In his covenant he is forbidden expressly to take any allowance above 400l., and forbidden to take any allowance above 100l., without the knowledge, consent, and approbation of the Council to which he belongs. Now he takes 16,000l., not only without the consent of the Council, but without their knowledge,—without the knowledge of any other human being: it is kept hid in the darkest and most secret recesses of his own black agents and confidants, and those of Munny Begum. Why is it a secret? Hospitality, generosity, virtues of that kind, are full of display; there is an ostentation, a pomp, in them; they want to be shown to the world, not concealed. The concealment of acts of charity is what makes them acceptable in the eyes of Him with regard to whom there can be no concealment; but acts of corruption are kept secret, not to keep them secret from the eye of Him, whom the person that observes the secrecy does not fear, nor perhaps believe in, but to keep them secret from the eyes of mankind, whose opinions he does fear, in the immediate effect of them, and in their future consequences. Therefore he had but one reason to keep this so dark and profound a secret, till it was dragged into day in spite of him; he had no reason to keep it a secret, but his knowing it was a proceeding that could not bear the light. Charity is the only virtue that I ever heard of that derives from its retirement any part of its lustre; the others require to be spread abroad in the face of day. Such candles should not be hid under a bushel, and, like the illuminations which men light up when they mean to express great joy and great magnificence for a great event, their very splendor is a part of their excellence. We upon our feasts light up this whole capital city; we in our feasts invite all the world to partake them. Mr. Hastings feasts in the dark; Mr. Hastings feasts alone; Mr. Hastings feasts like a wild beast; he growls in the corner over the dying and the dead, like the tigers of that country, who drag their prey into the jungles. Nobody knows of it, till he is brought into judgment for the flock he has destroyed. His is the entertainment of Tantalus; it is an entertainment from which the sun hid his light.
But was it an entertainment upon a visit? Was Mr. Hastings upon a visit? No: he was executing a commission for the Company in a village in the neighborhood of Moorshedabad, and by no means upon a visit to the Nabob. On the contrary, he was upon something that might be more properly called a visitation. He came as a heavy calamity, like a famine or a pestilence on a country; he came there to do the severest act in the world,—as he himself expresses, to take the bread, literally the bread, from above a thousand of the nobles of the country, and to reduce them to a situation which no man can hear of without shuddering. When you consider, that, while he was thus entertained himself, he was famishing fourteen hundred of the nobility and gentry of the country, you will not conceive it to be any extenuation of his crimes, that he was there, not upon a visit, but upon a duty, the harshest that could be executed, both to the persons who executed and the people who suffered from it.
It is mentioned and supposed in the observations upon this case, though no circumstances relative to the persons or the nature of the visit are stated, that this expense was something which he might have charged to the Company and did not. It is first supposed by the learned counsel who made the observation, that it was a public, allowed, and acknowledged thing; then, that he had not charged the Company anything for it. I have looked into that business. In the first place, I see no such custom; and if there was such a custom, there was the most abusive misemployment of it. I find that in that year there was paid from the Company's cash account to the Governor's travelling charges (and he had no other journey at that end of the year) thirty thousand rupees, which is about 3,000l.; and when we consider that he was in the receipt of near 30,000l., besides the nuzzers, which amount to several thousand a year, and that he is allowed 3,000l. by the Company for his travelling expenses, is it right to charge upon the miserable people whom he was defrauding of their bread 16,000l. for his entertainment?
I find that there are also other great sums relative to the expenses of the Committee of Circuit, which he was upon. How much of them is applicable to him I know not. I say, that the allowance of three thousand pounds was noble and liberal; for it is not above a day or two's journey to Moorshedabad, and by his taking his road by Kishenagur he could not be longer. He had a salary to live upon, and he must live somewhere; and he was actually paid three thousand pounds for travelling charges for three months, which was at the rate of twelve thousand pounds a year: a large and abundant sum.
If you once admit that a man for an entertainment shall take sixteen thousand pounds, there never will be any bribe, any corruption, that may not be justified: the corrupt man has nothing to do but to make a visit, and then that very moment he may receive any sum under the name of this entertainment; that moment his covenants are annulled, his bonds and obligations destroyed, the act of Parliament repealed, and it is no longer bribery, it is no longer corruption, it is no longer peculation; it is nothing but thanks for obliging inquiries, and a compliment according to the mode of the country, by which he makes his fortune.
What hinders him from renewing that visit? If you support this distinction, you will teach the Governor-General, instead of attending his business at the capital, to make journeys through the country, putting every great man of that country under the most ruinous contributions; and as this custom is in no manner confined to the Governor-General, but extends, as it must upon that principle, to every servant of the Company in any station whatever, then, if each of them were to receive an entertainment, I will venture to say that the greatest ravage of an hostile army could not, indeed, destroy the country more entirely than the Company's servants by such visits.
Your Lordships will see that there are grounds for suspicion, not supported with the same evidence, but with evidence of great probability, that there was another entertainment given at the expense of another lac of rupees; and there is also great probability that Mr. Hastings received two lac of rupees, and Mr. Middleton another lac. The whole of the Nabob's revenues would have been exhausted by these two men, if they had stayed there a whole year: and they stayed three months. Nothing will be secured from the Company's servants, so long as they can find, under this name, or under pretence of any corrupt custom of the country, a vicious excuse for this corrupt practice. The excuse is worse than the thing itself. I leave it, then, with your judgment to decide whether you will or not, if this justification comes before you, establish a principle which would put all Bengal in a worse situation than an hostile army could do, and ruin all the Company's servants by sending them from their duty to go round robbing the whole country under the name of entertainments.
My Lords, I have now done with this first part,—namely, the presumption arising from his refusal to make any defence, on pretence that the charge brought against him might be referred to a court of justice, and from the non-performance of his promise to give satisfaction to his employers,—and when that pretence was removed, still refusing to give that satisfaction, though suffering as he did under a load of infamy and obloquy, and though urged to give it by persons of the greatest character. I have stated this to your Lordships as the strongest presumption of guilt, and that this presumption is strengthened by the very excuse which he fabricated for a part of his bribes, when he knew that the proof of them was irresistible, and that this excuse is a high aggravation of his guilt,—that this excuse is not supported by law, that it is not supported by reason, that it does not stand with his covenant, but carries with it a manifest proof of corruption, and that it cannot be justified by any principle, custom, or usage whatever. My Lords, I say I have done with the presumption arising from his conduct as it regarded the fact specifically charged against him, and with respect to the relation he stood in to the Court of Directors, and from the attempt he made to justify that conduct. I believe your Lordships will think both one and the other strong presumptions of his criminality, and of his knowledge that the act he was doing was criminal.
I have another fact to lay before your Lordships, which affords a further presumption of his guilt, and which will show the mischievous consequences of it; and I trust your Lordships will not blame me for going a little into it. Your Lordships know we charge that the appointment of such a woman as Munny Begum to the guardianship of the Nabob, to the superintendency of the civil justice of the country, and to the representation of the whole government, was made for no other purpose than that through this corrupt woman sixteen thousand pounds a year, the whole tattered remains of the Nabob's grandeur, might be a prey to Mr. Hastings: it could be for no other. Now your Lordships would imagine, that, after this, knowing he was already grievously suspected, he would have abstained from giving any further ground for suspicion by a repetition of the same acts through the same person; as no other reason could be furnished for such acts, done directly contrary to the order of his superiors, but that he was actuated by the influence of bribery. Your Lordships would imagine, that, when this Munny Begum was removed upon a charge of corruption, Mr. Hastings would have left her quiet in tranquil obscurity, and that he would no longer have attempted to elevate her into a situation which furnished against himself so much disgrace and obloquy to himself, and concerning which he stood charged with a direct and positive act of bribery. Your Lordships well know, that, upon the deposition of that great magistrate, Mahomed Reza Khân, this woman was appointed to supply his place. The Governor-General and Council (the majority of them being then Sir John Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis) had made a provisional arrangement for the time, until they should be authorized to fill up the place in a proper manner. Soon after, there came from Europe a letter expressing the satisfaction which the Court of Directors had received in the acquittal of Mahomed Reza Khân, expressing a regard for his character, an high opinion of his abilities, and a great disposition to make him some recompense for his extreme sufferings; and accordingly they ordered that he should be again employed. Having no exact ideas of the state of employments in that country, they made a mistake in the specific employment for which they named him; for, being a Mahometan, and the head of the Mahometans in that country, he was named to an office which must be held by a Gentoo. But the majority I have just named, who never endeavored by any base and delusive means to fly from their duty, or not to execute it at all, because they were desired to execute it in a way in which they could not execute it, followed the spirit of the order; and finding that Mahomed Reza Khân, before his imprisonment and trial, had been in possession of another employment, they followed the spirit of the instructions of the Directors and replaced him in that employment: by which means there was an end put to the government of Munny Begum, the country reverted to its natural state, and men of the first rank in the country were placed in the first situations in it. The seat of judicature was filled with wisdom, gravity, and learning, and Munny Begum sunk into that situation into which a woman who had been engaged in the practices that she had been engaged in naturally would sink at her time of life. Mr. Hastings resisted this appointment. He trifled with the Company's orders on account of the letter of them, and endeavored to disobey the spirit of them. However, the majority overbore him; they put Mahomed Reza Khân into his former situation; and as a proof and seal to the honor and virtue of their character, there was not a breath of suspicion that they had any corrupt motive for this conduct. They were odious to many of the India House here; they were odious to that corrupt influence which had begun and was going on to ruin India; but in the face of all this odium, they gave the appointment to Mahomed Reza Khân, because the act contained in itself its own justification. Mr. Hastings made a violent protest against it, and resisted it to the best of his power, always in favor of Munny Begum, as your Lordships will see. Mr. Hastings sent this protest to the Directors; but the Directors, as soon as the case came before them, acknowledged their error, and praised the majority of the Council, Sir John Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, for the wise and honorable part they had taken upon the occasion, by obeying the spirit and not the letter,—commended the act they had done,—confirmed Mahomed Reza Khân in his place,—and to prevent that great man from being any longer the sport of fortune, any longer the play of avarice between corrupt governors and dancing-girls, they gave him the pledged faith of the Company that he should remain in that office as long as his conduct deserved their protection: it was a good and an honorable tenure. My Lords, soon afterwards there happened two lamentable deaths,—first of Colonel Monson, afterwards of General Clavering. Thus Mr. Hastings was set loose: there was an inspection and a watch upon his conduct, and no more. He was then just in the same situation in which he had stood in 1772. What does he do? Even just what he did in 1772. He deposes Mahomed Reza Khân, notwithstanding the Company's orders, notwithstanding their pledged faith; he turns him out, and makes a distribution of two lacs and a half of rupees, the salary of that great magistrate, in the manner I will now show your Lordships. He made an arrangement consisting of three main parts: the first was with regard to the women, the next with regard to the magistracy, the last with regard to the officers of state of the household.
The first person that occurred to Mr. Hastings was Munny Begum; and he gave her, not out of that part of the Nabob's allowance which was to support the seraglio, but out of the allowance of this very magistrate, just as if such a thing had been done here out of the salary of a Lord Chancellor or a Lord Chief-Justice,—out of these two lacs and a half of rupees, that is, about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand pounds a year, he ordered an allowance to be made to Munny Begum of 72,000 rupees per annum, or 7,200l. a year; for the Nabob's own mother, whom he thrust, as usual, into a subordinate situation, he made an allowance of 3,000l.; to the Sudder ul Huk Khân, which is, translated into English, the Lord Chief-Justice, he allowed the same sum that he did to the dancing-girl, (which was very liberal in him, and I am rather astonished to find it,) namely, 7,200l. a year. And who do you think was the next public officer he appointed? It was the Rajah Gourdas, the son of Nundcomar, and whose testimony he has attempted both before and since this occasion to weaken. To him, however, he gave an employment of 6,000l. a year, as if to make through the son some compensation to the manes of the father. And in this manner he distributes, with a wild and liberal profusion, between magistrates and dancing-girls, the whole spoil of Mahomed Reza Khân, notwithstanding the Company's direct and positive assurance given to him. Everything was done, at the same time, to put, as it was before, into the hands of this dancing-girl the miserable Nabob's whole family; and that the fund for corruption might be large enough, he did not take the money for this dancing-girl out of the Nabob's separate revenue, of which he and the dancing-girl had the private disposal between them.