Your Lordships see, Mr. Hastings considered this act to be a most unlucky discovery: indeed, as long as it remained in force, it would have been unlucky for him, because it would have destroyed one of the principal sources of his illegal profits. Why does he consider it unlucky? Because it admits of no reservation, no exception, no refinement whatever, but is clear, positive, decisive. Now in what case was it that Mr. Hastings made this determination? In the case of a donation publicly offered to an army serving in the field by a prince then independent of the Company. If ever there was a circumstance in which any refinement, any favorable construction of the act could be used, it was in favor of a body of men serving in the field, fighting for their country, spilling their blood for it, suffering all the inconveniences of that climate. It was undoubtedly voluntarily offered to them by the party, in the height of victory, and enriched by the plunder of whole provinces. I believe your Lordships will agree with me, that, if any relaxation, any evasion, of an act of Parliament could be allowed, if the intention of the legislature could for a moment be trifled with, or supposed for a moment doubtful, it was in this instance; and yet, upon the rigor of the act, Mr. Hastings refuses that army the price of their blood, money won solely almost by their arms for a prince who had acquired millions by their bravery, fidelity, and sufferings. This was the case in which Mr. Hastings refused a public donation to the army; and from that day to this they have never received it.
If the receipt of this public donation could be thus forbidden, whence has Mr. Hastings since learned that he may privately take money, and take it not only from princes, and persons in power, and abounding in wealth, but, as we shall prove, from persons in a comparative degree of penury and distress? that he could take it from persons in office and trust, whose power gave them the means of ruining the people for the purpose of enabling themselves to pay it? Consider in what a situation the Company must be, if the Governor-General can form such a secret exchequer of direct bribes, given eo nomine as bribes, and accepted as such, by the parties concerned in the transaction, to be discovered only by himself, and with only the inward reservation that I have spoken of.
In the first place, if Mr. Hastings should die without having made a discovery of all his bribes, or if any other servant of the Company should imitate his example without his heroic good intentions in doing such villanous acts, how is the Company to recover the bribe-money? The receivers need not divulge it till they think fit; and the moment an informer comes, that informer is ruined. He comes, for instance, to the Governor-General and Council, and charges, say, not Mr. Hastings, but the head of the Board of Revenue, with receiving a bribe. "Receive a bribe? So I did; but it was with an intention of applying it to the Company's service. There I nick the informer: I am beforehand with him: the bribe is sanctified by my inward jesuitical intention. I will make a merit of it with the Company. I have received 40,000l. as a bribe; there it is for you: I am acquitted; I am a meritorious servant: let the informer go and seek his remedy as he can." Now, if an informer is once instructed that a person who receives bribes can turn them into merit, and take away his action from him, do you think that you ever will or can discover any one bribe? But what is still worse, by this method disclose but one bribe, and you secure all the rest that you possibly can receive upon any occasion. For instance, strong report prevails that a bribe of 40,000l. has been given, and the receiver expects that information will be laid against him. He acknowledges that he has received a bribe of 40,000l., but says that it was for the service of the Company, and that it is carried to their account. And thus, by stating that he has taken some money which he has accounted for, but concealing from whom that money came, which is exactly Mr. Hastings's case, if at last an information should be laid before the Company of a specific bribe having been received of 40,000l., it is said by the receiver, "Lord! this is the 40,000l. I told you of: it is broken into fragments, paid by instalments; and you have taken it and put it into your own coffers."
Again, suppose him to take it through the hand of an agent, such as Gunga Govind Sing, and that this agent, who, as we have lately discovered, out of a bribe of 40,000l., which Mr. Hastings was to have received, kept back half of it, falls into their debt like him: I desire to know what the Company can do in such a case. Gunga Govind Sing has entered into no covenants with the Company. There is no trace of his having this money, except what Mr. Hastings chooses to tell. If he is called upon to refund it to the Company, he may say he never received it, that he was never ordered to extort this money from the people; or if he was under any covenant not to take money, he may set up this defence: "I am forbidden to receive money; and I will not make a declaration which will subject me to penalties": or he may say in India, before the Supreme Court, "I have paid the bribe all to Mr. Hastings"; and then there must be a bill and suit there, a bill and suit here, and by that means, having one party on one side the water and the other party on the other, the Company may never come to a discovery of it. And that in fact this is the way in which one of his great bribe-agents has acted I shall prove to your Lordships by evidence.
Mr. Hastings had squeezed out of a miserable country a bribe of 40,000l., of which he was enabled to bring to the account of the Company only 20,000l., and of which we should not even have known the existence, if the inquiries pursued with great diligence by the House of Commons had not extorted the discovery: and even now that we know the fact, we can never get at the money; the Company can never receive it; and before the House had squeezed out of him that some such money had been received, he never once told the Court of Directors that his black bribe-agent, whom he recommended to their service, had cheated both them and him of 20,000l. out of the fund of the bribe-revenue. If it be asked, Where is the record of this? Record there is none. In what office is it entered? It is entered in no office; it is mentioned as privately received for the Company's benefit: and you shall now further see what a charming office of receipt and account this new exchequer of Mr. Hastings's is.
For there is another and a more serious circumstance attending this business. Every one knows, that, by the law of this, and, I believe, of every country, any money which is taken illegally from any person, as every bribe or sum of money extorted or paid without consideration is, belongs to the person who paid it, and he may bring his action for it, and recover it. Then see how the Company stands. The Company receives a bribe of 40,000l. by Mr. Hastings; it is carried to its account; it turns bribery into a revenue; it sanctifies it. In the mean time, the man from whom this money is illegally taken sues Mr. Hastings. Must not he recover of Mr. Hastings? Then, if so, must not Mr. Hastings recover it again from the Company? The Company undoubtedly is answerable for it. And here is a revenue which every man who has paid it may drag out of the treasury again. Mr. Hastings's donations of his bribes to the treasury are liable to be torn from it at pleasure by every man who gives the money. First it may be torn from him who receives it; and then he may recover it from the treasury, to which he has given it.
But admitting that the taking of bribes can be sanctified by their becoming the property of the Company, it may still be asked, For what end and purpose has the Company covenanted with Mr. Hastings that money taken extorsively shall belong to the Company? Is it that satisfaction and reparation may be awarded against the said Warren Hastings to the said Company for their own benefit? No: it is for the benefit of the injured persons; and it is to be carried to the Company's account, "but in trust, nevertheless, and to the intent that the said Company may and do render and pay over the moneys received or recovered by them to the parties injured or defrauded, which the said Company accordingly hereby agree and covenant to do." Now here is a revenue to be received by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use, applied at his discretion to that use, and which the Company has previously covenanted to restore to the persons that are injured and damaged. This is a revenue which is to be torn away by the action of any person,—a revenue which they must return back to the person complaining, as they in justice ought to do: for no nation ever avowed making a revenue out of bribery and peculation. They are, then, to restore it back again. But how can they restore it? Mr. Hastings has applied it: he has given it in presents to princes,—laid it out in budgeros,—in pen, ink, and wax,—in salaries to secretaries: he has laid it out just in any way he pleased: and the India Company, who have covenanted to restore all this money to the persons from whom it came, are deprived of all means of performing so just a duty. Therefore I dismiss the idea that any man so acting could have had a good intention in his mind: the supposition is too weak, senseless, and absurd. It was only in a desperate cause that he made a desperate attempt: for we shall prove that he never made a disclosure without thinking that a discovery had been previously made or was likely to be made, together with an exposure of all the circumstances of his wicked and abominable concealment.
You will see the history of this new scheme of bribery, by which Mr. Hastings contrived by avowing some bribes to cover others, attempted to outface his delinquency, and, if possible, to reconcile a weak breach of the laws with a sort of spirited observance of them, and to become infamous for the good of his country.
The first appearance of this practice of bribery was in a letter of the 29th of November, 1780. The cause which led to the discovery was a dispute between him and Mr. Francis at the board, in consequence of a very handsome offer made by Mr. Hastings to the board relative to a measure proposed by him, to which he found one objection to be the money that it would cost. He made the most generous and handsome offer, as it stands upon record, that perhaps any man ever made,—namely, that he would defray the expense out of his own private cash, and that he had deposited with the treasurer two lac of rupees. This was in June, 1780, and Mr. Francis soon after returned to Europe. I need not inform your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings had before this time been charged with bribery and peculation by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis. He suspected that Mr. Francis, then going to Europe, would confirm this charge by the suspicious nature and circumstances of this generous offer; and this suspicion was increased by the connection which he supposed, and which we can prove he thought, Mr. Francis had with Cheyt Sing. Apprehending, therefore, that he might discover and bring the bribe to light some way or other, he resolved to anticipate any such discovery by declaring, upon the 29th of November, that this money was not his own. I will mention to your Lordships hereafter the circumstances of this money. He says, "My present reason for adverting to my conduct," (that is, his offer of two lac of rupees out of his own private cash for the Company's service, upon the 26th of June, 1780,) "on the occasion I have mentioned, is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your possession, was not my own,—that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."
My Lords, you see what an account Mr. Hastings has given of some obscure transaction by which he contradicts the record. For, on the 26th of June, he generously, nobly, full of enthusiasm for their service, offers to the Company money of his own. On the 29th of November he tells the Court of Directors that the money he offered on the former day was not his own,—that his assertion was totally false,—that the money was not his,—that he had no right to receive it,—and that he would not have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which at that instant offered.