it was, to take away one half of the Nabob's allowance which he had by treaty. I do not charge Mr. Hastings with this reduction: he had nothing to do with that. Sixteen lac were cut off, and sixteen left; these two sums had been distributed, one for the support of the seraglio and the dignity of the state, the other for the court establishment and the household. The sixteen lac which was left, therefore, required to be well economized, and well administered. There was a rigor in the Company's order relative to it, which was, that it should take place from an antedated time, that is, a whole year prior to the communication of their order to the Nabob. The order was, that the Nabob's stipend should be reduced to sixteen lac a year from the month of January. Mr. Hastings makes this reflection upon it, in order to leave no doubt upon your mind of his integrity in administering that great trust: he says,—

"Your order for the reduction of the Nabob's stipend was communicated to him in the month of December, 1771. He remonstrated against it, and desired it might be again referred to the Company. The board entirely acquiesced in his remonstrance, and the subsequent payments of his stipend were paid as before. I might easily have availed myself of this plea. I might have treated it as an act of the past government, with which I had no cause to interfere, and joined in asserting the impossibility of his defraying the vast expense of his court and household without it, which I could have proved by plausible arguments, drawn from the actual amount of the nizamut and bhela establishments; and both the Nabob and Begum would have liberally purchased my forbearance. Instead of pursuing this plan, I carried your orders rigidly and literally into execution. I undertook myself the laborious and reproachful task of limiting his charges, from an excess of his former stipend, to the sum of his reduced allowance."

He says in another place,—"The stoppage of the king's tribute was an act of mine, and I have been often reproached with it. It was certainly in my power to have continued the payment of it, and to have made my terms with the king for any part of it which I might have chosen to reserve for my own use. He would have thanked me for the remainder."

My Lords, I believe it is a singular thing, and what your Lordships have been very little used to, to see a man in the situation of Mr. Hastings, or in any situation like it, so ready in knowing all the resources by which sinister emolument may be made and concealed, and which, under pretences of public good, may be transferred into the pocket of him who uses those pretences. He is resolved, if he is innocent, that his innocence shall not proceed from ignorance. He well knows the ways of falsifying the Company's accounts; he well knows the necessities of the natives, and he knows that by paying a part of their dues they will be ready to give an acquittance of the whole. These are parts of Mr. Hastings's knowledge of which your Lordships will see he also well knows how to avail himself.

But you would expect, when he reduced the allowance to sixteen lac, and took credit to himself as if he had done the thing which he professed, and had argued from his rigor and cruelty his strict and literal obedience to the Company, that he had in reality done it. The very reverse: for it will be in proof, that, after he had pretended to reduce the Company's allowance, he continued it a twelvemonth from the day in which he said he had entirely executed it, to the amount of 90,000l., and entered a false account of the suppression in the Company's accounts; and when he has taken a credit as under pretence of reducing that allowance, he paid 90,000l. more than he ought. Can you, then, have a doubt, after all these false pretences, after all this fraud, fabrication, and suppression which he made use of, that that 90,000l., of which he kept no account and transmitted no account, was money given to himself for his own private use and advantage?

This is all that I think necessary to state to your Lordships upon this monstrous part of the arrangement; and therefore, from his rigorous obedience in cases of cruelty, and, where control was directed, from his total disobedience, and from his choice of persons, from his suppression of the accounts that ought to have been produced, and falsifying the accounts that were kept, there arises a strong inference of corruption. When your Lordships see all this in proof, your Lordships will justify me in saying that there never was (taking every part of the arrangement) such a direct, open violation of any trust.—I shall say no more with regard to the appointment of Munny Begum.

My Lords, here ended the first scene, and here ends that body of presumption arising from the transaction and inherent in it. My Lords, the next scene that I am to bring before you is the positive proof of corruption in this transaction, in which I am sure you already see that corruption must exist. The charge was brought by a person in the highest trust and confidence with Mr. Hastings, a person employed in the management of the whole transaction, a person to whom the management, subordinate to Munny Begum, of all the pecuniary transactions, and all the arrangements made upon that occasion, was intrusted.

On the 11th day of March, 1775, Nundcomar gives to Mr. Francis, a member of the Council, a charge against Mr. Hastings, consisting of two parts. The first of these charges was a vast number of corrupt dealings, with respect to which he was the informer, not the witness, but to which he indicated the modes of inquiry; and they are corrupt dealings, as Mr. Hastings himself states them, amounting to millions of rupees, and in transactions every one of which implies in it the strongest degree of corruption. The next part was of those to which he was not only an informer, but a witness, in having been the person who himself transmitted the money to Mr. Hastings and the agents of Mr. Hastings; and accordingly, upon this part, which is the only part we charge, his evidence is clear and full, that he gave the money to Mr. Hastings,—he and the Begum (for I put them together). He states, that Mr. Hastings received for the appointment of Munny Begum to the rajahship two lacs of rupees, or about 22,000l., and that he received in another gross sum one lac and a half of rupees: in all making three lac and a half, or about 36,000l. This charge was signed by the man, and accompanied with the account.

Mr. Hastings, on that day, made no reflection or observation whatever upon this charge, except that he attempted to excite some suspicion that Mr. Francis, who had produced it, was concerned in the charge, and was the principal mover in it. He asks Mr. Francis that day this question:—

"The Governor-General observes, as Mr. Francis has been pleased to inform the board that he was unacquainted with the contents of the letter sent in to the board by Nundcomar, that he thinks himself justified in carrying his curiosity further than he should have permitted himself without such a previous intimation, and therefore begs leave to ask Mr. Francis whether he was before this acquainted with Nundcomar's intention of bringing such charges against him before the board.

"Mr. Francis.—As a member of this Council, I do not deem myself obliged to answer any question of mere curiosity. I am willing, however, to inform the Governor-General, that, though I was totally unacquainted with the contents of the paper I have now delivered in to the board till I heard it read, I did apprehend in general that it contained some charge against him. It was this apprehension that made me so particularly cautious in the manner of receiving the Rajah's letter. I was not acquainted with Rajah Nundcomar's intention of bringing in such charges as are mentioned in the letter.

    "WARREN HASTINGS.
    J. CLAVERING.
    GEO. MONSON.
    P. FRANCIS."

Now what the duty of Mr. Hastings and the Council was, upon receiving such information, I shall beg leave to state to your Lordships from the Company's orders; but, before I read them, I must observe, that, in pursuance of an act of Parliament, which was supposed to be made upon account of the neglect of the Company, as well as the neglects of their servants, and for which general neglects responsibility was fixed upon the Company for the future, while for the present their authority was suspended, and a Parliamentary commission sent out to regulate their affairs, the Company did, upon that occasion, send out a general code and body of instructions to be observed by their servants, in the 35th paragraph of which it is said,—

"We direct that you immediately cause the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions which may have been committed either against the natives or Europeans, and into all abuses that may have prevailed in the collection of the revenues, or any part of the civil government of the Presidency: and that you communicate to us all information which you may be able to learn relative thereto, or to any dissipation or embezzlement of the Company's money."

Your Lordships see here that there is a direct duty fixed upon them to forward, to promote, to set on foot, without exception of any persons whatever, an inquiry into all manner of corruption, peculation, and oppression. Therefore this charge of Nundcomar's was a case exactly within the Company's orders; such a charge was not sought out, but was actually laid before them; but if it had not been actually laid before them, if they had any reason to suspect that such corruptions existed, they were bound by this order to make an active inquiry into them.

Upon that day (11th March, 1775) nothing further passed; and, on the part of Mr. Hastings, that charge, as far as we can find, might have stood upon the records forever, without his making the smallest observation upon it, or taking any one step to clear his own character. But Nundcomar was not so inattentive to his duties as an accuser as Mr. Hastings was to his duties as an inquirer; for, without a moment's delay, upon the first board-day, two days after, Nundcomar came and delivered the following letter.

"I had the honor to lay before you, in a letter of the 11th instant, an abstracted, but true account of the Honorable Governor in the course of his administration. What is there written I mean not the least to alter: far from it. I have the strongest written vouchers to produce in support of what I have advanced; and I wish and entreat, for my honor's sake, that you will suffer me to appear before you, to establish the fact by an additional, incontestable evidence."

My Lords, I will venture to say, if ever there was an accuser that appeared well and with weight before any court, it was this man. He does not shrink from his charge; he offered to meet the person he charged face to face, and to make good his charge by his own evidence, and further evidence that he should produce. Your Lordships have also seen the conduct of Mr. Hastings on the first day; you have seen his acquiescence under it; you have seen the suspicion he endeavored to raise. Now, before I proceed to what Mr. Hastings thought of it, I must remark upon this accusation, that it is a specific accusation, coming from a person knowing the very transaction, and known to be concerned in it,—that it was an accusation in writing, that it was an accusation with a signature, that it was an accusation with a person to make it good, that it was made before a competent authority, and made before an authority bound to inquire into such accusation. When he comes to produce his evidence, he tells you, first, the sums of money given, the species in which they were given, the very bags in which they were put, the exchange that was made by reducing them to the standard money of the country; he names all the persons through whose hands the whole transaction went, eight in number, besides himself, Munny Begum, and Gourdas, being eleven, all referred to in this transaction. I do believe that since the beginning of the world there never was an accusation which was more deserving of inquiry, because there never was an accusation which put a false accuser in a worse situation, and that put an honest defendant in a better; for there was every means of collation, every means of comparison, every means of cross-examining, every means of control. There was every way of sifting evidence, in which evidence could be sifted. Eleven witnesses to the transaction are referred to; all the particulars of the payment, every circumstance that could give the person accused the advantage of showing the falsehood of the accusation, were specified. General accusations may be treated as calumnies; but particular accusations, like these, afford the defendant, if innocent, every possible means for making his defence: therefore the very making no defence at all would prove, beyond all doubt, a consciousness of guilt.

The next thing for your Lordships' consideration is the conduct of Mr. Hastings upon this occasion. You would imagine that he would have treated the accusation with a cold and manly disdain; that he would have challenged and defied inquiry, and desired to see his accuser face to face. This is what any man would do in such a situation. I can conceive very well that a man composed, firm, and collected in himself, conscious of not only integrity, but known integrity, conscious of a whole life beyond the reach of suspicion,—that a man placed in such a situation might oppose general character to general accusation, and stand collected in himself, poised on his own base, and defying all the calumnies in the world. But as it shows a great and is a proof of a virtuous mind to despise calumny, it is the proof of a guilty mind to despise a specific accusation, when made before a competent authority, and with competent means to prove it. As Mr. Hastings's conduct was what no man living expected, I will venture to say that no expression can do it justice but his own. Upon reading the letter, and a motion being made that Rajah Nundcomar be brought before the board to prove the charge against the Governor-General, the Governor-General enters the following minute.

"Before the question is put, I declare that I will not suffer Nundcomar to appear before the board as my accuser. I know what belongs to the dignity and character of the first member of this administration. I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the members of this board to be my judges. I am reduced on this occasion to make the declaration, that I look upon General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis as my accusers. I cannot prove this in the direct letter of the law, but in my conscience I regard them as such, and I will give my reasons for it. On their arrival at this place, and on the first formation of the Council, they thought proper to take immediate and decisive measures in contradiction and for the repeal of those which were formed by me in conjunction with the last administration. I appealed to the Court of Directors from their acts. Many subsequent letters have been transmitted both by them and by me to the Court of Directors: by me, in protestation against their conduct; by them, in justification of it. Quitting this ground, they since appear to me to have chosen other modes of attack, apparently calculated to divert my attention and to withdraw that of the public from the subject of our first differences, which regarded only the measures that were necessary for the good of the service, to attacks directly and personally levelled at me for matters which tend to draw a personal and popular odium upon me: and fit instruments they have found for their purpose,—Mr. Joseph Fowke, Mahrajah Nundcomar, Roopnarain Chowdry, and the Ranny of Burdwan.

"It appears incontestably upon the records that the charges preferred by the Ranny against me proceeded from the office of Mr. Fowke. All the papers transmitted by her came in their original form written in the English language,—some with Persian papers, of which they were supposed to be translations, but all strongly marked with the character and idiom of the English language. I applied on Saturday last for Persian originals of some of the papers sent by her, and I was refused: I am justified in declaring my firm belief that no such originals exist.

"With respect to Nundcomar's accusations, they were delivered by the hands of Mr. Francis, who has declared that he was called upon by Rajah Nundcomar, as a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this state, to lay the packet which contained them before the board,—that he conceived that he could not, consistent with his duty, refuse such a letter at the instance of a person of the Rajah's rank, and did accordingly receive it, and laid it before the board,—declaring at the same time that he was unacquainted with the contents of it. I believe that the Court of Directors, and those to whom those proceedings shall be made known, will think differently of this action of Mr. Francis: that Nundcomar was guilty of great insolence and disrespect in the demand which he made of Mr. Francis; and that it was not a duty belonging to the office of a councillor of this state to make himself the carrier of a letter, which would have been much more properly committed to the hands of a peon or hircarra, or delivered by the writer of it to the secretary himself.

"Mr. Francis has acknowledged that he apprehended in general that it contained some charge against me. If the charge was false, it was a libel. It might have been false for anything that Mr. Francis could know to the contrary, since he was unacquainted with the contents of it. In this instance, therefore, he incurred the hazard of presenting a libel to the board: this was not a duty belonging to his office as a councillor of this state. I must further inform the board that I have been long since acquainted with Nundcomar's intentions of making this attack upon me. Happily, Nundcomar, among whose talents for intrigue that of secrecy is not the first, has been ever too ready to make the first publication of his own intentions. I was shown a paper containing many accusations against me, which I was told was carried by Nundcomar to Colonel Monson, and that he himself was employed for some hours in private with Colonel Monson, explaining the nature of those charges.

"I mention only what I was told; but as the rest of the report which was made to me corresponds exactly with what has happened since, I hope I shall stand acquitted to my superiors and to the world in having given so much credit to it as to bring the circumstance upon record. I cannot recollect the precise time in which this is said to have happened, but I believe it was either before or at the time of the dispatch of the 'Bute' and 'Pacific.' The charge has since undergone some alteration; but of the copy of the paper which was delivered to me, containing the original charge, I caused a translation to be made; when, suspecting the renewal of the subject in this day's consultation, I brought it with me, and I desire it may be recorded, that, when our superiors, or the world, if the world is to be made the judge of my conduct, shall be possessed of these materials, they may, by comparing the supposed original and amended list of accusations preferred against me by Nundcomar, judge how far I am justified in the credit which I give to the reports above mentioned. I do not mean to infer from what I have said that it makes any alteration in the nature of the charges, whether they were delivered immediately from my ostensible accusers, or whether they came to the board through the channel of patronage; but it is sufficient to authorize the conviction which I feel in my own mind, that those gentlemen are parties in the accusations of which they assert the right of being the judges.

"From the first commencement of this administration, every means have been tried both to deprive me of the legal authority with which I have been trusted, and to proclaim the annihilation of it to the world; but no instance has yet appeared of this in so extraordinary a degree as in the question now before the board. The chief of the administration, your superior, Gentlemen, appointed by the legislature itself, shall I sit at this board to be arraigned in the presence of a wretch whom you all know to be one of the basest of mankind? I believe I need not mention his name; but it is Nundcomar. Shall I sit here to hear men collected from the dregs of the people give evidence, at his dictating, against my character and conduct? I will not. You may, if you please, form yourselves into a committee for the investigation of these matters in any manner which you may think proper; but I will repeat, that I will not meet Nundcomar at the board, nor suffer Nundcomar to be examined at the board; nor have you a right to it, nor can it answer any other purpose than that of vilifying and insulting me to insist upon it.

"I am sorry to have found it necessary to deliver my sentiments on a subject of so important a nature in an unpremeditated minute, drawn from me at the board, which I should have wished to have had leisure and retirement to have enabled me to express myself with that degree of caution and exactness which the subject requires. I have said nothing but what I believe and am morally certain I shall stand justified for in the eyes of my superiors and the eyes of the world; but I reserve to myself the liberty of adding my further sentiments in such a manner and form as I shall hereafter judge necessary."

My Lords, you see here the picture of Nundcomar drawn by Mr. Hastings himself; you see the hurry, the passion, the precipitation, the confusion, into which Mr. Hastings is thrown by the perplexity of detected guilt; you see, my Lords, that, instead of defending himself, he rails at his accuser in the most indecent language, calling him a wretch whom they all knew to be the basest of mankind,—that he rails at the Council, by attributing their conduct to the worst of motives,—that he rails at everybody, and declares the accusation to be a libel: in short, you see plainly that the man's head is turned. You see there is not a word he says upon this occasion which has common sense in it; you see one great leading principle in it,—that he does not once attempt to deny the charge. He attempts to vilify the witness, he attempts to vilify those he supposes to be his accusers, he attempts to vilify the Council; he lags upon the accusation, he mixes it with other accusations, which had nothing to do with it, and out of the whole he collects a resolution—to do what? To meet his adversary and defy him? No,—that he will not suffer him to appear before him: he says, "I will not sit at this board in the character of a criminal, nor do I acknowledge the board to be my judges."

He was not called upon to acknowledge them to be his judges. Both he and they were called upon to inquire into all corruptions without exception. It was his duty not merely [not?] to traverse and oppose them while inquiring into acts of corruption, but he was bound to take an active part in it,—that if they had a mind to let such a thing sleep upon their records, it was his duty to have brought forward the inquiry. They were not his judges, they were not his accusers; they were his fellow-laborers in the inquiry ordered by the Court of Directors, their masters, and by which inquiry he might be purged of that corruption with which he stood charged.

He says, "Nundcomar is a wretch whom you all know to be the basest of mankind." I believe they did not know the man to be a wretch, or the basest of mankind; but if he was a wretch, and if he was the basest of mankind, if he was guilty of all the crimes with which we charge Mr. Hastings, (not one of which was ever proved against him,)—if any of your Lordships were to have the misfortune to be before this tribunal, before any inquest of the House of Commons, or any other inquest of this nation, would you not say that it was the greatest possible advantage to you that the man who accused you was a miscreant, the vilest and basest of mankind, by the confession of all the world? Do mankind really, then, think that to be accused by men of honor, of weight, of character, upon probable charges, is an advantage to them, and that to be accused by the basest of mankind is a disadvantage? No: give me, if ever I am to have accusers, miscreants, as he calls him,—wretches, the basest and vilest of mankind. "The board," says he, "are my accusers." If they were, it was their duty; but they were not his accusers, but were inquiring into matters which it was equally his duty to inquire into. He would not suffer Nundcomar to be produced; he would not suffer Nundcomar to be examined; he rather suffered such an accusation to stand against his name and character than permit it to be inquired into. Do I want any other presumption of his guilt, upon such an occasion, than such conduct as this?

This man, whom he calls a wretch, the basest and vilest of mankind, was undoubtedly, by himself, in the records of the Company, declared to be one of the first men of that country, everything that a subject could be, a person illustrious for his birth, sacred with regard to his caste, opulent in fortune, eminent in situation, who had filled the very first offices in that country; and that he was, added to all this, a man of most acknowledged talents, and of such a superiority as made the whole people of Bengal appear to be an inferior race of beings compared to him,—a man whose outward appearance and demeanor used to cause reverence and awe, and who at that time was near seventy years of age, which, without any other title, generally demands respect from mankind. And yet this man he calls the basest of mankind, a name which no man is entitled to call another till he has proved something to justify him in so doing; and notwithstanding his opulence, his high rank, station, and birth, he despises him, and will not suffer him to be heard as an accuser before him. I will venture to say that Mr. Hastings, in so doing, whether elevated by philosophy or inflated by pride, is not like the rest of mankind. We do know, that, in all accusations, a great part of their weight and authority comes from the character, the situation, the name, the description, the office, the dignity of the persons who bring them; mankind are so made, we cannot resist this prejudice; and it has weight, and ever will have primâ facie weight, in all the tribunals in the world. If, therefore, Rajah Nundcomar was a man who (it is not degrading to your Lordships to say) was equal in rank, according to the idea of his country, to any peer in this House, as sacred as a bishop, of as much gravity and authority as a judge, and who was prime-minister in the country in which he lived, with what face can Mr. Hastings call this man a wretch, and say that he will not suffer him to be brought before him? If, indeed, joined with such circumstances, the accuser be a person of bad morals, then, I admit, those bad morals take away from their weight; but for a proof of that you must have some other grounds than the charges and the railing of the culprit against him.