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

Commerce, which enriches every other country in the world, was bringing Bengal to total ruin. The Company, in former times, when it had no sovereignty or power in the country, had large privileges under their dustuck, or permit: their goods passed, without paying duties, through the country. The servants of the Company made use of this dustuck for their own private trade, which, while it was used with moderation, the native government winked at in some degree; but when it got wholly into private hands, it was more like robbery than trade. These traders appeared everywhere; they sold at their own prices, and forced the people to sell to them at their own prices also. It appeared more like an army going to pillage the people, under pretence of commerce, than anything else. In vain the people claimed the protection of their own country courts. This English army of traders in their march ravaged worse than a Tartarian conqueror. The trade they carried on, and which more resembled robbery than commerce, anticipated the resources of the tyrant, and threatened to leave him no materials for imposition or confiscation. Thus this miserable country was torn to pieces by the horrible rapaciousness of a double tyranny. This appeared to be so strong a case, that a deputation was sent to him at his new capital, Monghir, to form a treaty for the purpose of giving some relief against this cruel, cursed, and oppressive trade, which was worse even than the tyranny of the sovereign. This trade Mr. Vansittart, the President about this time, that is, in 1763, who succeeded to Mr. Holwell, and was in close union of interests with the tyrant Cossim Ali Khân, by a treaty known by the name of the treaty of Monghir, agreed very much to suppress and to confine within something like reasonable bounds. There never was a doubt on the face of that treaty, that it was a just, proper, fair transaction. But as nobody in Bengal did then believe that rapine was ever forborne but in favor of bribery, the persons who lost every advantage by the treaty of Monghir, when they thought they saw corrupt negotiation carrying away the prizes of unlawful commerce, and were likely to see their trade crippled by Cossim Ali Khân, fell into a most violent fury at this treaty; and as the treaty was made without the concurrence of the rest of the Council, the Company's servants grew divided: one part were the advocates of the treaty, the other of the trade. The latter were universally of opinion that the treaty was bought for a great sum of money. The evidence we have on our records of the sums of money that are stated to have been paid on this occasion has never been investigated to the bottom; but we have it on record, that a great sum (70,000l.) was paid to persons concerned in that negotiation. The rest were exceedingly wroth to see themselves not profiting by the negotiation, and losing the trade, or likely to be excluded from it; and they were the more so, because, as we have it upon our journals, during all that time the trade of the negotiators was not proscribed, but a purwannah was issued by Cossim Ali Khân, that the trade of his friends Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Hastings should not be subject to the general regulations. This filled the whole settlement with ill blood; but in the regulation itself (I put the motive and the secret history out of the case) undoubtedly Mr. Hastings and Mr. Vansittart were on the right side. They had shown to a demonstration the mischief of this trade. However, as the other party were strong, and did not readily let go their hold of this great advantage, first, dissensions, murmurs, various kinds of complaints, and ill blood arose. Cossim Ali was driven to the wall; and having at the same time made what he thought good preparations, a war broke out at last. And how did it break out? This Cossim Ali Khân signalized his first acts of hostility by an atrocity committed against the faith of treaties, against the rules of war, against every principle of honor. This intended murderer of his father-in-law, whom Mr. Hastings had assisted to raise to the throne of Bengal, well knowing his character and his disposition, and well knowing what such a man was capable of doing,—this man massacred the English wherever he met them. There were two hundred, or thereabouts, of the Company's servants, or their dependants, slaughtered at Patna with every circumstance of the most abominable cruelty. Their limbs were cut to pieces. The tyrant whom Mr. Hastings set up cut and hacked the limbs of British subjects in the most cruel and perfidious manner, threw them into wells, and polluted the waters of the country with British blood. Immediately war is declared against him in form. That war sets the whole country in a blaze; and then other parties begin to appear upon the scene, whose transactions you will find yourselves deeply concerned in hereafter.

As soon as war was declared against Cossim, it was necessary to resolve to put up another Nabob, and to have another revolution: and where do they resort, but to the man whom, for his alleged tyranny, for his incapacity, for the numberless iniquities he was said to have committed, and for his total unfitness and disinclination to all the duties of government, they had dethroned? This very man they take up again, to place on the throne from which they had about two years before removed him, and for the effecting of which they had committed so many iniquities. Even this revolution was not made without being paid for. According to the usual order of procession, in which the youngest walk first, first comes the Company; and the Company had secured to it in perpetuity those provinces which Cossim Ali Khân had ceded, as it was thought, rather in the way of mortgage than anything else. Then, under the name of compensation for sufferings to the people concerned in the trade, and in the name of donation to an army and a navy which had little to do in this affair, they tax him—what sum do you think? They tax that empty and undone treasury of that miserable and undone country 500,000l. for a private emolument to themselves,—for the compensation for this iniquitous trade,—for the compensation for abuses of which he was neither the author nor the abettor, they tax this miserable prince 500,000l. That sum was given to individuals. Now comes the Company at home, which, on hearing this news, was all inflamed. The Directors were on fire. They were shocked at it, and particularly at this donation to the army and navy. They resolved they would give it no countenance and support. In the mean time the gentlemen did not trouble their heads upon that subject, but meant to exact and get their 500,000l. as they could.

Here was a third revolution, bought at this amazing sum, and this poor, miserable prince first dragged from Moorshedabad to Calcutta, then dragged back from Calcutta to Moorshedabad, the sport of fortune and the plaything of avarice. This poor man is again set up, but is left with no authority: his troops limited,—his person, everything about him, in a manner subjugated,—a British Resident the master of his court: he is set up as a pageant on this throne, with no other authority but what would be sufficient to give a countenance to presents, gifts, and donations. That authority was always left, when all the rest was taken away. One would have thought that this revolution might have satisfied these gentlemen, and that the money gained by it would have been sufficient. No. The partisans of Cossim Ali wanted another revolution. The partisans of the other side wished to have something more done in the present. They now began to think that to depose Cossim instantly, and to sell him to another, was too much at one time,—especially as Cossim Ali was a man of vigor and resolution, carrying on a fierce war against them. But what do you think they did? They began to see, from the example of Cossim Ali, that the lieutenancy, the ministry of the king, was a good thing to be sold, and the sale of that might turn out as good a thing as the sale of the prince.

For this office there were two rival candidates, persons of great consideration, in Bengal: one, a principal Mahomedan, called Mahomed Reza Khân, a man of high authority, great piety in his own religion, great learning in the law, of the very first class of Mahomedan nobility; but at the same time, on all these accounts, he was abhorred and dreaded by the Nabob, who necessarily feared that a man of Mahomed Reza Khân's description would be considered as better entitled and fitter for his seat, as Nabob of the provinces. To balance him, there was another man, known by the name of the Great Rajah Nundcomar. This man was accounted the highest of his caste, and held the same rank among the Gentoos that Mahomed Reza Khân obtained among the Mahomedans. The prince on the throne had no jealousy of Nundcomar, because he knew, that, as a Gentoo, he could not aspire to the office of Subahdar. For that reason he was firmly attached to him; he might depend completely on his services; he was his against Mahomed Reza Khân, and against the whole world. There was, however, a flaw in the Nabob's title, which it was necessary should be hid. And perhaps it lay against Mahomed Reza Khân as well as him. But it was a source of apprehension to the Nabob, and contributed to make him wish to keep all Mahomedan influence at a distance. For he was a Syed, that is to say, a descendant of Mahomet, and as such, though of the only acknowledged nobility among Mussulmen, would be by that circumstance excluded, by the known laws of the Mogul empire, from being Subahdar in any of the Mogul provinces, in case the revival of the constitution of that empire should ever again take place.

An auction was now opened before the English Council at Calcutta. Mahomed Reza Khân bid largely; Nundcomar bid largely. The circumstances of these two rivals at the Nabob court were equally favorable to the pretensions of each. But the preponderating merits of Mahomed Reza Khân, arising from the subjection in which he was likely to keep the Nabob, and make him fitter for the purpose of continued exactions, induced the Council to take his money, which amounted to about 220,000l. Be the sum paid what it may, it was certainly a large one; in consequence of which the Council attempted to invest Mahomed Reza Khân with the office of Naib Subah, or Deputy Viceroy. As to Nundcomar, they fell upon him with a vengeful fury. He fought his battle as well as he could; he opposed bribe to bribe, eagle to eagle; but at length he was driven to the wall. Some received his money, but did him no service in return; others, more conscientious, refused to receive it; and in this battle of bribes he was vanquished. A deputation was sent from Calcutta to the miserable Nabob, to tear Nundcomar, his only support, from his side, and to put the object of all his terrors, Mahomed Reza Khân, in his place.

Thus began a new division that split the Presidency into violent factions; but the faction which adhered to Nundcomar was undoubtedly the weakest. That most miserable of men, Mir Jaffier Ali Khân, clinging, as to the last pillar, to Nundcomar, trembling at Mahomed Reza Khân, died in the struggle, a miserable victim to all the revolutions, to all the successive changes and versatile politics at Calcutta. Like all the rest of the great personages whom we have degraded and brutalized by insult and oppression, he betook himself to the usual destructive resources of unprincipled misery,—sensuality, opium, and wine. His gigantic frame of constitution soon gave way under the oppression of this relief, and he died, leaving children and grandchildren by wives and concubines. On the old Nabob's death, Mahomed Reza Khân was acknowledged Deputy Nabob, the money paid, and this revolution completed.

Here, my Lords, opened a new source of plunder, peculation, and bribery, which was not neglected. Revolutions were no longer necessary; succession supplied their places: and well the object agreed with the policy. Rules of succession could not be very well ascertained to an office like that of the Nabob, which was hereditary only by the appointment of the Mogul. The issue by lawful wives would naturally be preferred by those who meant the quiet of the country. But a more doubtful title was preferred, as better adapted to the purposes of extortion and peculation. This miserable succession was sold, and the eldest of the issue of Munny Begum, an harlot, brought in to pollute the harem of the seraglio, of whom you will hear much hereafter, was chosen. He soon succeeded to the grave. Another son of the same prostitute succeeded to the same unhappy throne, and followed to the same untimely grave. Every succession was sold; and between venal successions and venal revolutions, in a very few years seven princes and six sales were seen successively in Bengal. The last was a minor, the issue of a legitimate wife, admitted to succeed because a minor, and because there was none illegitimate left. He was instantly stripped of the allowance of his progenitors, and reduced to a pension of 160,000 a year. He still exists, and continued to the end of Mr. Hastings's government to furnish constant sources of bribery and plunder to him and his creatures.

The offspring of Munny Begum clinging, as his father did, to Nundcomar, they tore Nundcomar from his side, as they had done from the side of his father, and carried him down as a sort of prisoner to Calcutta; where, having had the weakness to become the first informer, he was made the first example. This person, pushed to the wall, and knowing that the man he had to deal with was desperate and cruel in his resentments, resolves on the first blow, and enters before the Council a regular information in writing of bribery against Mr. Hastings. In his preface to that charge he excuses himself for what is considered to be an act equally insane and wicked, and as the one inexpiable crime of an Indian, the discovery of the money he gives,—that Mr. Hastings had declaredly determined on his ruin, and to accomplish it had newly associated himself with one Mohun Persaud, a name I wish your Lordships to remember, a bitter enemy of his, an infamous person, whom Mr. Hastings knew to be such, and as such had turned him out of his house,—that Mr. Hastings had lately recalled, and held frequent communications with this Mohun Persaud, the subject of which he had no doubt was his ruin. In the year 1775 he was hanged by those incorrupt English judges who were sent to India by Parliament to protect the natives from oppression.

Your Lordships will observe that this new sale of the office of ministers succeeded to the sale of that of nabobs. All these varied and successive sales shook the country to pieces. As if those miserable exhausted provinces were to be cured of inanition by phlebotomy, while Cossim Ali was racking it above, the Company were drawing off all its nutriment below. A dreadful, an extensive, and most chargeable war followed. Half the northern force of India poured down like a torrent on Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our resources. The war was the fruit of Mr. Hastings's cabals. Its termination, as usual, was the result of the military merit and the fortune of this nation. Cossim Ali, after having been defeated toy the military genius and spirit of England, (for the Adamses, Monroes, and others of that period, I believe, showed as much skill and bravery as any of their predecessors,) in his flight swept away above three millions in money, jewels, or effects, out of a country which he had plundered and exhausted by his unheard-of exactions. However, he fought his way like a retiring lion, turning his face to his pursuers. He still fought along his frontier. His ability and his money drew to his cause the Subahdar of Oude, the famous Sujah ul Dowlah. The Mogul entered into these wars, and penetrated into the lower provinces on one side, whilst Bulwant Sing, the Rajah of Benares, entered them on another. After various changes of party and changes of fortune, the loss which began in the treachery of the civil service was, as I have before remarked, redeemed by military merit. Many examples of the same sort have since been seen.

Whilst these things were transacted in India, the Court of Directors in London, hearing of so many changes, hearing of such an incredible mass of perfidy and venality, knowing that there was a general market made of the country and of the Company, that the flame of war spread from province to province, that, in proportion as it spread, the fire glowed with augmented fierceness, and that the rapacity which originally gave rise to it was following it in all its progress,—the Company, my Lords, alarmed not only for their acquisitions, but their existence, and finding themselves sinking lower and lower by every victory they obtained, thought it necessary at length to come to some system and some settlement. After composing their differences with Lord Clive, they sent him out to that country about the year 1765, in order, by his name, weight, authority, and vigor of mind, to give some sort of form and stability to government, and to rectify the innumerable abuses which prevailed there, and particularly that great source of disorders, that fundamental abuse, presents: for the bribes by which all these revolutions were bought had not the name of conditions, stipulations, or rewards; they even had the free and gratuitous style of presents. The receivers contended that they were mere gratuities given for service done, or mere tokens of affection and gratitude to the parties. They may give them what names they please, and your Lordships will think of them what you please; but they were the donations of misery to power, the gifts of sufferers to the oppressors; and consequently, where they prevailed, they left no certain property or fixed situation to any man in India, from the highest to the lowest.

The Court of Directors sent out orders to enlarge the servants' covenants with new and severe clauses, strongly prohibiting the practice of receiving presents. Lord Clive himself had been a large receiver of them. Yet, as it was in the moment of a revolution which gave them all they possessed, the Company would hear no more of it. They sent him out to reform: whether they chose well or ill does not signify. I think, upon the whole, they chose well; because his name and authority could do much. They sent him out to redress the grievances of that country, and it was necessary he should be well armed for that service. They sent him out with such powers as no servant of the Company ever held before. I would not be understood here in my own character, much less in the delegated character in which I stand, to contend for any man in the totality of his conduct. Perhaps in some of his measures he was mistaken, and in some of his acts reprehensible; but justice obliges me to say, that the plan which he formed and the course which he pursued were in general great and well imagined,—that he laid great foundations, if they had been properly built upon. For, in the first place, he composed all the neighboring countries torn to pieces by the wars of Cossim Ali, and quieted the apprehensions raised by the opinion of the boundless ambition of England. He took strong measures to put an end to a great many of the abuses that prevailed in the country subject to the Company. He then proceeded to the upper provinces, and formed a plan which, for a military man, has great civil and political merit. He put a bound to the aspiring spirit of the Company's servants; he limited its conquests; he prescribed bounds to its ambition. "First" (says he) "quiet the minds of the country; what you have obtained regulate; make it known to India that you resolve to acquire no more."

On this solid plan he fixed every prince that was concerned in the preceding wars, on the one side and on the other, in an happy and easy settlement. He restored Sujah ul Dowlah, who had been driven from his dominions by the military arm of Great Britain, to the rank of Vizier, and to the dominion of the territories of Oude. With a generosity that astonished all Asia, he reinstated this expelled enemy of his nation peaceably upon his throne. And this act of politic generosity did more towards quieting the minds of the people of Asia than all the terror, great as it was, of the English arms. At the same time, Lord Clive, generous to all, took peculiar care of our friends and allies. He took care of Bulwant Sing, the great Rajah of Benares, who had taken our part in the war. He secured him from the revenge of Sujah ul Dowlah. The Mogul had granted us the superiority over Bulwant Sing. Lord Clive reëstablished him in a secure, easy independency. He confirmed him, under the British guaranty, in the rich principality which he held.

The Mogul, the head of the Mussulman religion in India, and of the Indian empire, a head honored and esteemed even in its ruins, he procured to be recognized by all the persons that were connected with his empire. The rents that ought to be paid to the Vizier of the Empire he gave to the Vizierate. Thus our alliances were cemented, our enemies were reconciled, all Asia was conciliated by our settlement with the king. To that unhappy fugitive king, driven from place to place, the sport of fortune, now an emperor and now a prisoner, prayed for in every mosque in which his authority was conspired against, one day opposed by the coin struck in his name and the other day sold for it,—to this descendant of Tamerlane he allotted, with a decent share of royal dignity, an honorable fixed residence, where he might be useful and could not be dangerous.

As to the Bengal provinces, he did not take for the Company the viceroyalty, as Mr. Holwell would have persuaded, almost forced, the Company to do; but, to satisfy the prejudices of the Mahomedans, the country was left in the hands nominally of the Subah, or viceroy, who was to administer the criminal justice and the exterior forms of royalty. He obtained from the sovereign the dewanny. This is the great act of the constitutional entrance of the Company into the body politic of India. It gave to the settlement of Bengal a fixed constitutional form, with a legal title, acknowledged and recognized now for the first time by all the natural powers of the country, because it arose from the charter of the undoubted sovereign. The dewanny, or high-stewardship, gave to the Company the collection and management of the revenue; and in this modest and civil character they appeared, not the oppressors, but the protectors of the people. This scheme had all the real power, without any invidious appearance of it; it gave them the revenue, without the parade of sovereignty. On this double foundation the government was happily settled. The minds of the natives were quieted. The Company's territories and views were circumscribed. The arm of force was put out of sight. The imperial name covered everything. The power of the purse was in the hand of the Company. The power of the sword was in effect so, as they contracted for the maintenance of the army. The Company had a revenue of a million and a half. The Nabob had, indeed, fallen from any real and effective power, yet the dignity of the court was maintained. The prejudices and interests of the Mahomedans, and particularly of their nobility, who had suffered more by this great revolution even than the old inhabitants of the country, were consulted; for by this plan a revenue of 500,000l. was settled on the viceroyalty, which was thus enabled to provide in some measure for those great families. The Company likewise, by this plan, in order to enjoy their revenues securely, and to avoid envy and murmur, put them into the hands of Mahomed Reza Khân, whom Lord Clive found in the management of affairs, and did not displace; and he was now made deputy-steward to the Company, as he had been before lieutenant-viceroy to the Nabob. A British Resident at Moorshedabad was established as a control. The Company exercised their power over the revenue in the first instance through the natives, but the British Resident was in reality the great mover.

If ever this nation stood in a situation of glory throughout Asia, it was in that moment. But, as I have said, some material errors and mistakes were committed. After the formation of this plan, Lord Clive unfortunately did not stay long enough in the country to give consistency to the measures of reformation he had undertaken, but rapidly returned to England; and after his departure, the government that continued had not vigor or authority to support the settlement then made, and considerable abuses began to prevail in every quarter. Another capital period in our history here commences. Those who succeeded (though I believe one of them was one of the honestest men that ever served the Company, I mean Governor Verelst) had not weight enough to poise the system of the service, and consequently many abuses and grievances again prevailed. Supervisors were appointed to every district, as a check on the native collectors, and to report every abuse as it should arise. But they who were appointed to redress grievances were themselves accused of being guilty of them. However, the disorders were not of that violent kind which preceded Mr. Hastings's departure, nor such as followed his return: no mercenary wars, no mercenary revolutions, no extirpation of nations, no violent convulsions in the revenue, no subversion of ancient houses, no general sales of any descriptions of men,—none of these, but certainly such grievances as made it necessary for the Company to send out another commission in 1769, with instructions pointing out the chief abuses. It was composed of Mr. Vansittart, Mr. Ford, and Mr. Scrafton. The unfortunate end of that commission is known to all the world; but I mention it in order to state that the receipt of presents was considered as one of the grievances which then prevailed in India, and that the supervisors under that commission were ordered upon no account whatever to take presents. Upon the unfortunate catastrophe which happened, the Company was preparing to send out another for the rectification of these grievances, when Parliament thought it necessary to supersede that commission, to take the matter into their own hands, and to appoint another commission in a Parliamentary way (of which Mr. Hastings was one) for the better government of that country. Mr. Hastings, as I must mention to your Lordships, soon after the deposition and restoration of Jaffier Ali Khân, and before Lord Clive arrived, quitted for a while the scene in which he had been so mischievously employed, and returned to England to strengthen himself by those cabals which again sent him out with new authority to pursue the courses which were the natural sequel to his former proceedings. He returned to India with great power, indeed,—first to a seat in Council at Fort St. George, and from thence to succeed to the Presidency of Fort William. On him the Company placed their chief reliance. Happy had it been for them, happy for India and for England, if his conduct had been such as to spare your Lordships and the Commons the exhibition of this day!

When this government, with Mr. Hastings at the head of it, was settled, Moorshedabad did still continue the seat of the native government, and of all the collections. Here the Company was not satisfied with placing a Resident at the durbar, which was the first step to our assuming the government in that country. These steps must be traced by your Lordships; for I should never have given you this trouble, if it was not necessary to possess you clearly of the several progressive steps by which the Company's government came to be established and to supersede the native. The next step was the appointment of supervisors in every province, to oversee the native collector. The third was to establish a general Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad, to superintend the great steward, Mahomed Reza Khân. In 1772 that Council by Mr. Hastings was overturned, and the whole management of the revenue brought to Calcutta. Mahomed Reza Khân, by orders of the Company, was turned out of all his offices, and turned out for reasons and principles which your Lordships will hereafter see; and at last the dewanny was entirely taken out of the native hands, and settled in the Supreme Council and Presidency itself in Calcutta; and so it remained until the year 1781, when Mr. Hastings made another revolution, took it out of the hands of the Supreme Council, in which the orders of the Company, an act of Parliament, and their own act had vested it, and put it into a subordinate council: that is, it was entirely vested in himself.

Now your Lordships see the whole of the revolutions. I have stated them, I trust, with perspicuity,—stated the grounds and principles upon which they were made,—stated the abuses that grew upon them,—and that every revolution produced its abuse. You saw the native government vanish by degrees, until it was reduced to a situation fit for nothing but to become a private perquisite, as it has been, to Mr. Hastings, and to be granted to whom he pleased. The English government succeeded, at the head of which Mr. Hastings was placed by an act of Parliament, having before held the office of President of the Council,—the express object of both these appointments being to redress grievances; and within these two periods of his power, as President and Governor-General, were those crimes committed of which he now stands accused. All this history is merely by way of illustration: his crimination begins from his nomination to the Presidency; and we are to consider how he comported himself in that station, and in his office of Governor-General.

The first thing, in considering the merits or demerits of any governor, is to have some test by which they are to be tried. And here, my Lords, we conceive, that, when a British governor is sent abroad, he is sent to pursue the good of the people as much as possible in the spirit of the laws of this country, which in all respects intend their conservation, their happiness, and their prosperity. This is the principle upon which Mr. Hastings was bound to govern, and upon which he is to account for his conduct here. His rule was, what a British governor, intrusted with the power of this country, was bound to do or to forbear. If he has performed and if he has abstained as he ought, dismiss him honorably acquitted from your bar; otherwise condemn him. He may resort to other principles and to other maxims; but this country will force him to be tried by its laws. The law of this country recognizes that well-known crime called misconduct in office; it is a head of the law of England, and, so far as inferior courts are competent to try it, may be tried in them. Here your Lordships' competence is plenary: you are fully competent both to inquire into and to punish the offence.