The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)

I will have nothing to do with the great question that arose upon the Governor-General's resolution to dissolve a board, whether the board have a right to sit afterwards; it is enough that Mr. Hastings would not suffer them, as a Council, to examine into what, as a Council, they were bound to examine into. He absolutely declared the Council dissolved, when they did not accept his committee, for which they had many good reasons, as I shall show in reply, if necessary, and which he could have no one good reason for proposing;—he then declares the Council dissolved. The Council, who did not think Mr. Hastings had a power to dissolve them while proceeding in the discharge of their duty, went on as a Council. They called in Nundcomar to support his charge: Mr. Hastings withdrew. Nundcomar was asked what he had to say further in support of his own evidence. Upon which he produces a letter from Munny Begum, the dancing-girl that I have spoken of, in which she gives him directions and instructions relative to his conduct in every part of those bribes; by which it appears that the corrupt agreement for her office was made with Mr. Hastings through Nundcomar, before he had quitted Calcutta. It points out the execution of it, and the manner in which every part of the sum was paid: one lac by herself in Calcutta; one lac, which she ordered Nundcomar to borrow, and which he did borrow; and a lac and a half which were given to him, Mr. Hastings, besides this purchase money, under color of an entertainment. This letter was produced, translated, examined, criticized, proved to be sealed with the seal of the Begum, acknowledged to have no marks but those of authenticity upon it, and as such was entered upon the Company's records, confirming and supporting the evidence of Nundcomar, part by part, and circumstance by circumstance. And I am to remark, that, since this document, so delivered in, has never been litigated or controverted in the truth of it, from that day to this, by Mr. Hastings, so, if there was no more testimony, here is enough, upon this business. Your Lordships will remark that this charge consisted of two parts: two lacs that were given explicitly for the corrupt purchase of the office; and one lac and a half given in reality for the same purpose, but under the color of what is called an entertainment.

Now in the course of these proceedings it was thought necessary that Mr. Hastings's banian, Cantoo Baboo, (a name your Lordships will be well acquainted with, and who was the minister in this and all the other transactions of Mr. Hastings,) should be called before the board to explain some circumstances in the proceedings. Mr. Hastings ordered his banian, a native, not to attend the sovereign board appointed by Parliament for the government of that country, and directed to inquire into transactions of this nature. He thus taught the natives not only to disobey the orders of the Court of Directors, enforced by an act of Parliament, but he taught his own servant to disobey, and ordered him not to appear before the board. Quarrels, duels, and other mischiefs arose. In short, Mr. Hastings raised every power of heaven and of hell upon this subject: but in vain: the inquiry went on.

Mr. Hastings does not meet Nundcomar: he was afraid of him. But he was not negligent of his own defence; for he flies to the Supreme Court of Justice. He there prosecuted an inquiry against Nundcomar for a conspiracy. Failing in that, he made other attempts, and disabled Nundcomar from appearing before the board by having him imprisoned, and thus utterly crippled that part of the prosecution against him. But as guilt is never able thoroughly to escape, it did so happen, that the Council, finding monstrous deficiencies in the Begum's affairs, finding the Nabob's allowance totally squandered, that the most sacred pensions were left unpaid, that nothing but disorder and confusion reigned in all his affairs, that the Nabob's education was neglected, that he could scarcely read or write, that there was scarcely any mark of a man left in him except those which Nature had at first imprinted,—I say, all these abuses being produced in a body before them, they thought it necessary to send up to inquire into them; and a considerable deficiency or embezzlement appearing in the Munny Begum's account of the young Nabob's stipend, she voluntarily declared, by a writing under her seal, that she had given 15,000l. to Mr. Hastings for an entertainment.

Mr. Hastings, finding that the charge must come fully against him, contrived a plan which your Lordships will see the effects of presently, and this was, to confound this lac and an half, or 15,000l., with the two lacs given directly and specifically as a bribe,—intending to avail himself of this finesse whenever any payment was to be proved of the two lacs, which he knew would be proved against him, and which he never did deny; and accordingly your Lordships will find some confusion in the proofs of the payment of those sums. The receipt of two lacs is proved by Nundcomar, proved with all the means of detection which I have stated; the receipt of the lac and a half is proved by Munny Begum's letter, the authenticity of which was established, and never denied by Mr. Hastings. In addition to these proofs, Rajah Gourdas, who had the management of the Nabob's treasury, verbally gave an account perfectly corresponding with that of Nundcomar and the Munny Begum's letter; and he afterwards gave in writing an attestation, which in every point agrees correctly with the others. So that there are three witnesses upon this business. And he shall not disqualify Rajah Gourdas, because, whatever character he thought fit to give Nundcomar, he has given the best of characters to Rajah Gourdas, who was employed by Mr. Hastings in occupations of trust, and therefore any objections to his competency cannot exist. Having got thus far, the only thing that remained was to examine the records of the public offices, and see whether any trace of these transactions was to be found there. These offices had been thrown into confusion in the manner you will hear; but, upon strict inquiry, there was a shomaster, or office paper, produced, from which it appears that the officer of the treasury, having brought to the Nabob an account of one lac and a half which he said had been given to Mr. Hastings, desired to know from him under what head of expense it should be entered, and that he, the Nabob, desired him to put it under the head of expenses for entertaining Mr. Hastings. If there had been a head of entertainment established as a regular affair, the officer would never have gone to the Nabob and asked under what name to enter it; but he found an irregular affair, and he did not know what head to put it under. And from the whole of the proceedings it appears that three lacs and a half were paid: two lac by way of bribe, one lac and a half under the color of an entertainment. Mr. Hastings endeavors to invalidate the first obliquely, not directly, for he never directly denied it; and he partly admits the second, in hopes that all the proof of payment of the first charge should be merged and confounded in the second. And therefore your Lordships will see from the beginning of that business till it came into the hands of Mr. Smith, his agent, then appearing in the name and character of agent and solicitor to the Company, that this was done to give some appearance and color to it by a false representation, as your Lordships will see, of every part of the transaction.

The proof, then, of the two lacs rests upon the evidence of Nundcomar, the letter of Munny Begum, and the evidence of Rajah Gourdas. The evidence of the lac and a half, by way of entertainment, was at first the same; and afterwards begins a series of proofs to which Mr. Hastings has himself helped us. For, in the first place, he produces this office paper in support of his attempt to establish the confusion between the payment of the two lacs and of the lac and a half. He did not himself deny that he received a lac and a half, because with respect to that lac and a half he had founded some principle of justification. Accordingly this office paper asserts and proves this lac and a half to have been given, in addition to the other proofs. Then Munny Begum herself is inquired of. There is a commission appointed to go up to her residence; and the fact is proved to the satisfaction of Mr. Goring, the commissioner. The Begum had put a paper of accounts, through her son, into his hands, which shall be given at your Lordships' bar, in which she expressly said that she gave Mr. Hastings a lac and a half for entertainment. But Mr. Hastings objects to Mr. Goring's evidence upon this occasion. He wanted to supersede Mr. Goring in the inquiry; and he accordingly appoints, with the consent of the Council, two creatures of his own to go and assist in that inquiry. The question which he directs these commissioners to put to Munny Begum is this:—"Was the sum of money charged by you to be given to Mr. Hastings given under an idea of entertainment customary, or upon what other ground, or for what other reason?" He also desires the following questions may be proposed to the Begum:—"Was any application made to you for the account which you have delivered of three lacs and a half of rupees said to have been paid to the Governor and Mr. Middleton? or did you deliver the account of your own free will, and unsolicited?" My Lords, you see that with regard to the whole three lacs and a half of rupees the Begum had given an account which tended to confirm the payment of them; but Mr. Hastings wanted to invalidate that account by supposing she gave it under restraint. The second question is,—"In what manner was the application made to you, and by whom?" But the principal question is this:—"On what account was the one lac and a half given to the Governor-General which you have laid to his account? Was it in consequence of any requisition from him, or of any previous agreement, or of any established usage?" When a man asks concerning a sum of money, charged to be given to him by another person, on what account it was given, he does indirectly admit that that money actually was paid, and wants to derive a justification from the mode of the payment of it; and accordingly that inference was drawn from the question so sent up, and it served as an instruction to Munny Begum; and her answer was, that it was given to him, as an ancient usage and custom, for an entertainment. So that the fact of the gift of the money is ascertained by the question put by Mr. Hastings to her, and her answer. And thus at last comes his accomplice in this business, and gives the fullest testimony to the lac and a half.

I must beg leave, before I go further, to state the circumstances of the several witnesses examined upon this business. They were of two kinds: voluntary witnesses, and accomplices forced by inquiry and examination to discover their own guilt. Of the first kind were Nundcomar and Rajah Gourdas: these were the only two that can be said to be voluntary in the business, and who gave their information without much fear, though the last unwillingly, and with a full sense of the danger of doing it. The other was the evidence of his accomplice, Munny Begum, wrung from her by the force of truth, in which she confessed that she gave the lac and a half, and justifies it upon the ground of its being a customary entertainment. Besides this, there is the evidence of Chittendur, who was one of Mr. Hastings's instruments, and one of the Begum's servants. He, being prepared to confound the two lacs with the one lac and a half, says, upon his examination, that a lac and a half was given; but upon examining into the particulars of it, he proves that the sum he gave was two lacs, and not a lac and a half: for he says that there was a dispute about the other half lac; Nundcomar demanded interest, which the Begum was unwilling to allow, and consequently that half lac remained unpaid. Now this half lac can be no part of the lac and a half, which is admitted on all hands, and proved by the whole body of concurrent testimony, to have been given to Mr. Hastings in one lumping sum. When Chittendur endeavors to confound it with the lac and a half, he clearly establishes the fact that it was a parcel of the two lacs, and thus bears evidence, in attempting to prevaricate in favor of Mr. Hastings, that one lac and a half was paid, which Mr. Hastings is willing to allow; but when he enters into the particulars of it, he proves by the subdivision of the payment, and by the non-payment of part of it, that it accords with the two lacs, and not with the lac and a half.

There are other circumstances in these accounts highly auxiliary to this evidence. The lac and a half was not only attested by Rajah Gourdas, by the Begum, by Chittendur, by the Begum again upon Mr. Hastings's own question, indirectly admitted by Mr. Hastings, proved by the orders for it to be written off to expense, (such a body of proof as perhaps never existed,) but there is one proof still remaining, namely, a paper, which was produced before the Committee, and which we shall produce to your Lordships. It is an authentic paper, delivered in favor of Mr. Hastings by Major Scott, who acted at that time as Mr. Hastings's agent, to a committee of the House of Commons, and authenticated to come from Munny Begum herself. All this body of evidence we mean to produce; and we shall prove, first, that he received the two lacs,—and, secondly, that he received one lac and a half under the name of entertainment. With regard to the lac and a half, Mr. Hastings is so far from controverting it, even indirectly, that he is obliged to establish it by testimonies produced by himself, in order to sink in that, if he can, the two lacs, which he thinks he is not able to justify, but which he fears will be proved against him. The lac and a half, I do believe, he will not be advised to contest; but whether he is or no, we shall load him with it, we shall prove it beyond all doubt. But there are other circumstances further auxiliary in this business, which, from the very attempts to conceal it, prove beyond doubt the fraudulent and wicked nature of the transaction. In the account given by the Begum, a lac, which is for Mr. Hastings's entertainment, is entered in a suspicious neighborhood; for there is there entered a lac of rupees paid for the subahdarry sunnuds to the Mogul through the Rajah Shitab Roy. Upon looking into the account, and comparing it with another paper produced, the first thing we find is, that this woman charges the sum paid to be a sum due; and then she charges this one lac to have been paid when the Mogul was in the hands of the Mahrattas, when all communication with him was stopped, and when Rajah Shitab Roy, who is supposed to have paid it, was under confinement in the hands of Mr. Hastings. Thus she endeavors to conceal the lac of rupees paid to Mr. Hastings.

In order to make this transaction, which, though not in itself intricate, is in some degree made so by Mr. Hastings, clear to your Lordships, we pledge ourselves to give to your Lordships, what must be a great advantage to the culprit himself, a syllabus, the heads of all this charge, and of the proofs themselves, with their references, to show how far the proof goes to the two lacs, and then to the one lac and a half singly. This we shall put in writing, that you may not depend upon the fugitive memory of a thing not so well, perhaps, or powerfully expressed as it ought to be, and in order to give every advantage to the defendant, and to give every facility to your Lordships' judgment: and this will, I believe, be thought a clear and fair way of proceeding. Your Lordships will then judge whether Mr. Hastings's conduct at the time, his resisting an inquiry, preventing his servant appearing as an evidence, discountenancing and discouraging his colleagues, raising every obstruction to the prosecution, dissolving the Council, preventing evidence and destroying it as far as lay in his power by collateral means, be not also such presumptive proofs as give double force to all the positive proof we produce against him.

The lac and a half, I know, he means to support upon the custom of entertainment; and your Lordships will judge whether or not a man who was ordered and had covenanted never to take more than 400l. could take 16,000l. under color of an entertainment. That which he intends to produce as a justification we charge, and your Lordships and the world will think, to be the heaviest aggravation of his crime. And after explaining to your Lordships the circumstances under which this justification is made, and leaving a just impression of them upon your minds, I shall beg your Lordships' indulgence to finish this member of the business to-morrow.

It is stated and entered in the account, that an entertainment was provided for Mr. Hastings at the rate of 200l. a day. He stayed at Moorshedabad for near three months; and thus you see that visits from Mr. Hastings are pretty expensive things: it is at the rate of 73,000l. a year for his entertainment. We find that Mr. Middleton, an English gentleman who was with him, received likewise (whether under the same pretence I know not, and it does not signify) another sum equal to it; and if these two gentlemen had stayed in that country a year, their several allowances would have been 146,000l. out of the Nabob's allowance of 160,000l. a year: they would have eat up nearly the whole of it. And do you wonder, my Lords, that such guests and such hosts are difficult to be divided? Do you wonder that such visits, when so well paid for and well provided for, were naturally long? There is hardly a prince in Europe who would give to another prince of Europe from his royal hospitality what was given upon this occasion to Mr. Hastings.

Let us now see what was Mr. Hastings's business during this long protracted visit. First, he tells you that he came there to reduce all the state and dignity of the Nabob. He tells you that he felt no compunction in reducing that state; that the elephants, the menagerie, the stables, all went without mercy, and consequently all the persons concerned in them were dismissed also. When he came to the abolition of the pensions, he says,—"I proceeded with great pain, from the reflection that I was the instrument in depriving whole families, all at once, of their bread, and reducing them to a state of penury: convinced of the necessity of the measure, I endeavored to execute it with great impartiality." Here he states the work he was employed in, when he took this two hundred pounds a day for his own pay. "It was necessary to begin with reforming the useless servants of the court, and retrenching the idle parade of elephants, menageries, &c., which loaded the civil list. This cost little regret in performing; but the Resident, who took upon himself the chief share in this business, acknowledges that he suffered considerably in his feelings, when he came to touch on the pension list. Some hundreds of persons of the ancient nobility of the country, excluded, under our government, from almost all employments, civil or military, had, ever since the revolution, depended on the bounty of the Nabob; and near ten lacs were bestowed that way. It is not that the distribution was always made with judgment or impartial, and much room was left for a reform; but when the question was to cut off entirely the greatest part, it could not fail to be accompanied with circumstances of real distress. The Resident declares, that, even with some of the highest rank, he could not avoid discovering, under all the pride of Eastern manners, the manifest marks of penury and want. There was, however, no room left for hesitation: to confine the Nabob's expenses within the limited sum, it was necessary that pensions should be set aside."

Here, my Lords, is a man sent to execute one of the most dreadful offices that was ever executed by man,—to cut off, as he says himself, with a bleeding heart, the only remaining allowance made for hundreds of the decayed nobility and gentry of a great kingdom, driven by our government from the offices upon which they existed. In this moment of anxiety and affliction, when he says he felt pain and was cut to the heart to do it,—at this very moment, when he was turning over fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry of this country to downright want of bread,—just at that moment, while he was doing this act, and feeling this act in this manner, from the collected morsels forced from the mouths of that indigent and famished nobility he gorged his own ravenous maw with an allowance of two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment. As we see him in this business, this man is unlike any other: he is also never corrupt but he is cruel; he never dines without creating a famine; he does not take from the loose superfluity of standing greatness, but falls upon the indigent, the oppressed, and ruined; he takes to himself double what would maintain them. His is unlike the generous rapacity of the noble eagle, who preys upon a living, struggling, reluctant, equal victim; his is like that of the ravenous vulture, who falls upon the decayed, the sickly, the dying, and the dead, and only anticipates Nature in the destruction of its object. His cruelty is beyond his corruption: but there is something in his hypocrisy which is more terrible than his cruelty; for, at the very time when with double and unsparing hands he executes a proscription, and sweeps off the food of hundreds of the nobility and gentry of a great country, his eyes overflow with tears, and he turns the precious balm that bleeds from wounded humanity, and is its best medicine, into fatal, rancorous, mortal poison to the human race.

You have seen, that, when he takes two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, he tells you that in this very act he is starving fourteen hundred of the ancient nobility and gentry. My Lords, you have the blood of nobles,—if not, you have the blood of men in your veins: you feel as nobles, you feel as men. What would you say to a cruel Mogul exactor, by whom after having been driven from your estates, driven from the noble offices, civil and military, which you hold, driven from your bishoprics, driven from your places at court, driven from your offices as judges, and, after having been reduced to a miserable flock of pensioners, your very pensions were at last wrested from your mouths, and who, though at the very time when those pensions were wrested from you he declares them to have been the only bread of a miserable decayed nobility, takes himself two hundred pounds a day for his entertainment, and continues it till it amounts to sixteen thousand pounds? I do think, that, of all the corruptions which he has not owned, but has not denied, or of those which he does in effect own, and of which he brings forward the evidence himself, the taking and claiming under color of an entertainment is ten times the most nefarious.

I shall this day only further trouble your Lordships to observe that he has never directly denied this transaction. I have tumbled over the records, I have looked at every part, to see whether he denies it. He did not deny it at the time, he did not deny it to the Court of Directors: on the contrary, he did in effect acknowledge it, when, without directly acknowledging it, he promised them a full and liberal explanation of the whole transaction. He never did give that explanation. Parliament took up the business; this matter was reported at the end of the Eleventh Report; but though the House of Commons had thus reported it, and made that public which before was upon the Company's records, he took no notice of it. Then another occasion arises: he comes before the House of Commons; he knows he is about to be prosecuted for those very corruptions; he well knows these charges exist against him; he makes his defence (if he will allow it to be his defence); but, though thus driven, he did not there deny it, because he knew, that, if he had denied it, it could be proved against him. I desire your Lordships will look at that paper which we have given in evidence, and see if you find a word of denial of it: there is much discourse, much folly, much insolence, but not one word of denial. Then, at last, it came before this tribunal against him. I desire to refer your Lordships to that part of his defence to the article in which this bribe is specifically charged: he does not deny it there; the only thing which looks like a denial is one sweeping clause inserted, (in order to put us upon the proof,) that all the charges are to be conceived as denied; but a specific denial to this specific charge in no stage of the business, from beginning to end, has he once made.

And therefore here I close that part of the charge which relates to the business of Nundcomar. Your Lordships will see such a body of presumptive proof and positive proof as never was given yet of any secret corrupt act of bribery; and there I leave it with your Lordships' justice. I beg pardon for having detained you so long; but your Lordships will be so good as to observe that no business ever was covered with more folds of iniquitous artifice than this which is now brought before you.