Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with confiscation only. He comes just afterwards with a blister upon the sore. He lets loose another set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under Gunga Govind Sing, and these poor people are ravaged by the whole tribe of Calcutta banians.
Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in page 1022, where he states that Nundcomar desired him to make his son an aumeen. "The promise which he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he should be constituted aumeen, that is, inquisitor-general over the whole country, and that I would delegate to him my whole power and influence, is something more than a negative falsehood." He justly and naturally reprobates the proposition of appointing an inquisitor-general over the whole country; and yet we see him afterwards appointing Gunga Govind Sing such an inquisitor-general over the whole country, in order that a bega of land should not escape him.
Let us see how all this ended, and what it is that leads me directly to the presumption of corruption against him in this wicked aumeeny scheme. Now I will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended, I will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal by public auction, I will forgive all he has done with regard to his banians, I shall forgive him even this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships that there was the smallest use made of it with regard to the settlement of the revenues of the Company. If there was not, then there is obviously one use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all the people of the whole country under obedience to Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was done? Titles and accounts were exacted; the estimate was made, acre by acre; but we have not been able to find one word on their records of any return that was made to the Company of this investigation, or of any settlement or assessment of the country founded upon it, or of any regulation that was established upon it. Therefore, as an honest man, and as a man who is standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous suppositions. I cannot, I say, entertain any doubts that the only purpose it was designed to answer was to subject the whole landed interest of the country to the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to the cruel purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another purpose and I will give up the argument: for if there are two ways of accounting for the same act, it is possible it may be attributed to the better motive; but when we see that a bad thing was done under pretence of some good, we must attach a bad motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.
I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal. I have omitted much which might have been pressed upon your Lordships, not from any indisposition to remark upon the matter more fully, but because it has been done already by abler persons; I only wished to make some practical inferences, which, perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that one system of known or justly presumed corruption pervades the whole of this business, from one end to the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed interest, and the native zemindars or landholders of the country, I pass to the English government.
My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter extinction of the native Mahometan government, when we have shown the extinction of the native landed interest, what hope can there be for that afflicted country but in the servants of the Company? When we have shown the corrupt state of that service, what hope but from the Court of Directors, what hope but in the superintending control of British tribunals? I think as well of the body of my countrymen as any man can do. I do not think that any man sent out to India is sent with an ill purpose, or goes out with bad dispositions. No: I think the young men who go there are fair and faithful representatives of the people of the same age,—uncorrupted, but corruptible from their age, as we all are. They are sent there young. There is but one thing held out to them,—"You are going to make your fortune." The Company's service is to be the restoration of decayed noble families; it is to be the renovation of old, and the making of new ones. Now, when such a set of young men are sent out with these hopes and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,—when these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best, most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling, or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their education at once. What is the education of the generality of the world? Reading a parcel of books? No. Restraint of discipline, emulation, examples of virtues and of justice, form the education of the world. If the Company's servants have not that education, and are left to give loose to their natural passions, some would be corrupt of course, and some would be uncorrupt; but probably the majority of them would be inclined to pursue moderate courses between these two. Now I am to show you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this alternative: "Be starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint the hopes of your families, or be my slaves, be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything I shall wish you to conceal." This was the state of the service. Therefore the Commons did well and wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or that servant who may have peculated, but to punish the man who was sent to reform abuses, and to make Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant example of British justice.
I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of the Company's government,—to show you what Mr. Hastings was expected to do for their reformation, and what he actually did do; I shall then show your Lordships the effects of the whole.
I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an extract from the Directors' letter to Bengal, of the 10th April, 1773.