Thus Pitt maintained a cautious reserve. To say that he was waiting to see which way the wind would blow is manifestly unjust. He was awaiting further information in what was a most complicated case. We know that he sent to Hastings for an explanation of the terms of a zamindar’s tenure of office, evidently in order to clear up some of the questions respecting the Zamindar of Benares.[298] Thus, while Lansdowne, Mansfield, and Thurlow loudly proclaimed their confidence in Hastings; while the King continued to converse with him most affably at the levées, and Queen Charlotte accepted a splendid ivory bedstead presented by his wife, Pitt remained guardedly neutral.
Many members of the Opposition wished to let the motion of censure drop, and urged this at a private meeting held at the Duke of Portland’s residence shortly before the meeting of Parliament in January 1786. But the zeal of Burke and Fox had not cooled with time. Further, on the first day of the session they were pointedly challenged by Major Scott, the accredited agent of Hastings in the House. At best Scott was a poor champion. Verbose, tedious, and ever harping on the same theme, he wearied the House with the wrongs of Hastings before they came officially before it; and on the first day of the great trial Fanny Burney remarked: “What a pity that Mr. Hastings should have trusted his cause to so frivolous an agent! I believe—and indeed it is the general belief, both of friends and foes—that to his officious and injudicious zeal the present prosecution is wholly owing.”[299]
Yet Scott would scarcely have flung down the gauntlet without the knowledge and consent of his patron. Indeed on all grounds it is probable that Hastings, with his customary daring, preferred that the question should come to the clear light of a trial rather than swell with the accretions of gossip and dark innuendoes.[300] We must also remember that until the vote of censure of 28th May 1782 was removed from the journals of the House his name was under a cloud; and now that the accusations of Burke and Francis hurtled more thickly through the air, the whole matter was bound to come to the arbitrament of the law or of pistols.
On Hastings and Scott, then, rests the responsibility for renewing the strife. While they thus rashly opened the game, Burke replied on 17th February 1786 by a move of unusual skill. He requested that the Clerk of the House should read Dundas’s resolutions of censure of May 1782, and then ironically suggested that that gentleman, formerly the president of the special committee of the House, was the man who now ought to take action against the ex-Viceroy. He himself was but a humble member of that committee, and he now looked, but in vain, to those in power to give effect to the earlier resolutions. “But I perceive,” he said, with his eyes on Pitt, “that any operations by which the three per cents may be raised in value affect Ministers more deeply than the violated rights of millions of the human race.”[301] Dundas, never an effective speaker, failed to wriggle away from the charge of inconsistency thus pointedly driven home. The attitude of Pitt was calm and dignified. In the course of the adjourned debate he professed his neutrality on the question. While commending Burke for the moderation with which he then urged his demands, he admitted that the charges brought against Hastings ought to be investigated and his guilt or innocence proved by incontestable evidence. “I am,” he said, “neither a determined friend nor foe of Mr. Hastings, but I will support the principles of justice and equity. I recommend a calm dispassionate investigation, leaving every man to follow the impulse of his own mind.”[302]
This declaration of neutrality, the import of which will appear in the sequel, did not imply that there was to be no investigation. The challenge having been thrown down, the tournament was bound to proceed. Thenceforth Pitt confined himself to the functions of arbiter. Burke now enlarged his motion so as to include all the official correspondence respecting Oude, whereupon the Minister urged him always to state his reasons for the production of documents, and not to expect those which revealed any secret policy. Burke said he was ready to specify his charges, and he did so. He further said that he was in possession of abundant evidence to make good those charges. On his applying for certain confidential papers, Pitt opposed the motion; but he agreed to sixteen other motions for papers. In face of these facts, how can the panegyrists of Warren Hastings claim that Pitt objected to Burke’s procedure and carried a motion against it?[303] Burke’s motions were agreed to without a division, the Prime Minister having merely given an obviously necessary veto in the case of confidential documents.
In view of the charges of gross inconsistency that have been brought against Pitt on the Hastings trial, it will be well to look into details somewhat closely. On 3rd March 1786 Burke returned to the charge by pressing for the communication of papers respecting the recent peace with the Mahrattas and cognate subjects. At once Dundas and Pitt objected, on the ground that very many of those documents were of the most confidential character, revealing, as they did, the secret means whereby the Mahratta confederacy was dissolved. In the course of his speech Pitt declared that Hastings had made that peace “with an address and ingenuity that did him immortal honour.” But he added that other charges against him might be substantiated. In vain did Fox and Burke protest against the withholding of documents bearing on the present topic. The sense of the House was against them. Wilberforce applauded the caution of Ministers, as did eighty-seven members against forty-four on a division. A similar motion by the accusers for the production of papers relative to Delhi met with the same fate three days later.
On Fox renewing his demand for the Delhi papers (17th March), Pitt took occasion to state his views clearly. If State papers were called for in order to set on foot a criminal prosecution, he required the mover to “show a probable ground of guilt,” and secondly, that the papers were necessary to substantiate that guilt; the third condition was that the public service would not suffer by publication.[304] He then proceeded to prove that the action of Hastings in seeking to form an alliance with the Great Mogul (despite the orders of the Company) was timely and statesmanlike, as it promised to thwart the alluring offers of Tippoo Sahib and the French to that potentate. Finally he asserted that, if he could reveal the Delhi correspondence to the House, all members would see how improper its publication would be. For his own ease and for the reputation of Hastings, which would be enhanced by such a step, he could wish to give it to the world, especially as all the documents hitherto granted were hostile to the ex-Viceroy; but in the interests of the country he must oppose the demand of the prosecutors for the Delhi papers. In spite of the slap-dash assertions of Sheridan that the contents of those papers were perfectly well known, the House upheld Pitt’s decision by 140 votes to 73.[305]
The next move of the prosecutors was to demand the presence of certain witnesses at the bar of the House. The Master of the Rolls objected on points of form, and also protested against the appearance of pamphlets hostile to Hastings which had been industriously circulated among the members of both Houses. Burke then admitted that most of the State Papers asked for had been granted, though some had been denied, but acridly complained that Ministers were now trying to quash the prosecution. Pitt did not speak.[306] On 26th April Burke brought forward two more charges, whereupon Pitt remarked that they contained much criminal matter, but he had formed no opinion as to their correctness; he hoped that it would appear otherwise, but the House must examine them with the utmost impartiality. Fox having taunted him with pretending to see no guilt where he saw too much, Pitt deprecated such outbursts. Later in the debate he demurred to the examination of witnesses called by the prosecutors before Hastings himself had been heard at the bar. Justice, he said, demanded that the accused should have a hearing before the accusers substantiated their case. He also declared that he would not consent to the examination of witnesses, still less to vote the impeachment of Hastings, on the vague and indefinite charges as yet before the House. Wilberforce expressed the hope that the Minister would persevere in the steady path he had pursued and would not be driven from it by the intemperate attacks of opponents. Burke inveighed against Pitt’s decision; but the latter carried the day by 139 votes to 80.
It was therefore by Pitt’s action that Hastings procured a hearing in the House—an opportunity which, if tactfully used, might have disconcerted his accusers. But the opportunity was lost. Instead of making a telling speech, Hastings proceeded to read a long and laboured reply, which occupied all the sittings of 1st and 2nd May, and emptied the House. Members accustomed to the faultless oratory of Pitt and the debating vigour of Fox, yawned at the dreary recital of remote events of which they knew little and cared less. Accordingly, it was with enhanced hope of success that Burke, after a month of careful preparation, brought forward his charges respecting the Rohilla War. On 13th June he introduced them. On the former of them Grenville defended the conduct of Hastings on the ground that the Rohillas had by their raids provoked the war, and that it was well to remove them. Dundas censured the Rohilla War, but maintained that, while the Governor-General should have been recalled for it twelve years ago, there was no ground for impeaching him for it now, especially as in the interval Parliament had three times named him Governor-General. Wilberforce, whose opinion weighed much with Pitt, took the same view. The most significant speech of the defence was that of Wilbraham who, on behalf of Hastings’ honour, urged the House to refer the charges to the House of Lords, where alone a full acquittal could be pronounced.[307] Pitt spoke only on a small technical point, but voted with Grenville and Dundas. Despite a long and powerful speech by Fox, the House sided with what seemed to be the ministerial view, and at half-past seven in the morning of 3rd June rejected Burke’s motion by 119 votes to 67.
Undaunted by this further rebuff, Fox, on 13th June, very ably brought up the charge relating to the treatment of Cheyt Singh, Zamindar of Benares.[308] He allowed that the continuance of Hastings in power twelve years after the Rohilla War seemed to imply that Parliament had condoned that offence; but this plea could not be urged respecting the Benares affair of 1781. He showed that the Company had agreed to respect the independence of the Zamindar of Benares, and that Hastings had pressed on him remorselessly for aids in money and cavalry, and had finally mulcted the exhausted prince of half a million sterling. The fate of Bengal, he claimed, depended on their condemnation of so tyrannical a proceeding.