Mr. Hastings, however, began to be pretty sensible that this way of proceeding had a very unpromising and untoward look; for which reason he next declared that he reserved his defence for fear of a legal prosecution, and that some time or other he would give a large and liberal explanation to the Court of Directors, to whom he was answerable for his conduct, of his refusing to suffer the inquiry to proceed, of his omitting to give them satisfaction at the time, of his omitting to take any one natural step that an innocent man would have taken upon such an occasion. Under this promise he has remained from that time to the time you see him at your bar, and he has neither denied, exculpated, explained, or apologized for his conduct in any one single instance.
While he accuses the intemperance of his adversaries, he shows a degree of temperance in himself which always attends guilt in despair: for struggling guilt may be warm, but guilt that is desperate has nothing to do but to submit to the consequences of it, to bear the infamy annexed to its situation, and to try to find some consolation in the effects of guilt with regard to private fortune for the scandal it brings them into in public reputation. After the business had ended in India, the causes why he should have given the explanation grew stronger and stronger: for not only the charges exhibited against him were weighty, but the manner in which he was called upon to inquire into them was such as would undoubtedly tend to stir the mind of a man of character, to rouse him to some consideration of himself, and to a sense of the necessity of his defence. He was goaded to make this defence by the words I shall read to your Lordships from Sir John Clavering.
"In the late proceedings of the Revenue Board it will appear that there is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General has thought it reasonable to abstain." He further says, in answer to Mr. Hastings, "The malicious view with which this innuendo" (an innuendo of Mr. Hastings) "is thrown out is only worthy of a man who, having disgraced himself in the eyes of every man of honor both in Asia and in Europe, and having no imputation to lay to our charge, has dared to attempt in the dark what malice itself could not find grounds to aim at openly."
These are the charges which were made upon him,—not loosely, in the heat of conversation, but deliberately, in writing, entered upon record, and sent to his employers, the Court of Directors, those whom the law had set over him, and to whose judgment and opinion he was responsible. Do your Lordships believe that it was conscious innocence that made him endure such reproaches, so recorded, from his own colleague? Was it conscious innocence that made him abandon his defence, renounce his explanation, and bear all this calumny, (if it was calumny,) in such a manner, without making any one attempt to refute it? Your Lordships will see by this, and by other minutes with which the books are filled, that Mr. Hastings is charged quite to the brim with corruptions of all sorts, and covered with every mode of possible disgrace. For there is something so base and contemptible in the crimes of peculation and bribery, that, when they come to be urged home and strongly against a man, as here they are urged, nothing but a consciousness of guilt can possibly make a person so charged support himself under them. Mr. Hastings considered himself, as he has stated, to be under the necessity of bearing them. What is that necessity? Guilt. Could he say that Sir John Clavering (for I say nothing now of Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, who were joined with him) was a man weak and contemptible? I believe there are those among your Lordships who remember that Sir John Clavering was known before he went abroad, and better known by his conduct after, to be a man of the most distinguished honor that ever served his Majesty; he served his Majesty in a military situation for many years, and afterwards in that high civil situation in India. It is known that through every step and gradation of a high military service, until he arrived at the highest of all, there never was the least blot upon him, or doubt or suspicion of his character; that his temper for the most part, and his manners, were fully answerable to his virtues, and a noble ornament to them; that he was one of the best natured, best bred men, as well as one of the highest principled men to be found in his Majesty's service; that he had passed the middle time of life, and come to an age which makes men wise in general; so that he could be warmed by nothing but that noble indignation at guilt which is the last thing that ever was or will be extinguished in a virtuous mind. He was a man whose voice was not to be despised; but if his character had been personally as contemptible as it was meritorious and honorable in every respect, yet his situation as a commissioner named by an act of Parliament for the express purpose of reforming India gave him a weight and consequence that could not suffer Mr. Hastings, without a general and strong presumption of his guilt, to acquiesce in such recorded minutes from him. But if he had been a weak, if he had been an intemperate man, (in reality he was as cool, steady, temperate, judicious a man as ever was born,) the Court of Directors, to whom Mr. Hastings was responsible by every tie and every principle, and was made responsible at last by a positive act of Parliament obliging him to yield obedience to their commands as the general rule of his duty,—the Court of Directors, I say, perfectly approved of every part of General Clavering's, Colonel Monson's, and Mr. Francis's conduct; they approved of this inquiry which Mr. Hastings rejected; and they have declared, "that the powers and instructions vested in and given to General Clavering and the other gentlemen were such as fully authorized them in every inquiry that seems to have been their object ... Europeans."[2]
Now after the supreme authority, to which they were to appeal in all their disputes, had passed this judgment upon this very inquiry, the matter no longer depended upon Mr. Hastings's opinion; nor could he be longer justified in attributing that to evil motives either of malice or passion in his colleagues. When the judges who were finally to determine who was malicious, who was passionate, who was or was not justified either in setting on foot the inquiry or resisting it, had passed that judgment, then Mr. Hastings was called upon by all the feelings of a man, and by his duty in Council, to give satisfaction to his masters, the Directors, who approved of the zeal and diligence shown in that very inquiry, the passion of which he only reprobated, and upon which he grounded his justification.
If anything but conscious guilt could have possibly influenced him to such more than patience under this accusation, let us see what was his conduct when the scene was changed. General Clavering, fatigued and broken down by the miseries of his situation, soon afterwards lost a very able and affectionate colleague, Colonel Monson, (whom Mr. Hastings states to be one of the bitterest of his accusers,) a man one of the most loved and honored of his time, a person of your Lordships' noble blood, and a person who did honor to it, and if he had been of the family of a commoner, well deserved to be raised to your distinction. When that man died,—died of a broken heart, to say nothing else,—and General Clavering felt himself in a manner without help, except what he derived from the firmness, assiduity, and patience of Mr. Francis, sinking like himself under the exertion of his own virtues, he was resolved to resign his employment. The Court of Directors were so alarmed at this attempt of his to resign his employment, that they wrote thus: "When you conceived the design of quitting our service, we imagine you could not have heard of the resignation of Mr. Hastings ... your zeal and ability."[3]
My Lords, in this struggle, and before he could resign finally, another kind of resignation, the resignation of Nature, took place, and Sir John Clavering died. The character that was given Sir John Clavering at that time is a seal to the whole of his proceedings, and the use that I shall make of it your Lordships will see presently. "The abilities of General Clavering, the comprehensive knowledge he had attained of our affairs ... to the East India Company."[4]
And never had it a greater loss. There is the concluding funeral oration made by his masters, upon a strict, though by no means partial, view of his conduct. My Lords, here is the man who is the great accuser of Mr. Hastings, as he says. What is he? a slight man, a man of mean situation, a man of mean talents, a man of mean character? No: of the highest character. Was he a person whose conduct was disapproved by their common superiors? No: it was approved when living, and ratified when dead. This was the man, a man equal to him in every respect, upon the supposed evil motives of whom alone was founded the sole justification of Mr. Hastings.
But be it, then, that Sir John Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis were all of them the evil-minded persons that he describes them to be, and that from dislike to them, from a kind of manly resentment, if you please, against such persons, an hatred against malicious proceedings, and a defiance of them, he did not think proper, as he states, to make his defence during that period of time, and while oppressed by that combination,—yet, when he got rid of the two former persons, and when Mr. Francis was nothing, when the whole majority was in his hand, and he was in full power, there was a large, open, full field for inquiry; and he was bound to re-institute that inquiry, and to clear his character before his judges and before his masters. Mr. Hastings says, "No: they have threatened me with a prosecution, and I reserve myself for a court of justice."