The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12)

PART IX.

FULL VINDICATION OF FYZOOLA KHÂN BY MAJOR PALMER AND MR. HASTINGS

I. That, in the course of the said negotiation for establishing the rights of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, Major Palmer aforesaid did communicate to the Resident, Bristow, and through the said Resident to the Council-General of Bengal, the full and direct denial of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân to all and every of the charges made or pretended to be made against him, as follows.

"Fyzoola Khân persists in denying the infringement on his part of any one article in the treaty, or the neglect of any obligation which it imposed upon him.

"He does not admit of

the improvements reported to be made

 in his jaghire, and even asserts that the collections this year will fall short of the original

jumma

  by reason of the long drought.

"He denies having exceeded the limited number of Rohillas in his service;

"And having refused the required aid of cavalry, made by Johnson, to act with General Goddard.

"He observes, respecting the charge of evading the Vizier's requisition for the cavalry lately stationed at Daranagur, to be stationed at Lucknow, that he is not bound by treaty to maintain a stationary force for the service of the Vizier, but to supply an aid of two or three thousand troops in time of war.

"Lastly, he asserts, that, so far from encouraging the ryots of the Vizier to settle in his jaghire, it has been his constant practice to deliver them up to the Aumil of Rohilcund, whenever he could discover them."

II. That, in giving his opinions on the aforesaid denials of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, the said Palmer did not controvert any one of the constructions of the treaty advanced by the said Nabob.

That, although the said Palmer, "from general appearances as well as universal report, did not doubt that the jumma of the jaghire is

greatly increased

," yet he, the said Palmer, did not intimate that it was increased in any degree near

the amount reported

, as it was drawn out in a regular estimate transmitted to the said Palmer expressly for the purposes of his negotiation, which was of course by him produced to the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and to which specifically the denial of Fyzoola Khân must be understood to apply.

That the said Palmer did not hint any doubt of the deficiency affirmed by Fyzoola Khân in the collections for the current year: and,

That, if any increase of jumma did truly exist, whatever it may have been, the said Palmer did acknowledge it "to have been solemnly relinquished (in a private agreement) by the Vizier."

That, although the said Palmer did suppose the number of Rohillas (employed "in ordinary occupations) in Rampoor alone to exceed that limited by the treaty for his service," yet the said Palmer did by no means imply that the Nabob Fyzoola Khân

maintained in his service

 a single man more than was allowed by treaty; and by a particular and minute account of the troops of Fyzoola Khân, transmitted by the Resident, Bristow, to the said Palmer, the number was stated but at 5,840, probably including officers, who were not understood to be comprehended in the treaty.

That the said Palmer did further admit it "

to be not clearly expressed

 in the treaty, whether the restriction included Rohillas of all descriptions"; but, at any rate, he adds, "it does not appear that their number is formidable, or that he

could by any means subsist such numbers as could cause any serious alarm to the Vizier

; neither is there any appearance of their entertaining any views beyond the quiet possession of the advantages which they at present enjoy."

And that, in a subsequent letter, in which the said Palmer thought it prudent "to vindicate himself from any possible insinuation that he meant to sacrifice the Vizier's interest," he, the said Palmer, did positively attest the new claim on Fyzoola Khân for the protection of the Vizier's ryots to be wholly without foundation, as the Nabob Fyzoola Khân "had proved to him , by producing receipts of various dates and for great numbers of these people surrendered upon requisition from the Vizier's officers."

III. That, over and above the aforesaid complete refutation of the different charges and pretexts under which exactions had been practised, or attempted to be practised, on the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, the said Palmer did further condemn altogether the principle of calculation assumed in such exactions (even if they had been founded in justice) by the following explanation of the nature of the tenure by which, under the treaty of Lall-Dang, the Nabob Fyzoola Khân held his possessions as a jaghiredar.

"There are no precedents in the ancient usage of the country for ascertaining the

nuzzerana

  or

peshcush

  of grants of this nature:

they were bestowed by the prince as rewards or favors

; and the accustomary present in return was adapted to the dignity of the donor rather than to the value of the gift,—

to which it never, I believe, bore any kind of proportion

."

IV. That a sum of money ("which of course was to be received by the Company") being now obtained, and the "

interests both of the Company and the Vizier

" being thus much "

better promoted

" by "

establishing the rights

" of Fyzoola Khân than they could have been by "

depriving him of his independency

," when every undue influence of secret and criminal purposes was removed from the mind of the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, Esquire, he, the said Hastings, did also concur with his friend and agent, Major Palmer, in the vindication of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and in the most ample manner.

That the said Warren Hastings did now clearly and explicitly understand the clauses of the treaty, "that Fyzoola Khân should send

two

 or

three

 [and not

five

] thousand men, or

attend in person, in case it was requisite

."

That the said Warren Hastings did now confess that the right of the Vizier under the treaty was at best "but

a precarious and unserviceable right

; and that he thought fifteen lacs, or 150,000

l.

 and upwards, an ample equivalent," (or, according to the expression of Major Palmer,

an excellent bargain

,) as in truth it was, "for expunging an article of such a tenor and so loosely worded."

And, finally, that the said Hastings did give the following description of the general character, disposition, and circumstances of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân.

"The rumors which had been spread of his hostile designs against the Vizier were totally groundless, and if he had been inclined, he had not the means to make himself formidable; on the contrary, being in the decline of life, and possessing a very fertile and prosperous jaghire, it is more natural to suppose that Fyzoola Khân wishes to spend the remainder of his days in quietness than that he is preparing to embark in active and offensive scenes which must end in his own destruction."

V. Yet that, notwithstanding this virtual and implied crimination of his whole conduct toward the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and after all the aforesaid acts systematically prosecuted in open violation of a positive treaty against a prince who had an hereditary right to more than he actually possessed, for whose protection the faith of the Company and the nation was repeatedly pledged, and who had deserved and obtained the public thanks of the British government,—when, in allusion to certain of the said acts, the Court of Directors had expressed to the said Hastings their wishes "to be considered rather as the guardians of the honor and property of the native powers than as the instruments of oppression," he, the said Hastings, in reply to the said Directors, his masters, did conclude his official account of the final settlement with Fyzoola Khân with the following indecent, because unjust, exultation:—

"Such are the measures which we shall ever wish to observe towards our allies or dependants upon our frontiers."

APPENDIX TO THE EIGHTH AND SIXTEENTH CHARGES.

26

26

  As the letter referred to in the Eighth and Sixteenth Articles of Charge is not contained in any of the Appendixes to the Reports of the Select Committee, it has been thought necessary to annex it as an Appendix to these Charges.

Copy of a Letter from Warren Hastings, Esquire, to William Devaynes, Esquire, Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, dated Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785, and printed by order of the House of Commons.

To William Devaynes, Esquire, Chairman of the Honorable the Court of Directors

Sir,—The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to Bengal by the "Surprise," dated the 16th March, 1784, were pleased to express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was received, what were my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors, and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits on my own account.

I have been kindly apprised that the information required as above is yet expected from me. I hope that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the Presidency when the "Surprise" arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed, to the day of my final departure from it, by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes which compose our Consultations of that period, that the submission which my respect would have enjoined me to pay to the command imposed on me was lost to my recollection, perhaps from the stronger impression which the first and distant perusal of it had left on my mind that it was rather intended as a reprehension for something which had given offence in my report of the original transaction than as expressive of any want of a further elucidation of it.

I will now endeavor to reply to the different questions which have been stated to me in as explicit a manner as I am able. To such information as I can give the Honorable Court is fully entitled; and where that shall prove defective, I will point out the easy means by which it may be rendered more complete.

First, I believe I can affirm with certainty, that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates which are prefixed to them in the account; but as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a greater degree of accuracy to the account. Perhaps the Honorable Court will judge this sufficient for any purpose to which their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your Accountant-General, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that I ever kept of it. In this each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it.

For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable the Court of Directors of the 22d May, 1782: namely, that "I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory at that distance of time could verify; and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest." It will not be expected that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily, or with a strong probability, follow them.

I have said that the three first sums of the account were paid into the Company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expense of a detachment which was formed and employed against Mahdajee Sindia under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly apprised the Court of Directors in my letter of the 29th November, 1780. The other two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made public, though intended for public service, and actually applied to it. The exigencies of the government were at that time my own, and every pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized them; but neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our Proceedings every little aid which I could thus procure, nor do I know how I could have stated it, without appearing to court favor by an ostentation which I disdain, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have laid an equal claim. I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them. I was therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it, which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the money to be brought directly to my own house, or to that of any person known to be in trust for me: for these reasons I caused it to be transported immediately to the treasury. There, you well know, Sir, it could not be received without being passed to some credit, and this could only be done by entering it as a loan or as a deposit: the first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit I am utterly ignorant: possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed.

Although I am firmly persuaded that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of the Court of Directors. They had answered my purpose of public utility, and I had almost totally dismissed them from my remembrance. But when fortune threw a sum in my way of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time in which I received it made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally: hastily, perhaps to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of the sum, of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of it, and in the performance of my promise I thought it consistent with it to add to the account all the former appropriations of the same kind: my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding part of these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and informing them of the rest.

It being my wish to clear up every doubt upon this transaction, which either my own mind could suggest or which may have been suggested by others, I beg leave to suppose another question, and to state the terms of it in my reply, by informing you that the indorsement on the bonds was made about the period of my leaving the Presidency, in the middle of the year 1781, in order to guard against their becoming a claim on the Company, as part of my estate, in the event of my death occurring in the course of the service on which I was then entering.

This, Sir, is the plain history of the transaction. I should be ashamed to request that you would communicate it to the Honorable Court of Directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favor of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect which is due to them as a body, and to the assurances which I derive from your experienced civilities that you will kindly overlook the trouble imposed by it.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your very humble and most obedient servant,

(Signed)

WARREN HASTINGS.

CHELTENHAM, 11 July, 1785.

SPEECHES IN THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL. SPEECH IN OPENING. FEBRUARY, 1788

SPEECH IN OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT. FIRST DAY: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1788

My Lords,—The gentlemen who have it in command to support the impeachment against Mr. Hastings have directed me to open the cause with a general view of the grounds upon which the Commons have proceeded in their charge against him. They have directed me to accompany this with another general view of the extent, the magnitude, the nature, the tendency, and the effect of the crimes which they allege to have been by him committed. They have also directed me to give an explanation (with their aid I may be enabled to give it) of such circumstances, preceding the crimes charged on Mr. Hastings, or concomitant with them, as may tend to elucidate whatever may be found obscure in the articles as they stand. To these they wished me to add a few illustrative remarks on the laws, customs, opinions, and manners of the people concerned, and who are the objects of the crimes we charge on Mr. Hastings. The several articles, as they appear before you, will be opened by other gentlemen with more particularity, with more distinctness, and, without doubt, with infinitely more ability, when they come to apply the evidence which naturally belongs to each article of this accusation. This, my Lords, is the plan which we mean to pursue on the great charge which is now to abide your judgment.

My Lords, I must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to this cause, in which the honor of the kingdom and the fate of many nations are involved, that, from the first commencement of our Parliamentary process to this the hour of solemn trial, not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen between the two Houses.

My Lords, there are persons who, looking rather upon what was to be found in our records and histories than what was to be expected from the public justice, had formed hopes consolatory to themselves and dishonorable to us. They flattered themselves that the corruptions of India would escape amidst the dissensions of Parliament. They are disappointed. They will be disappointed in all the rest of their expectations which they have formed upon everything, except the merits of their cause. The Commons will not have the melancholy unsocial glory of having acted a solitary part in a noble, but imperfect work. What the greatest inquest of the nation has begun its highest tribunal will accomplish. At length justice will be done to India. It is true that your Lordships will have your full share in this great achievement; but the Commons have always considered that whatever honor is divided with you is doubled on themselves.

My Lords, I must confess, that, amidst these encouraging prospects, the Commons do not approach your bar without awe and anxiety. The magnitude of the interests which we have in charge will reconcile some degree of solicitude for the event with the undoubting confidence with which we repose ourselves upon your Lordships' justice. For we are men, my Lords; and men are so made, that it is not only the greatness of danger, but the value of the adventure, which measures the degree of our concern in every undertaking. I solemnly assure your Lordships that no standard is sufficient to estimate the value which the Commons set upon the event of the cause they now bring before you. My Lords, the business of this day is not the business of this man, it is not solely whether the prisoner at the bar be found innocent or guilty, but whether millions of mankind shall be made miserable or happy.

Your Lordships will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only a long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them. Upon both of these you must judge. According to the judgment that you shall give upon the past transactions in India, inseparably connected as they are with the principles which support them, the whole character of your future government in that distant empire is to be unalterably decided. It will take its perpetual tenor, it will receive its final impression, from the stamp of this very hour.

It is not only the interest of India, now the most considerable part of the British empire, which is concerned, but the credit and honor of the British nation itself will be decided by this decision. We are to decide by this judgment, whether the crimes of individuals are to be turned into public guilt and national ignominy, or whether this nation will convert the very offences which have thrown a transient shade upon its government into something that will reflect a permanent lustre upon the honor, justice, and humanity of this kingdom.

My Lords, there is another consideration, which augments the solicitude of the Commons, equal to those other two great interests I have stated, those of our empire and our national character,—something that, if possible, comes more home to the hearts and feelings of every Englishman: I mean, the interests of our Constitution itself, which is deeply involved in the event of this cause. The future use and the whole effect, if not the very existence, of the process of an impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors before the peers of this kingdom upon the charge of the Commons will very much be decided by your judgment in this cause. This tribunal will be found (I hope it will always be found) too great for petty causes: if it should at the same time be found incompetent to one of the greatest,—that is, if little offences, from their minuteness, escape you, and the greatest, from their magnitude, oppress you,—it is impossible that this form of trial should not in the end vanish out of the Constitution. For we must not deceive ourselves: whatever does not stand with credit cannot stand long. And if the Constitution should be deprived, I do not mean in form, but virtually, of this resource, it is virtually deprived of everything else that is valuable in it. For this process is the cement which binds the whole together; this is the individuating principle that makes England what England is. In this court it is that no subject, in no part of the empire, can fail of competent and proportionable justice; here it is that we provide for that which is the substantial excellence of our Constitution,—I mean, the great circulation of responsibility, by which (excepting the supreme power) no man, in no circumstance, can escape the account which he owes to the laws of his country. It is by this process that magistracy, which tries and controls all other things, is itself tried and controlled. Other constitutions are satisfied with making good subjects; this is a security for good governors. It is by this tribunal that statesmen who abuse their power are accused by statesmen and tried by statesmen, not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality. It is here that those who by the abuse of power have violated the spirit of law can never hope for protection from any of its forms; it is here that those who have refused to conform themselves to its perfections can never hope to escape through any of its defects. It ought, therefore, my Lords, to become our common care to guard this your precious deposit, rare in its use, but powerful in its effect, with a religious vigilance, and never to suffer it to be either discredited or antiquated. For this great end your Lordships are invested with great and plenary powers: but you do not suspend, you do not supersede, you do not annihilate any subordinate jurisdiction; on the contrary, you are auxiliary and supplemental to them all.

Whether it is owing to the felicity of our times, less fertile in great offences than those which have gone before us, or whether it is from a sluggish apathy which has dulled and enervated the public justice, I am not called upon to determine,—but, whatever may be the cause, it is now sixty-three years since any impeachment, grounded upon abuse of authority and misdemeanor in office, has come before this tribunal. The last is that of Lord Macclesfield, which happened in the year 1725. So that the oldest process known to the Constitution of this country has, upon its revival, some appearance of novelty. At this time, when all Europe is in a state of, perhaps, contagious fermentation, when antiquity has lost all its reverence and all its effect on the minds of men, at the same time that novelty is still attended with the suspicions that always will be attached to whatever is new, we have been anxiously careful, in a business which seems to combine the objections both to what is antiquated and what is novel, so to conduct ourselves that nothing in the revival of this great Parliamentary process shall afford a pretext for its future disuse.

My Lords, strongly impressed as they are with these sentiments, the Commons have conducted themselves with singular care and caution. Without losing the spirit and zeal