FOOTNOTES:
[2] Document wanting.
[3] Document wanting.
[4] Document wanting.
[5] Document wanting.
[6] Document wanting.
[7] Document wanting.
SPEECH
ON
THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.
THIRD DAY: TUESDAY, MAY 5, 1789.
My Lords,—Agreeably to your Lordships' proclamation, which I have just heard, and the duty enjoined me by the House of Commons, I come forward to make good their charge of high crimes and misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Governor-General of Bengal, and now a prisoner at your bar.
My Lords, since I had last the honor of standing in this place before your Lordships, an event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent. My Lords, I have been disavowed by those who sent me here to represent them. My Lords, I have been disavowed in a material part of that engagement which I had pledged myself to this House to perform. My Lords, that disavowal has been followed by a censure. And yet, my Lords, so censured and so disavowed, and by such an authority, I am sent here again, to this the place of my offence, under the same commission, by the same authority, to make good the same charge, against the same delinquent.
My Lords, the situation is new and awful: the situation is such as, I believe, and I am sure, has nothing like it on the records of Parliament, nor, probably, in the history of mankind. My Lords, it is not only new and singular, but, I believe, to many persons, who do not look into the true interior nature of affairs, it may appear that it would be to me as mortifying as it is unprecedented. But, my Lords, I have in this situation, and upon the consideration of all the circumstances, something more to feed my mind with than mere consolation; because, my Lords, I look upon the whole of these circumstances, considered together, as the strongest, the most decisive, and the least equivocal proof which the Commons of Great Britain can give of their sincerity and their zeal in this prosecution. My Lords, is it from a mistaken tenderness or a blind partiality to me, that, thus censured, they have sent me to this place? No, my Lords, it is because they feel, and recognize in their own breasts, that active principle of justice, that zeal for the relief of the people of India, that zeal for the honor of Great Britain, which characterizes me and my excellent associates, that, in spite of any defects, in consequence of that zeal which they applaud, and while they censure its mistakes, and, because they censure its mistakes, do but more applaud, they have sent me to this place, instructed, but not dismayed, to pursue this prosecution against Warren Hastings, Esquire. Your Lordships will therefore be pleased to consider this, as I consider it, not as a thing honorable to me, in the first place, but as honorable to the Commons of Great Britain, in whose honor the national glory is deeply concerned; and I shall suffer myself with pleasure to be sacrificed, perhaps, in what is dearer to me than my life, my reputation, rather than let it be supposed that the Commons should for one moment have faltered in their duty. I, my Lords, on the one hand, feeling myself supported and encouraged, feeling protection and countenance from this admonition and warning which has been given to me, will show myself, on the other hand, not unworthy so great and distinguished a mark of the favor of the Commons,—a mark of favor not the consequence of flattery, but of opinion. I shall feel animated and encouraged by so noble a reward as I shall always consider the confidence of the Commons to be: the only reward, but a rich reward, which I have received for the toils and labors of a long life.
The Commons, then, thus vindicated, and myself thus encouraged, I shall proceed to make good the charge in which the honor of the Commons, that is, the national honor, is so deeply concerned. For, my Lords, if any circumstance of weakness, if any feebleness of nerve, if any yielding to weak and popular opinions and delusions were to shake us, consider what the situation of this country would be. This prosecution, if weakly conceived, ill digested, or intemperately pursued, ought never to have been brought to your Lordships' bar: but being brought to your Lordships' bar, the nation is committed to it, and the least appearance of uncertainty in our minds would disgrace us forever. Esto perpetua, has been said. To the glory of this nation, much more be it said, Esto perpetua; and I will say, that, as we have raised and exhibited a theatre of justice which has excited the admiration of all Europe, there would be a sort of lustre in our infamy, and a splendor in the disgrace that we should bring upon ourselves, if we should, just at that moment, turn that theatre of our glory into a spectacle of dishonor beyond what has ever happened to any country of the world.
The Commons of Great Britain, whilst willing to keep a strong and firm hand over all those who represent them in any business, do at the same time encourage them in the prosecution of it, by allowing them a just discretion and latitude wherever their own orders have not marked a distinction. I shall therefore go on with the more cheerful confidence, not only for the reasons that I have stated, but for another and material reason. I know and am satisfied, that, in the nobleness of your judgment, you will always make a distinction between the person that gives the order and the organ that is to execute it. The House of Commons know no such thing as indiscretion, imprudence, or impropriety: it is otherwise with their instruments. Your Lordships very well know, that, if you hear anything that shall appear to you to be regular, apt to bring forward the charge, just, prudent, cogent, you are to give it to the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled; if you should hear from me (and it must be from me alone, and not from any other member of the Committee) anything that is unworthy of that situation, that comes feeble, weak, indigested, or ill-prepared, you are to attribute that to the instrument. Your Lordships' judgment would do this without my saying it. But whilst I claim it on the part of the Commons for their dignity, I claim for myself the necessary indulgence that must be given to all weakness. Your Lordships, then, will impute it where you would have imputed it without my desire. It is a distinction you would naturally have made, and the rather because what is alleged by us at the bar is not the ground upon which you are to give judgment. If not only I, but the whole body of managers, had made use of any such expressions as I made use of,—even if the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, if the collective body of Parliament, if the voice of Europe, had used them,—if we had spoken with the tongues of men and angels, you, in the seat of judicature, are not to regard what we say, but what we prove; you are to consider whether the charge is well substantiated, and proof brought out by legal inference and argument. You know, and I am sure the habits of judging which your Lordships have acquired by sitting in judgment must better inform you than any other men, that the duties of life, in order to be well performed, must be methodized, separated, arranged, and harmonized in such a manner that they shall not clash with one another, but each have a department assigned and separated to itself. My Lords, in that manner it is that we, the prosecutors, have nothing to do with the principles which are to guide the judgment, that we have nothing to do with the defence of the prisoner. Your Lordships well know, that, when we come before you, you hear a party; that, when the accused come before you, you hear a party: that it is for you to doubt, and wait till you come to the close, before you decide; that it is for us, the prosecutors, to have decided before we came here. To act as prosecutors, we ought to have no doubt or hesitation, nothing trembling or quivering in our minds upon the occasion. We ought to be fully convinced of guilt, before we come to you. It is, then, our business to bring forward the proofs,—to enforce them with all the clearness, illustration, example, that we can bring forward,—that we are to show the circumstances that can aggravate the guilt,—that we are to go further, show the mischievous consequences and tendency of those crimes to society,—and that we are, if able so to do, to arouse and awaken in the minds of all that hear us those generous and noble sympathies which Providence has planted in the breasts of all men, to be the true guardians of the common rights of humanity. Your Lordships know that this is the duty of the prosecutors, and that therefore we are not to consider the defence of the party, which is wisely and properly left to himself; but we are to press the accusation with all the energy of which it is capable, and to come with minds perfectly convinced before an august and awful tribunal which at once tries the accuser and the accused.
Having stated thus much with respect to the Commons, I am to read to your Lordships the resolution which the Commons have come to upon this great occasion, and upon which I shall take the liberty to say a very few words.
My Lords, the Commons have resolved last night, and I did not see the resolution till this morning, "that no direction or authority was given by this House to the committee appointed to manage the impeachment against Warren Hastings, Esquire, to make any charge or allegation against the said Warren Hastings respecting the condemnation or execution of Nundcomar; and that the words spoken by the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, one of the said managers, videlicet, that he (meaning Mr. Hastings) murdered that man (meaning Nundcomar) by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey, ought not to have been spoken."
My Lords, this is the resolution of the House of Commons. Your Lordships well know and remember my having used such or similar words, and the end and purpose for which I used them. I owe a few words of explanation to the Commons of Great Britain, who attend in a committee of the whole House to be the observers and spectators of my conduct. I owe it to your Lordships, I owe it to this great auditory, I owe it to the present times and to posterity, to make some apology for a proceeding which has drawn upon me the disavowal of the House which I represent. Your Lordships will remember that this charge which I have opened to your Lordships is primarily a charge founded upon the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar; and consequently I thought myself obliged, I thought it a part of my duty, to support the credit of that person, who is the principal evidence to support the direct charge that is brought before your Lordships. I knew that Mr. Hastings, in his anticipated defence before the House of Commons, had attempted to shake the credit of that witness. I therefore thought myself justified in informing your Lordships, and in warning him, that, if he did attempt to shake the credit of an important witness against him by an allegation of his having been condemned and executed for a forgery, I would endeavor to support his credit by attacking that very prosecution which brought on that condemnation and that execution; and that I did consider it, and would lay grounds before your Lordships to prove it, to be a murder committed, instead of a justification set up, or that ought to be set up.
Now, my Lords, I am ordered by the Commons no longer to persist in that declaration; and I, who know nothing in this place, and ought to know nothing in this place, but obedience to the Commons, do mean, when Mr. Hastings makes that objection (if he shall be advised to make it) against the credit of Rajah Nundcomar, not thus to support that credit; and therefore that objection to the credit of the witness must go unrefuted by me. My Lords, I must admit, perhaps against my private judgment, (but that is of no consideration for your Lordships, when opposed to the judgment of the House of Commons,) or, at least, not contest, that a first minister of state, in a great kingdom, who had the benefit of the administration, and of the entire and absolute command of a revenue of fifteen hundred thousand pounds a year, had been guilty of a paltry forgery in Calcutta; that this man, who had been guilty of this paltry forgery, had waited for his sentence and his punishment, till a body of English judges, armed with an English statute, came to Calcutta; and that this happened at the very happy nick and moment when he was accusing Mr. Hastings of the bribery with which we now in the name of the Commons charge him; that it was owing to an entirely fortuitous concurrence of circumstances, in which Mr. Hastings had no share, or that it was owing to something beyond this, something that is rather pious than fortuitous, namely, that, as Mr. Hastings tells you himself, "all persuasions of men were impressed with a superstitious belief that a fortunate influence directed all my actions to their destined ends." I, not being at that time infected with the superstition, and considering what I thought Mr. Hastings's guilt to be, and what I must prove it to be as well as I can, did not believe that Providence did watch over Mr. Hastings, so as in the nick of time, like a god in a machine, to come down to save him in the moment of his imminent peril and distress: I did not think so, but I must not say so.
But now, to show that it was not weakly, loosely, or idly, that I took up this business, or that I anticipated a defence which it was not probable for Mr. Hastings to make, (and I wish to speak to your Lordships in the first instance, but to the Commons in the next,) I will read part of Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons: it is in evidence before your Lordships. He says,—"My accuser" (meaning myself, then acting as a private member of Parliament) "charges me with 'the receipt of large sums of money, corruptly taken before the promulgation of the Regulating Act of 1773, contrary to my covenants with the Company, and with the receipt of very large sums taken since, in defiance of that law, and contrary to my declared sense of its provisions.' And he ushers in this charge in the following pompous diction: 'That in March, 1775, the late Rajah Nundcomar, a native Hindoo of the highest caste in his religion, and of the highest rank in society, by the offices which he had held under the country government, did lay before the Council an account of various sums of money,' &c. It would naturally strike every person ignorant of the character of Nundcomar, that an accusation made by a person of the highest caste in his religion and of the highest rank by his offices demanded particular notice, and acquired a considerable degree of credit, from a prevalent association of ideas that a nice sense of honor is connected with an elevated rank of life: but when this honorable House is informed that my accuser knew (though he suppressed the facts) that this person, of high rank and high caste, had forfeited every pretension to honor, veracity, and credit,—that there are facts recorded on the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, (independent of the forgery for which he suffered death,) of the most deliberate treachery to the state, for which he was confined, by the orders of the Court of Directors, to the limits of the town of Calcutta, in order to prevent his dangerous intrigues, and of having violated every principle of common honesty in private life,—I say, when this honorable House is acquainted it is from mutilated and garbled assertions, founded on the testimony of such an evidence, without the whole matter being fairly stated, I do hope and trust it will be sufficient for them to reject now these vague and unsupported charges, in like manner as they were before rejected by the Court of Directors and his Majesty's ministers, when they were first made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis.—I must here interrupt the course of my defence to explain on what grounds I employed or had any connection with a man of so flagitious a character as Nundcomar."
My Lords, I hope this was a good and reasonable ground for me to anticipate the defence which Mr. Hastings would make in this House,—namely, on the known, recognized, infamous character of Nundcomar, with regard to certain proceedings there charged at large, with regard to one forgery for which he suffered and two other forgeries with which Mr. Hastings charged him. I, who found that the Commons of Great Britain had received that very identical charge of Nundcomar, and given it to me in trust to make it good, did naturally, I hope excusably, (for that is the only ground upon which I stand,) endeavor to support that credit upon which the House acted. I hope I did so; and I hope that the goodness of that intention may excuse me, if I went a little too far on that occasion. I would have endeavored to support that credit, which it was much Mr. Hastings's interest to shake, and which he had before attempted to shake.
Your Lordships will have the goodness to suppose me now making my apology, and by no manner of means intending to persist either in this, or in anything which the House of Commons shall desire me not to declare in their name. But the House of Commons has not denied me the liberty to make you this just apology: God forbid they should! for they would be guilty of great injustice, if they did. The House of Commons, whom I represent, will likewise excuse me, their representative, whilst I have been endeavoring to support their characters in the face of the world, and to make an apology, and only an humble apology, for my conduct, for having considered that act in the light that I represented it,—and which I did merely from my private opinion, without any formal instruction from the House. For there is no doubt that the House is perfectly right, inasmuch as the House did neither formally instruct me nor at all forbid my making use of such an argument; and therefore I have given your Lordships the reason why it was fit to make use of such argument,—if it was right to make use of it. I am in the memory of your Lordships that I did conceive it to be relevant, and it was by the poverty of the language I was led to express my private feelings under the name of a murder. For, if the language had furnished me, under the impression of those feelings, with a word sufficient to convey the complicated atrocity of that act, as I felt it in my mind, I would not have made use of the word murder. It was on account of the language furnishing me with no other I was obliged to use that word. Your Lordships do not imagine, I hope, that I used that word in any other than a moral and popular sense, or that I used it in the legal and technical sense of the word murder. Your Lordships know that I could not bring before this bar any commoner of Great Britain on a charge for murder. I am not so ignorant of the laws and constitution of my country. I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime. What led me into that error? Nine years' meditation upon that subject.
My Lords, the prisoner at the bar in the year 1780 sent a petition to the House of Commons complaining of that very chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey. The House of Commons, who then had some trust in me, as they have some trust still, did order me, along with persons more wise and judicious than myself, several of whom stand near me, to make an inquiry into the state of the justice of that country. The consequence of that inquiry was, that we began to conceive a very bad opinion both of the complainant and defendant in that business,—that we found the English justice to be, as we thought it, and reported it to the House, a grievance, instead of a redress, to the people of India. I could bring before your Lordships, if I did not spare your patience, whole volumes of reports, whole bodies of evidence, which, in the progress we have made in the course of eight or nine years, brought to my mind such a conviction as will never be torn from my heart but with my life; and I should have no heart that was fit to lodge any honest sentiment, if I departed from my opinion upon that occasion. But when I declare my own firm opinion upon it,—when I declare the reasons that led me to it,—when I mention the long meditation that preceded my founding a judgment upon it, the strict inquiry, the many hours and days spent in consideration, collation, and comparison,—I trust that infirmity which could be actuated by no malice to one party or the other may be excused; I trust that I shall meet with this indulgence, when your Lordships consider, that, as far as you know me, as far as my public services for many years account for me, I am a man of a slow, laborious, inquisitive temper, that I do seldom leave a pursuit without leaving marks, perhaps of my weakness, but leaving marks of that labor, and that, in consequence of that labor, I made that affirmation, and thought the nature of the cause obliged me to support and substantiate it. It is true that those who sent me here have sagacity to decide upon the subject in a week; they can in one week discover the errors of my labors for nine years.
Now that I have made this apology to you, I assure you, you shall never hear me, either in my own name here, much less in the name of the Commons, urge one thing to you in support of the credit of Nundcomar grounded upon that judgment, until the House shall instruct and order me otherwise; because I know, that, when I can discover their sentiments, I ought to know nothing here but what is in strict and literal obedience to them.
My Lords, another thing might make me, perhaps, a little willing to be admitted to the proof of what I advanced, and that is, the very answer of Mr. Hastings to this charge, which the House of Commons, however, have adopted, and therefore in some degree purified. "To the malicious part of this charge, which is the condemnation of Nundcomar for a forgery, I do declare, in the most solemn and unreserved manner, that I had no concern, either directly or indirectly, in the apprehending, prosecuting, or executing of Nundcomar. He suffered for a crime of forgery which he had committed in a private trust that was delegated to him, and for which he had been prosecuted in the dewanny courts of the country before the institution of the Supreme Court of Judicature. To adduce this circumstance, therefore, as a confirmation of what was before suspicious from his general depravity of character, is just as reasonable as to assert that the accusations of Empson and Dudley were confirmed because they suffered death for their atrocious acts."
My Lords, this was Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons, and it is now in evidence before your Lordships. In this defence, he supposes the charge which was made originally before the Commons, and which the Commons voted, (though afterwards, for the convenience of shortening it, the affair was brought before your Lordships in the way in which it is,)—he supposes, I say, the whole to proceed from a malicious intention; and I hope your Lordships will not think, and I hope the Commons, reconsidering this matter, will not think, that, when such an imputation of malice was made for the purpose of repelling this corroborating argument which was used in the House of Commons to prove his guilt, I was wrong in attempting to support the House of Commons against his imputation of malice.
I must observe where I am limited and where I am not. I am limited, strictly, fully, (and your Lordships and my country, who hear me, will judge how faithfully I shall adhere to that limitation,) not to support the credit of Nundcomar by any allegation against Mr. Hastings respecting his condemnation or execution; but I am not at all limited from endeavoring to support his credit against Mr. Hastings's charges of other forgeries, and from showing you, what I hope to show you clearly in a few words, that Nundcomar cannot be presumed guilty of forgery with more probability than Mr. Hastings is guilty of bringing forward a light and dangerous (for I use no other words than a light and dangerous) charge of forgery, when it serves his purpose. Mr. Hastings charges Nundcomar with two other forgeries. "These two forgeries," he says, "are facts recorded in the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, and of a letter from the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah"; and therefore he infers malice in those who impute anything improper to him, knowing that the proof stood so. Here he asserts that there are records before the House of Commons, and on the Company's Proceedings and Consultations, proving Nundcomar to have been guilty of these two forgeries. Turn over the next page of his printed defence, and you find a very extraordinary thing. You would have imagined that this forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, which, he says, is recognized and proved on the Journals, was a forgery charged by Munny Begum herself, or by somebody on her part, or some person concerned in this business. There is no other charge of it whatever, but the charge of Warren Hastings himself. He wants you to discredit a man for forgery upon no evidence under heaven but that of his own, who thinks proper, without any sort of authority, without any sort of reference, without any sort of collateral evidence, to charge a man with that very direct forgery. "You are," he says, "well informed of the reasons which first induced me to give any share of my confidence to Nundcomar, with whose character I was acquainted by an experience of many years. The means which he himself took to acquire it were peculiar to himself. He sent a messenger to me at Madras, on the first news of my appointment to this Presidency, with pretended letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, the brother of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân, filled with bitter invectives against Mahomed Reza Khân, and of as warm recommendations, as I recollect, of Nundcomar. I have been since informed by the Begum that the letter which bore her seal was a complete forgery, and that she was totally unacquainted with the use which had been made of her name till I informed her of it. Juggut Chund, Nundcomar's son-in-law, was sent to her expressly to entreat her not to divulge it. Mr. Middleton, whom she consulted on the occasion, can attest the truth of this story."
Mr. Middleton is dead, my Lords. This is not the Mr. Middleton whom your Lordships have heard and know well in this House, but a brother of that Mr. Middleton, who is since dead. Your Lordships find, when we refer to the records of the Company for the proof of this forgery, that there is no other than the unsupported assertion of Mr. Hastings himself that he was guilty of it. Now that was bad enough; but then hear the rest. Mr. Hastings has charged this unhappy man, whom we must not defend, with another forgery; he has charged him with a forgery of a letter from Yeteram ul Dowlah to Mr. Hastings. Now you would imagine that he would have given his own authority at least for that assertion, which he says was proved. He goes on and says, "I have not yet had the curiosity to inquire of the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah whether his letter was of the same stamp; but I cannot doubt it."
Now here he begins, in this very defence which is before your Lordships, to charge a forgery upon the credit of Munny Begum, without supporting it even by his own testimony,—and another forgery in the name of Yeteram ul Dowlah, which he said he had not even the curiosity to inquire into, and yet desires you, at the same time, to believe it to be proved. Good God! in what condition do men of the first character and situation in that country stand, when we have here delivered to us, as a record of the Company, Mr. Hastings's own assertions, saying that these forgeries were proved, though you have for the first nothing but his own unsupported assertion, and for the second his declaration only that he had not the curiosity to inquire into it! I am not forbidden by the Commons to state how and on what slight grounds Warren Hastings charges the natives of the country with forgery; neither am I forbidden to bring forward the accusation which Mr. Hastings made against Nundcomar for a conspiracy, nor the event of it, nor any circumstance relative to it. I shall therefore proceed in the best manner I can. There was a period, among the revolutions of philosophy, when there was an opinion, that, if a man lost one limb or organ, the strength of that which was lost retired into what was left. My Lords, if we are straitened in this, then our vigor will be redoubled in the rest, and we shall use it with double force. If the top and point of the sword is broken off, we shall take the hilt in our hand, and fight with whatever remains of the weapon against bribery, corruption, and peculation; and we shall use double diligence under any restraint which the wisdom of the Commons may lay upon us, or your Lordships' wisdom may oblige us to submit to.
Having gone through this business, and shown in what manner I am restrained, where I am not to repel Mr. Hastings's defence, and where I am left at large to do it, I shall submit to the strict injunction with the utmost possible humility, and enjoy the liberty which is left to me with vigor, with propriety, and with discretion, I trust.
My Lords, when the circumstance happened which has given occasion to the long parenthesis by which my discourse has been interrupted, I remember I was beginning to open to your Lordships the second period of Mr. Hastings's scheme and system of bribery. My Lords, his bribery is so extensive, and has had such a variety in it, that it must be distinguished not only with regard to its kind, but must be likewise distinguished according to the periods of bribery and the epochas of peculation committed by him. In the first of those periods we shall prove to your Lordships, I believe, without the aids that we hoped for, (your Lordships allowing, as I trust you will do, a good deal for our situation,)—we shall be able, I say, to prove that Mr. Hastings took, as a bribe for appointing Munny Begum, three lac and an half of rupees; we shall prove the taking at the same time the Rajeshaye bribes. Mr. Hastings at that time followed bribery in a natural manner: he took a bribe; he took it as large as he could; he concealed it as well as he could; and he got out of it by artifice or boldness, by use of trick or use of power, just as he was enabled: he acted like a wild, natural man, void of instruction, discipline, and art.
The second period opened another system of bribery. About this time he began to think (from what communication your Lordships may guess) of other means by which, when he could no longer conceal any bribe that he had received, he not only might exempt himself from the charge and the punishment of guilt, but might convert it into a kind of merit, and, instead of a breaker of laws, a violator of his trust, a receiver of scandalous bribes, a peculator of the first magnitude, might make himself to be considered as a great, distinguishing, eminent financier, a collector of revenue in new and extraordinary ways, and that we should thus at once praise his diligence, industry, and ingenuity. The scheme he set on foot was this: he pretended that the Company could not exist upon principles of strict justice, (for so he expresses it,) and that their affairs, in many cases, could not be so well accommodated by a regular revenue as by privately taking money, which was to be applied to their service by the person who took it, at his discretion. This was the principle he laid down. It would hardly be believed, I imagine, unless strong proof appeared, that any man could be so daring as to hold up such a resource to a regular government, which had three million of known, avowed, a great part of it territorial, revenue. But it is necessary, it seems, to piece out the lion's skin with a fox's tail,—to tack on a little piece of bribery and a little piece of peculation, in order to help out the resources of a great and flourishing state; that they should have in the knavery of their servants, in the breach of their laws, and in the entire defiance of their covenants, a real resource applicable to their necessities, of which they were not to judge, but the persons who were to take the bribes; and that the bribes thus taken were, by a mental reservation, a private intention in the mind of the taker, unknown to the giver, to be some time or other, in some way or other, applied to the public service. The taking such bribes was to become a justifiable act, in consequence of that reservation in the mind of the person who took them; and he was not to be called to account for them in any other way than as he thought fit.
My Lords, an act of Parliament passed in the year 1773, the whole drift of which, I may say, was to prevent bribery, peculation, and extortion in the Company's servants; and the act was penned, I think, with as much strictness and rigor as ever act was penned. The 24th clause of Chap. 63, 13 Geo. III., has the following enactment: "And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that, from and after the first day of August, 1774, no person holding or exercising any civil or military office under the crown, or the said United Company, in the East Indies, shall accept, receive, or take, directly or indirectly, by himself, or any other person or persons on his behalf, or for his use or benefit, of and from any of the Indian princes or powers, or their ministers or agents, or any of the natives of Asia, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, upon any account, or on any pretence whatsoever, or any promise or engagement for any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward: and if any person, holding or exercising any such civil or military office, shall be guilty of any such offence, and shall be thereof legally convicted," &c., &c. It then imposes the penalties: and your Lordships see that human wisdom cannot pen an act more strongly directed against taking bribes upon any pretence whatever.
This act of Parliament was in affirmance of the covenant entered into by the servants of the Company, and of the explicit orders of the Company, which forbid any person whatever in trust, "directly or indirectly, to accept, take, or receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive, any gift, reward, gratuity, allowance, donation, or compensation, in money, effects, jewels, or otherwise howsoever, from any of the Indian princes, sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants, or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees, &c., &c. And that he, the said Warren Hastings, shall and will convey, assign, and make over to the said United Company, for their sole and proper use and benefit, all and every such gifts, rewards, gratuities, allowances, donations, or compensations whatsoever, which, contrary to the true intent and meaning of these presents, shall come into the hands, possession, or power of the said Warren Hastings, or any other person or persons in trust for him or for his use."
The nature of the covenant, the act of Parliament, and the Company's orders are clear. First, they have not forbidden their Governor-General, nor any of their Governors, to take and accept from the princes of the country, openly and publicly, for their use, any territories, lands, sums of money, or other donations, which may be offered in consequence of treaty or otherwise. It was necessary to distinguish this from every other species of acceptance, because many occasions occurred in which fines were paid to the Company in consequence of treaties; and it was necessary to authorize the receipt of the same in the Company's treasury, as an open and known proceeding. It was never dreamed that this should justify the taking of bribes, privately and clandestinely, by the Governor, or any other servant of the Company, for the purpose of its future application to the Company's use. It is declared that all such bribes and money received should be the property of the Company. And why? As a means of recovering them out of the corrupt hands that had taken them. And therefore this was not a license for bribery, but a prohibitory and penal clause, providing the means of coercion, and making the prohibition stronger. Now Mr. Hastings has found out that this very coercive clause, which was made in order to enable his superiors to get at him and punish him for bribery, is a license for him to receive bribes. He is not only a practitioner of bribery, but a professor, a doctor upon the subject. His opinion is, that he might take presents or bribes to himself; he considers the penal clause which the Company attached to their prohibition, and by which all such bribes are constructively declared to be theirs, in order to recover them out of his hands, as a license to receive bribes, to extort money; and he goes with the very prohibition in his hand, the very means by which he was to be restrained, to exercise an unlimited bribery, peculation, and extortion over the unhappy natives of the country.
The moment he finds that the Company has got a scent of any one of his bribes, he comes forward and says, "To be sure, I took it as a bribe; I admit the party gave me it as a bribe: I concealed it for a time, because I thought it was for the interest of the Company to conceal it; but I had a secret intention, in my own mind, of applying it to their service: you shall have it; but you shall have it as I please, and when I please; and this bribe becomes sanctified the moment I think fit to apply it to your service." Now can it be supposed that the India Company, or that the act of Parliament, meant, by declaring that the property taken by a corrupt servant, contrary to the true intent of his covenant, was theirs, to give a license to take such property,—and that one mode of obtaining a revenue was by the breach of the very covenants which were meant to prevent extortion, peculation, and corruption? What sort of body is the India Company, which, coming to the verge of bankruptcy by the robbery of half the world, is afterwards to subsist upon the alms of peculation and bribery, to have its strength recruited by the violation of the covenants imposed upon its own servants? It is an odd sort of body to be so fed and so supported. This new constitution of revenue that he has made is indeed a very singular contrivance. It is a revenue to be collected by any officer of the Company, (for they are all alike forbidden, and all alike permitted,)—to be collected by any person, from any person, at any time, in any proportion, by any means, and in any way he pleases; and to be accounted for, or not to be accounted for, at the pleasure of the collector, and, if applied to their use, to be applied at his discretion, and not at the discretion of his employers. I will venture to say that such a system of revenue never was before thought of. The next part is an exchequer, which he has formed, corresponding with it. You will find the board of exchequer made up of officers ostensibly in the Company's service, of their public accountant and public treasurer, whom Mr. Hastings uses as an accountant and treasurer of bribes, accountable, not to the Company, but to himself, acting in no public manner, and never acting but upon his requisition, concealing all his frauds and artifices to prevent detection and discovery. In short, it is an exchequer in which, if I may be permitted to repeat the words I made use of on a former occasion, extortion is the assessor, in which fraud is the treasurer, confusion the accountant, oblivion the remembrancer. That these are not mere words, I will exemplify as I go through the detail: I will show you that every one of the things I have stated are truths, in fact, and that these men are bound by the condition of their recognized fidelity to Mr. Hastings to keep back his secrets, to change the accounts, to alter the items, to make him debtor or creditor at pleasure, and by that means to throw the whole system of the Company's accounts into confusion.
I have shown the impossibility of the Company's having intended to authorize such a revenue, much less such a constitution of it as Mr. Hastings has drawn from the very prohibitions of bribery, and such an exchequer as he has formed upon the principles I have stated. You will not dishonor the legislature or the Company, be it what it may, by thinking that either of them could give any sanction to it. Indeed, you will not think that such a device could ever enter into the head of any rational man. You are, then, to judge whether it is not a device to cover guilt, to prevent detection by destroying the means of it; and at the same time your Lordships will judge whether the evidence we bring you to prove that revenue is a mere pretext be not stronger than the strange, absurd reasons which he has produced for forming this new plan of an exchequer of bribery.
My Lords, I am now going to read to you a letter in which Mr. Hastings declares his opinion upon the operation of the act, which he now has found the means, as he thinks, of evading. My Lords, I will tell you, to save you a good deal of reading, that there was certain prize-money given by Sujah ul Dowlah to a body of the Company's troops serving in the field,—that this prize-money was to be distributed among them; but upon application being made to Mr. Hastings for his opinion and sanction in the distribution, Mr. Hastings at first seemed inclined to give way to it, but afterwards, upon reading and considering the act of Parliament, before he allowed the soldiery to receive this public donation, he thus describes his opinion of the operation of the act.
Extract of a Letter from Mr. Hastings to Colonel Champion, 31 August, 1774.
"Upon a reference to the new act of Parliament, I was much disappointed and sorry to find that our intentions were entirely defeated by a clause in the act, (to be in force after the 1st of August, 1774,) which divests us of the power to grant, and expressly prohibits the army to receive, the Nabob's intended donation. Agreeable to the positive sense of this clause, notwithstanding it is expressed individually, there is not a doubt but the army is included with all other persons in the prohibition from receiving presents or donations; a confirmation of which is, that in the clause of exceptions, wherein 'counsellors-at-law, physicians, surgeons, and chaplains are permitted to receive the fees annexed to their profession,' no mention whatever is made of any latitude given to the army, or any circumstances wherein it would be allowable for them to receive presents.... This unlucky discovery of an exclusion by act of Parliament, which admits of no abatement or evasion wherever its authority extends, renders a revisal of our proceedings necessary, and leaves no option to our decision. It is not like the ordinances of the Court of Directors, where a favorable construction may be put, and some room is left for the interposition of the authority vested in ourselves,—but positive and decisive, admitting neither of refinement nor misconstruction. I should be happy, if in this instance a method could be devised of setting the act aside, which I should most willingly embrace; but, in my opinion, an opposition would be to incur the penalty."
Your Lordships see, Mr. Hastings considered this act to be a most unlucky discovery: indeed, as long as it remained in force, it would have been unlucky for him, because it would have destroyed one of the principal sources of his illegal profits. Why does he consider it unlucky? Because it admits of no reservation, no exception, no refinement whatever, but is clear, positive, decisive. Now in what case was it that Mr. Hastings made this determination? In the case of a donation publicly offered to an army serving in the field by a prince then independent of the Company. If ever there was a circumstance in which any refinement, any favorable construction of the act could be used, it was in favor of a body of men serving in the field, fighting for their country, spilling their blood for it, suffering all the inconveniences of that climate. It was undoubtedly voluntarily offered to them by the party, in the height of victory, and enriched by the plunder of whole provinces. I believe your Lordships will agree with me, that, if any relaxation, any evasion, of an act of Parliament could be allowed, if the intention of the legislature could for a moment be trifled with, or supposed for a moment doubtful, it was in this instance; and yet, upon the rigor of the act, Mr. Hastings refuses that army the price of their blood, money won solely almost by their arms for a prince who had acquired millions by their bravery, fidelity, and sufferings. This was the case in which Mr. Hastings refused a public donation to the army; and from that day to this they have never received it.
If the receipt of this public donation could be thus forbidden, whence has Mr. Hastings since learned that he may privately take money, and take it not only from princes, and persons in power, and abounding in wealth, but, as we shall prove, from persons in a comparative degree of penury and distress? that he could take it from persons in office and trust, whose power gave them the means of ruining the people for the purpose of enabling themselves to pay it? Consider in what a situation the Company must be, if the Governor-General can form such a secret exchequer of direct bribes, given eo nomine as bribes, and accepted as such, by the parties concerned in the transaction, to be discovered only by himself, and with only the inward reservation that I have spoken of.
In the first place, if Mr. Hastings should die without having made a discovery of all his bribes, or if any other servant of the Company should imitate his example without his heroic good intentions in doing such villanous acts, how is the Company to recover the bribe-money? The receivers need not divulge it till they think fit; and the moment an informer comes, that informer is ruined. He comes, for instance, to the Governor-General and Council, and charges, say, not Mr. Hastings, but the head of the Board of Revenue, with receiving a bribe. "Receive a bribe? So I did; but it was with an intention of applying it to the Company's service. There I nick the informer: I am beforehand with him: the bribe is sanctified by my inward jesuitical intention. I will make a merit of it with the Company. I have received 40,000l. as a bribe; there it is for you: I am acquitted; I am a meritorious servant: let the informer go and seek his remedy as he can." Now, if an informer is once instructed that a person who receives bribes can turn them into merit, and take away his action from him, do you think that you ever will or can discover any one bribe? But what is still worse, by this method disclose but one bribe, and you secure all the rest that you possibly can receive upon any occasion. For instance, strong report prevails that a bribe of 40,000l. has been given, and the receiver expects that information will be laid against him. He acknowledges that he has received a bribe of 40,000l., but says that it was for the service of the Company, and that it is carried to their account. And thus, by stating that he has taken some money which he has accounted for, but concealing from whom that money came, which is exactly Mr. Hastings's case, if at last an information should be laid before the Company of a specific bribe having been received of 40,000l., it is said by the receiver, "Lord! this is the 40,000l. I told you of: it is broken into fragments, paid by instalments; and you have taken it and put it into your own coffers."
Again, suppose him to take it through the hand of an agent, such as Gunga Govind Sing, and that this agent, who, as we have lately discovered, out of a bribe of 40,000l., which Mr. Hastings was to have received, kept back half of it, falls into their debt like him: I desire to know what the Company can do in such a case. Gunga Govind Sing has entered into no covenants with the Company. There is no trace of his having this money, except what Mr. Hastings chooses to tell. If he is called upon to refund it to the Company, he may say he never received it, that he was never ordered to extort this money from the people; or if he was under any covenant not to take money, he may set up this defence: "I am forbidden to receive money; and I will not make a declaration which will subject me to penalties": or he may say in India, before the Supreme Court, "I have paid the bribe all to Mr. Hastings"; and then there must be a bill and suit there, a bill and suit here, and by that means, having one party on one side the water and the other party on the other, the Company may never come to a discovery of it. And that in fact this is the way in which one of his great bribe-agents has acted I shall prove to your Lordships by evidence.
Mr. Hastings had squeezed out of a miserable country a bribe of 40,000l., of which he was enabled to bring to the account of the Company only 20,000l., and of which we should not even have known the existence, if the inquiries pursued with great diligence by the House of Commons had not extorted the discovery: and even now that we know the fact, we can never get at the money; the Company can never receive it; and before the House had squeezed out of him that some such money had been received, he never once told the Court of Directors that his black bribe-agent, whom he recommended to their service, had cheated both them and him of 20,000l. out of the fund of the bribe-revenue. If it be asked, Where is the record of this? Record there is none. In what office is it entered? It is entered in no office; it is mentioned as privately received for the Company's benefit: and you shall now further see what a charming office of receipt and account this new exchequer of Mr. Hastings's is.
For there is another and a more serious circumstance attending this business. Every one knows, that, by the law of this, and, I believe, of every country, any money which is taken illegally from any person, as every bribe or sum of money extorted or paid without consideration is, belongs to the person who paid it, and he may bring his action for it, and recover it. Then see how the Company stands. The Company receives a bribe of 40,000l. by Mr. Hastings; it is carried to its account; it turns bribery into a revenue; it sanctifies it. In the mean time, the man from whom this money is illegally taken sues Mr. Hastings. Must not he recover of Mr. Hastings? Then, if so, must not Mr. Hastings recover it again from the Company? The Company undoubtedly is answerable for it. And here is a revenue which every man who has paid it may drag out of the treasury again. Mr. Hastings's donations of his bribes to the treasury are liable to be torn from it at pleasure by every man who gives the money. First it may be torn from him who receives it; and then he may recover it from the treasury, to which he has given it.
But admitting that the taking of bribes can be sanctified by their becoming the property of the Company, it may still be asked, For what end and purpose has the Company covenanted with Mr. Hastings that money taken extorsively shall belong to the Company? Is it that satisfaction and reparation may be awarded against the said Warren Hastings to the said Company for their own benefit? No: it is for the benefit of the injured persons; and it is to be carried to the Company's account, "but in trust, nevertheless, and to the intent that the said Company may and do render and pay over the moneys received or recovered by them to the parties injured or defrauded, which the said Company accordingly hereby agree and covenant to do." Now here is a revenue to be received by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use, applied at his discretion to that use, and which the Company has previously covenanted to restore to the persons that are injured and damaged. This is a revenue which is to be torn away by the action of any person,—a revenue which they must return back to the person complaining, as they in justice ought to do: for no nation ever avowed making a revenue out of bribery and peculation. They are, then, to restore it back again. But how can they restore it? Mr. Hastings has applied it: he has given it in presents to princes,—laid it out in budgeros,—in pen, ink, and wax,—in salaries to secretaries: he has laid it out just in any way he pleased: and the India Company, who have covenanted to restore all this money to the persons from whom it came, are deprived of all means of performing so just a duty. Therefore I dismiss the idea that any man so acting could have had a good intention in his mind: the supposition is too weak, senseless, and absurd. It was only in a desperate cause that he made a desperate attempt: for we shall prove that he never made a disclosure without thinking that a discovery had been previously made or was likely to be made, together with an exposure of all the circumstances of his wicked and abominable concealment.
You will see the history of this new scheme of bribery, by which Mr. Hastings contrived by avowing some bribes to cover others, attempted to outface his delinquency, and, if possible, to reconcile a weak breach of the laws with a sort of spirited observance of them, and to become infamous for the good of his country.
The first appearance of this practice of bribery was in a letter of the 29th of November, 1780. The cause which led to the discovery was a dispute between him and Mr. Francis at the board, in consequence of a very handsome offer made by Mr. Hastings to the board relative to a measure proposed by him, to which he found one objection to be the money that it would cost. He made the most generous and handsome offer, as it stands upon record, that perhaps any man ever made,—namely, that he would defray the expense out of his own private cash, and that he had deposited with the treasurer two lac of rupees. This was in June, 1780, and Mr. Francis soon after returned to Europe. I need not inform your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings had before this time been charged with bribery and peculation by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis. He suspected that Mr. Francis, then going to Europe, would confirm this charge by the suspicious nature and circumstances of this generous offer; and this suspicion was increased by the connection which he supposed, and which we can prove he thought, Mr. Francis had with Cheyt Sing. Apprehending, therefore, that he might discover and bring the bribe to light some way or other, he resolved to anticipate any such discovery by declaring, upon the 29th of November, that this money was not his own. I will mention to your Lordships hereafter the circumstances of this money. He says, "My present reason for adverting to my conduct," (that is, his offer of two lac of rupees out of his own private cash for the Company's service, upon the 26th of June, 1780,) "on the occasion I have mentioned, is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your 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."
My Lords, you see what an account Mr. Hastings has given of some obscure transaction by which he contradicts the record. For, on the 26th of June, he generously, nobly, full of enthusiasm for their service, offers to the Company money of his own. On the 29th of November he tells the Court of Directors that the money he offered on the former day was not his own,—that his assertion was totally false,—that the money was not his,—that he had no right to receive it,—and that he would not have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which at that instant offered.
Such is the account sent by their Governor in India, acting as an accountant, to the Company,—a company with whom everything is matter of account. He tells them, indeed, that the sum he had offered was not his own,—that he had no right to it,—and that he would not have taken it, if he had not been greatly tempted by the occasion; but he never tells them by what means he came at it, the person from whom he received it, the occasion upon which he received it, (whether justifiable or not,) or any one circumstance under heaven relative to it. This is a very extraordinary account to give to the public of a sum which we find to be somewhere above twenty thousand pounds, taken by Mr. Hastings in some way or other. He set the Company blindly groping in the dark by the very pretended light, the ignis-fatuus, which he held out to them: for at that time all was in the dark, and in a cloud: and this is what Mr. Hastings calls information communicated to the Company on the subject of these bribes.
You have heard of obscurity illustrated by a further obscurity,—obscurum per obscurius. He continues to tell them,—"Something of affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of another transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it is more immediately my duty to inform you." He then tells them that he had contrived to give a sum of money to the Rajah of Berar, and the account he gives of that proceeding is this. "We had neither money to spare, nor, in the apparent state of that government in its relation to ours, would it have been either prudent or consistent with our public credit to have afforded it. It was, nevertheless, my decided opinion that some aid should be given, not less as a necessary relief than as an indication of confidence, and a return for the many instances of substantial kindness which we had within the course of the two last years experienced from the government of Berar. I had an assurance that such a proposal would receive the acquiescence of the board; but I knew that it would not pass without opposition, and it would have become public, which might have defeated its purpose. Convinced of the necessity of the expedient, and assured of the sincerity of the government of Berar, from evidences of stronger proof to me than I could make them appear to the other members of the board, I resolved to adopt it and take the entire responsibility of it upon myself. In this mode a less considerable sum would suffice. I accordingly caused three lac of rupees to be delivered to the minister of the Rajah of Berar resident in Calcutta. He has transmitted it to Cuttack. Two thirds of this sum I have raised by my own credit, and shall charge it in my official accounts; the other third I have supplied from the cash in my hands belonging to the Honorable Company."
Your Lordships see in this business another mode which he has of accounting with the Company, and informing them of his bribe. He begins his account of this transaction by saying that it has something of affinity to the last anecdote,—meaning the account of the first bribe. An anecdote is made a head of an account; and this, I believe, is what none of your Lordships ever have heard of before,—and I believe it is yet to be learned in this commercial nation, a nation of accurate commercial account. The account he gives of the first is an anecdote; and what is his account of the second? A relation of an anecdote: not a near relation, but something of affinity,—a remote relation, cousin three or four times removed, of the half-blood, or something of that kind, to this anecdote: and he never tells them any circumstance of it whatever of any kind, but that it has some affinity to the former anecdote. But, my Lords, the thing which comes to some degree of clearness is this, that he did give money to the Rajah of Berar. And your Lordships will be so good as to advert carefully to the proportions in which he gave it. He did give him two lac of rupees of money raised by his own credit, his own money; and the third he advanced out of the Company's money in his hands. He might have taken the Company's money undoubtedly, fairly, openly, and held it in his hands, for a hundred purposes; and therefore he does not tell them that even that third was money he had obtained by bribery and corruption. No: he says it is money of the Company's, which he had in his hand. So that you must get through a long train of construction before you ascertain that this sum was what it turns out to be, a bribe, which he retained for the Company. Your Lordships will please to observe, as I proceed, the nature of this pretended generosity in Mr. Hastings. He is always generous in the same way. As he offered the whole of his first bribe as his own money, and afterward acknowledged that no part of it was his own, so he is now generous again in this latter transaction,—in which, however, he shows that he is neither generous nor just. He took the first money without right, and he did not apply it to the very service for which it was pretended to be taken. He then tells you of another anecdote, which, he says, has an affinity to that anecdote, and here he is generous again. In the first he appears to be generous and just, because he appears to give his own money, which he had a right to dispose of; then he tells you he is neither generous nor just, for he had taken money he had no right to, and did not apply it to the service for which he pretended to have received it. And now he is generous again, because he gives two lac of his own money,—and just, because he gives one lac which belonged to the Company; but there is not an idea suggested from whom he took it.
But to proceed, my Lords. In this letter he tells you he had given two thirds his own money and one third the Company's money. So it stood upon the 29th of November, 1780. On the 5th of January following we see the business take a totally different turn; and then Mr. Hastings calls for three Company's bonds, upon two different securities, antedated to the 1st and 2d of October, for the three lac, which he before told them was two thirds his own money and one third the Company's. He now declares the whole of it to be his own, and he thus applies by letter to the board, of which he himself was a majority.
"Honorable Sir and Sirs,—Having had occasion to disburse the sum of three lacs of sicca rupees on account of secret services, which having been advanced from my own private cash, I request that the same may be repaid to me in the following manner.
"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the second loan, bearing date from 1st October, for one lac of sicca rupees.
"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the first loan, bearing date from 1st October, for one lac of sicca rupees."
"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the first loan, bearing date from the 2d October, for one lac of sicca rupees."
Here are two accounts, one of which must be directly and flatly false: for he could not have given two thirds his own, and have supplied the other third from money of the Company's, and at the same time have advanced the whole as his own. He here goes the full length of the fraud: he declares that it is all his own,—so much his own that he does not trust the Company with it, and actually takes their bonds as a security for it, bearing an interest to be paid to him when he thinks proper.
Thus it remained from the 5th of January, 1781, till 16th December, 1782, when this business takes another turn, and in a letter of his to the Company these bonds become all their own. All the money advanced is now, all of it, the Company's money. First he says two thirds were his own; next, that the whole is his own; and the third account is, that the whole is the Company's, and he will account to them for it.
Now he has accompanied this account with another very curious one. For when you come to look into the particulars of it, you will find there are three bonds declared to be the Company's bonds, and which refer to the former transactions, namely, the money for which he had taken the bonds; but when you come to look at the numbers of them, you will find that one of the three bonds which he had taken as his own disappears, and another bond, of another date, and for a much larger sum, is substituted in its place, of which he had never mentioned anything whatever. So that, taking his first account, that two thirds is his own money, then that it is all his own, in the third that it is all the Company's money, by a fourth account, given in a paper describing the three bonds, you will find that there is one lac which he does not account for, but substitutes in its place a bond before taken as his own. He sinks and suppresses one bond, he gives two bonds to the Company, and to supply the want of the third, which he suppresses, he brings forward a bond for another sum, of another date, which he had never mentioned before. Here, then, you have four different accounts: if any one of them is true, every one of the other three is totally false. Such a system of cogging, such a system of fraud, such a system of prevarication, such a system of falsehood, never was, I believe, before exhibited in the world.
In the first place, why did he take bonds at all from the Company for the money that was their own? I must be cautious how I charge a legal crime. I will not charge it to be forgery, to take a bond from the Company for money which was their own. He was employed to make out bonds for the Company, to raise money on their credit. He pretends he lent them a sum of money, which was not his to lend: but he gives their own money to them as his own, and takes a security for it. I will not say that it is a forgery, but I am sure it is an offence as grievous, because it is as much a cheat as a forgery, with this addition to it, that the person so cheating is in a trust; he violates that trust, and in so doing he defrauds and falsifies the whole system of the Company's accounts.
I have only to show what his own explanation of all these actions was, because it supersedes all observation of mine. Hear what prevaricating guilt says for the falsehood and delusion which had been used to cover it; and see how he plunges deeper and deeper upon every occasion. This explanation arose out of another memorable bribe, which I must now beg leave to state to your Lordships.
About the time of the receipt of the former bribes, good fortune, as good things seldom come singly, is kind to him; and when he went up and had nearly ruined the Company's affairs in Oude and Benares, he received a present of 100,000l. sterling, or thereabouts. He received bills for it in September, 1781, and he gives the Company an account of it in January, 1782. Remark in what manner the account of this money was given, and the purposes for which he intends to apply it. He says, in this letter, "I received the offer of a considerable sum of money, both on the Nabob's part and that of his ministers, as a present to myself, not to the Company: I accepted it without hesitation, and gladly, being entirely destitute both of means and credit, whether for your service or the relief of my own necessities." My Lords, upon this you shall hear a comment, made by some abler persons than me. This donation was not made in species, but in bills upon the house of Gopaul Doss, who was then a prisoner in the hands of Cheyt Sing. After mentioning that he took this present for the Company, and for their exigencies, and partly for his own necessities, and in consequence of the distress of both, he desires the Company, in the moment of this their greatest distress, to award it to him, and therefore he ends, "If you should adjudge the deposit to me, I shall consider it as the most honorable approbation and reward of my labors: and I wish to owe my fortune to your bounty. I am now in the fiftieth year of my life: I have passed thirty-one years in the service of the Company, and the greatest part of that time in employments of the highest trust. My conscience allows me boldly to claim the merit of zeal and integrity; nor has fortune been unpropitious to their exertions. To these qualities I bound my pretensions. I shall not repine, if you shall deem otherwise of my services; nor ought your decision, however it may disappoint my hope of a retreat adequate to the consequence and elevation of the office which I now possess, to lessen my gratitude for having been so long permitted to hold it, since it has at least enabled me to lay up a provision with which I can be contented in a more humble station."
And here your Lordships will be pleased incidentally to remark the circumstance of his condition of life and his fortune, to which he appeals, and upon account of which he desires this money. Your Lordships will remember that in 1773 he said, (and this I stated to you from himself,) that, if he held his then office for a very few years, he should be enabled to lay by an ample provision for his retreat. About nine years after that time, namely, in the month of January, 1782, he finds himself rather pinched with want, but, however, not in so bad a way but that the holding of his office had enabled him to lay up a provision with which he could be contented in a more humble station. He wishes to have affluence; he wishes to have dignity; he wishes to have consequence and rank: but he allows that he has competence. Your Lordships will see afterwards how miserably his hopes were disappointed: for the Court of Directors, receiving this letter from Mr. Hastings, did declare, that they could not give it to him, because the act had ordered that "no fees of office, perquisites, emoluments, or advantages whatsoever, should be accepted, received, or taken by such Governor-General and Council, or any of them, in any manner or on any account or pretence whatsoever"; "and as the same act further directs, 'that no Governor-General, or any of the Council, shall directly take, accept, or receive, of or from any person or persons, in any manner or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward,' we cannot, were we so inclined, decree the amount of this present to the Governor-General. And it is further enacted, 'that any such present, gift, gratuity, donation, or reward, accepted, taken, or received, shall be deemed and construed to have been received to and for the sole use of the Company.'" And therefore they resolved, most unjustly and most wickedly, to keep it to themselves. The act made it in the first instance the property of the Company, and they would not give it him. And one should think this, with his own former construction of the act, would have made him cautious of taking bribes. You have seen what weight it had with him to stop the course of bribes which he was in such a career of taking in every place and with both hands.
Your Lordships have now before you this hundred thousand pounds, disclosed in a letter from Patna, dated the 20th January, 1782. You find mystery and concealment in every one of Mr. Hastings's discoveries. For (which is a curious part of it) this letter was not sent to the Court of Directors in their packet regularly, but transmitted by Major Fairfax, one of his agents, to Major Scott, another of his agents, to be delivered to the Company. Why was this done? Your Lordships will judge, from that circuitous mode of transmission, whether he did not thereby intend to leave some discretion in his agent to divulge it or not. We are told he did not; but your Lordships will believe that or not, according to the nature of the fact. If he had been anxious to make this discovery to the Directors, the regular way would have been to send his letter to the Directors immediately in the packet: but he sent it in a box to an agent; and that agent, upon due discretion, conveyed it to the Court of Directors. Here, however, he tells you nothing about the persons from whom he received this money, any more than he had done respecting the two former sums.
On the 2d of May following the date of this Patna letter he came down to Calcutta with a mind, as he himself describes it, greatly agitated. All his hope of plundering Benares had totally failed. The produce of the robbing of the Begums, in the manner your Lordships have heard, was all dissipated to pay the arrears of the armies: there was no fund left. He felt himself agitated and full of dread, knowing that he had been threatened with having his place taken from him several times, and that he might be called home to render an account. He had heard that inquiries had begun in a menacing form in Parliament; and though at that time Bengal was not struck at, there was a charge of bribery and peculation brought against the Governor of Madras. With this dread, with a mind full of anxiety and perturbation, he writes a letter, as he pretends, on the 22d of May, 1782. Your Lordships will remark, that, when he came down to Calcutta from his expedition up the country, he did not till the 22d of May give any account whatever of these transactions,—and that this letter, or pretended letter, of the 22d of May was not sent till the 16th of December following. We shall clearly prove that he had abundant means of sending it, and by various ways, before the 16th of December, 1782, when he inclosed in another letter that of the 22d of May. This is the letter of discovery; this is the letter by which his breast was to be laid open to his employers, and all the obscurity of his transactions to be elucidated. Here are indeed new discoveries, but they are like many new-discovered lands, exceedingly inhospitable, very thinly inhabited, and producing nothing to gratify the curiosity of the human mind.
This letter is addressed to the Honorable the Court of Directors, dated Fort William, 22d May, 1782. He tells them he had promised to account for the ten lacs of rupees which he had received, and this promise, he says, he now performs, and that he takes that opportunity of accounting with them likewise for several other sums which he had received. His words are,—
"This promise I now perform, and, deeming it consistent with the spirit of it, I have added such other sums as have been occasionally converted to the Company's property through my means, in consequence of the like original destination. Of the second of these sums you have already been advised in a letter which I had the honor to address the Honorable Court of Directors, dated 29th November, 1780. Both this and the third article were paid immediately to the treasury, by my order to the sub-treasurer to receive them on the Company's account, but never passed through my hands. The three sums for which bonds were granted were in like manner paid to the Company's treasury, without passing through my hands, but their application was not specified. The sum of 50,000 current rupees was received while I was on my journey to Benares, and applied as expressed in the account.
"As to the manner in which these sums have been expended, the reference which I have made of it in the accompanying account, to the several accounts in which they are credited, renders any other specification of it unnecessary,—besides that these accounts either have or will have received a much stronger authentication than any that I could give to mine."
I wish your Lordships to attend to the next paragraph, which is meant by him to explain why he took bribes at all,—why he took bonds for some of them, as moneys of his own, and not moneys of the Company,—why he entered some upon the Company's accounts, and why of the others he renders no account at all. Light, however, will beam upon you as we proceed.
"Why these sums were taken by me,—why they were, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use,—why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest,—might, were this matter exposed to the view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures, to which it would be of little use to reply. Were your Honorable Court to question me on these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's benefit, at times when the Company very much needed 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, and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. I trust, Honorable Sirs, to your breasts for a candid interpretation of my actions,—and assume the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such an occasion, entitled to it."
Lofty, my Lords! You see, that, after the Directors had expected an explanation for so long a time, he says, "Why these sums were taken by me, and, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use, I cannot tell; why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest, I cannot tell: if this matter were exposed to view, it would furnish a variety of conjectures." Here is an account which is to explain the most obscure, the most mysterious, the most evidently fraudulent transactions. When asked how he came to take these bonds, how he came to use these frauds, he tells you he really does not know,—that he might have this motive for it, that he might have another motive for it,—that he wished to conceal it from public curiosity,—but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. "You foolish Court of Directors may conjecture and conjecture on. You are asking me why I took bonds to myself for money of yours, why I have cheated you, why I have falsified my account in such a manner. I will not tell you."
In the satisfaction which he had promised to give them he neither mentions the persons, the times, the occasions, or motives for any of his actions. He adds, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest." For some purposes, he thought it necessary to use the most complicated and artful concealments; for some, he could not tell what his motives were; and for others, that it was mere carelessness. Here is the exchequer of bribery!—have I falsified any part of my original stating of it?—an exchequer in which the man who ought to pay receives, the man who ought to give security takes it, the man who ought to keep an account says he has forgotten; an exchequer in which oblivion was the remembrancer; and, to sum up the whole, an exchequer into the accounts of which it was useless to inquire. This is the manner in which the account of near two hundred thousand pounds is given to the Court of Directors. You can learn nothing in this business that is any way distinct, except a premeditated design of a concealment of his transactions. That is avowed.
But there is a more serious thing behind. Who were the instruments of his concealment? No other, my Lords, than the Company's public accountant. That very accountant takes the money, knowing it to be the Company's, and that it was only pretended to be advanced by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use. He sees Mr. Hastings make out bonds to himself for it, and Mr. Hastings makes him enter him as creditor, when in fact he was debtor. Thus he debauches the Company's accountant, and makes him his confederate. These fraudulent and corrupt acts, covered by false representations, are proved to be false not by collation with anything else, but false by a collation with themselves. This, then, is the account, and his explanation of it; and in this insolent, saucy, careless, negligent manner, a public accountant like Mr. Hastings, a man bred up a book-keeper in the Company's service, who ought to be exact, physically exact, in his account, has not only been vicious in his own account, but made the public accounts vicious and of no value.
But there is in this account another curious circumstance with regard to the deposit of this sum of money, to which he referred in his first paragraph of his letter of the 29th of November, 1780. He states that this deposit was made and passed into the hands of Mr. Larkins on the 1st of June. It did so; but it is not entered in the Company's accounts till November following. Now in all that intermediate space where was it? what account was there of it? It was entirely a secret between Mr. Larkins and Mr. Hastings, without a possibility of any one discovering any particular relative to it. Here is an account of two hundred thousand pounds received, juggled between the accountant and him, without a trace of it appearing in the Company's books. Some of those committees, to whom, for their diligence at least, I must say the public have some obligation, and in return for which they ought to meet with some indulgence, examining into all these circumstances, and having heard that Mr. Hastings had deposited a sum of money in the hands of the Company's sub-treasurer in the month of June, sent for the Company's books. They looked over those books, but they did not find the least trace of any such sum of money, and not any account of it: nor could there be, because it was not paid to the Company's account till the November following. The accountant had received the money, but never entered it from June till November. Then, at last, have we an account of it. But was it even then entered regularly upon the Company's accounts? No such thing: it is a deposit carried to the Governor-General's credit.
[The entry of the several species in which this deposit was made was here read from the Company's General Journal of 1780 and 1781.]
My Lords, when this account appears at last, when this money does emerge in the public accounts, whose is it? Is it the Company's? No: Mr. Hastings's. And thus, if, notwithstanding this obscure account in November, the Directors had claimed and called for this affinity to an anecdote,—if they had called for this anecdote and examined the account,—if they had said, "We observe here entered two lac and upwards; come, Mr. Hastings, let us see where this money is,"—they would find that it is Mr. Hastings's money, not the Company's; they would find that it is carried to his credit. In this manner he hands over this sum, telling them, on the 22d of May, 1782, that not only the bonds were a fraud, but the deposit was a fraud, and that neither bonds nor deposit did in reality belong to him. Why did he enter it at all? Then, afterwards, why did he not enter it as the Company's? Why make a false entry, to enter it as his own? And how came he, two years after, when he does tell you that it was the Company's and not his own, to alter the public accounts? But why did he not tell them at that time, when he pretends to be opening his breast to the Directors, from whom he received it, or say anything to give light to the Company respecting it? who, supposing they had the power of dispensing with an act of Parliament, or licensing bribery at their pleasure, might have been thereby enabled to say, "Here you ought to have received it,—there it might be oppressive and of dreadful example."
I have only to state, that, in this letter, which was pretended to be written on the 22d of May, 1782, your Lordships will observe that he thinks it his absolute duty (and I wish to press this upon your Lordships, because it will be necessary in a comparison which I shall have hereafter to make) to lay open all their affairs to them, to give them a full and candid explanation of his conduct, which he afterwards confesses he is not able to do. The paragraph has been just read to you. It amounts to this: "I have taken many bribes,—have falsified your accounts,—have reversed the principle of them in my own favor; I now discover to you all these my frauds, and think myself entitled to your confidence upon this occasion." Now all the principles of diffidence, all the principles of distrust, nay, more, all the principles upon which a man may be convicted of premeditated fraud, and deserve the severest punishment, are to be found in this case, in which he says he holds himself to be entitled to their confidence and trust. If any of your Lordships had a steward who told you he had lent you your own money, and had taken bonds from you for it, and if he afterwards told you that that money was neither yours nor his, but extorted from your tenants by some scandalous means, I should be glad to know what your Lordships would think of such a steward, who should say, "I will take the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such an occasion, entitled to your confidence and trust." You will observe his cavalier mode of expression. Instead of his exhibiting the rigor and severity of an accountant and a book-keeper, you would think that he had been a reader of sentimental letters; there is such an air of a novel running through the whole, that it adds to the ridicule and nausea of it: it is an oxymel of squills; there is something to strike you with horror for the villany of it, something to strike you with contempt for the fraud of it, and something to strike you with utter disgust for the vile and bad taste with which all these base ingredients are assorted.
Your Lordships will see, when the account which is subjoined to this unaccountable letter comes before you, that, though the Company had desired to know the channels through which he got those sums, there is not (except by a reference that appears in another place to one of the articles) one single syllable of explanation given from one end to the other, there is not the least glimpse of light thrown upon these transactions. But we have since discovered from whom he got these bribes; and your Lordships will be struck with horror, when you hear it.
I have already remarked to you, that, though this letter is dated upon the 22d of May, it was not dispatched for Europe till December following; and he gets Mr. Larkins, who was his agent and instrument in falsifying the Company's accounts, to swear that this letter was written upon the 22d of May, and that he had no opportunity to send it, but by the "Lively" in December. On the 16th of that month he writes to the Directors, and tells them that he is quite shocked to find he had no earlier opportunity of making this discovery, which he thought himself bound to make; though this discovery, respecting some articles of it, had now been delayed nearly two years, and though it since appears that there were many opportunities, and particularly by the "Resolution," of sending it. He was much distressed, and found himself in an awkward situation, from an apprehension that the Parliamentary inquiry, which he knew was at this time in progress, might have forced from him this notable discovery. He says, "I do not fear the consequences of any Parliamentary process." Indeed, he needed not to fear any Parliamentary inquiry, if it produced no further discovery than that which your Lordships have in the letter of the 22d of May, and in the accounts subjoined to it. He says, that "the delay is of no public consequence; but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate, because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished."
Now here is a very curious letter, that I wish to have read for some other reasons, which will afterwards appear, but principally at present for the purpose of showing you that he held it to be his duty and thought it to the last degree dishonorable not to give the Company an account of those secret bribes: he thought it would reflect upon him, and ruin his character forever, if this account did not come voluntarily from him, but was extorted by terror of Parliamentary inquiry. In this letter of the 16th December, 1782, he thus writes.
"The delay is of no public consequence, but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate; because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished, but which were unknown when my letter was written, and written in the necessary consequence of a promise made to that effect in a former letter to your Honorable Committee, dated 20th January last. However, to preclude the possibility of such reflections from affecting me, I have desired Mr. Larkins, who was privy to the whole transaction, to affix to the letter his affidavit of the date in which it was written. I own I feel most sensibly the mortification of being reduced to the necessity of using such precautions to guard my reputation from dishonor. If I had at any time possessed that degree of confidence from my immediate employers which they never withheld from the meanest of my predecessors, I should have disdained to use these attentions. How I have drawn on me a different treatment I know not; it is sufficient that I have not merited it. And in the course of a service of thirty-two years, and ten of these employed in maintaining the powers and discharging the duties of the first office of the British government in India, that honorable court 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 but 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 the unworthy and, pardon me, if I add, dangerous, reflections which they have passed upon me for the first communication of this kind: and your own experience will suggest to you, that there are persons who would profit by such a warning.
"Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration.
"If I appear in any unfavorable light by these transactions, I resign the common and legal security of those who commit crimes or errors. I am ready to answer every particular question that may be put against myself, upon honor or upon oath.
"The sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come would never have yielded them to the Company publicly; and the exigencies of your service (exigencies created by the exposition of your affairs, and faction in your councils) required those supplies.
"I could have concealed them, had I had a wrong motive, from yours and the public eye forever; and I know that the difficulties to which a spirit of injustice may subject me for my candor and avowal are greater than any possible inconvenience that could have attended the concealment, except the dissatisfaction of my own mind. These difficulties are but a few of those which I have suffered in your service. The applause of my own breast is my surest reward, and was the support of my mind in meeting them. Your applause, and that of my country, are my next wish in life."
Your Lordships will observe at the end of this letter, that this man declares his first applause to be from his own breast, and that he next wishes to have the applause of his employers. But reversing this, and taking their applause first, let us see on what does he ground his hope of their applause? Was it on his former conduct? No: for he says that conduct had repeatedly met with their disapprobation. Was it upon the confidence which he knew they had in him? No: for he says they gave more of their confidence to the meanest of his predecessors. Observe, my Lords, the style of insolence he constantly uses with regard to all mankind. Lord Clive was his predecessor, Governor Cartier was his predecessor, Governor Verelst was his predecessor: every man of them as good as himself: and yet he says the Directors had given "more of their confidence to the meanest of his predecessors." But what was to entitle him to their applause? A clear and full explanation of the bribes he had taken. Bribes was to be the foundation of their confidence in him, and the clear explanation of them was to entitle him to their applause! Strange grounds to build confidence upon!—the rotten ground of corruption, accompanied with the infamy of its avowal! Strange ground to expect applause!—a discovery which was no discovery at all! Your Lordships have heard this discovery, which I have not taken upon me to state, but have read his own letter on the occasion. Has there, at this moment, any light broken in upon you concerning this matter?
But what does he say to the Directors? He says, "Upon the whole of these transactions, which to you, who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, may appear unprecedented, if not improper, I have but a few short remarks to suggest to your consideration." He looks upon them and treats them as a set of low mechanical men, a set of low-born book-keepers, as base souls, who in an account call for explanation and precision. If there is no precision in accounts, there is nothing of worth in them. You see he himself is an eccentric accountant, a Pindaric book-keeper, an arithmetician in the clouds. "I know," he says, "what the Directors desire: but they are mean people; they are not of elevated sentiments; they are modest; they avoid ostentation in taking of bribes: I therefore am playing cups and balls with them, letting them see a little glimpse of the bribes, then carrying them fairly away." Upon this he founds the applause of his own breast.
Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.
That private ipse plaudo he may have in this business, which is a business of money; but the applause of no other human creature will he have for giving such an account as he admits this to be,—irregular, uncertain, problematical, and of which no one can make either head or tail. He despises us also, who are representatives of the people, and have amongst us all the regular officers of finance, for expecting anything like a regular account from him. He is hurt at it; he considers it as a cruel treatment of him; he says, "Have I deserved this treatment?" Observe, my Lords, he had met with no treatment, if treatment it may be called, from us, of the kind of which he complains. The Court of Directors had, however, in a way shameful, abject, low, and pusillanimous, begged of him, as if they were his dependants, and not his masters, to give them some light into the account; they desire a receiver of money to tell from whom he received it, and how he applied it. He answers, They may be hanged for a parcel of mean, contemptible book-keepers, and that he will give them no account at all. He says, "If you sue me"—There is the point: he always takes security in a court of law. He considers his being called upon by these people, to whom he ought as a faithful servant to give an account, and to do which he was bound by an act of Parliament specially intrusting him with the administration of the revenues, as a gross affront. He adds, that he is ready to resign his defence, and to answer upon honor or upon oath. Answering upon honor is a strange way they have got in India, as your Lordships may see in the course of this inquiry. But he forgets, that, being the Company's servant, the Company may bring a bill in Chancery against him, and force him upon oath to give an account. He has not, however, given them light enough or afforded them sufficient ground for a fishing bill in Chancery. Yet he says, "If you call upon me in a Chancery way, or by Common Law, I really will abdicate all forms, and give you some account." In consequence of this the Company did demand from him an account, regularly, and as fully and formally as if they had demanded it in a court of justice. He positively refused to give them any account whatever; and they have never, to this very day in which we speak, had any account that is at all clear or satisfactory. Your Lordships will see, as I go through this scene of fraud, falsification, iniquity, and prevarication, that, in defiance of his promise, which promise they quote upon him over and over again, he has never given them any account of this matter.
He goes on to say (and the threat is indeed alarming) that by calling him to account they may provoke him—to what? "To appropriate," he says, "to my own use the sums which I have already passed to your credit, by the unworthy and, pardon me, if I add, dangerous, reflections which you have passed upon me for the first communication of this kind." They passed no reflections: they said they would neither praise nor blame him, but pressed him for an account of a matter which they could not understand: and I believe your Lordships understand it no more than they, for it is not in the compass of human understanding to conceive or comprehend it. Instead of an account of it, he dares to threaten them: "I may be tempted, if you should provoke me, not to be an honest man,—to falsify your account a second time, and to reclaim those sums which I have passed to your credit,—to alter the account again, by the assistance of Mr. Larkins." What a dreadful declaration is this of his dominion over the public accounts, and of his power of altering them! a declaration, that, having first falsified those accounts in order to deceive them, and afterwards having told them of this falsification in order to gain credit with them, if they provoke him, he shall take back the money he had carried to their account, and make them his debtors for it! He fairly avows the dominion he has over the Company's accounts; and therefore, when he shall hereafter plead the accounts, we shall be able to rebut that evidence, and say, "The Company's accounts are corrupted by you, through your agent, Mr. Larkins; and we give no credit to them, because you not only told the Company you could do so, but we can prove that you have actually done it." What a strange medley of evasion, pretended discovery, real concealment, fraud, and prevarication appears in every part of this letter!
But admitting this letter to have been written upon the 22d of May, and kept back to the 16th of December, you would imagine that during all that interval of time he would have prepared himself to give some light, some illustration of these dark and mysterious transactions, which carried fraud upon the very face of them. Did he do so? Not at all. Upon the 16th of December, instead of giving them some such clear accounts as might have been expected, he falls into a violent passion for their expecting them; he tells them it would be dangerous; and he tells them they knew who had profited by these transactions: thus, in order to strike terror into their breasts, hinting at some frauds which they had practised or protected. What weight this may have had with them I know not; but your Lordships will expect in vain, that Mr. Hastings, after giving four accounts, if any one of which is true, the other three must necessarily be false,—after having thrown the Company's accounts into confusion, and being unable to tell, as he says himself, why he did so,—will at last give some satisfaction to the Directors, who continued, in a humble, meek way, giving him hints that he ought to do it.—You have heard nothing yet but the consequences of their refusing to give him the present of a hundred thousand pounds, which he had taken from the Nabob. They did right to refuse it to him; they did wrong to take it to themselves.
We now find Mr. Hastings on the river Ganges, in September, 1784,—that Ganges whose purifying water expiates so many sins of the Gentoos, and which, one would think, would have washed Mr. Hastings's hands a little clean of bribery, and would have rolled down its golden sands like another Pactolus. Here we find him discovering another of his bribes. This was a bribe taken upon totally a different principle, according to his own avowal: it is a bribe not pretended to be received for the use of the Company,—a bribe taken absolutely entirely for himself. He tells them that he had taken between thirty and forty thousand pounds. This bribe, which, like the former, he had taken without right, he tells them that he intends to apply to his own purposes, and he insists upon their sanction for so doing. He says, he had in vain, upon a former occasion, appealed to their honor, liberality, and generosity,—that he now appeals to their justice; and insists upon their decreeing this bribe—which he had taken without telling them from whom, where, or on what account—to his own use.
Your Lordships remember, that in the letter which he wrote from Patna, on the 20th of January, 1782, he there states that he was in tolerable good circumstances, and that this had arisen from his having continued long in their service. Now, he has continued two years longer in their service, and he is reduced to beggary! "This," he says, "is a single example of a life spent in the accumulation of crores for your benefit, and doomed in its close to suffer the extremity of private want, and to sink in obscurity."
So far back as in 1773 he thought that he could save an exceeding good fortune out of his place. In 1782 he says, with gratitude, that he has made a decent private competency; but in two years after he sunk to the extremity of private want. And how does he seek to relieve that want? By taking a bribe: bribes are no longer taken by him for the Company's service, but for his own. He takes the bribe with an express intention of keeping it for his own use, and he calls upon the Company for their sanction. If the money was taken without right, no claim of his could justify its being appropriated to himself: nor could the Company so appropriate it; for no man has a right to be generous out of another's goods. When he calls upon their justice and generosity, they might answer, "If you have a just demand upon our treasury, state it, and we will pay it; if it is a demand upon our generosity, state your merits, and we will consider them." "But I have paid myself by a bribe; I have taken another man's money; and I call upon your justice—to do what? to restore it to its owner? no—to allow me to keep it myself." Think, my Lords, in what a situation the Company stands! "I have done a great deal for you; this is the jackal's portion; you have been the lion; I have been endeavoring to prog for you; I am your bribe-pander, your factor of corruption, exposing myself to every kind of scorn and ignominy, to insults even from you. I have been preying and plundering for you; I have gone through every stage of licentiousness and lewdness, wading through every species of dirt and corruption, for your advantage. I am now sinking into the extremity of private want; do give me this—what? money? no, this bribe; rob me the man who gave me this bribe; vote me—what? money of your own? that would be generous: money you owe me? that would be just: no, money which I have extorted from another man; and I call upon your justice to give it me." This is his idea of justice. He says, "I am compelled to depart from that liberal plan which I originally adopted, and to claim from your justice (for you have forbid me to appeal to your generosity) the discharge of a debt which I can with the most scrupulous integrity aver to be justly due, and which I cannot sustain." Now, if any of the Company's servants may say, "I have been extravagant, profuse,—it was all meant for your good,—let me prey upon the country at my pleasure,—license my bribes, frauds, and peculations, and then you do me justice,"—what country are we in, where these ideas are ideas of generosity and justice?
It might naturally be expected that in this letter he would have given some account of the person from whom he had taken this bribe. But here, as in the other cases, he had a most effectual oblivion; the Ganges, like Lethe, causes a drowsiness, as you saw in Mr. Middleton; they recollect nothing, they know nothing. He has not stated, from that day to this, from whom he took that money. But we have made the discovery. And such is the use of Parliamentary inquiries, such, too, both to the present age and posterity, will be their use, that, if we pursue them with the vigor which the great trust justly imposed upon us demands, and if your Lordships do firmly administer justice upon this man's frauds, you will at once put an end to those frauds and prevarications forever. Your Lordships will see, that, in this inquiry, it is the diligence of the House of Commons, which he has the audacity to call malice, that has discovered and brought to light the frauds which we shall be able to prove against him.
I will now read to your Lordships an extract from that stuff, called a defence, which he has either written himself or somebody else has written for him, and which he owns or disclaims, just as he pleases, when, under the slow tortures of a Parliamentary impeachment, he discovered at length from whom he got this last bribe.
"The last part of the charge states, that, in my letter to the Court of Directors of the 21st February, 1784, I have confessed to have received another sum of money, the amount of which is not declared, but which, from the application of it, could not be less than thirty-four thousand pounds sterling, &c. In the year 1783, when I was actually in want of a sum of money for my private expenses, owing to the Company not having at that time sufficient cash in their treasury to pay my salary, I borrowed three lacs of rupees of Rajah Nobkissin, an inhabitant of Calcutta, whom I desired to call upon me with a bond properly filled up. He did so; but at the time I was going to execute it he entreated I would rather accept the money than execute the bond. I neither accepted the offer nor refused it; and my determination upon it remained suspended between the alternative of keeping the money, as a loan to be repaid, and of taking it, and applying it, as I had done other sums, to the Company's use. And there the matter rested till I undertook my journey to Lucknow, when I determined to accept the money for the Company's use; and these were my motives. Having made disbursements from my own cash for services, which, though required to enable me to execute the duties of my station, I had hitherto omitted to enter into my public accounts, I resolved to reimburse myself in a mode most suitable to the situation of the Company's affairs, by charging these disbursements in my durbar accounts of the present year, and crediting them by a sum privately received, which was this of Nobkissin's. If my claim on the Company were not founded in justice, and bonâ fide due, my acceptance of three lacs of rupees from Nobkissin by no means precludes them from recovering that sum from me. No member of this Honorable House suspects me, I hope, of the meanness and guilt of presenting false accounts."
We do not suspect him of presenting false accounts: we can prove, we are now radically proving, that he presents false accounts. We suspect no man who does not give ground for suspicion; we accuse no man who has not given ground for accusation; and we do not attempt to bring before a court of justice any charges which we shall not be able decisively to prove. This will put an end to all idle prattle of malice, of groundless suspicions of guilt, and of ill-founded charges. We come here to bring the matter to the test, and here it shall be brought to the test, between the Commons of Great Britain and this East India delinquent. In his letter of the 21st of February, 1784, he says he has never benefited himself by contingent accounts; and as an excuse for taking this bribe from Nobkissin, which he did not discover at the time, but many years afterwards, at the bar of the House of Commons, he declares that he wanted to apply it to the contingent account for his expenses, that is, for what he pretended to have laid out for the Company, during a great number of years. He proceeds:—
"If it should be objected, that the allowance of these demands would furnish a precedent for others of the like kind, I have to remark, that in their whole amount they are but the aggregate of a contingent account of twelve years; and if it were to become the practice of those who have passed their prime of life in your service, and filled, as I have filled it, the first office of your dominion, to glean from their past accounts all the articles of expense which their inaccuracy or indifference hath overlooked, your interests would suffer infinitely less by the precedent than by a single example of a life spent in the accumulation of crores for your benefit and doomed in its close to suffer the extremity of private want and to sink in obscurity."
Here is the man that has told us at the bar of the House of Commons that he never made up any contingent accounts; and yet, as a set-off against this bribe, which he received for himself, and never intended to apply to the current use of the Company, he feigns and invents a claim upon them, namely, that he had, without any authority of the Company, squandered away in stationery and budgeros, and other idle services, a sum amounting to 34,000l. But was it for the Company's service? Is this language to be listened to? "Everything I thought fit to expend I have expended for the Company's service. I intended, indeed, at that time, to have been generous. I intended out of my own pocket to have paid for a translation of the code of Gentoo laws. I was then in the prime of my life, flowing in money, and had great expectations: I am now old; I cannot afford to be generous: I will look back into all my former accounts, pen, ink, wax, everything that I generously or prodigally spent as my own humor might suggest; and though, at the same time, I know you have given me a noble allowance, I now make a charge upon you for this sum of money, and intend to take a bribe in discharge of it." Now suppose Lord Cornwallis, who sits in the seat, and I hope will long, and honorably and worthily, fill the seat, which that gentleman possessed,—suppose Lord Cornwallis, after never having complained of the insufficiency of his salary, and after having but two years ago said he had saved a sufficient competency out of it, should now tell you that 30,00l. a year was not enough for him, and that he was sinking into want and distress, and should justify upon that alleged want taking a bribe, and then make out a bill of contingent expenses to cover it, would your Lordships bear this?
Mr. Hastings has told you that he wanted to borrow money for his own use, and that he applied to Rajah Nobkissin, who generously pressed it upon him as a gift. Rajah Nobkissin is a banian: you will be astonished to hear of generosity in a banian; there never was a banian and generosity united together: but Nobkissin loses his banian qualities at once, the moment the light of Mr. Hastings's face beams upon him. "Here," says Mr. Hastings, "I have prepared bonds for you." "Astonishing! how can you think of the meanness of bonds? You call upon me to lend you 34,000l., and propose bonds? No, you shall have it: you are the Governor-General, who have a large and ample salary; but I know you are a generous man, and I emulate your generosity: I give you all this money." Nobkissin was quite shocked at Mr. Hastings's offering him a bond. My Lords, a Gentoo banian is a person a little lower, a little more penurious, a little more exacting, a little more cunning, a little more money-making, than a Jew. There is not a Jew in the meanest corner of Duke's Place in London that is so crafty, so much a usurer, so skilful how to turn money to profit, and so resolved not to give any money but for profit, as a Gentoo broker of the class I have mentioned. But this man, however, at once grows generous, and will not suffer a bond to be given to him; and Mr. Hastings, accordingly, is thrown into very great distress. You see sentiment always prevailing in Mr. Hastings. The sentimental dialogue which must have passed between him and a Gentoo broker would have charmed every one that has a taste for pathos and sentiment. Mr. Hastings was pressed to receive the money as a gift. He really does not know what to do: whether to insist upon giving a bond or not,—whether he shall take the money for his own use, or whether he shall take it for the Company's use. But it may be said of man as it is said of woman: the woman who deliberates is lost: the man that deliberates about receiving bribes is gone. The moment he deliberates, that moment his reason, the fortress, is lost, the walls shake, down it comes,—and at the same moment enters Nobkissin into the citadel of his honor and integrity, with colors flying, with drums beating, and Mr. Hastings's garrison goes out, very handsomely indeed, with the honors of war, all for the benefit of the Company. Mr. Hastings consents to take the money from Nobkissin; Nobkissin gives the money, and is perfectly satisfied.
Mr. Hastings took the money with a view to apply it to the Company's service. How? To pay his own contingent bills. "Everything that I do," says he, "and all the money I squander, is all for the Company's benefit. As to particulars of accounts, never look into them; they are given you upon honor. Let me take this bribe: it costs you nothing to be just or generous. I take the bribe: you sanctify it." But in every transaction of Mr. Hastings, where we have got a name, there we have got a crime. Nobkissin gave him the money, and did not take his bond, I believe, for it; but Nobkissin, we find, immediately afterwards enters upon the stewardship or management of one of the most considerable districts in Bengal. We know very well, and shall prove to your Lordships, in what manner such men rack such districts, and exact from the inhabitants the money to repay themselves for the bribes which had been taken from them. These bribes are taken under a pretence of the Company's service, but sooner or later they fall upon the Company's treasury. And we shall prove that Nobkissin, within a year from the time when he gave this bribe, had fallen into arrears to the Company, as their steward, to the amount of a sum the very interest of which, according to the rate of interest in that country, amounted to more than this bribe, taken, as was pretended, for the Company's service. Such are the consequences of a banian's generosity, and of Mr. Hastings's gratitude, so far as the interest of the country is concerned; and this is a good way to pay Mr. Hastings's contingent accounts. But this is not all: a most detestable villain is sent up into the country to take the management of it, and the fortunes of all the great families in it are given entirely into his power. This is the way by which the Company are to keep their own servants from falling into "the extremity of private want." And the Company itself, in this pretended saving to their treasury by the taking of bribes, lose more than the amount of the bribes received. Wherever a bribe is given on one hand, there is a balance accruing on the other. No man, who had any share in the management of the Company's revenues, ever gave a bribe, who did not either extort the full amount of it from the country, or else fall in balance to the Company to that amount, and frequently both. In short, Mr. Hastings never was guilty of corruption, that blood and rapine did not follow; he never took a bribe, pretended to be for their benefit, but the Company's treasury was proportionably exhausted by it.
And now was this scandalous and ruinous traffic in bribes brought to light by the Court of Directors? No: we got it in the House of Commons. These bribes appear to have been taken at various times and upon various occasions; and it was not till his return from Patna, in February, 1782, that the first communication of any of them was made to the Court of Directors. Upon the receipt of this letter, the Court of Directors wrote back to him, requiring some further explanation upon the subject. No explanation was given, but a communication of other bribes was made in his letter, said to be written in May of the same year, but not dispatched to Europe till the December following. This produced another requisition from the Directors for explanation. And here your Lordships are to observe that this correspondence is never in the way of letters written and answers given; but he and the Directors are perpetually playing at hide-and-seek with each other, and writing to each other at random: Mr. Hastings making a communication one day, the Directors requiring an explanation the next; Mr. Hastings giving an account of another bribe on the third day, without giving any explanation of the former. Still, however, the Directors are pursuing their chase. But it was not till they learned that the committees of the House of Commons (for committees of the House of Commons had then some weight) were frowning upon them for this collusion with Mr. Hastings, that at last some honest men in the Direction were permitted to have some ascendency, and that a proper letter was prepared, which I shall show your Lordships, demanding from Mr. Hastings an exact account of all the bribes that he had received, and painting to him, in colors as strong at least as those I use, his bribery, his frauds, and peculations,—and what does them great honor for that moment, they particularly direct that the money which was taken from the Nabob of Oude should be carried to his account. These paragraphs were prepared by the Committee of Correspondence, and, as I understand, approved by the Court of Directors, but never were sent out to India. However, something was sent, but miserably weak and lame of its kind; and Mr. Hastings never answered it, or gave them any explanation whatever. He now, being prepared for his departure from Calcutta, and having finished all his other business, went up to Oude upon a chase in which just now we cannot follow him. He returned in great disgust to Calcutta, and soon after set sail for England, without ever giving the Directors one word of the explanation which he had so often promised, and they had repeatedly asked.
We have now got Mr. Hastings in England, where you will suppose some satisfactory account of all these matters would be obtained from him. One would suppose, that, on his arrival in London, he would have been a little quickened by a menace, as he expresses it, which had been thrown out against him in the House of Commons, that an inquiry would be made into his conduct; and the Directors, apprehensive of the same thing, thought it good gently to insinuate to him by a letter, written by whom and how we do not know, that he ought to give some explanation of these accounts. This produced a letter which I believe in the business of the whole world cannot be paralleled: not even himself could be his parallel in this. Never did inventive folly, working upon conscious guilt, and throwing each other totally in confusion, ever produce such a false, fraudulent, prevaricating letter as this, which is now to be given to you.
You have seen him at Patna, at Calcutta, in the country, on the Ganges: now you see him at the waters at Cheltenham; and you will find his letter from that place to comprehend the substance of all his former letters, and to be a digest of all the falsity, fraud, and nonsense contained in the whole of them. Here it is, and your Lordships will suffer it to be read. I must beg your patience; I must acknowledge that it has been the most difficult of all things to explain, but much more difficult to make pleasant and not wearisome, falsity and fraud pursued through all its artifices; and therefore, as it has been the most painful work to us to unravel fraud and prevarication, so there is nothing that more calls for the attention, the patience, the vigilance, and the scrutiny of an exact court of justice. But as you have already had almost the whole of the man, do not think it too much to hear the rest in this letter from Cheltenham. It is dated, Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785, addressed to William Devaynes, Esquire;[8] and it begins thus:—
"Sir,—The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to Bengal by the 'Surprise,' dated the 16th of March, 1784, were pleased to express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was received,—what were my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors,—and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits, on my own account."
I wish your Lordships to pause a moment. Here is a letter written in July, 1785. You see that from the 29th of December [November?], 1780, till that time, during which interval, though convinced in his own conscience and though he had declared his own opinion of the necessity of giving a full explanation of these money transactions, he had been imposing upon the Directors false and prevaricating accounts of them, they were never able to obtain a full disclosure from him.
He goes on:—"I have been kindly apprised that the information required as above is yet expected from me. I hope that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the Presidency when the 'Surprise' arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed, to the day of my final departure from it, by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes which compose our Consultations of that period,"—
These Consultations, my Lords, to which he appeals, form matter of one of the charges that the Commons have brought against Mr. Hastings,—namely, a fraudulent attempt to ruin certain persons employed in subordinate situations under him, for the purpose, by intruding himself into their place, of secretly carrying on his own transactions. These volumes of Consultations were written to justify that act.
He next says,—"The submission which my respect would have enjoined me to pay to the command imposed on me was lost to my recollection, perhaps from the stronger impression which the first and distant perusal of it had left on my mind, that it was rather intended as a reprehension for something which had given offence in my report of the original transaction than an expression of any want of a further elucidation of it."
Permit me to make a few remarks upon this extraordinary passage. A letter is written to him, containing a repetition of the request which had been made a thousand times before, and with which he had as often promised to comply. And here he says, "It was lost to my recollection." Observe his memory: he can forget the command, but he has an obscure recollection that he thought it a reprehension rather than a demand! Now a reprehension is a stronger mode of demand. When I say to a servant, "Why have you not given me the account which I have so often asked for?" is he to answer, "The reason I have not given it is because I thought you were railing at and abusing me"?
He goes on:—"I will now endeavor to reply to the different questions which have been stated to me, in as explicit a manner as I am able. To such information as I can give the Honorable Court is fully entitled; and where that shall prove defective, I will point out the only means by which it may be rendered more complete."
In order that your Lordships may thoroughly enter into the spirit of this letter, I must request that you will observe how handsomely and kindly these tools of Directors have expressed themselves to him, and that even their baseness and subserviency to him were not able to draw from him anything that could be satisfactory to his enemies: for as to these his friends, he cares but little about satisfying them, though they call upon him in consequence of his own promise; and this he calls a reprehension. They thus express themselves:—"Although it is not our intention to express any doubt of the integrity of the Governor-General,—on the contrary, after having received the presents, we cannot avoid expressing our approbation of his conduct in bringing them to the credit of the Company,—yet we must confess the statement of those transactions appears to us in many points so unintelligible, that we feel ourselves under the necessity of calling on the Governor-General for an explanation, agreeable to his promise voluntarily made to us. We therefore desire to be informed of the different periods when each sum was received, and what were the Governor-General's motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council and of the Court of Directors, and what were his reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums and paying other sums into the treasury as deposits upon his own account." Such is their demand, and this is what his memory furnishes as nothing but a reprehension.
He then proceeds:—"First, I believe I can affirm with certainty that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates which are affixed to them in the account. But as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a great degree of accuracy to the account."—Your Lordships see, that, after all, he declares he cannot make his account accurate. He further adds, "Perhaps the Honorable Court will judge this sufficient"—that is, this explanation, namely, that he can give none—"for any purpose to which their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer, for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your accountant-general, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that I ever kept of it."
Here is a man who of his bribe accounts cannot give an account in the country where they are carried on. When you call upon him in Bengal, he cannot give the account, because he is in Bengal; when he comes to England, he cannot give the account here, because his accounts are left in Bengal. Again, he keeps no accounts himself, but his accounts are in Bengal, in the hands of somebody else: to him he refers, and we shall see what that reference produced.
"In this, each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it."—Here are accounts kept for the Company, and yet he does not know whether they are in existence anywhere.
"For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable the Court of Directors of the 22d of May, 1782,—namely, 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 at that distance of time could verify, and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. It will not be expected that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them."
You have heard of that Oriental figure called, in the banian language, a painche, in English, a screw. It is a puzzled and studied involution of a period, framed in order to prevent the discovery of truth and the detection of fraud; and surely it cannot be better exemplified than in this sentence: "Neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them." Observe, that he says, not facts stated, but facts implied in the report. And of what was this to be a report? Of things which the Directors declared they did not understand. And then the inferences which are to follow these implied facts are to follow them—But how? With a strong probability. If you have a mind to study this Oriental figure of rhetoric, the painche, here it is for you in its most complete perfection. No rhetorician ever gave an example of any figure of oratory that can match this.
But let us endeavor to unravel the whole passage. First he states, that, in May, 1782, he had forgotten his motives for falsifying the Company's accounts; but he affirms the facts contained in the report, and afterwards, very rationally, draws such inferences as necessarily or with a strong probability follow them. And if I understand it at all, which God knows I no more pretend to do than Don Quixote did those sentences of lovers in romance-writers of which he said it made him run mad to attempt to discover the meaning, the inference is, "Why do you call upon me for accounts now, three years after the time when I could not give you them? I cannot give them you. And as to the papers relating to them, I do not know whether they exist; and if they do, perhaps you may learn something from them, perhaps you may not: I will write to Mr. Larkins for those papers, if you please." Now, comparing this with his other accounts, you will see what a monstrous scheme he has laid of fraud and concealment to cover his peculation. He tells them,—"I have said that the three first sums of the account were paid into the Company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expense of a detachment which was formed and employed against Mahdajee Sindia, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly apprised the Court of Directors in my letter of the 29th December [November?], 1780." He does not yet tell the Directors from whom he received it: we have found it out by other collateral means.—"The other two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made public, though intended for public service, and actually applied to it. The exigencies of government were at that time my own, and every pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized them."—Allowable means of receiving bribes! for such I shall prove them to be in the particular instances.—"But neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our Proceedings every little aid that I could thus procure; nor do I know how I could have stated it without appearing to court favor by an ostentation which I disdained, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have had an equal claim."
Now we see, that, after hammering his brains for many years, he does find out his motive, which he could not verify at the time,—namely, that, if he let his colleagues know that he was receiving bribes, and gaining the glory of receiving them, they might take it into their heads likewise to have their share in the same glory, as they were joined in the same commission, enjoyed the same powers, and were subject to the same restrictions. It was, indeed, scandalous in Mr. Hastings, not behaving like a good, fair colleague in office, not to let them know that he was going on in this career of receiving bribes, and to deprive them of their share in the glory of it: but they were grovelling creatures, who thought that keeping clean hands was some virtue.—"Well, but you have applied some of these bribes to your own benefit: why did you give no account of those bribes?" "I did not," he says, "because it might have excited the envy of my colleagues." To be sure, if he was receiving bribes for his own benefit, and they not receiving such bribes, and if they had a liking to that kind of traffic, it is a good ground of envy, that a matter which ought to be in common among them should be confined to Mr. Hastings, and he therefore did well to conceal it; and on the other hand, if we suppose him to have taken them, as he pretends, for the Company's use, in order not to excite a jealousy in his colleagues for being left out of this meritorious service, to which they had an equal claim, he did well to take bonds for what ought to be brought to the Company's account. These are reasons applicable to his colleagues, who sat with him at the same board,—Mr. Macpherson, Mr. Stables, Mr. Wheler, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis: he was afraid of exciting their envy or their jealousy.
You will next see another reason, and an extraordinary one it is, which he gives for concealing these bribes from his inferiors. But I must first tell your Lordships, what, till the proof is brought before you, you will take on credit,—indeed, it is on his credit,—that, when he formed the Committee of Revenue, he bound them by a solemn oath, "not, under any name or pretence whatever, to take from any zemindar, farmer, person concerned in the revenue, or any other, any gift, gratuity, allowance, or reward whatever, or anything beyond their salary"; and this is the oath to which he alludes. Now his reason for concealing his bribes from his inferiors, this Committee, under these false and fraudulent bonds, he states thus:—"I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them: I was therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it, which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the money to be brought to my own house, or that of any person known to be in trust for me."
My Lords, here he comes before you, avowing that he knew the practice of taking money from these people was a thing dishonorable in itself. "I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them." He held it particularly dishonorable to receive them; he had bound others by an oath not to receive them: but he received them himself; and why does he conceal it? "Why, because," says he, "if the suspicion came upon me, the dishonor would fall upon my pate." Why did he, by an oath, bind his inferiors not to take these bribes? "Why, because it was base and dishonorable so to do; and because it would be mischievous and ruinous to the Company's affairs to suffer them to take bribes." Why, then, did he take them himself? It was ten times more ruinous, that he, who was at the head of the Company's government, and had bound up others so strictly, should practise the same himself; and "therefore," says he, "I was more than ordinarily cautious." What! to avoid it? "No; to carry it on in so clandestine and private a manner as might secure me from the suspicion of that which I know to be detestable, and bound others up from practising."
We shall prove that the kind of men from whom he interdicted his Committee to receive bribes were the identical men from whom he received them himself. If it was good for him, it was good for them to be permitted these means of extorting; and if it ought at all to be practised, they ought to be admitted to extort for the good of the Company. Rajah Nobkissin was one of the men from whom he interdicted them to receive bribes, and from whom he received a bribe for his own use. But he says he concealed it from them, because he thought great mischief might happen even from their suspicion of it, and lest they should thereby be inclined themselves to practise it, and to break their oaths.
You take it, then, for granted that he really concealed it from them? No such thing. His principal confidant in receiving these bribes was Mr. Croftes, who was a principal person in this Board of Revenue, and whom he had made to swear not to take bribes: he is the confidant, and the very receiver, as we shall prove to your Lordships. What will your Lordships think of his affirming and averring a direct falsehood, that he did it to conceal it from these men, when one of them was his principal confidant and agent in the transaction? What will you think of his being more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it? He ought to have avoided the crime, and the suspicion would take care of itself.
"For these reasons," he says, "I caused it to be transported immediately to the treasury. There I well knew, Sir, it could not be received, without being passed to some credit; and this could only be done by entering it as a loan or as a deposit. The first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit I am utterly ignorant. Possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed."
My Lords, in fact, every word of this is either false or groundless: it is completely fallacious in every part. The first sum, he says, was entered as a loan, the second as a deposit. Why was this done? Because, when you enter moneys of this kind, you must enter them under some name, some head of account; "and I entered them," he says, "under these, because otherwise there was no entering them at all." Is this true? Will he stick to this? I shall desire to know from his learned counsel, some time or other, whether that is a point he will take issue upon. Your Lordships will see there were other bribes of his which he brought under a regular official head, namely, durbar charges; and there is no reason why he should not have brought these under the same head. Therefore what he says, that there is no other way of entering them but as loans and deposits, is not true. He next says, that in the second sum there was no reason for concealment, because it was avowed. But that false deposit was as much concealment as the false loan, for he entered that money as his own; whereas, when he had a mind to carry any money to the Company's account, he knew how to do it, for he had been accustomed to enter it under a general name, called durbar charges,—a name which, in its extent at least, was very much his own invention, and which, as he gives no account of those charges, is as large and sufficient to cover any fraudulent expenditure in the account as, one would think, any person could wish. You see him, then, first guessing one thing, then another,—first giving this reason, then another; at last, however, he seems to be satisfied that he has hit upon the true reason of his conduct.
Now let us open the next paragraph, and see what it is.—"Although I am firmly persuaded that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of the Court of Directors. They had answered my purpose of public utility, and I had almost dismissed them from my remembrance."
My Lords, you will observe in this most astonishing account which he gives here, that several of these sums he meant to conceal forever, even from the knowledge of the Directors. Look back to his letter of 22d May, 1782, and his letter of the 16th of December, and in them he tells you that he might have concealed them, but that he was resolved not to conceal them; that he thought it highly dishonorable so to do; that his conscience would have been wounded, if he had done it; and that he was afraid it would be thought that this discovery was brought from him in consequence of the Parliamentary inquiries. Here he says of a discovery which he values himself upon making voluntarily, that he is afraid it should be attributed to arise from motives of fear. Now, at last, he tells you, from Cheltenham, at a time when he had just cause to dread the strict account to which he is called this day, first, that he cannot tell whether any one motive which he assigns, either in this letter or in the former, were his real motive or not; that he does not know whether he has not invented them since, in consequence of a train of meditation upon what he might have done or might have said; and, lastly, he says, contrary to all his former declarations, "that he had never meant nor could give the Directors the least notice of them at all, as they had answered his purpose, and he had dismissed them from his remembrance." "I intended," he says, "always to keep them secret, though I have declared to you solemnly, over and over again, that I did not. I do not care how you discovered them; I have forgotten them; I have dismissed them from my remembrance." Is this the way in which money is to be received and accounted for?
He then proceeds thus:—"But when fortune threw a sum of money in my way of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time I received it made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally: hastily, perhaps, to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of it; and, in the performance of my promise, I thought it consistent with it to add to the amount all the former appropriations of the same kind: my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding a part of these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and informing them of the rest, it being my wish to clear up every doubt."
I am almost ashamed to remark upon the tergiversations and prevarications perpetually ringing the changes in this declaration. He would not have discovered this hundred thousand pounds, if he could have concealed it: he would have discovered it, lest malicious persons should be telling tales of it. He has a system of concealment: he never discovers anything, but when he thinks it can be forced from him. He says, indeed, "I could conceal these things forever, but my conscience would not give me leave": but it is guilt, and not honesty of conscience, that always prompts him. At one time it is the malice of people and the fear of misrepresentation which induced him to make the disclosure; and he values himself on the precaution which this fear had suggested to him. At another time it is the magnitude of the sum which produced this effect: nothing but the impossibility of concealing it could possibly have made him discover it. This hundred thousand pounds he declares he would have concealed, if he could; and yet he values himself upon the discovery of it. Oh, my Lords, I am afraid that sums of much greater magnitude have not been discovered at all! Your Lordships now see some of the artifices of this letter. You see the variety of styles he adopts, and how he turns himself into every shape and every form. But, after all, do you find any clear discovery? do you find any satisfactory answer to the Directors' letter? does he once tell you from whom he received the money? does he tell you for what he received it, what the circumstances of the persons giving it were, or any explanation whatever of his mode of accounting for it? No: and here, at last, after so many years' litigation, he is called to account for his prevaricating, false accounts in Calcutta, and cannot give them to you.
His explanation of his conduct relative to the bonds now only remains for your Lordships' consideration. Before he left Calcutta, in July, 1784 [1781?], he says, when he was going upon a service which he thought a service of danger, he indorsed the false bonds which he had taken from the Company, declaring them to be none of his. You will observe that these bonds had been in his hands from the 9th or 15th of January (I am not quite sure of the exact date) to the day when he went upon this service, some time in the month of July, 1784 [1781?]. This service he had formerly declared he did not apprehend to be a service of danger; but he found it to be so after: it was in anticipation of that danger that he made this attestation and certificate upon the bonds. But who ever saw them? Mr. Larkins saw them, says he: "I gave them Mr. Larkins." We will show you hereafter that Mr. Larkins deserves no credit in this business,—that honor binds him not to discover the secrets of Mr. Hastings. But why did he not deliver them up entirely, when he was going upon that service? for all pretence of concealment in the business was now at an end, as we shall prove. Why did he not cancel these bonds? Why keep them at all? Why not enter truly the state of the account in the Company's records? "But I indorsed them," he says. "Did you deliver them so indorsed into the treasury?" "No, I delivered them indorsed into the hands of my bribe-broker and agent." "But why not destroy them, or give them up to the Company, and say you were paid, which would have been the only truth in this transaction? Why did you not indorse them before? Why not, during the long period of so many years, cancel them?" No, he kept them to the very day when he was going from Calcutta, and had made a declaration that they were not his. Never before, upon any account, had they appeared; and though the Committee of the House of Commons, in the Eleventh Report, had remarked upon all these scandalous proceedings and prevarications, yet he was not stimulated, even then, to give up these bonds. He held them in his hands till the time when he was preparing for his departure from Calcutta, in spite of the Directors, in spite of the Parliament, in spite of the cries of his own conscience, in a matter which was now grown public, and would knock doubly upon his reputation and conduct. He then declares they are not for his own use, but for the Company's service. But were they then cancelled? I do not find a trace of their being cancelled. In this letter of the 17th of January, 1785, he says with regard to these bonds, "The following sums were paid into the treasury, and bonds granted for the same in the name of the Governor-General, in whose possession the bonds remain, with a declaration upon each, indorsed and signed by him, that he has no claim on the Company for the amount either of principal or interest, no part of the latter having been received."
To the account of the 22d of May, of the indorsement, is added the declaration upon oath. But why any man need to declare upon oath that the money which he has fraudulently taken and concealed from another person is not his is the most extraordinary thing in the world. If he had a mind to have it placed to his credit as his own, then an oath would be necessary; but in this case any one would believe him upon his word. He comes, however, and says, "This is indorsed upon oath." Oath! before what magistrate? In whose possession were the bonds? Were they given up? There is no trace of that upon the record, and it stands for him to prove that they were ever given up, and in any hands but Mr. Larkins's and his own. So here are the bonds, begun in obscurity and ending in obscurity, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, corruption to corruption, and fraud to fraud. This is all we see of these bonds, till Mr. Larkins, to whom he writes some letter concerning them which does not appear, is called to read a funeral sermon over them.
My Lords, I am come now near the period of this class of Mr. Hastings's bribes. I am a little exhausted. There are many circumstances that might make me wish not to delay this business by taking up another day at your Lordships' bar, in order to go through this long, intricate scene of corruption. But my strength now fails me. I hope within a very short time, to-morrow or the next court-day, to finish it, and to go directly into evidence, as I long much to do, to substantiate the charge; but it was necessary that the evidence should be explained. You have heard as much of the drama as I could go through: bear with my weakness a little: Mr. Larkins's letter will be the epilogue to it. I have already incurred the censure of the prisoner; I mean to increase it, by bringing home to him the proof of his crimes, and to display them in all their force and turpitude. It is my duty to do it; I feel it an obligation nearest to my heart.