Your Lordships will please to bear in mind, that afterwards, by his own consent, and the consent of the rest of the Council, this business was compromised between the son, the mother, and their relations. A very great sum of money, which was most useful to the Company at that period, was raised by a family compact and arrangement among themselves. This proceeding was sanctioned by the Company, Mr. Hastings himself consenting; and a pledge was given to the Begums and family of the Nabob, that this should be the last demand made upon them,—that it should be considered, not as taken compulsively, but as a friendly and amicable donation. They never admitted, nor did the Nabob ever contend, that he had any right at all to take this money from them. At that time it was not Mr. Hastings's opinion that the badness of the system would justify any violence as a consequence of it; and when the advancement of the money was agreed to between the parties, as a family and amicable compact, he was as ready as anybody to propose and sanction a regular treaty between the parties, that all claims on one side and all kind of uneasiness on the other should cease forever, under the guardianship of British faith.
Mr. Hastings, as your Lordships remember, has conceded that British faith is the support of the British empire; that, if that empire is to be maintained, it is to be maintained by good faith; that, if it is to be propagated, it is to be propagated by public faith; and that, if the British empire falls, it will be through perfidy and violence. These are the principles which he assumes, when he chooses to reproach others. But when he has to defend his own perfidy and breaches of faith, then, as your Lordships will find set forth in his defence before the House of Commons on the Benares charge, he denies, or at least questions, the validity of any treaty that can at present be made with India. He declares that he considers all treaties as being weakened by a considerable degree of doubt respecting their validity and their binding force, in such a state of things as exists in India.
Whatever was done, during that period of time to which I have alluded, by the majority of the Council, Mr. Hastings considered himself as having nothing to do with, on the plea of his being a dissentient member: a principle which, like other principles, I shall take some notice of by-and-by. Colonel Monson and General Clavering died soon after, and Mr. Hastings obtained a majority in the Council, and was then, as he calls it, restored to his authority; so that any evil that could be done by evil men under that evil system could have lasted but for a very short time indeed. From that moment, Mr. Hastings, in my opinion, became responsible for every act done in Council, while he was there, which he did not resist, and for every engagement which he did not oppose. For your Lordships will not bear that miserable jargon which you have heard, shameful to office and to official authority, that a man, when, he happens not to find himself in a majority upon any measure, may think himself excusable for the total neglect of his duty; that in such a situation he is not bound to propose anything that it might be proper to propose, or to resist anything that it might be proper to resist. What would be the inference from such an assumption? That he can never act in a commission; that, unless a man has the supreme power, he is not responsible for anything he does or neglects to do. This is another principle which your Lordships will see constantly asserted and constantly referred to by Mr. Hastings. Now I do contend, that, notwithstanding his having been in a minority, if there was anything to be done that could prevent oppressive consequences, he was bound to do that thing; and that he was bound to propose every possible remedial measure. This proud, rebellious proposition against the law, that any one individual in the Council may say that he is responsible for nothing, because he is not the whole Council, calls for your Lordships' strongest reprobation.
I must now beg leave to observe to you, that the treaty was made (and I wish your Lordships to advert to dates) in the year 1775; Mr. Hastings acquired the majority in something more than a year afterwards; and therefore, supposing the acts of the former majority to have been ever so iniquitous, their power lasted but a short time. From the year 1776 to 1784 Mr. Hastings had the whole government of Oude in himself, by having the majority in the Council. My Lords, it is no offence that a Governor-General, or anybody else, has the majority in the Council. To have the government in himself is no offence. Neither was it any offence, if you please, that the Nabob was virtually a vassal to the Company, as he contends he was. For the question is not, what a Governor-General may do, but what Warren Hastings did do. He who has a majority in Council, and records his own acts there, may justify these acts as legal: I mean the mode is legal. But as he executes whatever he proposes as Governor-General, he is solely responsible for the nature of the acts themselves.
I shall now show your Lordships that Mr. Hastings, finding, as he states, the Nabob to be made by the treaty in 1775 eventually a vassal to the Company, has thought proper to make him a vassal to himself, for his own private purposes. Your Lordships will see what corrupt and iniquitous purposes they were. In the first place, in order to annihilate in effect the Council, and to take wholly from them their control in the affairs of Oude, he suppressed (your Lordships will find the fact proved in your minutes) the Persian correspondence, which was the whole correspondence of Oude. This whole correspondence was secreted by him, and kept from the Council. It was never communicated to the Persian translator of the Company, Mr. Colebrooke, who had a salary for executing that office. It was secreted, and kept in the private cabinet of Mr. Hastings; from the period of 1781 to 1785 no part of it was communicated to the Council. There is nothing, as your Lordships have often found in this trial, that speaks for the man like himself; there is nothing will speak for his conduct like the records of the Company.
"Fort William, 19th February, 1785.
"At a Council: present, the Honorable John Macpherson, Esquire, Governor-General, President, and John Stables, Esquire.
"The Persian Translator, attending in obedience to the Board's orders, reports, that, since the end of the year 1781, there have been no books of correspondence kept in his office, because, from that time until the late Governor-General's departure, he was employed but once by the Governor-General to manage the correspondence, during a short visit which Major Davy, the military Persian interpreter, paid by the Governor's order to Lucknow; that, during that whole period of three years, he remained entirely ignorant of the correspondence, as he was applied to on no occasion, except for a few papers sometimes sent to him by the secretaries, which he always returned to them as soon as translated.
"The Persian Translator has received from Mr. Scott, since the late Governor-General's departure, a trunk containing English draughts and translations and the Persian originals of letters and papers, with three books in the Persian language containing copies of letters written between August, 1782, and January, 1785; and if the Board should please to order the secretaries of the general department to furnish him with copies of all translations and draughts recorded in their Consultations between the 1st of January, 1782, and the 31st of January, 1785, he thinks that he should be able, with what he has found in Captain Scott's trunk, to make up the correspondence for that period.