With a generous oblivion of duty and honour, with a proud sense of having authorized all future rapacity, and sanctioned all past oppression, this friendly judge proceeded on his circuit of health and ease; and while the Governor General, sanctioned by his solemn opinion, issued his orders to plunder the Begums of their treasure, Sir Elijah pursued his progress, passing through a wide region of disress and misery, in quest of objects best suited to his feelings, in anxious search of calamities most kindred to his invalid imagination. Friendship, then, made Sir Elijah forget what was due to himself, what was due to the high office in which he was placed, and to the power which had placed him in it. He was the last man who ought to have undertaken such an office. He was bound to have maintained a line of conduct more consonant with the elevation of his rank, the dignity of his office, and the gravity of a judge; who ought to have felt himself incapable of soiling his pure ermine, by condescending to run about the country, like an itinerant informer, with a pedlar’s pack of garbled evidence and surreptitious affidavits.
He could not be ignorant of the robbery his errand was intended to cover; for his first question mooted the point. The judge most gravely informs us, that he was cautioned not to proceed from Chunar by way of Fyzyabad, as the Begums were in rebellion. Most friendly advice indeed! Fyzyabad was many score of miles out of the route of Lucknow to Chunar; and, at that moment, peace absolutely prevailed in every part of the country; his datum, therefore would have been discovered to be false. Nor would it have been very pleasant for him to be found at Fyzyabad, with the actual order in his pocket, by which they were to be plundered, which happened to be the fact. Here Mr. Sheridan proved what he asserted, by reading extracts from authenticated papers.
When Mr. Hastings arrived at Chunar, he was met by the Nabob with an open and unsuspecting heart. Here the most insidious Treaty on the one part, that ever was entered into, was concerted and concluded; no one article of it being intended for execution on the part of the Governor. In the first article it was stipulated with one he calls an independent Prince
That, as great distress has arisen to the Nabob’s government, from the military power and dominion assumed by the Jaghierdars, he be permitted to resume such as he may find necessary; with a reserve, that all such, for the amount of whose Jaghires the Company are guarantees, shall, in case of the resumption of their lands, be paid the amount of their net collections, thro’ the Resident, in ready money. And that no English Resident be appointed to Furruckabad.
This was solemnly covenanted, in direct infraction of a subsisting guarantee for the protection of the Begum’s Jaghires. And how was this cloaked? Why, by affidavits, taken extra-judicially by his Majesty’s Chief Justice in Bengal, who says very guardedly in his evidence, that several persons deposed that a design was entered into to extirpate the English from India. But when? Not till after the transactions at Benares, when the weight of the arm of power compelled that unfortunate Prince, Cheyt Sing, to become an unhappy wanderer, and when the name of Briton became detested throughout Hindostan. This artifice was thin, and the veil was easily seen through, for the plan was preconcerted, long before the revolution at Benares took place.
This first article, containing a general permission to the Nabob to confiscate, and take into his hands such Jaghiers as he might find necessary, Mr. Hastings inverted singularly, by making him confiscate whatever Jaghiers he pleased.
The second article stipulated for the withdrawing of the British army from the Province of Oude, which Mr. Hastings did, but inverted the article singularly, by reserving to himself a right to send another army into the Province when he thought proper. The two other articles, the one for withdrawing the British President at Furruckabad, and the other stipulating for putting Fizula Cawn into the hands of the Nabob, both, by a singular inversion, Mr. Hastings rendered of no effect or avail.
The unsuspecting Nabob, in the warmth of friendship, at meeting the Governor, and concluding a Treaty which he thought salutary to his interest, made him a present of ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS. This, exclaimed Mr. Sheridan, was rank corruption in Mr. Hastings. The circumstances of this present were as extraordinary as the thing itself. Four months afterwards, and not till then, Mr. Hastings communicated the matter to the Company; unfortunately for himself however, this tardy disclosure was conveyed in words which betray his original meaning; for, with no common incaution, he admits the present “was of a magnitude not to be concealed.”
Then it was published and made known, that Bills on Gopaul Doss, the Banker, (then a prisoner,) were given to the amount mentioned, payable in four months. And this was to be extorted from a country, at the time its Prince declared his inability to pay his debts, and when his minister Hyder Beg Cawn declared it to be “a speaking picture of Famine and Woe.” Mr. Sheridan, in stating all the circumstances of this bribe, averred that the whole had its rise in a principle of rank corruption; for what was the price that hepaid? By the treaty he agreed to withdraw all the English gentlemen, and all the English army. He agreed to this at the moment of rebellion and revolt. The other articles of the treaty, as strange, nothing but the bribe could have occasioned, together with the reserve which he had in his own mind, of treachery to the Nabob; for the only part of the treaty which he ever attempted to carry into execution, was to withdraw the English gentlemen from Oude. The Nabob considered this as essential to his deliverance, and his observation on the circumstance was curious; for,
though Major Palmer, said he, has not asked any thing, I observe it is the custom of the English gentlemen constantly to ask for something of me before they go.
This imputation on the English Mr. Hastings countenanced, most readily, and rejoiced at it, as it was a screen and shelter for his own abandoned profligacy; and therefore, at the very moment that he was himself plundering the Nabob, with his usual gravity and cant, making a feint of executing this part of the Treaty;
Go, said he, to the English gentlemen; Go, you set of oppressive rascals; Go from this worthy unhappy man, whom you have plundered, and leave him to my protection. You have robbed him, you have taken advantage of his accumulated distresses; but, please God, he shall in future be at rest; for I have promised he shall never see the face of an Englishman again.
This however was the only part of the treaty which he even attempted to fulfil; and we learn from himself, that, at the very moment he made it, he intended to deceive the Nabob. That he advised general, instead of partial resumption, in order to defeat the end and view of the Nabob; and, instead of having given instant and unqualified assent to all the articles of the treaty, he had perpetually qualified, explained, and varied them with new diminutions and reservations.
He had suffered the Nabob to take their Jaghiers from several Jaghierdars; but he had compelled him to deprive others of their’s according to his will: he withdrew the army according to the wish of the vizier, but it was only to send back almost instantly an equivalent force: he resigned the fortresses, but to garrison them again immediately. This might by the friends of Mr. Hastings, be deemed policy; but surely it was too clumsy a fraud, too gross a fallacy, to deserve that name. It was however like the man, though unlike the greatness ascribed to him.
Mr. Sheridan put the whole of this into a very glaring point of view, and called upon gentlemen to say, if there was any thing in Machiavel, any treachery upon record, if they had ever heard of any cold Italian fraud, that could in any degree be put in comparison with the disgusting hypocrisy, and unequalled baseness, that Mr. Hastings had shewn on that occasion.
In his defence, Mr. Hastings had made it his boast, that the conduct of his life had been uniformly governed by the rules of honour and plain dealing. He asked, how was this bold and daring assertion to be reconciled to his whole conduct throughout the affair of the Begums? In every part of which, obliquity, fraud, falsehood, treachery, oppression, the most glaring violation of justice, and the most open breach of solemn engagements, were the great and leading features. He had heard it said by s
ome of his admirers, but who were not so implicit as to give unqualified applause to his crimes, that they found an apology for the atrocity of his actions in the greatness of his mind. He could not, upon the closest examination of his conduct, discover the smallest symptoms of either a great mind, or great ability. To estimate the solidity of such a defence, it would be sufficient, merely to consider in what consisted this prepossessing distion, this captivating characteristic of greatness of mind. It was the characteristic of magnanimity to aim at attaining a great end by great means; to support truth, to protect the weak, to relieve the oppressed, to right the injured, to punish those that had done wrong; and, on no consideration, to countenance injustice. In these traits, and these alone, we are to discover true estimable magnanimity; to them alone we can justly affix the splendid titles and honours of real greatness. Were these the characteristicks of Mr. Hastings? Directly the reverse. Mr. Hastings, in his conduct and in his writings, exhibited a system made up of things unnaturally conjoined. His letters and his minutes were full of strutting meanness, bombastical prevarication, and ridiculously violent contradictions in terms; just as the mass and magnitude of his crimes were contrasted with the littleness of his motives, and the low means he could condescend to for the attainment of his objects. The most groveling ideas, he conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions disgusted the mind’s taste, as much as his actions excited the soul’s abhorrence. In short, he appeared to be a mixture of the trickster and the tyrant, at once a Scapin and a Dionysius. It seemed that all his actions were directed by a low, underhand, crooked, policy; as well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the direct and unvaried swiftness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings’s ambition, to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. Mr. Hastings, if he ever acted with wisdom, it was with perverted wisdom.
Mr. Sheridan said, that this mixture of character seemed, by some unaccountable, but inherent, quality, to be appropriated in inferior degrees to every thing that concerned his employers. He remembered to have heard a learned gentleman (Mr. Dundas) remark, that there was something in the original frame and constitution of the Company, which carried the sordid ideas of the mercantile principle on which it was founded, always about them; so that, even in all their measures and actions, we saw the paltry character. Their civil policy and their military achievements were connected with and contaminated by the meanness of pedlars, and the profligacy of pirates. Thus we saw auctioneering ambassadors, and trading generals. — And thus we saw a revolution brought about by affidavits, an army employed in executing an arrest, a town besieged on a note of hand; a prince dethroned for the balance of an account. They exhibited a government, in which they had all the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre; and the little traffick of a merchant’s counting house, wielding a truncheon with one hand, and he might truly say, picking a pocket with the other.
He then proceeded to state the conduct of Mr. Hastings, in enforcing the resumption of the Jaghire, and the plunder of the envied treasure, of the Begums. On the 27th of Nov. 1781, his pleasure concerning that business was first sent, through Sir Elijah Impey, to Mr. Middleton. On the 1st of December this was backed by a written order; and it was not, until the 8th of January following, that the Nabob could be prevailed on to dismiss his scruples; nor, until threatened with the severest displeasure of the Governor General, that he could be compelled to repair to Fyzyabad, to obey the unnatural mandate, by plundering his parents. A resistance was then made by the friends of the Begums, on finding the violence intended to them. But, strange to tell! this resistance was absolutely alledged by Mr. Hastings in his defence, as the sole cause of the violence! That is to say, the resistance of an unjust attack not made until after the 8th of January, 1782, was alledged as the foundation of the pleasure signified on the 27th of November, 1781, of the written order by which that was enforced, and all the determinations which had so long preceded! Or, in other words, the order was said to be founded on a resistance made to its being executed, near six weeks after that order was first issued.
Having gone through the facts of the transactions which made up the charge, Mr. Sheridan next adverted to the affidavits exhibited, and sworn before Sir Elijah Impey; and though he said he might fairly throw them aside, and put them out of the question, on account of the indirect manner in which they were obtained, and the strange and irrelevant testimony they afforded, yet he would wave all objection to them on those grounds, and examine them with as much seriousness, as if they were correctly formal, and every way unexceptionable; they were all, he said, conceived in one spirit, and formed upon one plan. He then read the Affidavit of Mr. Middleton, and clearly pointed out how futile and presumptuous were the grounds upon which he had, to the satisfaction of his conscience, proceeded to the utmost extremity of violence against the Begums.
The God of Justice, exclaimed he, forbid that any man in this House should make up his mind to accuse Mr. Hastings on the ground that Mr. Middleton condemned the Begums.
He next animadverted on the depositions of Colonel Hannay, Colonel Gordon, Major M`Donald, Major Williams, and others, from which he struck out a variety of such brilliant detections as baffle memory to follow.
Amongst a variety of glaring circumstances he pointed out the following:
Major Williams, amidst other rumours, stated one that “he had heard:” That 50 British troops, watching 200 prisoners, had been surrounded by 6000 of the enemy, and must inevitably have fallen a sacrifice, if they had not been relieved by the approach of a detachment of nine men. With this assistance they had entirely driven away the enemy, and slain several hundreds of them. Considering the character given by Mr. H. to the British army in Oude, that they manifested a rage for rapacity and peculation; it was extraordinary that there were no instances of stouter swearing. Of Mr. M. he said, that he liked not the memory which remembered things better at the end of five years, than at the time, unless there might be something so relaxing in the climate of India, affecting the memory as well as the nerves, by which the traces of actions were lost; and that men must return to their native air of England and be braced up, and have their memories like their sinews, restrung.
Mr. Sheridan pointed out many other improbabilities, and having in very strong colours painted the loose quality of the affidavits, and clearly and incontrovertibly shewn the partiality and injustice, which was contained in them against the Begums, he solemnly appealed to that side of the House which was more peculiarly interested in law-proceedings. They saw that, that House was the path to fortune in their profession; that they might soon, and some of them were, to be called to a dignified situation, where the great and important trust would be reposed in them, of protecting the lives and properties of their fellow-subjects.
One learned gentleman in particular, was, if rumour spoke right, soon to be called to succeed that bright luminary of the law, whose sun he feared was setting, but whose departure from the seat of active justice was splendid and magnificent, in its being done while he possessed a mind on which time had not power to lay his hand: Of the learned Gentleman, the successor, he must say, that there was not one circumstance of his life, except perhaps his activity on an election contest, that did not distinguish him as a most proper person to fill the important seat. He desired to ask that learned Gentleman, and every other of the profession, would he lay his hand upon his breast, and solemnly declare, if upon such evidence as the mass of depositions taken at Lucknow, any one of them could venture to say that, sitting as a Judge, he would be legally warranted to convict any, the meanest individual of an offence, however trivial. If any one would say he could, he declared to God he would sit down, and not add a syllable more to the too long trespass he had made on the patience of the committee.
Here Mr. Sheridan craved the indulgence of the House (a general and loud cry of hear! hear!) whilst he for a moment enquired into the spirit and temper of the affidavits
, on which the ruin of the unfortunate Begums was founded. Colonel Gordon had exhibited a flagrantly conspicuous proof of the grateful spirit and temper of affidavits, designed to plunge these wretched women in irretrievable ruin. Colonel Gordon was but just before not merely released from danger, but preserved from imminent death. That gentleman was in the hands of the insurgents, and his release was entirely effected by the negociation of the Bhow Begum. Yet even at the expiration of two little days from his deliverance, he deposes against the distressed and unfortunate woman, who had become his saviour; and only upon hearsay evidence, accuses her of crimes and rebellion. Upon this occasion she manifested the strongest attachment to the English interest; for, in her private letters and dispatches to Colonel Hannay, she particularly desired that the Zemindars might not be informed of her interposition in favor of the Colonel: this was at once a bold and convincing proof of her unalterable attachment. Was this a proof of rebellion?
Great God of justice, (exclaimed the orator) canst thou from thy eternal throne look down upon such premeditated turpitude of heart, and not fix some dreadful mark of obloquy upon the perpetrators?
If, continues Mr. Sheridan, these affidavits, because they are a mere collection of hearsays, without a tittle of any thing like legal evidence in their composition, could not (as I am certain is the case) be received in a court of law, nor be brought forward in a court of equity, was it a species of evidence sufficient to justify a wanton act of oppression, of violence and gross injustice, committed against two princesses; the one the wife, the other the mother of the deceased Nabob Sujah ul Dowlah.
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 73
