strongly to mark to your Lordships: I mean collusive trials and collusive acquittals. When this matter came to be examined, according to the orders of the Court, which was on the 4th of October, 1762, the Council consisted of Peter Maguire, Warren Hastings, and Hugh Watts. Mr. Hastings had by this time accomplished the business of Resident with the Nabob, and had taken the seat to which his seniority entitled him in Council. Here a difficulty arose in limine. Mr. Hastings was represented to have acted as interpreter in this business; he was therefore himself an object of the inquisition; he was doubtful as evidence; he was disqualified as a judge. It likewise appeared that there might be some objection to others whose evidence was wanting, but who were themselves concerned in the guilt. Mr. Lushington's evidence would be useful, but there were two circumstances rather unlucky. First, he had put the seal to the instrument of murder; and, secondly, and what was most material, he had made an affidavit at Patna, whilst the affair was green and recent, that he had done so; and in the same affidavit had deposed that Warren Hastings was interpreter in that transaction. Here were difficulties both on him and Mr. Hastings. The question was, how to get Mr. Hastings, the interpreter, out of his interpretation, and to put him upon the seat of judgment. It was effected, however, and the manner in which it was effected was something curious. Mr. Lushington, who by this time was got completely over, himself tells you that in conferences with Major Calliaud, and by arguments and reasons by him delivered, he was persuaded to unsay his swearing, and to declare that he believed that the affidavit which he made at Patna, and while the
transaction was recent or nearly recent, must be a mistake: that he believed (what is amazing indeed for any belief) that not Mr. Hastings, but he himself, interpreted. Mr. Lushington completely loses his own memory, and he accepts an offered, a given memory, a memory supplied to him by a party in the transaction. By this operation all difficulties are removed: Mr. Hastings is at once put into the capacity of a judge. He is declared by Mr. Lushington not to have been an interpreter in the transaction. After this, Mr. Hastings is himself examined. Your Lordships will look at the transaction at your leisure, and I think you will consider it as a pattern for inquiries of this kind. Mr. Hastings is examined: he does not recollect. His memory also fails on a business in which it is not easy to suppose a man could be doubtful,—whether he was present or not: he thinks he was not there,—for that, if he had been there, and acted as interpreter, he could not have forgot it.
I think it is pretty nearly as I state it: if I have fallen into any error or inaccuracy, it is easily rectified; for here is the state of the transaction given by the parties themselves. On this inaccurate memory of Mr. Hastings, not venturing, however, to say positively that he was not the interpreter, or that he was not present, he is discharged from being an accomplice,—he is removed from the bar, and leaps upon the seat of justice. The court thus completed, Major Calliaud comes manfully forward to make his defence. Mr. Lushington is taken off his back in the manner we have seen, and no one person remains but Captain Knox. Now, if Captain Knox was there and assenting, he is an accomplice too. Captain Knox asserts, that, at the consultation about the murder, he
said it was a pity to cut off so fine a young fellow in such a manner,—meaning that fine young fellow the Prince, the descendant of Tamerlane, the present reigning Mogul, from whom the Company derive their present charter. The purpose to be served by this declaration, if it had any purpose, was, that Captain Knox did not assent to the murder, and that therefore his evidence might be valid.
The defence set up by Major Calliaud was to this effect. He was apprehensive, he said, that the Nabob was alarmed at the violent designs that were formed against him by Mr. Holwell, and that therefore, to quiet his mind, (to quiet it by a proposition compounded of murder and treason,—an odd kind of mind he had that was to be quieted by such means!)—but to quiet his mind, and to show that the English were willing to go all lengths with him, to sell body and soul to him, he did put his seal to this extraordinary agreement, he put his seal to this wonderful paper. He likewise stated, that he was of opinion at the time that nothing at all sinister could happen from it, that no such murder was likely to take place, whatever might be the intention of the parties. In fact, he had very luckily said in a letter of his, written a day after the setting the seal, "I think nothing will come of this matter, but it is no harm to try." This experimental treachery, and these essays of conditional murder, appeared to him good enough to make a trial of; but at the same time he was afraid nothing would come of it. In general, the whole gest of his defence comes to one point, in which he persists,—that, whatever the act might be, his mind is clear: "My hands are guilty, but my heart is free." He conceived that it would be very
improper, undoubtedly, to do such an act, if he suspected anything could happen from it: he, however, let the thing out of his own hands; he put, it into the hands of others; he put the commission into the hands of a murderer. The fact was not denied; it was fully before these severe judges. The extenuation was the purity of his heart, and the bad situation of the Company's affairs,—the perpetual plea, which your Lordships will hear of forever, and which if it will justify evil actions, they will take good care that the most nefarious of their deeds shall never want a sufficient justification. But then he calls upon his life and his character to oppose to his seal; and though he has declared that Mr. Holwell had intended ill to the Nabob, and that he approved of those measures, and only postponed them, yet he thought it necessary, he says, to quiet the fears of the Nabob; and from this motive he did an act abhorrent to his nature, and which, he says, he expressed his abhorrence of the morning after he signed it: not that he did so; but if he had, I believe it would only have made the thing so many degrees worse. Your Lordships will observe, that, in this conference, as stated by himself, these reasons and apologies for it did not appear, nor did they appear in the letter, nor anywhere else, till next year, when he came upon his trial. Then it was immediately recollected that Mr. Holwell's designs were so wicked they certainly must be known to the Nabob, though he never mentioned them in the conference of the morning or the evening of the 15th; yet such was now the weight and prevalence of them upon the Major's mind, that he calls upon Mr. Hastings to know whether the Nabob was not informed of these designs of Mr. Holwell against him. Mr. Hastings's memory
was not quite correct upon the occasion. He does not recollect anything of the matter. He certainly seems not to think that he ever mentioned it to the Nabob, or the Nabob to him; but he does recollect, he thinks, speaking something to some of the Nabob's attendants upon it, and further this deponent sayeth not. On this state of things, namely, the purity of intention, the necessities of the Company, the propriety of keeping the Nabob in perfect good-humor and removing suspicions from his mind, which suspicions he had never expressed, they came to the resolution I shall have the honor to read to you: "That the representation, given in the said defence, of the state of the affairs of the country at that time" (that is, about the month of April, 1760) "is true and just" (that is, the bad state of the country, which we shall consider hereafter); "that, in such circumstances, the Nabob's urgent account of his own distresses, the Colonel's desire of making him easy," (for here is a recapitulation of the whole defence,) "as the first thing necessary for the good of the service, and the suddenness of the thing proposed, might deprive him for a moment of his recollection, and surprise him into a measure which, as to the measure itself, he could not approve. That such only were the motives which did or could influence Colonel Calliaud to assent to the proposal is fully evinced by the deposition of Captain Knox and Mr. Lushington, that his [Calliaud's] conscience, at the time, never reproached him with a bad design."
Your Lordships have heard of the testimony of a person to his own conscience; but the testimony of another man to any one's conscience—this is the first time, I believe, it ever appeared in a judicial proceed
ing. It is natural to say, "My conscience acquits me of it"; but they declare, that "his conscience never reproached him with a bad design, and therefore, upon the whole, they are satisfied that his intention was good, though he erred in the measure."
I beg leave to state one thing that escaped me: that the Nabob, who was one of the parties to the design, was, at the time of the inquiry, a sort of prisoner or an exile at Calcutta; that his moonshee was there, or might have been had; and that his spy was likewise there; and that they, though parties to this transaction, were never called to account for it in any sense or in any degree, or to show how far it was necessary to quiet the Nabob's mind.