You have seen, that, when he takes two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, he tells you that in this very act he is starving fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry. My Lords, you have the blood of nobles,—if not, you have the blood of men in your veins: you feel as nobles, you feel as men. What would you say to a cruel Mogul exactor, by whom after having been driven from your estates, driven from the noble offices, civil and military, which you hold, driven from your bishoprics, driven from your places at court, driven from your offices as judges, and, after having been reduced to a miserable flock of pensioners, your very pensions were at last wrested from your mouths, and who, though at the very time when those pensions were wrested from you he declares them to have been the only bread of a miserable decayed nobility, takes himself two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, and continues it till it amounts to sixteen thousand pounds? I do think, that, of all the corruptions which he has not owned, but has not denied, or of those which he does in effect own, and of which he brings forward the evidence himself, the taking and claiming under color of an entertainment is ten times the most nefarious.
I shall this day only further trouble your Lordships to observe that he has never directly denied this transaction. I have tumbled over the records, I have looked at every part, to see whether he denies it. He did not deny it at the time, he did not deny it to the Court of Directors: on the contrary, he did in effect acknowledge it, when, without directly acknowledging it, he promised them a full and liberal explanation of the whole transaction. He never did give that explanation. Parliament took up the business; this matter was reported at the end of the Eleventh Report; but though the House of Commons had thus reported it, and made that public which before was upon the Company's records, he took no notice of it. Then another occasion arises: he comes before the House of Commons; he knows he is about to be prosecuted for those very corruptions; he well knows these charges exist against him; he makes his defence (if he will allow it to be his defence); but, though thus driven, he did not there deny it, because he knew, that, if he had denied it, it could be proved against him. I desire your Lordships will look at that paper which we have given in evidence, and see if you find a word of denial of it: there is much discourse, much folly, much insolence, but not one word of denial. Then, at last, it came before this tribunal against him. I desire to refer your Lordships to that part of his defence to the article in which this bribe is specifically charged: he does not deny it there; the only thing which looks like a denial is one sweeping clause inserted, (in order to put us upon the proof,) that all the charges are to be conceived as denied; but a specific denial to this specific charge in no stage of the business, from beginning to end, has he once made.
And therefore here I close that part of the charge which relates to the business of Nundcomar. Your Lordships will see such a body of presumptive proof and positive proof as never was given yet of any secret corrupt act of bribery; and there I leave it with your Lordships' justice. I beg pardon for having detained you so long; but your Lordships will be so good as to observe that no business ever was covered with more folds of iniquitous artifice than this which is now brought before you.
SPEECH
ON
THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.
SECOND DAY: SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1789.
My Lords,—When I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships, I endeavored to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an affair was consistent with the brevity which I endeavored to preserve, the proofs which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an inquiry instituted by an order of the Court of Directors into the corruption and peculation of persons in authority in India. My Lords, I have endeavored to show you by anterior presumptive proofs, drawn from the nature and circumstances of the acts themselves inferring guilt, that such actions and such conduct could be referable only to one cause, namely, corruption; I endeavored to show you afterwards, my Lords, what the specific nature and extent of the corruption was, as far as it could be fully proved; and lastly, the great satisfactory presumption which attended the inquiry with regard to Mr. Hastings,—namely, that, contrary to law, contrary to his duty, contrary to what is owed by innocence to itself, Mr. Hastings resisted that inquiry, and employed all the power of his office to prevent the exercise of it, either in himself or in others. These presumptions and these proofs will be brought before your Lordships, distinctly and in order, at the end of this opening.
The next point on which I thought it necessary to proceed was relative to the presumptions which his subsequent conduct gave with regard to his guilt: because, my Lords, his uniform tenor of conduct, such as must attend guilt, both in the act, at the time of the inquiry, and subsequent to it, will form such a body of satisfactory evidence as I believe the human mind is not made to resist.
My Lords, there is another reason why I choose to enter into the presumptions drawn from his conduct and the fact, taking his conduct in two parts, if it may be so expressed, omission and commission, in order that your Lordships should more fully enter into the consequences of this system of bribery. But before I say anything upon that, I wish your Lordships to be apprised, that the Commons, in bringing this bribe of three lac and a half before your Lordships, do not wish by any means to have it understood that this is the whole of the bribe that was received by Mr. Hastings in consequence of delivering up the whole management of the government of the country to that improper person whom he nominated for it. My Lords, from the proofs that will be adduced before you, there is great probability that he received very nearly a hundred thousand pounds; there is positive proof of his receiving fifty; and we have chosen only to charge him with that of which there is such an accumulated body of proof as to leave no doubt upon the minds of your Lordships. All this I say, because we are perfectly apprised of the sentiments of the public upon this point: when they hear of the enormity of Indian peculation, when they see the acts done, and compare them with the bribes received, the acts seem so enormous and the bribes comparatively so small, that they can hardly be got to attribute them to that motive. What I mean to state is this: that, from a collective view of the subject, your Lordships will be able to judge that enormous offences have been committed, and that the bribe which we have given in proof is a specimen of the nature and extent of those enormous bribes which extend to much greater sums than we are able to prove before you in the manner your Lordships would like and expect.
I have already remarked to your Lordships, that, after this charge was brought and recorded before the Council in spite of the resistance made by Mr. Hastings, in which he employed all the power and authority of his station, and the whole body of his partisans and associates in iniquity, dispersed through every part of these provinces,—after he had taken all these steps, finding himself pressed by the proof and pressed by the presumption of his resistance to the inquiry, he did think it necessary to make something like a defence. Accordingly he has made what he calls a justification, which did not consist in the denial of that fact, or any explanation of it. The mode he took for his defence was abuse of his colleagues, abuse of the witnesses, and of every person who in the execution of his duty was inquiring into the fact, and charging them with things which, if true, were by no means sufficient to support him, either in defending the acts themselves, or in the criminal means he used to prevent inquiry into them. His design was to mislead their minds, and to carry them from the accusation and the proof of it. With respect to the passion, violence, and intemperate heat with which he charged them, they were proceeding in an orderly, regular manner; and if on any occasion they seem to break out into warmth, it was in consequence of that resistance which he made to them, in what your Lordships, I believe, will agree with them in thinking was one of the most important parts of their functions. If they had been intemperate in their conduct, if they had been violent, passionate, prejudiced against him, it afforded him only a better means of making his defence; because, though in a rational and judicious mind the intemperate conduct of the accuser certainly proves nothing with regard to the truth or falsehood of his accusation, yet we do know that the minds of men are so constituted that an improper mode of conducting a right thing does form some degree of prejudice against it. Mr. Hastings, therefore, unable to defend himself upon principle, has resorted as much as he possibly could to prejudice. And at the same time that there is not one word of denial, or the least attempt at a refutation of the charge, he has loaded the records with all manner of minutes, proceedings, and letters relative to everything but the fact itself. The great aim of his policy, both then, before, and ever since, has been to divert the mind of the auditory, or the persons to whom he addressed himself, from the nature of his cause, to some collateral circumstance relative to it,—a policy to which he has always had recourse; but that trick, the last resource of despairing guilt, I trust will now completely fail him.