"If it should be objected, that the allowance of these demands would furnish a precedent for others of the like kind, I have to remark, that in their whole amount they are but the aggregate of a contingent account of twelve years; and if it were to become the practice of those who have passed their prime of life in your service, and filled, as I have filled it, the first office of your dominion, to glean from their past accounts all the articles of expense which their inaccuracy or indifference hath overlooked, your interests would suffer infinitely less by the precedent than by a single example of a life spent in the accumulation of crores for your benefit and doomed in its close to suffer the extremity of private want and to sink in obscurity."
Here is the man that has told us at the bar of the House of Commons that he never made up any contingent accounts; and yet, as a set-off against this bribe, which he received for himself, and never intended to apply to the current use of the Company, he feigns and invents a claim upon them, namely, that he had, without any authority of the Company, squandered away in stationery and budgeros, and other idle services, a sum amounting to 34,000l. But was it for the Company's service? Is this language to be listened to? "Everything I thought fit to expend I have expended for the Company's service. I intended, indeed, at that time, to have been generous. I intended out of my own pocket to have paid for a translation of the code of Gentoo laws. I was then in the prime of my life, flowing in money, and had great expectations: I am now old; I cannot afford to be generous: I will look back into all my former accounts, pen, ink, wax, everything that I generously or prodigally spent as my own humor might suggest; and though, at the same time, I know you have given me a noble allowance, I now make a charge upon you for this sum of money, and intend to take a bribe in discharge of it." Now suppose Lord Cornwallis, who sits in the seat, and I hope will long, and honorably and worthily, fill the seat, which that gentleman possessed,—suppose Lord Cornwallis, after never having complained of the insufficiency of his salary, and after having but two years ago said he had saved a sufficient competency out of it, should now tell you that 30,00l. a year was not enough for him, and that he was sinking into want and distress, and should justify upon that alleged want taking a bribe, and then make out a bill of contingent expenses to cover it, would your Lordships bear this?
Mr. Hastings has told you that he wanted to borrow money for his own use, and that he applied to Rajah Nobkissin, who generously pressed it upon him as a gift. Rajah Nobkissin is a banian: you will be astonished to hear of generosity in a banian; there never was a banian and generosity united together: but Nobkissin loses his banian qualities at once, the moment the light of Mr. Hastings's face beams upon him. "Here," says Mr. Hastings, "I have prepared bonds for you." "Astonishing! how can you think of the meanness of bonds? You call upon me to lend you 34,000l., and propose bonds? No, you shall have it: you are the Governor-General, who have a large and ample salary; but I know you are a generous man, and I emulate your generosity: I give you all this money." Nobkissin was quite shocked at Mr. Hastings's offering him a bond. My Lords, a Gentoo banian is a person a little lower, a little more penurious, a little more exacting, a little more cunning, a little more money-making, than a Jew. There is not a Jew in the meanest corner of Duke's Place in London that is so crafty, so much a usurer, so skilful how to turn money to profit, and so resolved not to give any money but for profit, as a Gentoo broker of the class I have mentioned. But this man, however, at once grows generous, and will not suffer a bond to be given to him; and Mr. Hastings, accordingly, is thrown into very great distress. You see sentiment always prevailing in Mr. Hastings. The sentimental dialogue which must have passed between him and a Gentoo broker would have charmed every one that has a taste for pathos and sentiment. Mr. Hastings was pressed to receive the money as a gift. He really does not know what to do: whether to insist upon giving a bond or not,—whether he shall take the money for his own use, or whether he shall take it for the Company's use. But it may be said of man as it is said of woman: the woman who deliberates is lost: the man that deliberates about receiving bribes is gone. The moment he deliberates, that moment his reason, the fortress, is lost, the walls shake, down it comes,—and at the same moment enters Nobkissin into the citadel of his honor and integrity, with colors flying, with drums beating, and Mr. Hastings's garrison goes out, very handsomely indeed, with the honors of war, all for the benefit of the Company. Mr. Hastings consents to take the money from Nobkissin; Nobkissin gives the money, and is perfectly satisfied.
Mr. Hastings took the money with a view to apply it to the Company's service. How? To pay his own contingent bills. "Everything that I do," says he, "and all the money I squander, is all for the Company's benefit. As to particulars of accounts, never look into them; they are given you upon honor. Let me take this bribe: it costs you nothing to be just or generous. I take the bribe: you sanctify it." But in every transaction of Mr. Hastings, where we have got a name, there we have got a crime. Nobkissin gave him the money, and did not take his bond, I believe, for it; but Nobkissin, we find, immediately afterwards enters upon the stewardship or management of one of the most considerable districts in Bengal. We know very well, and shall prove to your Lordships, in what manner such men rack such districts, and exact from the inhabitants the money to repay themselves for the bribes which had been taken from them. These bribes are taken under a pretence of the Company's service, but sooner or later they fall upon the Company's treasury. And we shall prove that Nobkissin, within a year from the time when he gave this bribe, had fallen into arrears to the Company, as their steward, to the amount of a sum the very interest of which, according to the rate of interest in that country, amounted to more than this bribe, taken, as was pretended, for the Company's service. Such are the consequences of a banian's generosity, and of Mr. Hastings's gratitude, so far as the interest of the country is concerned; and this is a good way to pay Mr. Hastings's contingent accounts. But this is not all: a most detestable villain is sent up into the country to take the management of it, and the fortunes of all the great families in it are given entirely into his power. This is the way by which the Company are to keep their own servants from falling into "the extremity of private want." And the Company itself, in this pretended saving to their treasury by the taking of bribes, lose more than the amount of the bribes received. Wherever a bribe is given on one hand, there is a balance accruing on the other. No man, who had any share in the management of the Company's revenues, ever gave a bribe, who did not either extort the full amount of it from the country, or else fall in balance to the Company to that amount, and frequently both. In short, Mr. Hastings never was guilty of corruption, that blood and rapine did not follow; he never took a bribe, pretended to be for their benefit, but the Company's treasury was proportionably exhausted by it.
And now was this scandalous and ruinous traffic in bribes brought to light by the Court of Directors? No: we got it in the House of Commons. These bribes appear to have been taken at various times and upon various occasions; and it was not till his return from Patna, in February, 1782, that the first communication of any of them was made to the Court of Directors. Upon the receipt of this letter, the Court of Directors wrote back to him, requiring some further explanation upon the subject. No explanation was given, but a communication of other bribes was made in his letter, said to be written in May of the same year, but not dispatched to Europe till the December following. This produced another requisition from the Directors for explanation. And here your Lordships are to observe that this correspondence is never in the way of letters written and answers given; but he and the Directors are perpetually playing at hide-and-seek with each other, and writing to each other at random: Mr. Hastings making a communication one day, the Directors requiring an explanation the next; Mr. Hastings giving an account of another bribe on the third day, without giving any explanation of the former. Still, however, the Directors are pursuing their chase. But it was not till they learned that the committees of the House of Commons (for committees of the House of Commons had then some weight) were frowning upon them for this collusion with Mr. Hastings, that at last some honest men in the Direction were permitted to have some ascendency, and that a proper letter was prepared, which I shall show your Lordships, demanding from Mr. Hastings an exact account of all the bribes that he had received, and painting to him, in colors as strong at least as those I use, his bribery, his frauds, and peculations,—and what does them great honor for that moment, they particularly direct that the money which was taken from the Nabob of Oude should be carried to his account. These paragraphs were prepared by the Committee of Correspondence, and, as I understand, approved by the Court of Directors, but never were sent out to India. However, something was sent, but miserably weak and lame of its kind; and Mr. Hastings never answered it, or gave them any explanation whatever. He now, being prepared for his departure from Calcutta, and having finished all his other business, went up to Oude upon a chase in which just now we cannot follow him. He returned in great disgust to Calcutta, and soon after set sail for England, without ever giving the Directors one word of the explanation which he had so often promised, and they had repeatedly asked.
We have now got Mr. Hastings in England, where you will suppose some satisfactory account of all these matters would be obtained from him. One would suppose, that, on his arrival in London, he would have been a little quickened by a menace, as he expresses it, which had been thrown out against him in the House of Commons, that an inquiry would be made into his conduct; and the Directors, apprehensive of the same thing, thought it good gently to insinuate to him by a letter, written by whom and how we do not know, that he ought to give some explanation of these accounts. This produced a letter which I believe in the business of the whole world cannot be paralleled: not even himself could be his parallel in this. Never did inventive folly, working upon conscious guilt, and throwing each other totally in confusion, ever produce such a false, fraudulent, prevaricating letter as this, which is now to be given to you.
You have seen him at Patna, at Calcutta, in the country, on the Ganges: now you see him at the waters at Cheltenham; and you will find his letter from that place to comprehend the substance of all his former letters, and to be a digest of all the falsity, fraud, and nonsense contained in the whole of them. Here it is, and your Lordships will suffer it to be read. I must beg your patience; I must acknowledge that it has been the most difficult of all things to explain, but much more difficult to make pleasant and not wearisome, falsity and fraud pursued through all its artifices; and therefore, as it has been the most painful work to us to unravel fraud and prevarication, so there is nothing that more calls for the attention, the patience, the vigilance, and the scrutiny of an exact court of justice. But as you have already had almost the whole of the man, do not think it too much to hear the rest in this letter from Cheltenham. It is dated, Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785, addressed to William Devaynes, Esquire;[8] and it begins thus:—
"Sir,—The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to Bengal by the 'Surprise,' dated the 16th of March, 1784, were pleased to express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was received,—what were my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors,—and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits, on my own account."
I wish your Lordships to pause a moment. Here is a letter written in July, 1785. You see that from the 29th of December [November?], 1780, till that time, during which interval, though convinced in his own conscience and though he had declared his own opinion of the necessity of giving a full explanation of these money transactions, he had been imposing upon the Directors false and prevaricating accounts of them, they were never able to obtain a full disclosure from him.
He goes on:—"I have been kindly apprised that the information required as above is yet expected from me. I hope that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the Presidency when the 'Surprise' arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed, to the day of my final departure from it, by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes which compose our Consultations of that period,"—