To the Court of Directors he is very little more complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never done before.
"Were your Honorable Court to question me upon these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's benefit, at times in which the Company very much stood in need of them; that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory could at this distance of time verify."[51]
He here professes not to be certain of the motives by which he was himself actuated in so extraordinary a concealment, and in the use of such extraordinary means to effect it; and as if the acts in question were those of an absolute stranger, and not his own, he gives various loose conjectures concerning the motive to them. He even supposes, in taking presents contrary to law, and in taking bonds for them as his own, contrary to what he admits to be truth and fact, that he might have acted without any distinct motive at all, or at least such as his memory could reach at that distance of time. That immense distance, in the faintness of which his recollection is so completely lost as to set him guessing at his motives for his own conduct, was from the 15th of January, 1781, when the bonds at his own request were given, to the date of this letter, which is the 22d of May, 1782,—that is to say, about one year and four months.
As to the other sums, for which no bond was taken, the ground for the difference in his explanation is still more extraordinary: he says, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest."[52] The rest of these sums, which were not worth his care, are stated in his account to be greater than those he was so solicitous (for some reason which he cannot guess) to cover under bonds: these sums amount to near 53,000l.; whereas the others did not much exceed 40,000l. For these actions, attended with these explanations, he ventures to appeal to their (the Directors') breasts for a candid interpretation, and "he assumes the freedom to add, that he thinks himself, on such a subject, and on such an occasion, entitled to it";[53] and then, as if he had performed some laudable exploit, in the accompanying letter he glories in the integrity of his conduct; and anticipating his triumph over injustice, and the applauses which at a future time he seems confident he shall receive, says he, "The applause of my own breast is my surest reward: your applause and that of my country is my next wish in life."[54] He declares in that very letter that he had not at any time possessed the confidence with them which they never withheld from the meanest of his predecessors. With wishes so near his heart perpetually disappointed, and, instead of applauses, (as he tells us,) receiving nothing but reproaches and disgraceful epithets, his steady continuance for so many years in their service, in a place obnoxious in the highest degree to suspicion and censure, is a thing altogether singular.
It appears very necessary to your Committee to observe upon the great leading principles which Mr. Hastings assumes, to justify the irregular taking of these vast sums of money, and all the irregular means he had employed to cover the greater part of it. These principles are the more necessary to be inquired into, because, if admitted, they will serve to justify every species of improper conduct. His words are, "that the sources from which these reliefs to the public service have come would never have yielded them to the Company publicly; and that the exigencies of their service (exigencies created by the exposition of their affairs, and faction in their divided councils) required those supplies."[55]
As to the first of these extraordinary positions, your Committee cannot conceive what motive could actuate any native of India dependent on the Company, in assisting them privately, and in refusing to assist them publicly. If the transaction was fair and honest, every native must have been desirous of making merit with the great governing power. If he gave his money as a free gift, he might value himself upon very honorable and very acceptable service; if he lent it on the Company's bonds, it would still have been of service, and he might also receive eight per cent for his money. No native could, without some interested view, give to the Governor-General what he would refuse to the Company as a grant, or even as a loan. It is plain that the powers of government must, in some way or other, be understood by the natives to be at sale. The Governor-General says that he took the money with an original destination to the purposes to which he asserts he has since applied it. But this original destination was in his own mind only,—not declared, nor by him pretended to be declared, to the party who gave the presents, and who could perceive nothing in it but money paid to the supreme magistrate for his private emolument. All that the natives could possibly perceive in such a transaction must be highly dishonorable to the Company's government; for they must conceive, when they gave money to Mr. Hastings, that they bought from Mr. Hastings either what was their own right or something that was not so, or that they redeemed themselves from some acts of rigor inflicted, threatened, or apprehended. If, in the first case, Mr. Hastings gave them the object for which they bargained, his act, however proper, was corrupt,—if he did not, it was both corrupt and fraudulent; if the money was extorted by force or threats, it was oppressive and tyrannical. The very nature of such transactions has a tendency to teach the natives to pay a corrupt court to the servants of the Company; and they must thereby be rendered less willing, or less able, or perhaps both, to fulfil their engagements to the state. Mr. Scott's evidence asserts that they would rather give to Mr. Hastings than lend to the Company. It is very probable; but it is a demonstration of their opinion of his power and corruption, and of the weak and precarious state of the Company's authority.
The second principle assumed by Mr. Hastings for his justification, namely, that factious opposition and a divided government might create exigencies requiring such supplies, is full as dangerous as the first; for, if, in the divisions which must arise in all councils, one member of government, when he thinks others factiously disposed, shall be entitled to take money privately from the subject for the purposes of his politics, and thereby to dispense with an act of Parliament, pretences for that end cannot be wanting. A dispute may always be raised in council in order to cover oppression and peculation elsewhere. But these principles of Mr. Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient members. The law has placed the sense of the whole in the majority; and it is not a thing to be suffered, that any of the members should privately raise money for the avowed purpose of defeating that sense, or for promoting designs that are contrary to it: a more alarming assumption of power in an individual member of any deliberative or executive body cannot be imagined. Mr. Hastings had no right, in order to clear himself of peculation, to criminate the majority with faction. No member of any body, outvoted on a question, has, or can have, a right to direct any part of his public conduct by that principle. The members of the Council had a common superior, to whom they might appeal in their mutual charges of faction: they did so frequently; and the imputation of faction has almost always been laid on Mr. Hastings himself.
But there were periods, very distinguished periods too, in the records of the Company, in which the clandestine taking of money could not be supported even by this pretence. Mr. Hastings has been charged with various acts of peculation, perpetrated at a time he could not excuse himself by the plea of any public purpose to be carried on, or of any faction in council by which it was traversed. It may be necessary here to recall to the recollection of the House, that, on the cry which prevailed of the ill practices of the Company's servants in India, (which general cry in a great measure produced the Regulating Act of 1773,) the Court of Directors, in their instructions of the 29th of March, 1774, gave it as an injunction to the Council-General, that "they immediately cause the strictest inquiry to be made into all oppressions which may have been committed either against natives or Europeans, and into all abuses which may have prevailed in the collection of the revenues or any part of the civil government of the Presidency; and that you communicate to us all information which you may be able to obtain relative thereto, or any embezzlement or dissipation of the Company's money."
In this inquiry, by far the most important abuse which appeared on any of the above heads was that which was charged relative to the sale in gross by Mr. Hastings of nothing less than the whole authority of the country government in the disposal of the guardianship of the Nabob of Bengal.