The demand of 500,000l. was a thing likely to irritate the Rajah and to create resistance. In fact, he confesses this. Mr. Markham and he had a discourse upon that subject, and agreed to arrest the Rajah, because they thought the enforcing this demand might drive him to his forts, and excite a rebellion in the country. He therefore knew there was danger to be apprehended from this act of violence. And yet, knowing this, he sent one unarmed Resident to give the orders, and four unarmed companies of sepoys to support him. He provokes the people, he goads them with every kind of insult added to every kind of injury, and then rushes into the very jaws of danger, provoking a formidable foe by the display of a puny, insignificant force.
In expectation of danger, he seized the person of the Rajah, and he pretends that the Rajah suffered no disgrace from his arrest. But, my Lords, we have proved, what was stated by the Rajah, and was well known to Mr. Hastings, that to imprison a person of elevated station, in that country, is to subject him to the highest dishonor and disgrace, and would make the person so imprisoned utterly unfit to execute the functions of government ever after.
I have now to state to your Lordships a transaction which is worse than his wantonly playing with the safety of the Company, worse than his exacting sums of money by fraud and violence. My Lords, the history of this transaction must be prefaced by describing to your Lordships the duty and privileges attached to the office of Naib. A Naib is an officer well known in India, as the administrator of the affairs of any government, whenever the authority of the regular holder is suspended. But, although the Naib acts only as a deputy, yet, when the power of the principal is totally superseded, as by imprisonment or otherwise, and that of the Naib is substituted, he becomes the actual sovereign, and the principal is reduced to a mere pensioner. I am now to show your Lordships whom Mr. Hastings appointed as Naib to the government of the country, after he had imprisoned the Rajah.
Cheyt Sing had given him to understand through Mr. Markham, that he was aware of the design of suspending him, and of placing his government in the hands of a Naib whom he greatly dreaded. This person was called Ussaun Sing; he was a remote relation of the family, and an object of their peculiar suspicion and terror. The moment Cheyt Sing was arrested, he found that his prophetic soul spoke truly; for Mr. Hastings actually appointed this very man to be his master. And who was this man? We are told by Mr. Markham, in his evidence here, that he was a man who had dishonored his family,—he was the disgrace of his house,—that he was a person who could not be trusted; and Mr. Hastings, in giving Mr. Markham full power afterwards to appoint Naibs, expressly excepted this Ussaun Sing from all trust whatever, as a person totally unworthy of it. Yet this Ussaun Sing, the disgrace and calamity of his family, an incestuous adulterer, and a supposed issue of a guilty connection, was declared Naib. Yes, my Lords, this degraded, this wicked and flagitious character, the Rajah's avowed enemy, was, in order to heighten the Rajah's disgrace, to embitter his ruin, to make destruction itself dishonorable as well as destructive, appointed this [his?] Naib. Thus, when Mr. Hastings had imprisoned the Rajah, in the face of his subjects, and in the face of all India, without fixing any term for the duration of his imprisonment, he delivered up the country to a man whom he knew to be utterly undeserving, a man whom he kept in view for the purpose of frightening the Rajah, and whom he was obliged to depose on account of his misconduct almost as soon as he had named him, and to exclude specially from all kind of trust. We have heard of much tyranny, avarice, and insult in the world; but such an instance of tyranny, avarice, and insult combined has never before been exhibited.
We are now come to the last scene of this flagitious transaction. When Mr. Hastings imprisoned the Rajah, he did not renew his demand for the 500,000l., but he exhibited a regular charge of various pretended delinquencies against him, digested into heads, and he called on him, in a dilatory, irregular way of proceeding, for an answer. The man, under every difficulty and every distress, gave an answer to every particular of the charge, as exact and punctilious as could have been made to articles of impeachment in this House.
I must here request your Lordships to consider the order of these proceedings. Mr. Hastings, having determined upon the utter ruin and destruction of this unfortunate prince, endeavored, by the arrest of his person, by a contemptuous disregard to his submissive applications, by the appointment of a deputy who was personally odious to him, and by the terror of still greater insults, he endeavored, I say, to goad him on to the commission of some acts of resistance sufficient to give a color of justice to that last dreadful extremity to which he had resolved to carry his malignant rapacity. Failing in this wicked project, and studiously avoiding the declaration of any terms upon which the Rajah might redeem himself from these violent proceedings, he next declared his intention of seizing his forts, the depository of his victim's honor, and of the means of his subsistence. He required him to deliver up his accounts and accountants, together with all persons who were acquainted with the particulars of his effects and treasures, for the purpose of transferring those effects to such persons as he (Mr. Hastings) chose to nominate.
It was at this crisis of aggravated insult and brutality that the indignation which these proceedings had occasioned in the breasts of the Rajah's subjects burst out into an open flame. The Rajah had retired to the last refuge of the afflicted, to offer up prayers to his God and our God, when a vile chubdar, or tipstaff, came to interrupt and insult him. His alarmed and loyal subjects felt for a beloved sovereign that deep interest which we should all feel, if our sovereign were so treated. What man with a spark of loyalty in his breast, what man regardful of the honor of his country, when he saw his sovereign imprisoned, and so notorious a wretch appointed his deputy, could be a patient witness of such wrongs? The subjects of this unfortunate prince did what we should have done,—what all who love their country, who love their liberty, who love their laws, who love their property, who love their sovereign, would have done on such an occasion. They looked upon him as their sovereign, although degraded. They were unacquainted with any authority superior to his, and the phantom of tyranny which performed these oppressive acts was unaccompanied by that force which justifies submission by affording the plea of necessity. An unseen tyrant and four miserable companies of sepoys executed all the horrible things that we have mentioned. The spirit of the Rajah's subjects was roused by their wrongs, and encouraged by the contemptible weakness of their oppressors. The whole country rose up in rebellion, and surely in justifiable rebellion. Every writer on the Law of Nations, every man that has written, thought, or felt upon the affairs of government, must write, know, think, and feel, that a people so cruelly scourged and oppressed, both in the person of their chief and in their own persons, were justified in their resistance. They were roused to vengeance, and a short, but most bloody war followed.
We charge the prisoner at your bar with all the consequences of this war. We charge him with the murder of our sepoys, whom he sent unarmed to such a dangerous enterprise. We charge him with the blood of every man that was shed in that place; and we call him, as we have called him, a tyrant, an oppressor, and a murderer. We call him murderer in the largest and fullest sense of the word; because he was the cause of the murder of our English officers and sepoys, whom he kept unarmed, and unacquainted with the danger to which they would be exposed by the violence of his transactions. He sacrificed to his own nefarious views every one of those lives, as well as the lives of the innocent natives of Benares, whom he designedly drove to resistance by the weakness of the force opposed to them, after inciting them by tyranny and insult to that display of affection towards their sovereign which is the duty of all good subjects.
My Lords, these are the iniquities which we have charged upon the prisoner at your bar; and I will next call your Lordships' attention to the manner in which these iniquities have been pretended to be justified. You will perceive a great difference in the manner in which this prisoner is tried, and of which he so much complains, and the manner in which he dealt with the unfortunate object of his oppression. The latter thus openly appeals to his accuser. "You are," says he, "upon the spot. It is happy for me that you are so. You can now inquire into my conduct." Did Mr. Hastings so inquire? No, my Lords, we have not a word of any inquiry; he even found fresh matter of charge in the answer of the Rajah, although, if there is any fault in this answer, it is its extremely humble and submissive tone. If there was anything faulty in his manner, it was his extreme humility and submission. It is plain he would have almost submitted to anything. He offered, in fact, 220,000l. to redeem himself from greater suffering. Surely no man going into rebellion would offer 220,000l. of the treasure which would be so essential to his success; nor would any government that was really apprehensive of rebellion call upon the suspected person to arm and discipline two thousand horse. My Lords, it is evident no such apprehensions were entertained; nor was any such charge made until punishment had commenced. A vague accusation was then brought forward, which was answered by a clear and a natural defence, denying some parts of the charge, evading and apologizing for others, and desiring the whole to be inquired into. To this request the answer of the Governor-General was, "That won't do; you shall have no inquiries." And why? "Because I have arbitrary power, you have no rights, and I can and will punish you without inquiry." I admit, that, if his will is the law, he may take [make?] the charge before punishment or the punishment before the charge, or he may punish without making any charge. If his will is the law, all I have been saying amounts to nothing. But I have endeavored to let your Lordships see that in no country upon the earth is the will of a despot law. It may produce wicked, flagitious, tyrannical acts; but in no country is it law.
The duty of a sovereign in cases of rebellion, as laid down in the Hedaya, agrees with the general practice in India. It was usual, except in cases of notorious injustice and oppression, whenever a rebellion or a suspicion of a rebellion existed, to admonish the rebellious party and persuade him to return to his duty. Causes of complaint were removed and misunderstandings explained, and, to save the effusion of blood, severe measures were not adopted until they were rendered indispensable. This wise and provident law is or ought to be the law in all countries: it was in fact the law in that country, but Mr. Hastings did not attend to it. His unfortunate victim was goaded to revolt and driven from his subjects, although he endeavored by message after message to reconcile this cruel tyrant to him. He is told in reply, "You have shed the blood of Englishmen, and I will never be reconciled to you." Your Lordships will observe that the reason he gives for such an infernal determination (for it cannot be justly qualified by any other word) is of a nature to make tyranny the very foundation of our government. I do not say here upon what occasion people may or may not resist; but surely, if ever there was an occasion on which people, from love to their sovereign and regard to their country, might take up arms, it was this. They saw a tyrant violent in his demands and weak in his power. They saw their prince imprisoned and insulted, after he had made every offer of submission, and had laid his turban three times in the lap of his oppressor. They saw him, instead of availing himself of the means he possessed of cutting off his adversary, (for the life of Mr. Hastings was entirely in his power,) betaking himself to flight. They then thronged round him, took up arms in his defence, and shed the blood of some of his insulters. Is this resistance, so excited, so provoked, a plea for irreconcilable vengeance?