ELEVENTH REPORT
From the SELECT COMMITTEE appointed to take into consideration the state of the administration of justice in the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, and to report the same, as it shall appear to them, to the House, with their observations thereupon; and who were instructed to consider how the British possessions in the East Indies may be held and governed with the greatest security and advantage to this country, and by what means the happiness of the native inhabitants may be best protected.
Your Committee, in the course of their inquiry into the obedience yielded by the Company's Servants to the orders of the Court of Directors, (the authority of which orders had been strengthened by the Regulating Act of 1773,) could not overlook one of the most essential objects of that act and of those orders, namely, the taking of gifts and presents. These pretended free gifts from the natives to the Company's servants in power had never been authorized by law; they are contrary to the covenants formerly entered into by the President and Council, they are strictly forbidden by the act of Parliament, and forbidden upon grounds of the most substantial policy.
Before the Regulating Act of 1773, the allowances made by the Company to the Presidents of Bengal were abundantly sufficient to guaranty them against anything like a necessity for giving into that pernicious practice. The act of Parliament which appointed a Governor-General in the place of a President, as it was extremely particular in enforcing the prohibition of those presents, so it was equally careful in making an ample provision for supporting the dignity of the office, in order to remove all excuse for a corrupt increase of its emoluments.
Although evidence on record, as well as verbal testimony, has appeared before your Committee of presents to a large amount having been received by Mr. Hastings and others before the year 1775, they were not able to find distinct traces of that practice in him or any one else for a few years.
The inquiries set on foot in Bengal, by order of the Court of Directors, in 1775, with regard to all corrupt practices, and the vigor with which they were for some time pursued, might have given a temporary check to the receipt of presents, or might have produced a more effectual concealment of them, and afterwards the calamities which befell almost all who were concerned in the first discoveries did probably prevent any further complaint upon the subject; but towards the close of the last session your Committee have received much of new and alarming information concerning that abuse.
The first traces appeared, though faintly and obscurely, in a letter to the Court of Directors from the Governor-General, Mr. Hastings, written on the 29th of November, 1780.[14] It has been stated in a former Report of your Committee,[15] that on the 26th of June, 1780, Mr. Hastings being very earnest in the prosecution of a particular operation in the Mahratta war, in order to remove objections to that measure, which were made on account of the expense of the contingencies, he offered to exonerate the Company from that "charge." Continuing his Minute of Council, he says, "That sum" (a sum of about 23,000l.) "I have already deposited, within a small amount, in the hands of the sub-treasurer; and I beg that the board will permit it to be accepted for that service." Here he offers in his own person; he deposits, or pretends that he deposits, in his own person; and, with the zeal of a man eager to pledge his private fortune in support of his measures, he prays that his offer may be accepted. Not the least hint that he was delivering back to the Company money of their own, which he had secreted from them. Indeed, no man ever made it a request, much less earnestly entreated, "begged to be permitted," to pay to any persons, public or private, money that was their own.
It appeared to your Committee that the money offered for that service, which was to forward the operations of a detachment under Colonel Camac in an expedition against one of the Mahratta chiefs, was not accepted. And your Committee, having directed search to be made for any sums of money paid into the Treasury by Mr. Hastings for this service, found, that, notwithstanding his assertion of having deposited "two lacs of rupees, or within a trifle of that sum, in the hands of the sub-treasurer," no entry whatsoever of that or any other payment by the Governor-General was made in the Treasury accounts at or about that time.[16] This circumstance appeared very striking to your Committee, as the non-appearance in the Company's books of the article in question must be owing to one or other of these four causes:—That the assertion of Mr. Hastings, of his having paid in near two lacs of rupees at that time, was not true; or that the sub-treasurer may receive great sums in deposit without entering them in the Company's Treasury accounts; or that the Treasury books themselves are records not to be depended on; or, lastly, that faithful copies of these books of accounts are not transmitted to Europe. The defect of an entry corresponding with Mr. Hastings's declaration in Council can be attributed only to one of these four causes,—of which the want of foundation in his recorded assertion, though very blamable, is the least alarming.
On the 29th of November following, Mr. Hastings communicated to the Court of Directors some sort of notice of this transaction.[17] In his letter of that date he varies in no small degree the aspect under which the business appeared in his Minute of Consultation of the 26th of June. In his letter he says to the Directors, "The subject is now become obsolete; the fair hopes which I had built upon the prosecution of the Mahratta war have been blasted by the dreadful calamities which have befallen your Presidency of Fort St. George, and changed the object of our pursuit from the aggrandizement of your power to its preservation." After thus confessing, or rather boasting, of his motives to the Mahratta war, he proceeds: "My present reason for reverting to my own conduct on the occasion which I have mentioned" (namely, his offering a sum of money for the Company's service) "is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into my possession, was not my own, that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it but for the occasion which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."
The apology is brief indeed, considering the nature of the transaction; and what is more material than its length or its shortness, it is in all points unsatisfactory. The matter becomes, if possible, more obscure by his explanation. Here was money received by Mr. Hastings, which, according to his own judgment, he had no right to receive; it was money which, "but for the occasion that prompted him, he could not have accepted"; it was money which came into his, and from his into the Company's hands, by ways and means undescribed, and from persons unnamed: yet, though apprehensive of false conclusions and purposed misrepresentations, he gives his employers no insight whatsoever into a matter which of all others stood in the greatest need of a full and clear elucidation.
Although he chooses to omit this essential point, he expresses the most anxious solicitude to clear himself of the charges that might be made against him, of the artifices of ostentation, and of corrupt influence. To discover, if possible, the ground for apprehending such imputations, your Committee adverted to the circumstances in which he stood at the time: they found that this letter was dispatched about the time that Mr. Francis took his passage for England; his fear of misrepresentation may therefore allude to something which passed in conversation between him and that gentleman at the time the offer was made.
It was not easy, on the mere face of his offer, to give an ill turn to it. The act, as it stands on the Minute, is not only disinterested, but generous and public-spirited. If Mr. Hastings apprehended misrepresentation from Mr. Francis, or from any other person, your Committee conceive that he did not employ proper means for defeating the ill designs of his adversaries. On the contrary, the course he has taken in his letter to the Court of Directors is calculated to excite doubts and suspicions in minds the most favorably disposed to him. Some degree of ostentation is not extremely blamable at a time when a man advances largely from his private fortune towards the public service. It is human infirmity at the worst, and only detracts something from the lustre of an action in itself meritorious. The kind of ostentation which is criminal, and criminal only because it is fraudulent, is where a person makes a show of giving when in reality he does not give. This imposition is criminal more or less according to the circumstances. But if the money received to furnish such a pretended gift is taken from any third person without right to take it, a new guilt, and guilt of a much worse quality and description, is incurred. The Governor-General, in order to keep clear of ostentation, on the 29th of November, 1780, declares, that the sum of money which he offered on the 26th of the preceding June as his own was not his own, and that he had no right to it. Clearing himself of vanity, he convicts himself of deceit, and of injustice.
The other object of this brief apology was to clear himself of corrupt influence. Of all ostentation he stands completely acquitted in the month of November, however he might have been faulty in that respect in the month of June; but with regard to the other part of the apprehended charge, namely, corrupt influence, he gives no satisfactory solution. A great sum of money "not his own,"—money to which "he had no right,"—money which came into his possession "by whatever means":—if this be not money obtained by corrupt influence, or by something worse, that is, by violence or terror, it will be difficult to fix upon circumstances which can furnish a presumption of unjustifiable use of power and influence in the acquisition of profit. The last part of the apology, that he had converted this money ("which he had no right to receive") to the Company's use, so far as your Committee can discover, does nowhere appear. He speaks, in the Minute of the 26th of June, as having then actually deposited it for the Company's service; in the letter of November he says that he converted it to the Company's property: but there is no trace in the Company's books of its being ever brought to their credit in the expenditure for any specific service, even if any such entry and expenditure could justify him in taking money which he had by his own confession, "no right to receive."
The Directors appear to have been deceived by this representation, and in their letter of January, 1782,[18] consider the money as actually paid into their Treasury. Even under their error concerning the application of the money, they appear rather alarmed than satisfied with the brief apology of the Governor-General. They consider the whole proceeding as extraordinary and mysterious. They, however, do not condemn it with any remarkable asperity; after admitting that he might be induced to a temporary secrecy respecting the members of the board, from a fear of their resisting the proposed application, or any application of this money to the Company's use, yet they write to the Governor-General and Council as follows:—"It does not appear to us that there could be any real necessity for delaying to communicate to us immediate information of the channel by which the money came into Mr. Hastings's possession, with a complete illustration of the cause or causes of so extraordinary an event." And again: "The means proposed of defraying the extra expenses are very extraordinary; and the money, we conceive, must have come into his hands by an unusual channel; and when more complete information comes before us, we shall give our sentiments fully on the transaction." And speaking of this and other moneys under a similar description, they say, "We shall suspend our judgment, without approving it in the least degree, or proceeding to censure our Governor-General for this transaction." The expectations entertained by the Directors of a more complete explanation were natural, and their expression tender and temperate. But the more complete information which they naturally expected they never have to this day received.
Mr. Hastings wrote two more letters to the Secret Committee of the Court of Directors, in which he mentions this transaction: the first dated (as he asserts, and a Mr. Larkins swears) on the 22d of May, 1782;[19] the last, which accompanied it, so late as the 16th of December in the same year.[20] Though so long an interval lay between the transaction of the 26th of June, 1780, and the middle of December, 1782, (upwards of two years,) no further satisfaction is given. He has written, since the receipt of the above letter of the Court of Directors, (which demanded, what they had a right to demand, a clear explanation of the particulars of this sum of money which he had no right to receive,) without giving them any further satisfaction. Instead of explanation or apology, he assumes a tone of complaint and reproach, to the Directors: he lays before them a kind of an account of presents received, to the amount of upwards of 200,000l.,—some at a considerable distance of time, and which had not been hitherto communicated to the Company.
In the letter which accompanied that very extraordinary account, which then for the first time appeared, he discovers no small solicitude to clear himself from the imputation of having these discoveries drawn from him by the terrors of the Parliamentary inquiries then on foot. To remove all suspicion of such a motive for making these discoveries, Mr. Larkins swears, in an affidavit made before Mr. Justice Hyde, bearing even date with the letter which accompanies the account, that is, of the 16th of December, 1782, that this letter had been written by him on the 22d of May, several months before it was dispatched.[21] It appears that Mr. Larkins, who makes this voluntary affidavit, is neither secretary to the board, nor Mr. Hastings's private secretary, but an officer of the Treasury of Bengal.
Mr. Hastings was conscious that a question would inevitably arise, how he came to delay the sending intelligence of so very interesting a nature from May to December. He therefore thinks it necessary to account for so suspicious a circumstance. He tells the Directors, "that the dispatch of the 'Lively' having been protracted from time to time, the accompanying address, which was originally designed and prepared for that dispatch, and no other since occurring, has of course been thus long delayed."
The Governor-General's letter is dated the 22d May, and the "Resolution" was the last ship of the season dispatched for Europe. The public letters to the Directors are dated the 9th May; but it appears by the letter of the commander of the ship that he did not receive his dispatches from Mr. Lloyd, then at Kedgeree, until the 26th May, and also that the pilot was not discharged from the ship until the 11th June. Some of these presents (now for the first time acknowledged) had been received eighteen months preceding the date of this letter,—none less than four months; so that, in fact, he might have sent this account by all the ships of that season; but the Governor-General chose to write this letter thirteen days after the determination in Council for the dispatch of the last ship.
It does not appear that he has given any communication whatsoever to his colleagues in office of those extraordinary transactions. Nothing appears on the records of the Council of the receipt of the presents; nor is the transmission of this account mentioned in the general letter to the Court of Directors, but in a letter from himself to their Secret Committee, consisting generally of two persons, but at most of three. It is to be observed that the Governor-General states, "that the dispatch of the 'Lively' had been protracted from time to time; that this delay was of no public consequence; but that it produced a situation which with respect to himself he regarded as unfortunate, because it exposed him to the meanest imputations, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished, but which were unknown when his letter was written." If the Governor-General thought his silence exposed him to the meanest imputations, he had the means in his own power of avoiding those imputations: he might have sent this letter, dated the 22d May, by the Resolution. For we find, that, in a letter from Captain Poynting, of the 26th May, he states it not possible for him to proceed to sea with the smallest degree of safety without a supply of anchors and cables, and most earnestly requests they may be supplied from Calcutta; and on the 28th May we find a minute from the Secretary of the Council, Mr. Auriol, requesting an order of Council to the master-attendant to furnish a sloop to carry down those cables; which order was accordingly issued on the 30th May. There requires no other proof to show that the Governor-General had the means of sending this letter seven days after he wrote it, instead of delaying it for near seven months, and because no conveyance had offered. Your Committee must also remark, that the conveyance by land to Madras was certain; and whilst such important operations were carrying on, both by sea and land, upon the coast, that dispatches would be sent to the Admiralty or to the Company was highly probable.
If the letter of the 22d May had been found in the list of packets sent by the Resolution, the Governor General would have established in a satisfactory manner, and far beyond the effect of any affidavit, that the letter had been written at the time of the date. It appears that the Resolution, being on her voyage to England, met with so severe a gale of wind as to be obliged to put back to Bengal, and to unload her cargo. This event makes no difference in the state of the transaction. Whatever the cause of these new discoveries might have been, at the time of sending them the fact of the Parliamentary inquiry was publicly known.
In the letter of the above date Mr. Hastings laments the mortification of being reduced to take precautions "to guard his reputation from dishonor."—"If I had," says he, "at any time possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which they have never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use these attentions."
Who the meanest of Mr. Hastings's predecessors were does not appear to your Committee; nor are they able to discern the ground of propriety or decency for his assuming to himself a right to call any of them mean persons. But if such mean persons have possessed that degree of confidence from his immediate employers which for so many years he had not possessed "at any time," inferences must be drawn from thence very unfavorable to one or the other of the parties, or perhaps to both. The attentions which he practises and disdains can in this case be of no service to himself, his employers, or the public; the only attention at all effectual towards extenuating, or in some degree atoning for, the guilt of having taken money from individuals illegally was to be full and fair in his confession of all the particulars of his offence. This might not obtain that confidence which at no time he has enjoyed, but still the Company and the nation might derive essential benefit from it; the Directors might be able to afford redress to the sufferers; and by his laying open the concealed channels of abuse, means might be furnished for the better discovery, and possibly for the prevention, or at least for the restraint, of a practice of the most dangerous nature,—a practice of which the mere prohibition, without the means of detection, must ever prove, as hitherto it had proved, altogether frivolous.
Your Committee, considering that so long a time had elapsed without any of that information which the Directors expected, and perceiving that this receipt of sums of money under color of gift seemed a growing evil, ordered the attendance of Mr. Hastings's agent, Major Scott. They had found, on former occasions, that this gentleman was furnished with much more early and more complete intelligence of the Company's affairs in India than was thought proper for the Court of Directors; they therefore examined him concerning every particular sum of money the receipt of which Mr. Hastings had confessed in his account. It was to their surprise that Mr. Scott professed himself perfectly uninstructed upon almost every part of the subject, though the express object of his mission to England was to clear up such matters as might be objected to Mr. Hastings; and for that purpose he had early qualified himself by the production to your Committee of his powers of agency. The ignorance in which Mr. Hastings had left his agent was the more striking, because he must have been morally certain, that, if his conduct in these points should have escaped animadversion from the Court of Directors, it must become an object of Parliamentary inquiry; for, in his letter of the 15th [16th?] of December, 1782, to the Court of Directors, he expressly mentions his fears that those Parliamentary inquiries might be thought to have extorted from him the confessions which he had made.
Your Committee, however, entering on a more strict examination concerning the two lacs of rupees, which Mr. Hastings declares he had no right to take, but had taken from some person then unknown, Major Scott recollected that Mr. Hastings had, in a letter of the 7th of December, 1782, (in which he refers to some former letter,) acquainted him with the name of the person from whom he had received these two lacs of rupees, mentioned in the minute of June, 1780. It turned out to be the Rajah of Benares, the unfortunate Cheyt Sing.
In the single instance in which Mr. Scott seemed to possess intelligence in this matter, he is preferred to the Court of Directors. Under their censure as Mr. Hastings was, and as he felt himself to be, for not informing them of the channel in which he received that money, he perseveres obstinately and contemptuously to conceal it from them; though he thought fit to intrust his agent with the secret.
Your Committee were extremely struck with this intelligence. They were totally unacquainted with it, when they presented to the House the Supplement to their Second Report, on the affairs of Cheyt Sing. A gift received by Mr. Hastings from the Rajah of Benares gave rise in their minds to serious reflections on the condition of the princes of India subjected to the British authority. Mr. Hastings was, at the very time of his receiving this gift, in the course of making on the Rajah of Benares a series of demands, unfounded and unjustifiable, and constantly growing in proportion as they were submitted to. To these demands the Rajah of Benares, besides his objections in point of right, constantly sat up a plea of poverty. Presents from persons who hold up poverty as a shield against extortion can scarcely in any case be considered as gratuitous, whether the plea of poverty be true or false. In this case the presents might have been bestowed; if not with an assurance, at least with a rational hope, of some mitigation in the oppressive requisitions that were made by Mr. Hastings; for to give much voluntarily, when it is known that much will be taken away forcibly, is a thing absurd and impossible. On the other [one?] hand, the acceptance of that gift by Mr. Hastings must have pledged a tacit faith for some degree of indulgence towards the donor: if it was a free gift, gratitude, if it was a bargain, justice obliged him to do it. If, on the other hand, Mr. Hastings originally destined (as he says he did) this money, given to himself secretly and for his private emolument, to the use of the Company, the Company's favor, to whom he acted as trustee, ought to have been purchased by it. In honor and justice he bound and pledged himself for that power which was to profit by the gift, and to profit, too, in the success of an expedition which Mr. Hastings thought so necessary to their aggrandizement. The unhappy man found his money accepted, but no favor acquired on the part either of the Company or of Mr. Hastings.
Your Committee have, in another Report, stated to the House that Mr. Hastings attributed the extremity of distress which the detachments under Colonel Camac had suffered, and the great desertions which ensued on that expedition, to the want of punctuality of the Rajah in making payment of one of the sums which had been extorted from him; and this want of punctual payment was afterwards assigned as a principal reason for the ruin of this prince. Your Committee have shown to the House, by a comparison of facts and dates, that this charge is wholly without foundation. But if the cause of Colonel Camac's failure had been true as to the sum which was the object of the public demand, the failure could not be attributed to the Rajah, when he had on the instant privately furnished at least 23,000l. to Mr. Hastings,—that is, furnished the identical money which he tells us (but carefully concealing the name of the giver) he had from the beginning destined, as he afterwards publicly offered, for this very expedition of Colonel Camac's. The complication of fraud and cruelty in the transaction admits of few parallels. Mr. Hastings at the Council Board of Bengal displays himself as a zealous servant of the Company, bountifully giving from his own fortune, and in his letter to the Directors (as he says himself) as going out of the ordinary roads for their advantage;[22] and all this on the credit of supplies derived from the gift of a man whom he treats with the utmost severity, and whom he accuses, in this particular, of disaffection to the Company's cause and interests.
With 23,000l. of the Rajah's money in his pocket, he persecutes him to his destruction,—assigning for a reason, that his reliance on the Rajah's faith, and his breach of it, were the principal causes that no other provision was made for the detachment on the specific expedition to which the Rajah's specific money was to be applied. The Rajah had given it to be disposed of by Mr. Hastings; and if it was not disposed of in the best manner for the accomplishing his objects, the accuser himself is the criminal.
To take money for the forbearance of a just demand would have been corrupt only; but to urge unjust public demands,—to accept private pecuniary favors in the course of those demands,—and, on the pretence of delay or refusal, without mercy to persecute a benefactor,—to refuse to hear his remonstrances,—to arrest him in his capital, in his palace, in the face of all the people,—thus to give occasion to an insurrection, and, on pretext of that insurrection, to refuse all treaty or explanation,—to drive him from his government and his country,—to proscribe him in a general amnesty,—and to send him all over India a fugitive, to publish the shame of British government in all the nations to whom he successively fled for refuge,—these are proceedings to which, for the honor of human nature, it is hoped few parallels are to be found in history, and in which the illegality and corruption of the acts form the smallest part of the mischief.
Such is the account of the first sum confessed to be taken as a present by Mr. Hastings, since the year 1775; and such are its consequences. Mr. Hastings apologizes for this action by declaring "that he would not have received the money but for the occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded him of accepting and converting it to the use of the Company."[23] By this account, he considers the act as excusable only by the particular occasion, by the temptation of accidental means, and by the suggestion of the instant. How far this is the case appears by the very next paragraph of this letter in which the account is given and in which the apology is made. If these were his sentiments in June, 1780, they lasted but a very short time: his accidental means appear to be growing habitual.
To point out in a clear manner the spirit of the second money transaction to which your Committee adverted, which is represented by Mr. Hastings as having some "affinity with the former anecdote,"[24] (for in this light kind of phrase he chooses to express himself to his masters,) your Committee think it necessary to state to the House, that the business, namely, this business, which was the second object of their inquiry, appears in three different papers and in three different lights: on comparing of these authorities, in every one of which Mr. Hastings is himself the voucher, if one of the three be true, the other two must necessarily be false.
These three authorities, which your Committee has accurately compared, are, first, his minutes on the Consultations;[25] secondly, his letter to the Court of Directors on the 29th of November, 1780;[26] thirdly, his account, transmitted on the 16th of December, 1782.[27]
About eight months after the first transaction relative to Cheyt Sing, and which is just reported, that is, on the 5th of January, 1781, Mr. Hastings produced a demand to the Council for money of his own expended for the Company's service.[28] Here was no occasion for secrecy. Mr. Francis was on his passage to Europe; Mr. Wheler was alone left, who no longer dissented from anything; Mr. Hastings was in effect himself the whole Council. He declared that he had disbursed three lacs of rupees, that is, thirty-four thousand five hundred pounds, in secret services,—which having, he says, "been advanced from my own private cash, I request that the same may be repaid to me in the following manner." He accordingly desires three bonds, for a lac of Sicca rupees each, to be given to him in two of the Company's subscriptions,—one to bear interest on the eight per cent loan, the other two in the four per cent: the bonds were antedated to the beginning of the preceding October. On the 9th of the same month, that is, on the 9th of January, 1781, the three bonds were accordingly ordered.[29] So far the whole transaction appears clear, and of a piece. Private money is subscribed, and a public security is taken for it. When the Company's Treasury accounts[30] are compared with the proceedings of their Council-General, a perfect correspondence also appears. The three bonds are then [there?] entered to Mr. Hastings, and he is credited for principal and interest on them, in the exact terms of the order. So far the official accounts,—which, because of their perfect harmony, are considered as clear and consistent evidence to one body of fact.
The second sort of document relative to these bonds (though the first in order of time) is Mr. Hastings's letter of the 29th of November, 1780.[31] It is written between the time of the expenditure of the money for the Company's use and the taking of the bonds. Here, for the first time, a very material difference appears; and the difference is the more striking, because Mr. Hastings claimed the whole money as his own, and took bonds for it as such, after this representation. The letter to the Company discovers that part of the money (the whole of which he had declared on record to be his own, and for which he had taken bonds) was not his, but the property of his masters, from whom he had taken the security. It is no less remarkable that the letter which represents the money as belonging to the Company was written about six weeks before the Minute of Council in which he claims that money as his own. It is this letter on which your Committee is to remark.
Mr. Hastings, after giving his reasons for the application of the three lacs of rupees, and for his having for some time concealed the fact, says, "Two thirds of that sum I have raised by my own credit, and shall charge it in my official account; the other third I have supplied from the cash in my hands belonging to the Honorable Company."[32]
The House will observe, that in November he tells the Directors that he shall charge only two thirds in his official accounts; in the following January he charges the whole.[33] For the other third, although he admitted that to belong to the Company, we have seen that he takes a bond to himself.
It is material that he tells the Company in his letter that these two lacs of rupees were raised on his credit. His letter to the Council says that they were advanced from his private cash. What he raises on his credit may, on a fair construction, be considered as his own: but in this, too, he fails; for it is certain he has never transferred these bonds to any creditor; nor has he stated any sum he has paid, or for which he stands indebted, on that account, to any specific person. Indeed, it was out of his power; for the first two thirds of the money, which he formerly stated as raised upon his credit, he now confesses to have been from the beginning the Company's property, and therefore could not have been raised on his private credit, or borrowed from any person whatsoever.
To these two accounts, thus essentially varying, he has added a third,[34] varying at least as essentially from both. In his last or third account, which is a statement of all the sums he has received in an extraordinary manner, and confessed to be the Company's property, he reverses the items of his first account, and, instead of allowing the Company but one third and claiming two thirds for himself, he enters two of the bonds, each for a lac of rupees, as belonging to the Company: of the third bond, which appears so distinctly in the Consultations and in the Treasury accounts, not one word is said; ten thousand pounds is absorbed, sinks, and disappears at once, and no explanation whatsoever concerning it is given; Mr. Hastings seems not yet to have decided to whose account it ought to be placed. In this manner his debt to the Company, or the Company's to him, is just what he thinks fit. In a single article he has varied three times. In one account he states the whole to be his own; in another he claims two thirds; in the last he gives up the claim of the two thirds, and says nothing to the remaining portion.
To make amends, however, for the suppression of this third bond, given with the two others in January, 1781, and antedated to the beginning of October, Mr. Hastings, in the above-mentioned general account subjoined to his letter of the 22d May, 1782, has brought to the Company's credit a new bond.[35]
This bond is for 17,000l. It was taken from the Company (and so it appears on their Treasury accounts) on the 23d of November, 1780. He took no notice of this, when, in January following, he called upon his own Council for the three others. What is more extraordinary, he was equally silent with regard to it, when, only six days after its date, he wrote concerning the subject of the three other bonds to the Court of Directors; yet now it comes out, that that bond also was taken by Mr. Hastings from the Company for money which he declares he had received on the Company's account, and that he entered himself as creditor when he ought to have made himself debtor.
Your Committee examined Major Scott concerning this money, which Mr. Hastings must have obtained in some clandestine and irregular mode; but they could obtain no information of the persons from whom it was taken, nor of the occasion or pretence of taking this large sum; nor does any Minute of Council appear for its application to any service. The whole of the transaction, whatever it was, relative to this bond, is covered with the thickest obscurity.
Mr. Hastings, to palliate the blame of his conduct, declares that he has not received any interest on these bonds,—and that he has indorsed them as not belonging to himself, but to the Company.[36] As to the first part of this allegation, whether he received the interest or let it remain in arrear is a matter of indifference, as he entitled himself to it; and so far as the legal security he has taken goes, he may, whenever he pleases, dispose both of principal and interest. What he has indorsed on the bonds, or when he made the indorsement, or whether in fact he has made it at all, are matters known only to himself; for the bonds must be in his possession, and are nowhere by him stated to be given up or cancelled,—which is a thing very remarkable, when he confesses that he had no right to receive them.
These bonds make but a part of the account of private receipts of money by Mr. Hastings, formerly paid into the Treasury as his own property, and now allowed not to be so. This account brings into view other very remarkable matters of a similar nature and description.[37]
In the public records, a sum of not less than 23,871l. is set to his credit as a deposit for his private account, paid in by him into the Treasury in gold, and coined at the Company's mint.[38] This appears in the account furnished to the Directors, under the date of May, 1782, not to be lawfully his money, and he therefore transfers it to the Company's credit: it still remains as a deposit.[39]
That the House may be apprised of the nature of this article of deposit, it may not be improper to state that the Company receive into their treasury the cash of private persons, placed there as in a bank. On this no interest is paid, and the party depositing has a right to receive it upon demand. Under this head of account no public money is ever entered. Mr. Hastings, neither at making the deposit as his own, nor at the time of his disclosure of the real proprietor, (which he makes to be the Company,) has given any information of the persons from whom this money had been received. Mr. Scott was applied to by your Committee, but could not give any more satisfaction in this particular than in those relative to the bonds.
The title of the account of the 22d of May purports not only that those sums were paid into the Company's treasury by Mr. Hastings's order, but that they were applied to the Company's service. No service is specified, directly or by any reference, to which this great sum of money has been applied.
Two extraordinary articles follow this, in the May account, amounting to about 29,000l.[40] These articles are called Receipts for Durbar Charges. The general head of Durbar Charges, made by persons in office, when analyzed into the particulars, contains various expenses, including bounties and presents made by government, chiefly in the foreign department. But in the last account he confesses that this sum also is not his, but the Company's property; but as in all the rest, so in this, he carefully conceals the means by which he acquired the money, the time of his taking it, and the persons from whom it was taken. This is the more extraordinary, because, in looking over the journals and ledgers of the Treasury, the presents received and carried to the account of the Company (which were generally small and complimental) were precisely entered, with the name of the giver.
Your Committee, on turning to the account of Durbar charges in the ledger of that month, find the sum, as stated in the account of May 22d, to be indeed paid in; but there is no specific application whatsoever entered.
The account of the whole money thus clandestinely received, as stated on the 22d of May, 1782, (and for a great part of which Mr. Hastings to that time took credit for, and for the rest has accounted in an extraordinary manner as his own,) amounts in the whole to upwards of ninety-three thousand pounds sterling: a vast sum to be so obtained, and so loosely accounted for! If the money taken from the Rajah of Benares be added, (as it ought,) it will raise the sum to upwards of 116,000l.; if the 11,600l. bond in October be added, it will be upwards of 128,000l. received in a secret manner by Mr. Hastings in about one year and five months. To all these he adds another sum of one hundred thousand pounds, received as a present from the Subah of Oude. Total, upwards of 228,000l.
Your Committee find that this last is the only sum the giver of which Mr. Hastings has thought proper to declare. It is to be observed, that he did not receive this 100,000l. in money, but in bills on a great native money-dealer resident at Benares, and who has also an house at Calcutta: he is called Gopâl Dâs. The negotiation of these bills tended to make a discovery not so difficult as it would have been in other cases.
With regard to the application of this last sum of money, which is said to be carried to the Durbar charges of April, 1782, your Committee are not enabled to make any observations on it, as the account of that period has not yet arrived.
Your Committee have, in another Report, remarked fully upon most of the circumstances of this extraordinary transaction. Here they only bring so much of these circumstances again into view as may serve to throw light upon the true nature of the sums of money taken by British subjects in power, under the name of presents, and to show how far they are entitled to that description in any sense which can fairly imply in the pretended donors either willingness or ability to give. The condition of the bountiful parties who are not yet discovered may be conjectured from the state of those who have been made known: as far as that state anywhere appears, their generosity is found in proportion, not to the opulence they possess or to the favors they receive, but to the indigence they feel and the insults they are exposed to. The House will particularly attend to the situation of the principal giver, the Subah of Oude.
"When the knife," says he, "had penetrated to the bone, and I was surrounded with such heavy distresses that I could no longer live in expectations, I wrote you an account of my difficulties.
"The answer which I have received to it is such that it has given me inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had the least idea or expectation from you and the Council that you would ever have given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never before wrote, and which I could not have imagined. As I am resolved to obey your orders, and directions of the Council, without any delay, as long as I live, I have, agreeably to those orders, delivered up all my private papers to him [the Resident], that, when he shall have examined my receipts and expenses, he may take whatever remains. As I know it to be my duty to satisfy you, the Company, and Council, I have not failed to obey in any instance, but requested of him that it might be done so as not to distress me in my necessary expenses: there being no other funds but those for the expenses of my mutseddies, household expenses, and servants, &c. He demanded these in such a manner, that, being remediless, I was obliged to comply with what he required. He has accordingly stopped the pensions of my old servants for thirty years, whether sepoys, mutseddies, or household servants, and the expenses of my family and kitchen, together with the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and aunts, and of my brothers and dependants, which were for their support. I had raised thirteen hundred horse and three battalions of sepoys to attend upon me; but as I have no resources to support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed in the mahals [districts] and to send his people [the Resident's people] into the mahals, so that I have not now one single servant about me. Should I mention to what further difficulties I have been reduced, it would lay me open to contempt."
In other parts of this long remonstrance, as well as in other remonstrances no less serious, he says, "that it is difficult for him to save himself alive; that in all his affairs Mr. Hastings had given full powers to the gentlemen here," (meaning the English Resident and Assistants,) "who have done whatever they chose, and still continue to do it. I never expected that you would have brought me into such apprehension, and into so weak a state, without writing to me on any one of those subjects; since I have not the smallest connection with anybody except yourself. I am in such distress, both day and night, that I see not the smallest prospect of deliverance from it, since you are so displeased with me as not to honor me with a single letter."
In another remonstrance he thus expresses himself. "The affairs of this world are unstable, and soon pass away: it would therefore be incumbent on the English gentlemen to show some friendship for me in my necessities,—I, who have always exerted my very life in the service of the English, assigned over to them all the resources left in my country, stopped my very household expenses, together with the jaghires of my servants and dependants, to the amount of 98,98,375 rupees. Besides this, as to the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and uncle, which were granted to them for their support, agreeable to engagements, you are the masters,—if the Council have sent orders for the stopping their jaghires also, stop them. I have no resources left in my country, and have no friends by me, being even distressed in my daily subsistence. I have some elephants, horses, and the houses which I inhabit: if they can be of any service to my friends, they are ready. Whenever you can discover any resources, seize upon them: I shall not interfere to prevent you. In my present distress for my daily expenses, I was in hopes that they would have excused some part of my debt. Of what use is it for me to relate my situation, which is known to the whole world? This much is sufficient."
The truth of all these representations is nowhere contested by Mr. Hastings. It is, indeed, admitted in something stronger than words; for, upon account of the Nabob's condition, and the no less distressed condition of his dominions, he thought it fit to withdraw from him and them a large body of the Company's troops, together with all the English of a civil description, who were found no less burdensome than the military. This was done on the declared inability of the country any longer to support them,—a country not much inferior to England in extent and fertility, and, till lately at least, its equal in population and culture.
It was to a prince, in a state so far remote from freedom, authority, and opulence, so penetrated with the treatment he had received, and the behavior he had met with from Mr. Hastings, that Mr. Hastings has chosen to attribute a disposition so very generous and munificent as, of his own free grace and mere motion, to make him a present, at one donation, of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds sterling. This vast private donation was given at the moment of vast instant demands severely exacted on account of the Company, and accumulated on immense debts to the same body,—and all taken from a ruined prince and almost desolated territory.
Mr. Hastings has had the firmness, with all possible ease and apparent unconcern, to request permission from the Directors to legalize this forbidden present for his own use. This he has had the courage to do at a time when he had abundant reason to look for what he has since received,—their censure for many material parts of his conduct towards the people from whose wasted substance this pretended free gift was drawn. He does not pretend that he has reason to expect the smallest degree of partiality, in this or any other point, from the Court of Directors. For, besides his complaint, first stated, of having never possessed their confidence, in a late letter[41] (in which, notwithstanding the censures of Parliament, he magnifies his own conduct) he says, that, in all the long period of his service, "he has almost unremittedly wanted the support which all his predecessors had enjoyed from their constituents. From mine," says he, "I have received nothing but reproach, hard epithets, and indignities, instead of rewards and encouragement." It must therefore have been from some other source of protection than that which the law had placed over him that he looked for countenance and reward in violating an act of Parliament which forbid him from taking gifts or presents on any account whatsoever,—much less a gift of this magnitude, which, from the distress of the giver, must be supposed the effect of the most cruel extortion.
The Directors did wrong in their orders to appropriate money, which they must know could not have been acquired by the consent of the pretended donor, to their own use.[42] They acted more properly in refusing to confirm this grant to Mr. Hastings, and in choosing rather to refer him to the law which he had violated than to his own sense of what he thought he was entitled to take from the natives: putting him in mind that the Regulating Act had expressly declared "that no Governor-General, or any of the Council, shall, directly or indirectly, accept, receive, or take, of or from any person or persons, or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any of the aforesaid." Here is no reserve for the case of a disclosure to the Directors, and for the legalizing the breach of an act of Parliament by their subsequent consent. The illegality attached to the action at its very commencement, and it could never be afterwards legalized: the Directors had no such power reserved to them. Words cannot be devised of a stronger import or studied with more care. To these words of the act are opposed the declaration and conduct of Mr. Hastings, who, in his letter of January, 1782, thinks fit to declare, that "an offer of a very considerable sum of money was made to him, both on the part of the Nabob and his ministers, as a present, which he accepted without hesitation." The plea of his pretended necessity is of no avail. The present was not in ready money, nor, as your Committee conceive, applicable to his immediate necessities. Even his credit was not bettered by bills at long periods; he does not pretend that he raised any money upon them; nor is it conceivable that a banker at Benares would be more willing to honor the drafts of so miserable, undone, and dependent a person as the Nabob of Oude than those of the Governor-General of Bengal, which might be paid either on the receipt of the Benares revenue, or at the seat of his power, and of the Company's exchequer. Besides, it is not explicable, upon any grounds that can be avowed, why the Nabob, who could afford to give these bills as a present to Mr. Hastings, could not have equally given them in discharge of the debt which he owed to the Company. It is, indeed, very much to be feared that the people of India find it sometimes turn more to their account to give presents to the English in authority than to pay their debts to the public; and this is a matter of a very serious consideration.
No small merit is made by Mr. Hastings, and that, too, in a high and upbraiding style, of his having come to a voluntary discovery of this and other unlawful practices of the same kind. "That honorable court," says Mr. Hastings, addressing himself to his masters, in his letter of December, 1782, "ought to know whether I possess the integrity and honor which are the first requisites of such a station. If I wanted these, they have afforded me too powerful incentives to suppress the information which I now convey to them through you, and to appropriate to my own use the sums which I have already passed to their credit, by their unworthy, and pardon me if I add dangerous reflections, which they have passed upon me for the first communication of this kind"; and he immediately adds, what is singular and striking, and savors of a recriminatory insinuation, "and your own experience will suggest to you that there are persons who would profit by such a warning."[43] To what Directors in particular this imputation of experience is applied, and what other persons they are in whom experience has shown a disposition to profit of such a warning, is a matter highly proper to be inquired into. What Mr. Hastings says further on this subject is no less worthy of attention:—"that he could have concealed these transactions, if he had a wrong motive, from theirs and the public eye forever."[44] It is undoubtedly true, that, whether the observation be applicable to the particular case or not, practices of this corrupt nature are extremely difficult of detection anywhere, but especially in India; but all restraint upon that grand fundamental abuse of presents is gone forever, if the servants of the Company can derive safety from a defiance of the law, when they can no longer hope to screen themselves by an evasion of it. All hope of reformation is at an end, if, confiding in the force of a faction among Directors or proprietors to bear them out, and possibly to vote them the fruit of their crimes as a reward of their discovery, they find that their bold avowal of their offences is not only to produce indemnity, but to be rated for merit. If once a presumption is admitted, that, wherever something is divulged, nothing is hid, the discovering of one offence may become the certain means of concealing a multitude of others. The contrivance is easy and trivial, and lies open to the meanest proficient in this kind of art; it will not only become an effectual cover to such practices, but will tend infinitely to increase them. In that case, sums of money will be taken for the purpose of discovery and making merit with the Company, and other sums will be taken for the private advantage of the receiver.
It must certainly be impossible for the natives to know what presents are for one purpose, or what for the other. It is not for a Gentoo or a Mahometan landholder at the foot of the remotest mountains in India, who has no access to our records and knows nothing of our language, to distinguish what lacs of rupees, which he has given eo nomine as a present to a Company's servant, are to be authorized by his masters in Leadenhall Street as proper and legal, or carried to their public account at their pleasure, and what are laid up for his own emolument.
The legislature, in declaring all presents to be the property of the Company, could not consider corruption, extortion, and fraud as any part of their resources. The property in such presents was declared to be theirs, not as a fund for their benefit, but in order to found a legal title to a civil suit. It was declared theirs, to facilitate the recovery out of corrupt and oppressive hands of money illegally taken; but this legal fiction of property could not nor ought by the legislature to be considered in any other light than as a trust held by them for those who suffered the injury. Upon any other construction, the Company would have a right, first, to extract money from the subjects or dependants of this kingdom committed to their care, by means of particular conventions, or by taxes, by rents, and by monopolies; and when they had exhausted every contrivance of public imposition, then they were to be at liberty to let loose upon the people all their servants, from the highest rank to the lowest, to prey upon them at pleasure, and to draw, by personal and official authority, by influence, venality, and terror, whatever was left to them,—and that all this was justified, provided the product was paid into the Company's exchequer.
This prohibition and permission of presents, with this declaration of property in the Company, would leave no property to any man in India. If, however, it should be thought that this clause in the act[45] should be capable, by construction and retrospect, of so legalizing and thus appropriating these presents, (which your Committee conceive impossible,) it is absolutely necessary that it should be very fully explained.
The provision in the act was made in favor of the natives. If such construction prevails, the provision made as their screen from oppression will become the means of increasing and aggravating it without bounds and beyond remedy. If presents, which when they are given were unlawful, can afterwards be legalized by an application of them to the Company's service, no sufferer can even resort to a remedial process at law for his own relief. The moment he attempts to sue, the money may be paid into the Company's treasury; it is then lawfully taken, and the party is non-suited.
The Company itself must suffer extremely in the whole order and regularity of their public accounts, if the idea upon which Mr. Hastings justifies the taking of these presents receives the smallest countenance. On his principles, the same sum may become private property or public, at the pleasure of the receiver; it is in his power, Mr. Hastings says, to conceal it forever.[46] He certainly has it in his power not only to keep it back and bring it forward at his own times, but even to shift and reverse the relations in the accounts (as Mr. Hastings has done) in what manner and proportion seems good to him, and to make himself alternately debtor or creditor for the same sums.
Of this irregularity Mr. Hastings himself appears in some degree sensible. He conceives it possible that his transactions of this nature may to the Court of Directors seem unsatisfactory. He, however, puts it hypothetically: "If to you," says he, "who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, they should appear unprecedented, if not improper."[47] He just conceives it possible that in an official money transaction the Directors may expect a proceeding official and regular. In what other lights than those which are official and regular matters of public account ought to be regarded by those who have the charge of them, either in Bengal or in England, does not appear to your Committee. Any other is certainly "unprecedented and improper," and can only serve to cover fraud both in the receipt and in the expenditure. The acquisition of 58,000 rupees, or near 6000l., which appears in the sort of unofficial and irregular account that he furnishes of his presents, in his letter of May, 1782,[48] must appear extraordinary indeed to those who expect from men in office something official and something regular. "This sum," says he, "I received while I was on my journey to Benares."[49] He tells it with the same careless indifference as if things of this kind were found by accident on the high-road.
Mr. Hastings did not, indeed he could not, doubt that this unprecedented and improper account would produce much discussion. He says, "Why these sums were taken by me, why they were (except the second) quietly transferred to the Company's account, why bonds were taken for the first and not for the rest, might, were this matter to be exposed to the view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures."[50]
This matter has appeared, and has furnished, as it ought to do, something more serious than conjectures. It would in any other case be supposed that Mr. Hastings, expecting such inquiries, and considering that the questions are (even as they are imperfectly stated by himself) far from frivolous, would condescend to give some information upon them; but the conclusion of a sentence so importantly begun, and which leads to such expectations, is, "that to these conjectures it would be of little use to reply." This is all he says to public conjecture.
To the Court of Directors he is very little more complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never done before.
"Were your Honorable Court to question me upon these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's benefit, at times in which the Company very much stood in need of them; that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory could at this distance of time verify."[51]
He here professes not to be certain of the motives by which he was himself actuated in so extraordinary a concealment, and in the use of such extraordinary means to effect it; and as if the acts in question were those of an absolute stranger, and not his own, he gives various loose conjectures concerning the motive to them. He even supposes, in taking presents contrary to law, and in taking bonds for them as his own, contrary to what he admits to be truth and fact, that he might have acted without any distinct motive at all, or at least such as his memory could reach at that distance of time. That immense distance, in the faintness of which his recollection is so completely lost as to set him guessing at his motives for his own conduct, was from the 15th of January, 1781, when the bonds at his own request were given, to the date of this letter, which is the 22d of May, 1782,—that is to say, about one year and four months.
As to the other sums, for which no bond was taken, the ground for the difference in his explanation is still more extraordinary: he says, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest."[52] The rest of these sums, which were not worth his care, are stated in his account to be greater than those he was so solicitous (for some reason which he cannot guess) to cover under bonds: these sums amount to near 53,000l.; whereas the others did not much exceed 40,000l. For these actions, attended with these explanations, he ventures to appeal to their (the Directors') breasts for a candid interpretation, and "he assumes the freedom to add, that he thinks himself, on such a subject, and on such an occasion, entitled to it";[53] and then, as if he had performed some laudable exploit, in the accompanying letter he glories in the integrity of his conduct; and anticipating his triumph over injustice, and the applauses which at a future time he seems confident he shall receive, says he, "The applause of my own breast is my surest reward: your applause and that of my country is my next wish in life."[54] He declares in that very letter that he had not at any time possessed the confidence with them which they never withheld from the meanest of his predecessors. With wishes so near his heart perpetually disappointed, and, instead of applauses, (as he tells us,) receiving nothing but reproaches and disgraceful epithets, his steady continuance for so many years in their service, in a place obnoxious in the highest degree to suspicion and censure, is a thing altogether singular.
It appears very necessary to your Committee to observe upon the great leading principles which Mr. Hastings assumes, to justify the irregular taking of these vast sums of money, and all the irregular means he had employed to cover the greater part of it. These principles are the more necessary to be inquired into, because, if admitted, they will serve to justify every species of improper conduct. His words are, "that the sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come would never have yielded them to the Company publicly; and that the exigencies of their service (exigencies created by the exposition of their affairs, and faction in their divided councils) required those supplies."[55]
As to the first of these extraordinary positions, your Committee cannot conceive what motive could actuate any native of India dependent on the Company, in assisting them privately, and in refusing to assist them publicly. If the transaction was fair and honest, every native must have been desirous of making merit with the great governing power. If he gave his money as a free gift, he might value himself upon very honorable and very acceptable service; if he lent it on the Company's bonds, it would still have been of service, and he might also receive eight per cent for his money. No native could, without some interested view, give to the Governor-General what he would refuse to the Company as a grant, or even as a loan. It is plain that the powers of government must, in some way or other, be understood by the natives to be at sale. The Governor-General says that he took the money with an original destination to the purposes to which he asserts he has since applied it. But this original destination was in his own mind only,—not declared, nor by him pretended to be declared, to the party who gave the presents, and who could perceive nothing in it but money paid to the supreme magistrate for his private emolument. All that the natives could possibly perceive in such a transaction must be highly dishonorable to the Company's government; for they must conceive, when they gave money to Mr. Hastings, that they bought from Mr. Hastings either what was their own right or something that was not so, or that they redeemed themselves from some acts of rigor inflicted, threatened, or apprehended. If, in the first case, Mr. Hastings gave them the object for which they bargained, his act, however proper, was corrupt,—if he did not, it was both corrupt and fraudulent; if the money was extorted by force or threats, it was oppressive and tyrannical. The very nature of such transactions has a tendency to teach the natives to pay a corrupt court to the servants of the Company; and they must thereby be rendered less willing, or less able, or perhaps both, to fulfil their engagements to the state. Mr. Scott's evidence asserts that they would rather give to Mr. Hastings than lend to the Company. It is very probable; but it is a demonstration of their opinion of his power and corruption, and of the weak and precarious state of the Company's authority.
The second principle assumed by Mr. Hastings for his justification, namely, that factious opposition and a divided government might create exigencies requiring such supplies, is full as dangerous as the first; for, if, in the divisions which must arise in all councils, one member of government, when he thinks others factiously disposed, shall be entitled to take money privately from the subject for the purposes of his politics, and thereby to dispense with an act of Parliament, pretences for that end cannot be wanting. A dispute may always be raised in council in order to cover oppression and peculation elsewhere. But these principles of Mr. Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient members. The law has placed the sense of the whole in the majority; and it is not a thing to be suffered, that any of the members should privately raise money for the avowed purpose of defeating that sense, or for promoting designs that are contrary to it: a more alarming assumption of power in an individual member of any deliberative or executive body cannot be imagined. Mr. Hastings had no right, in order to clear himself of peculation, to criminate the majority with faction. No member of any body, outvoted on a question, has, or can have, a right to direct any part of his public conduct by that principle. The members of the Council had a common superior, to whom they might appeal in their mutual charges of faction: they did so frequently; and the imputation of faction has almost always been laid on Mr. Hastings himself.
But there were periods, very distinguished periods too, in the records of the Company, in which the clandestine taking of money could not be supported even by this pretence. Mr. Hastings has been charged with various acts of peculation, perpetrated at a time he could not excuse himself by the plea of any public purpose to be carried on, or of any faction in council by which it was traversed. It may be necessary here to recall to the recollection of the House, that, on the cry which prevailed of the ill practices of the Company's servants in India, (which general cry in a great measure produced the Regulating Act of 1773,) the Court of Directors, in their instructions of the 29th of March, 1774, gave it as an injunction to the Council-General, that "they immediately cause the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions which may have been committed either against natives or Europeans, and into all abuses which 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 obtain relative thereto, or any embezzlement or dissipation of the Company's money."
In this inquiry, by far the most important abuse which appeared on any of the above heads was that which was charged relative to the sale in gross by Mr. Hastings of nothing less than the whole authority of the country government in the disposal of the guardianship of the Nabob of Bengal.
The present Nabob, Mobarek ul Dowlah, was a minor when he succeeded to the title and office of Subahdar of the three provinces in 1770. Although in a state approaching to subjection, still his rank and character were important. Much was necessarily to depend upon a person who was to preserve the moderation of a sovereign not supported by intrinsic power, and yet to maintain the dignity necessary to carry on the representation of political government, as well as the substance of the whole criminal justice of a great country. A good education, conformably to the maxims of his religion and the manners of his people, was necessary to enable him to fill that delicate place with reputation either to the Mahometan government or to ours. He had still to manage a revenue not inconsiderable, which remained as the sole resource for the languishing dignity of persons any way distinguished in rank among Mussulmen, who were all attached and clung to him. These considerations rendered it necessary to put his person and affairs into proper hands. They ought to have been men who were able by the gravity of their rank and character to preserve his morals from the contagion of low and vicious company,—men who by their integrity and firmness might be enabled to resist in some degree the rapacity of Europeans, as well as to secure the remaining fragments of his property from the attempts of the natives themselves, who must lie under strong temptation of taking their share in the last pillage of a decaying house.
The Directors were fully impressed with the necessity of such an arrangement. Your Committee find, that, on the 26th of August, 1771, they gave instructions to the President and Council to appoint "a minister to transact the political affairs of the circar [government],—and to select for that purpose some person well qualified for the affairs of government to be the minister of the government, and guardian of the Nabob's minority."
The order was so distinct as not to admit of a mistake; it was (for its matter) provident and well considered; and the trust which devolved on Mr. Hastings was of such a nature as might well stimulate a man sensible to reputation to fulfil it in a manner agreeably to the directions he had received, and not only above just cause of exception, but out of the reach of suspicion and malice. In that situation it was natural to suppose he would cast his eyes upon men of the first repute and consideration among the Mussulmen of high rank.
Mr. Hastings, instead of directing his eyes to the durbar, employed his researches in the seraglio. In the inmost recesses of that place he discovered a woman secluded from the intercourse and shut up from the eyes of men, whom he found to correspond with the orders he had received from the Directors, as a person well "qualified for the affairs of government, fit to be a minister of government and the guardian of the Nabob's minority." This woman he solemnly invests with these functions. He appoints Rajah Gourdas, whom some time after he himself qualified with a description of a young man of mean abilities, to be her duan, or steward of the household. The rest of the arrangement was correspondent to this disposition of the principal offices.
It seems not to have been lawful or warrantable in Mr. Hastings to set aside the arrangement positively prescribed by the Court of Directors, which evidently pointed to a man, not to any woman whatever. As a woman confined in the female apartment, the lady he appointed could not be competent to hold or qualified to exercise any active employment: she stood in need of guardians for herself, and had not the ability for the guardianship of a person circumstanced as the Subah was. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis declare in their minute, "that they believe there never was an instance in India of such a trust so disposed of." Mr. Hastings has produced no precedent in answer to this objection.
It will be proper to state to the House the situation and circumstances of the women principally concerned, who were in the seraglio of Jaffier Ali Khân at his death. The first of these was called Munny Begum, a person originally born of poor and obscure parents, who delivered her over to the conductress of a company of dancing girls; in which profession being called to exhibit at a festival, the late Nabob took a liking to her, and, after some cohabitation, she obtained such influence over him that he took her for one of his wives and (she seems to have been the favorite) put her at the head of his harem; and having a son by her, this son succeeded to his authority and estate,—Munny Begum, the mother, being by his will a devisee of considerable sums of money, and other effects, on which he left a charge, which has since been applied to the service of the East India Company. The son of this lady dying, and a son by another wife succeeding, and dying also, the present Nabob, Mobarek ul Dowlah, son by a third wife, succeeded. This woman was then alive, and in the seraglio.
It was Munny Begum that Mr. Hastings chose, and not the natural mother of the Nabob. Whether, having chosen a woman in defiance of the Company's orders, and in passing by the natural parent of the minor prince, he was influenced by respect for the disposition made by the deceased Nabob during his life, or by other motives, the House will determine upon a view of the facts which follow. It will be matter of inquiry, when the question is stated upon the appointment of a stepmother in exclusion of the parent, whether the usage of the East constantly authorizes the continuance of that same distribution of rank and power which was settled in the seraglio during the life of a deceased prince, and which was found so settled at his death, and afterwards, to the exclusion of the mother of the successor. In case of female guardianship, her claim seems to be a right of Nature, and which nothing but a very clear positive law will (if that can) authorize the departure from. The history of Munny Begum is stated on the records of the Council-General, and no attempt made by Mr. Hastings to controvert the truth of it.
That was charged by the majority of Council to have happened which might be expected inevitably to happen: the care of the Nabob's education was grossly neglected, and his fortune as grossly mismanaged and embezzled. What connection this waste and embezzlement had with the subsequent events the House will judge.
On the 2d of May, 1775, Mr. James Grant, accountant to the Provincial Council of Moorshedabad, produced to the Governor-General and Council certain Persian papers which stated nine lacs of rupees (upwards of ninety thousand pounds sterling) received by Munny Begum, on her appointment to the management of the Nabob's household, over and above the balance due at that time, and not accounted for by her. These Grant had received from Nuned Roy, who had been a writer in the Begum's Treasury Office. Both Mr. Grant and Nuned Roy were called before the board, and examined respecting the authenticity of the papers. Among other circumstances tending to establish the credit of these papers, it appears that Mr. Grant offered to make oath that the chief eunuch of the Begum had come to him on purpose to prevail on him not to send the papers, and had declared that the accounts were not to be disputed.
On the 9th of May it was resolved by a majority of the board, against the opinion and solemn protest of the Governor-General, that a gentleman should be sent up to the city of Moorshedabad to demand of Munny Begum the accounts of the nizamut and household, from April, 1764, to the latest period to which they could be closed, and to divest the Begum of the office of guardian to the Nabob; and Mr. Charles Goring was appointed for this purpose.
The preceding facts are stated to the House, not as the foundation of an inquiry into the conduct of the Begum, but as they lead to and are therefore necessary to explain by what means a discovery was made of a sum of money given by her to Mr. Hastings.
Mr. Goring's first letter from the city, dated 17th May, 1775, mentions, among other particulars, the young Nabob's joy at being delivered out of the hands of Munny Begum, of the mean and indigent state of confinement in which he was kept by her, of the distress of his mother, and that he had told Mr. Goring that the "Begum's eunuch had instructed the servants not to suffer him to learn anything by which he might make himself acquainted with business": and he adds, "Indeed, I believe there is great truth in it, as his Excellency seems to be ignorant of almost everything a man of his rank ought to know,—not from a want of understanding, but of being properly educated."
On the 21st of May, Mr. Goring transmitted to the Governor-General and Council an account of sums given by the Begum under her seal, delivered to Mr. Goring by the Nabob in her apartments. The account is as follows.
Memorandum of Disbursements to English Gentlemen, from the Nabob's Sircar, in the Bengal Year 1179.
| Seal of Munny Begum, Mother of the Nabob Nudjuf ul Dowlah, deceased. | |
| To the Governor, Mr. Hastings, for an entertainment | 1,50,000 |
| To Mr. Middleton, on account of an agreement entered into by Baboo Begum | 1,50,000 |
| Rupees | 3,00,000 |
When this paper was delivered, the Governor-General moved that Mr. Goring might be asked how he came by it, and on what account this partial selection was made by him; also, that the Begum should be desired to explain the sum laid to his charge, and that he should ask the Nabob or the Begum their reasons for delivering this separate account.
The substance of the Governor's proposal was agreed to.
Mr. Goring's answer to this requisition of the board is as follows.
"In compliance with your orders to explain the delivery of the paper containing an account of three lacs of rupees, I am to inform you, it took its rise from a message sent me by the Begum, requesting I would interest myself with the Nabob to have Akbar Ali Khân released to her for a few hours, having something of importance to communicate to me, on which she wished to consult him. Thinking the service might be benefited by it, I accordingly desired the Nabob would be pleased to deliver him to my charge, engaging to return him the same night,—which I did. I heard no more till next day, when the Begum requested to see his Excellency and myself, desiring Akbar Ali might attend.
"On our first meeting, she entered into a long detail of her administration, endeavoring to represent it in the fairest light; at last she came to the point, and told me, my urgent and repeated remonstrances to her to be informed how the balance arose of which I was to inquire induced her from memory to say what she had herself given,—then mentioning the sum of a lac and a half to the Governor to feast him whilst he stayed there, and a lac and a half to Mr. Middleton by the hands of Baboo Begum. As I looked on this no more than a matter of conversation, I arose to depart, but was detained by the Begum's requesting the Nabob to come to her. A scene of weeping and complaint then began, which made me still more impatient to be gone, and I repeatedly sent to his Excellency for that purpose: he at last came out and delivered me the paper I sent you, declaring it was given him by the Begum to be delivered me."
Munny Begum also wrote a letter to General Clavering, in which she directly asserts the same. "Mr. Goring has pressed me on the subject of the balances; in answer to which I informed him, that all the particulars, being on record, would in the course of the inquiry appear from the papers. He accordingly received from the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah a list of three lacs of rupees given to the Governor and Mr. Middleton. I now send you inclosed a list of the dates when it was presented, and through whose means, which you will receive."
The Governor-General then desired that the following questions might be proposed to the Begum by Mr. Martin, then Resident at the Durbar.
1st. Was any application made to you for the account which you have delivered, of three lacs of rupees said to have been paid to the Governor and Mr. Middleton, or did you deliver the account of your own free will, and unsolicited?
2d. In what manner was the application made to you, and by whom?
3d. On what account was the sum of one and half lacs given to the Governor-General, which you have laid to his account? Was it in consequence of any requisition from him, or of any previous agreement, or of any established usage?
The Governor-General objected strongly to Mr. Goring's being present when the questions were put to the Begum; but it was insisted on by the majority, and it was resolved accordingly, that he ought to be present. The reasons on both sides will best appear by the copy of the debate, inserted in the Appendix.
The Begum's answer to the preceding questions, addressed to the Governor-General and Council, where it touched the substance, was as follows.
"The case is this. Mr. Goring, on his arrival here, seized all the papers, and secured them under his seal; and all the mutsuddies [clerks or accountants] attended him, and explained to him all the particulars of them. Mr. Goring inquired of me concerning the arrears due to the sepoys, &c., observing, that the nizamut and bhela money [Nabob's allowance] was received from the Company; from whence, then, could the balance arise? I made answer, that the sum was not adequate to the expenses. Mr. Goring then asked, What are those expenses which exceed the sum received from the Company? I replied, All the particulars will be found in the papers. The affair of the three lacs of rupees, on account of entertainment for the Governor and Mr. Middleton, has been, I am told, related to you by Rajah Gourdas; besides which there are many other expenses, which will appear from the papers. As the custom of entertainment is of long standing, and accordingly every Governor of Calcutta who came to Moorshedabad received a daily sum of two thousand rupees for entertainment, which, was in fact instead of provisions; and the lac and an half of rupees laid to Mr. Middleton's charge was a present on account of an agreement entered into by the Bhow Begum. I therefore affixed my seal to the account, and forwarded it to Mr. Goring by means of the Nabob."
In this answer, the accounts given to Mr. Goring she asserts to be genuine. They are explained, in all the particulars, by all the secretaries and clerks in office. They are secured under Mr. Goring's seal. To them she refers for everything; to them she refers for the three lacs of rupees given to Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton. It is impossible to combine together a clearer body of proof, composed of record of office and verbal testimony mutually supporting and illustrating each other.
The House will observe that the receipt of the money is indirectly admitted by one of the Governor's own questions to Munny Begum.
If the money was not received, it would have been absurd to ask on what account it was given. Both the question and the answer relate to some established usage, the appeal to which might possibly be used to justify the acceptance of the money, if it was accepted, but would be superfluous, and no way applicable to the charge, if the money was never given.
On this point your Committee will only add, that, in all the controversy between Mr. Hastings and the majority of the Council, he nowhere denies the receipt of this money. In his letter to the Court of Directors of the 31st of July, 1775, he says that the Begum was compelled by the ill treatment of one of her servants, which he calls a species of torture, to deliver the paper to Mr. Goring; but he nowhere affirms that the contents of the paper were false.
On this conduct the majority remark, "We confess it appears very extraordinary that Mr. Hastings should employ so much time and labor to show that the discoveries against him have been obtained by improper means, but that he should take no step whatsoever to invalidate the truth of them. He does not deny the receipt of the money: the Begum's answers to the questions put to her at his own desire make it impossible that he should deny it. It seems, he has formed some plan of defence against this and similar charges, which he thinks will avail him in a court of justice, and which it would be imprudent in him to anticipate at this time. If he has not received the money, we see no reason for such a guarded and cautious method of proceeding. An innocent man would take a shorter and easier course. He would voluntarily exculpate himself by his oath."
Your Committee entertain doubts whether the refusal to exculpate by oath can be used as a circumstance to infer any presumption of guilt. But where the charge is direct, specific, circumstantial, supported by papers and verbal testimony, made before his lawful superiors, to whom he was accountable, by persons competent to charge, if innocent, he was obliged at least to oppose to it a clear and formal denial of the fact, and to make a demand for inquiry. But if he does not deny the fact, and eludes inquiry, just presumptions will be raised against him.
Your Committee, willing to go to the bottom of a mode of corruption deep and dangerous in the act and the example, being informed that Mr. Goring was in London, resolved to examine him upon the subject. Mr. Goring not only agreed with all the foregoing particulars, but even produced to your Committee what he declared to be the original Persian papers in his hands, delivered from behind the curtain through the Nabob himself, who, having privilege, as a son-in-law, to enter the women's apartment, received them from Munny Begum as authentic,—the woman all the while lamenting the loss of her power with many tears and much vociferation. She appears to have been induced to make discovery of the above practices in order to clear herself of the notorious embezzlement of the Nabob's effects.
Your Committee examining Mr. Scott and Mr. Baber on this subject, they also produced a Persian paper, which Mr. Baber said he had received from the hands of a servant of Munny Begum,—and along with it a paper purporting to be a translation into English of the Persian original. In the paper given as the translation, Munny Begum is made to allege many matters of hardship and cruelty against Mr. Goring, and an attempt to compel her to make out a false account, but does not at all deny the giving the money: very far from it. She is made to assert, indeed, "that Mr. Goring desired her to put down three lacs of rupees, as divided between Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton. I begged to be excused, observing to him that this money had neither been tendered or accepted with any criminal or improper view." After some lively expressions in the European manner, she says, "that it had been customary to furnish a table for the Governor and his attendants, during their stay at court. With respect to the sum mentioned to Mr. Middleton, it was a free gift from my own privy purse. Purburam replied, he understood this money to be paid to these gentlemen as a gratuity for secret services; and as such he should assuredly represent it." Here the payments to Mr. Hastings are fully admitted, and excused as agreeable to usage, and for keeping a table. The present to Mr. Middleton is justified as a free gift. The paper produced by Mr. Scott is not referred to by your Committee as of any weight, but to show that it does not prove what it is produced to prove.
Your Committee, on reading the paper delivered in by Mr. Scott as a translation, perceive it to be written in a style which they conceived was little to be expected in a faithful translation from a Persian original, being full of quaint terms and idiomatic phrases, which strongly bespeak English habits in the way of thinking, and of English peculiarities and affectations in the expression. Struck with these strong internal marks of a suspicious piece, they turned to the Persian manuscript produced by Mr. Scott and Mr. Baber, and comparing it with Mr. Goring's papers, they found the latter carefully sealed upon every leaf, as they believe is the practice universal in all authentic pieces. They found on the former no seal or signature whatsoever, either at the top or bottom of the scroll. This circumstance of a want of signature not only takes away all authority from the piece as evidence, but strongly confirmed the suspicions entertained by your Committee, on reading the translation, of unwarrantable practices in the whole conduct of this business, even if the translation should be found substantially to agree with the original, such an original as it is. The Persian roll is in the custody of the clerk of your Committee for further examination.
Mr. Baber and Mr. Scott, being examined on these material defects in the authentication of a paper produced by them as authentic, could give no sort of account how it happened to be without a signature; nor did Mr. Baber explain how he came to accept and use it in that condition.
On the whole, your Committee conceive that all the parts of the transaction, as they appear in the Company's records, are consistent, and mutually throw light on each other.
The Court of Directors order the President and Council to appoint a minister to transact the political affairs of the government, and to select for that purpose some person well qualified for the affairs of government, and to be the minister of government. Mr. Hastings selects for the minister so described and so qualified a woman locked up in a seraglio. He is ordered to appoint a guardian to the Nabob's minority. Mr. Hastings passes by his natural parent, and appoints another woman. These acts would of themselves have been liable to suspicion. But a great deficiency or embezzlement soon appears in this woman's account. To exculpate herself, she voluntarily declares that she gave a considerable sum to Mr. Hastings, who never once denies the receipt. The account given by the principal living witness of the transaction in his evidence is perfectly coherent, and consistent with the recorded part. The original accounts, alleged to be delivered by the lady in question, were produced by him, properly sealed and authenticated. Nothing is opposed to all this but a paper without signature, and therefore of no authority, attended with a translation of a very extraordinary appearance; and this paper, in apologizing for it, confirms the facts beyond a doubt.
Finally, your Committee examined the principal living witness of the transaction, and find his evidence consistent with the record. Your Committee received the original accounts, alleged to be delivered by the lady in question, properly sealed and authenticated, and find opposed to them nothing but a paper without signature, and therefore of no authority, attended with a translation of a very extraordinary appearance.
In Europe the Directors ordered opinions to be taken on a prosecution: they received one doubtful, and three positively for it.
They write, in their letter of 5th February, 1777, paragraphs 32 and 33:—
"Although it is rather our wish to prevent evils in future than to enter into a severe retrospection of the past, and, where facts are doubtful, or attended with alleviating circumstances, to proceed with lenity, rather than to prosecute with rigor,—yet some of the cases are so flagrantly corrupt, and others attended with circumstances so oppressive to the inhabitants, that it would be unjust to suffer the delinquents to go unpunished. The principal facts[56] have been communicated to our solicitor, whose report, confirmed by our standing counsel, we send you by the present conveyance,—authorizing you, at the same time, to take such steps as shall appear proper to be pursued.
"If we find it necessary, we shall return you the original covenants of such of our servants as remain in India, and have been anyways concerned in the undue receipt of money, in order to enable you to recover the same for the use of the Company by a suit or suits at law, to be instituted in the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal."
Your Committee do not find that the covenants have been sent, or that any prosecution has been begun.
A vast scene of further peculation and corruption, as well in this business as in several other instances, appears in the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar. That evidence, and all the proceedings relating to it, are entered in the Appendix. It was the last evidence of the kind. The informant was hanged. An attempt was made by Mr. Hastings to indict him for a conspiracy; this failing of effect, another prosecutor appeared for an offence not connected with these charges. Nundcomar, the object of that charge, was executed, at the very crisis of the inquiry, for an offence of another nature, not capital by the laws of the country. As long as it appeared safe, several charges were made (which are inserted at large in the Appendix); and Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell seemed apprehensive of many more. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis declared, in a minute entered on the Consultations of the 5th May, 1775, that, "in the late proceedings of the Revenue Board, it will appear that there is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General has thought proper to abstain." A charge of offences of so heinous a nature, so very extensive, so very deliberate, made on record by persons of great weight, appointed by act of Parliament his associates in the highest trust,—a charge made at his own board, to his own face, and transmitted to their common superiors, to whom they were jointly and severally accountable, this was not a thing to be passed over by Mr. Hastings; still less ought it to have perished in other hands. It ought to have been brought to an immediate and strict discussion. General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis ought to have been punished for a groundless accusation, if such it had been. If the accusation were founded, Mr. Hastings was very unfit for the high office of Governor-General, or for any office.
After this comprehensive account by his colleagues of the Governor-General's conduct, these gentlemen proceeded to the particulars, and they produced the case of a corrupt bargain of Mr. Hastings concerning the disposition of office. This transaction is here stated by your Committee in a very concise manner, being on this occasion merely intended to point out to the House the absolute necessity which, in their opinion, exists for another sort of inquiry into the corruptions of men in power in India than hitherto has been pursued. The proceedings may be found at large in the Appendix.
A complaint was made that Mr. Hastings had sold the office of Phousdar of Hoogly to a person called Khân Jehan Khân on a corrupt agreement,—which was, that from his emoluments of seventy-two thousand rupees a year he was to pay to the Governor-General thirty-six thousand rupees annually, and to his banian, Cantoo Baboo, four thousand more. The complainant offers to pay to the Company the forty thousand rupees which were corruptly paid to these gentlemen, and to content himself with the allowance of thirty-two thousand. Mr. Hastings was, if on any occasion of his life, strongly called upon to bring this matter to the most distinct issue; and Mr. Barwell, who supported his administration, and as such ought to have been tender for his honor, was bound to help him to get to the bottom of it, if his enemies should be ungenerous enough to countenance such an accusation, without permitting it to be detected and exposed. But the course they held was directly contrary. They began by an objection to receive the complaint, in which they obstinately persevered as far as their power went. Mr. Barwell was of opinion that the Company's instructions to inquire into peculation were intended for the public interests,—that it could not forward the public interests to enter into these inquiries,—and that "he never would be a channel of aspersing any character, while it cannot conduce to the good of government." Here was a new mode of reasoning found out by Mr. Barwell, which might subject all inquiry into peculation to the discretion of the very persons charged with it. By that reasoning all orders of his superiors were at his mercy; and he actually undertook to set aside those commands which by an express act of Parliament he was bound to obey, on his opinion of what would or would not conduce to the good of government. On his principles, he either totally annihilates the authority of the act of Parliament, or he entertains so extravagant a supposition as that the Court of Directors possessed a more absolute authority, when their orders were not intended for the public good, than when they were.
General Clavering was of a different opinion. He thought "he should be wanting to the legislature, and to the Court of Directors, if he was not to receive the complaints of the inhabitants, when properly authenticated, and to prefer them to the board for investigation, as the only means by which these grievances can be redressed, and the Company informed of the conduct of their servants."
To these sentiments Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis adhered. Mr. Hastings thought it more safe, on principles similar to those assumed by Mr. Barwell, to refuse to hear the charge; but he reserved his remarks on this transaction, because they will be equally applicable to many others which in the course of this business are likely to be brought before the board. There appeared, therefore, to him a probability that the charge about the corrupt bargain was no more than the commencement of a whole class of such accusations; since he was of opinion (and what is very extraordinary, previous to any examination) that the same remarks would be applicable to several of those which were to follow. He must suppose this class of charges very uniform, as well as very extensive.
The majority, however, pressed their point; and notwithstanding his opposition to all inquiry, as he was supported only by Mr. Barwell, the question for it was carried. He was then desired to name a day for the appearance of the accuser, and the institution of the inquiry. Though baffled in his attempt to stop the inquiry in the first stage, Mr. Hastings made a second stand. He seems here to have recollected something inherent in his own office, that put the matter more in his power than at first he had imagined; for he speaks in a positive and commanding tone: "I will not," says his minute, "name a day for Mir Zin ul ab Dien to appear before the board; nor will I suffer him to appear before the board."
The question for the inquiry had been carried; it was declared fit to inquire; but there was, according to him, a power which might prevent the appearance of witnesses. On the general policy of obstructing such inquiries, Mr. Francis, on a motion to that effect, made a sound remark, which cannot fail of giving rise to very serious thoughts: "That, supposing it agreed among ourselves that the board shall not hear any charges or complaints against a member of it, a case or cases may hereafter happen, in which, by a reciprocal complaisance to each other, our respective misconduct may be effectually screened from inquiry; and the Company, whose interest is concerned, or the parties who may have reason to complain of any one member individually, may be left without remedy."
Mr. Barwell was not of the opinion of that gentleman, nor of the maker of the motion, General Clavering, nor of Mr. Monson, who supported it. He entertains sentiments with regard to the orders of the Directors in this particular perfectly correspondent with those which he had given against the original inquiry. He says, "Though it may in some little degree save the Governor-General from personal insult, where there is no judicial power lodged, that of inquisition can never answer any good purpose." This is doctrine of a most extraordinary nature and tendency, and, as your Committee conceive, contrary to every sound principle to be observed in the constitution of judicatures and inquisitions. The power of inquisition ought rather to be wholly separated from the judicial, the former being a previous step to the latter, which requires other rules and methods, and ought not, if possible, to be lodged in the same hands. The rest of his minute (contained in the Appendix) is filled with a censure on the native inhabitants, with reflections on the ill consequences which would arise from an attention to their complaints, and with an assertion of the authority of the Supreme Court, as superseding the necessity and propriety of such inquiries in Council. With regard to his principles relative to the natives and their complaints, if they are admitted, they are of a tendency to cut off the very principle of redress. The existence of the Supreme Court, as a means of relief to the natives under all oppressions, is held out to qualify a refusal to hear in the Council. On the same pretence, Mr. Hastings holds up the authority of the same tribunal. But this and other proceedings show abundantly of what efficacy that court has been for the relief of the unhappy people of Bengal. A person in delegated authority refuses a satisfaction to his superiors, throwing himself on a court of justice, and supposes that nothing but what judicially appears against him is a fit subject of inquiry. But even in this Mr. Hastings fails in his application of his principle; for the majority of the Council were undoubtedly competent to order a prosecution against him in the Supreme Court, which they had no ground for without a previous inquiry. But their inquiry had other objects. No private accuser might choose to appear. The party who was the subject of the peculation might be (as here is stated) the accomplice in it. No popular action or popular suit was provided by the charter under whose authority the court was instituted. In any event, a suit might fail in the court for the punishment of an actor in an abuse for want of the strictest legal proof, which might yet furnish matter for the correction of the abuse, and even reasons strong enough not only to justify, but to require, the Directors instantly to address for the removal of a Governor-General.—The opposition of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell proved as ineffectual in this stage as the former; and a day was named by the majority for the attendance of the party.
The day following this deliberation, on the assembling of the Council, the Governor-General, Mr. Hastings, said, "he would not sit to be confronted by such accusers, nor to suffer a judicial inquiry into his conduct at the board of which he is the president." As on the former occasions, he declares the board dissolved. As on the former occasions, the majority did not admit his claim to this power; they proceeded in his absence to examine the accuser and witnesses. Their proceedings are in Appendix K.
It is remarkable, that, during this transaction, Khân Jehan Khân, the party with whom the corrupt agreement was made, declined an attendance under excuses which the majority thought pretences for delay, though they used no compulsory methods towards his appearance. At length, however, he did appear, and then a step was taken by Mr. Hastings of a very extraordinary nature, after the steps which he had taken before, and the declarations with which those steps had been accompanied. Mr. Hastings, who had absolutely refused to be present in the foregoing part of the proceeding, appeared with Khân Jehan Khân. And now the affair took another turn; other obstructions were raised. General Clavering said that the informations hitherto taken had proceeded upon oath. Khân Jehan Khân had previously declared to General Clavering his readiness to be so examined; but when called upon by the board, he changed his mind, and alleged a delicacy, relative to his rank, with regard to the oath. In this scruple he was strongly supported by Mr. Hastings. He and Mr. Barwell went further: they contended that the Council had no right to administer an oath. They must have been very clear in that opinion, when they resisted the examination on oath of the very person who, if he could safely swear to Mr. Hastings's innocence, owed it as a debt to his patron not to refuse it; and of the payment of this debt it was extraordinary in the patron not only to enforce, but to support, the absolute refusal.
Although the majority did not acquiesce in this doctrine, they appeared to have doubts of the prudence of enforcing it by violent means; but, construing his refusal into a disposition to screen the peculations of the Governor-General, they treated him as guilty of a contempt of their board, dismissed him from the service, and recommended another (not the accuser) to his office.
The reasons on both sides appear in the Appendix. Mr. Hastings accuses them bitterly of injustice to himself in considering the refusal of this person to swear as a charge proved. How far they did so, and under what qualifications, will appear by reference to the papers in the Appendix. But Mr. Hastings "thanks God that they are not his judges." His great hold, and not without reason, is the Supreme Court; and he "blesses the wisdom of Parliament, that constituted a court of judicature at so seasonable a time, to check the despotism of the new Council." It was thought in England that the court had other objects than the protection of the Governor-General against the examinations of those sent out with instructions to inquire into the peculations of men in power.
Though Mr. Hastings did at that time, and avowedly did, everything to prevent any inquiry that was instituted merely for the information of the Court of Directors, yet he did not feel himself thoroughly satisfied with his own proceedings. It was evident that to them his and Mr. Barwell's reasonings would not appear very respectful or satisfactory; he therefore promises to give them full satisfaction at some future time. In his letter of the 14th of September, 1775, he reiterates a former declaration, and assures them of his resolution to this purpose in the strongest terms. "I now again recur to the declaration which I have before made, that it is my fixed determination to carry literally into execution, and most fully and liberally explain every circumstance of my conduct on the points upon which I have been injuriously arraigned,—and to afford you the clearest conviction of my own integrity, and of the propriety of my motives for my declining a present defence of it."
These motives, as far as they can be discovered, were the violence of his adversaries, the interested character and views of the accuser, and the danger of a prosecution in the Supreme Court, which made it prudent to reserve his defence. These arguments are applicable to any charge. Notwithstanding these reasons, it is plain by the above letter that he thought himself bound at some time or other to give satisfaction to his masters: till he should do this, in his own opinion, he remained in an unpleasant situation. But he bore his misfortune, it seems, patiently, with a confidence in their justice for his future relief. He says, "Whatever evil may fill the long interval which may precede it." That interval he has taken care to make long enough; for near eight years are now elapsed, and he has not yet taken the smallest step towards giving to the Court of Directors any explanation whatever, much less that full and liberal explanation which he had so repeatedly and solemnly promised.
It is to be observed, that, though Mr. Hastings talks in these letters much of his integrity, and of the purity of his motives, and of full explanations, he nowhere denies the fact of this corrupt traffic of office. Though he had adjourned his defence, with so much pain to himself, to so very long a day, he was not so inattentive to the ease of Khân Jehan Khân as he has shown himself to his own. He had been accused of corruptly reserving to himself a part of the emoluments of this man's office; it was a delicate business to handle, whilst his defence stood adjourned; yet, in a very short time after a majority came into his hands, he turned out the person appointed by General Clavering, &c., and replaced the very man with whom he stood accused of the corrupt bargain; what was worse, he had been charged with originally turning out another, to make room for this man. The whole is put in strong terms by the then majority of the Council, where, after charging him with every species of peculation, they add, "We believe the proofs of his appropriating four parts in seven of the salary with which the Company is charged for the Phousdar of Hoogly are such as, whether sufficient or not to convict him in a court of justice, will not leave the shadow of a doubt concerning his guilt in the mind of any unprejudiced person. The salary is seventy-two thousand rupees a year; the Governor takes thirty-six thousand, and allows Cantoo Baboo four thousand more for the trouble he submits to in conducting the negotiation with the Phousdar. This also is the common subject of conversation and derision through the whole settlement. It is our firm opinion and belief, that the late Phousdar of Hoogly, a relation of Mahomed Reza Khân, was turned out of this office merely because his terms were not so favorable as those which the Honorable Governor-General has obtained from the present Phousdar. The Honorable Governor-General is pleased to assert, with a confidential spirit peculiar to himself, that his measures hitherto stand unimpeached, except by us. We know not how this assertion is to be made good, unless the most daring and flagrant prostitution in every branch be deemed an honor to his administration."
The whole style and tenor of these accusations, as well as the nature of them, rendered Mr. Hastings's first postponing, and afterwards totally declining, all denial, or even defence or explanation, very extraordinary. No Governor ought to hear in silence such charges; and no Court of Directors ought to have slept upon them.
The Court of Directors were not wholly inattentive to this business. They condemned his act as it deserved, and they went into the business of his legal right to dissolve the Council. Their opinions seemed against it, and they gave precise orders against the use of any such power in future. On consulting Mr. Sayer, the Company's counsel, he was of a different opinion with regard to the legal right; but he thought, very properly, that the use of a right, and the manner and purposes for which it was used, ought not to have been separated. What he thought on this occasion appears in his opinion transmitted by the Court of Directors to Mr. Hastings and the Council-General. "But it was as great a crime to dissolve the Council upon base and sinister motives as it would be to assume the power of dissolving, if he had it not. I believe he is the first governor that ever dissolved a council inquiring into his behavior, when he was innocent. Before he could summon three councils and dissolve them, he had time fully to consider what would be the result of such conduct, to convince everybody, beyond a doubt, of his conscious guilt."
It was a matter but of small consolation to Mr. Hastings, during the painful interval he describes, to find that the Company's learned counsel admitted that he had legal powers of which he made an use that raised an universal presumption of his guilt.
Other counsel did not think so favorably of the powers themselves. But this matter was of less consequence, because a great difference of opinion may arise concerning the extent of official powers, even among men professionally educated, (as in this case such a difference did arise,) and well-intentioned men may take either part. But the use that was made of it, in systematical contradiction to the Company's orders, has been stated in the Ninth Report, as well as in many of the others made by two of your committees.