In the House of Commons there are undoubtedly powerful people who may be supposed to be influenced by patronage; but the higher and more powerful part of the country is more directly represented by your Lordships than by us, although we have of the first blood of England in the House of Commons. We do, indeed, represent, by the knights of the shires, the landed interest; by our city and borough members we represent the trading interest; we represent the whole people of England collectively. But neither blood nor power is represented so fully in the House of Commons as that order which composes the great body of the people,—the protection of which is our peculiar duty, and to which it is our glory to adhere. But the dignities of the country, the great and powerful, are represented eminently by your Lordships. As we, therefore, would keep the lowest of the people from the contagion and dishonor of peculation and corruption, and above all from exercising that vice which, among commoners, is unnatural as well as abominable, the vice of tyranny and oppression, so we trust that your Lordships will clear yourselves and the higher and more powerful ranks from giving the smallest countenance to the system which we have done our duty in denouncing and bringing before you.
My Lords, you have heard the account of the civil service. Think of their numbers, think of their influence, and the enormous amount of their salaries, pensions, and emoluments! They were, you have heard, an intolerable burden on the revenues and authority of the Vizier; and they exposed us to the envy and resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the prince from the just reward of their services and attachments. Here, my Lords, is the whole civil service brought before you. They usurp the country, they destroy the revenues, they overload the prince, and they exclude all the nobility and eminent persons of the country from the just reward of their service.
Did Mr. Francis, whom I saw here a little while ago, send these people into that country? Did General Clavering, or Colonel Monson, whom he charges with this system, send them there? No, they were sent by himself; and if one was sent by anybody else for a time, he was soon recalled: so that he is himself answerable for all the peculation which he attributes to the civil service. You see the character given of that service; you there see their accuser, you there see their defender, who, after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished the guilty in either, and now receives the prodigal praises of both.
I defy the ingenuity of man to show that Mr. Hastings is not the defamer of the service. I defy the ingenuity of man to show that the honor of Great Britain has not been tarnished under his patronage. He engaged to remove all these bloodsuckers by the treaty of Chunar; but he never executed that treaty. He proposed to take away the temporary brigade; but he again established it. He redressed no grievance; he formed no improvements in the government; he never attempted to provide a remedy without increasing the evil tenfold. He was the primary and sole cause of all the grievances, civil and military, to which the unhappy natives of that country were exposed; and he was the accuser of all the immediate authors of those grievances, without having punished any one of them. He is the accuser of them all. But the only person whom he attempted to punish was that man who dared to assert the authority of the Court of Directors, and to claim an office assigned to him by them.
I will now read to your Lordships the protest of General Clavering against the military brigade.—"Taking the army from the Nabob is an infringement of the rights of an independent prince, leaving only the name and title of it without the power. It is taking his subjects from him, against every law of Nature and of nations."
I will next read to your Lordships a minute of Mr. Francis's.—"By the foregoing letter from Mr. Middleton it appears that he has taken the government of the Nabob's dominions directly upon himself. I was not a party to the resolutions which preceded that measure, and will not be answerable for the consequences of it."
The next paper I will read is one introduced by the Managers, to prove that a representation was made by the Nabob respecting the expenses of the gentlemen resident at his court, and written after the removal before mentioned.
Extract of a Letter from the Vizier to Mr. Macpherson, received the 21st April, 1785.
"With respect to the expenses of the gentlemen who are here, I have before written in a covered manner; I now write plainly, that I have no ability to give money to the gentlemen, because I am indebted many lacs of rupees to the bankers for the payment of the Company's debt. At the time of Mr. Hastings's departure, I represented to him that I had no resources for the expenses of the gentlemen. Mr. Hastings, having ascertained my distressed situation, told me that after his arrival in Calcutta he would consult with the Council, and remove from hence the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every person except the gentlemen in office here. At this time that all the concerns are dependent upon you, and you have in every point given ease to my mind, according to Mr. Hastings's agreement, I hope that the expenses of the gentlemen maybe removed from me, and that you may recall every person residing here beyond the gentlemen in office. Although Major Palmer does not at this time demand anything for the gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them anything, yet the custom of the English gentlemen is, when they remain here, they will in the end ask for something. This is best, that they should be recalled."
I think so, too; and your Lordships will think so with me; but Mr. Hastings, who says that he himself thought thus in September, 1781, and engaged to recall these gentlemen, was so afraid of their powerful friends and patrons here, that he left India, and left all that load of obloquy upon his successors. He left a Major Palmer there, in the place of a Resident: a Resident of his own, as your Lordships must see; for Major Palmer was no Resident of the Company's. This man received a salary of about 23,000l. a year, which he declared to be less than his expenses; by which we may easily judge of the enormous salaries of those who make their fortunes there. He was left by Mr. Hastings as his representative of peculation, his representative of tyranny. He was the second agent appointed to control all power ostensible and unostensible, and to head these gentlemen whose "custom," the Nabob says, "was in the end to ask for money." Money they must have; and there, my Lords, is the whole secret.