The manner of disposing of the goods violently seized from the unfortunate Princesses, their jewels; their wearing apparel, their furniture even to their table utensils, though in significant objects when compared with other circumstances of their unhappy situation, was marked with injustice and oppression. — They were sold, or at least put up to sale, by auction — a pretended sale, where there were no bidders, who had not previously agreed on what they should purchase, and how much they should pay for dividing the spoil. This the Begum herself lamented in very affecting terms, in a representation to Mr. Middleton, when she says that she finds, from woeful experience, that even bullion, gold, and jewels, lose their value the moment it is known they come from her. But the rapacity of Middleton did not stop there, for after having thus fraudulently disposed of the goods, a new claim was made for the deficiency, and new cruelties were perpetrated to enforce the payment of a sum which did not constitute a part of the original fine. Attempts were made to find out new crimes and new debts due by the Nabob to the Company, though he had already offended to the amount of 600,000l. Mr. Hastings writes to Mr. Middleton not to come to a final settlement with the Nabob till he should consult his CASH-BOOK, which was the faithful record of the crimes of their allies, and in which he had already discovered 260,000l. worth of treason, that no person had ever before dreamed of. He accuses by the Multiplication Table, tries by the Rule of Three, and condemns, not by the sublime institute of Timur, or the simple maxims of English jurisprudence, but by the unerring rules of Cocker’s Arithmetic. — He then proceeded to animadvert on the testimony of Major Scott, whom he called the incomparable agent of Mr. Hastings. He had come to the bar, and said, that though the Defence of Mr. Hastings had not been drawn up by himself, yet there was one paragraph which he (Mr. Hastings) had written with his own proper hand. That paragraph was avowing the resumption of the Jaghires, and averring it to be consistent with the dictates of humanity, policy, and justice. “Give me the pen, said Mr. Hastings; “I will defend the measure as just and necessary. Do you find memory, I will find character!” And thus the twin warriors came into the field, each in his proper sphere of action, and armed for either purpose. Such had been the daring and unblushing defence of Mr. Hastings, for the commission of an act, on which their Lordships could have but one opinion. That it was not consistent with the dictates of justice, he appealed to those whose peculiar province it was to administer justice. Those of your Lordships, said be, who have been distinguished as Statesmen, will spurn at the idea of its being a measure that can be justified on the principles of good policy; and that it is not to be defended by the laws of humanity, he would appeal to that venerable part of the august tribunal who heard him — they who had ever proved themselves the distinguished advocates of religion and truth.
He now came to the recital of the cruelties perpetrated by the agents of Mr. Hastings, which he pledged himself to bring home to the bold culprit at the bar. The first act of their tyranny was the imprisonment of the Ministers of the Begums, who were persons of considerable eminence and distinction in that country, and who had enjoyed much of the confidence and favour of the late Nabob. Not satisfied with this, they were loaded with irons, and suffered the combined horrors of want, imprisonment, and ignominy; but what aggravated the scandalous injustice of this measure was, that they had suffered without even the formality of an enquiry, while that arch traitor, Shumshaw Cawn, though accused of disaffection to the English Government, was suffered to go about without notice; he had been so much neglected by those in power that he had not even been complimented with fetters, the usual badge of distinction, which it was the practice to bestow on opulent traitors. — To his poverty he owed his protection. — The unfortunate Ministers of the Begums not having yet satisfied the rapacity of these plunderers, were ordered to Chunar, where the English flag was flying as the signal of oppression, there to have corporal punishment inflicted on them, and one of them actually suffered it, to the disgrace of the honour, the justice, and humanity of the British nation. What must have been the feelings of the British officers upon that occasion, he must leave those to say who were present. To Major Gilpin he gave much praise, not only for the candid evidence he gave at the bar; but for his humane endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of the unhappy women, for they were the next objects of Mr. Middleton’s humanity. The conduct of Mr. Johnson was of a different kind, though he certainly had some claim to praise from his forbearance — he very humanely writes to Middleton that he did not think it would be worth while to put to death 2000 women and children for the purpose of enforcing prompt payment of their demands; but actuated by the fear of the dreadful responsibility under which Mr. Hastings had placed all his agents, they proceeded to carry his orders into execution, and took possession of the Palace. The sufferings of the women were pathetically described by Major Gilpin. In a letter dated the 30th October, 1782, he writes as follows: —
Last night, about eight o’clock, the women in the Khord Mohul, (Lesser Palace) or Zenana, (womens apartment under the charge of Latafut Ally Khan) assembled on the tops of the buildings, crying in a most lamentable manner for food; that for the last four days they had got but a very scanty allowance, and that yesterday they had got none. The melancholy cries of famine are more easily imagined than described. —
After such a description of calamity, he said, he would not trespass on the feelings of their Lordships by any comments on it. Their indignation against the author of those calamities rendered any further observations on that subject unnecessary. It was now for him to prove that Mr. Hastings was responsible for the actions of his agents. That he was responsible for the Treaty of Chunar, he believed, would scarcely be disputed — though Mr. Middleton had on the last day of his examination refused to answer some questions on that subject, lest it might criminate himself. With an avarice for infamy, and an anxious desire of monopolizing guilt, Mr. Middleton, when questioned about his conduct at Fyzabad, had answered that he alone was to blame, for Mr. Hastings had written an angry letter to him, disapproving of what he had done; but what, said he, will be your Lordships astonishment, when you are told that this letter from Mr. Hastings contained a gentle reproach to Mr. Middleton, not for his want of humanity, but for his lenity! Such was his anxiety to court infamy, and to solicit guilt, that he scrupled not to encounter ignominy when he might have claimed praise!
Mr. Hastings had urged in his defence, that as he was not privy to the actions, he could not be responsible for the guilt. This was not true. Mr. Hastings well knew what was going forward, though, perhaps, he might be unacquainted with the miserable detail. When a person in authority desires another to do an illegal act, he certainly is, to all intents and purposes, answerable for the consequences. He becomes the principal in the crime, though he might not be the actual perpetrator of it, and is considered, by every principle of natural law and natural reason, as the first object of punishment. What were the orders given by Mr. Hastings? They were peremptory — and it is proved by Middleton himself, that he could not have carried them into execution by any other means than those which had been adopted. Would any man then be hardy enough to assert, that Mr. Hastings was not in this instance answerable for the act of his agent? The communications of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton had been frequent and uninterrupted; though he must say they were more like the secret machinations of a banditti in a cavern, plotting the destruction of some innocent family. than the deliberations of British Representatives in India.
Mr. Middleton, however, had at least some regard to decorum on particular occasions, for, in answer to Mr. Hastings’s letter, accusing him of lenity and forbearance in the execution of his orders, he answers, “That the Nabob was son to the Begum whom we were to proceed against; — a son against his mother must at least save appearances in his mode of proceeding.” But Mr. Hastings all along pretends complete ignorance of the cruelties that were perpetrated, that is, he was ignorant of the exact number of lashes which were inflected, and the precise weight
of the iron which formed the fetters. — Such was the miserable sophistry by which he defended himself, though his guilt was the same as if he had with his own hand inflicted the punishment.
He then took notice of that part of Mr. Hastings’s defence, the object of which was to criminate the rest of the Board, or at least to prove that they were equally guilty with him. Had Sir John Macpherson then (of whose character he thought highly) no friend that would call him to the bar, to vindicate himself from so foul an aspersion? Was there nobody to do justice to the memory of Mr. Wheeler? For his own part, he was ready to acquit the Members of the Board from any share in the guilt of the black catalogue of Mr. Hastings’s crimes, though their agreeing to sign the dispatch to the Court of Directors, not one paragraph of which was true, was a very inexcusable, and even a criminal credulity. After commenting with great ingenuity and force of reasoning on the different paragraphs of the letter to the Court of Directors, with a view to prove that the whole was a fabrication, calculated solely to promote the views of Mr. Hastings, he said, he was convinced that Sir John Macpherson was now ashamed of his credulity, and would be glad of an opportunity of vindicating himself from the imputed guilt, of which Mr. Hastings had been anxious to give to the Board more than fell to their share.
The tyranny of Mr. Hastings, he said, was not to be reconciled to the common rules, nor could it be judged of by the common standard of tyrants. The atrocious cruelties of a Nero and a Caligula might be ascribed to the impetuosity of passions inflamed to madness, which knew no check, and which felt no correction. In their delirious career, they suffered no reflection to intervene, and they knew of no responsibility — they had no interval of remorse, no feeling of equality — they were born to rule, and they considered their subjects as creatures over whom they had a right to domineer. That such men, with turbulent, head-strong passions, should be tyrants, was not so wonderful as it was melancholy. But how different was the case of Mr. Hastings. He was a cool-thinking, deliberate tyrant. Born to no rule — entitled to no superiority — accustomed to converse, to act, and to live with his equals — bred in mercantile habits, which forced him to estimate on every measure — and entrusted by a mercantile Company with a government which was to be carried on by mercantile principles — Bound to give a faithful account of every transaction — and to expose not only the measure itself, but the motives that led to it — Who could never go to bed without discharging this duty — without balancing the transactions of the day — and reconciling his acts to justice and policy — Who held up, as it were, a glass rightly to his own conscience, and was bound to purge it. That such a man should become a tyrant, militated against every rational principle of man. — Yet here we saw the monster — a philosophical tyrant — a cool, deliberate, reasoning tyrant — who violated the rights of man, with a perfect consciousness of what those rights were — and who, endowed with the knowledge of the equal rank, as to freedom, granted by the Deity to human kind, arraigned the wisdom of Providence, by opposing its dispensations in favour of his species. A tyrant against man was a libeller of God — and the Court beheld in the prisoner a creature who had presumed to deface and disorder the beauty and harmony of that system which was originally granted by Heaven for the happiness of the earth.
Mr. Sheridan now drew to his conclusion. He said, their Lordships would not be surprized, if, after all that they had heard, he should think the cause for which he stood up perfectly safe, if he called on them to discharge from their minds all that they had heard of mere language, and only to attend to facts. A strict examination of the evidence would so fully and thoroughly convince them of the turpitude of the prisoner, that he wished to place the whole cause on that single ground, unornamented by eloquence, and unassisted by reasoning. One only passage more he should take notice of. — Mr. Hastings, in the moment when he stifled the pretended enquiry into the atrocious acts committed under his own authority, entered a minute of the most remarkable kind: —
If we cannot heal, let us not inflame the wounds which have been inflicted. If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to such a degree as to justify them in an appeal to a foreign jurisdiction, —
speaking of wounds inflicted by his own positive orders — and talking of a foreign jurisdiction, as if Sir Elijah Impey’s Court at Lucknow had not been a foreign jurisdiction, —
let us at least permit them to be the judges of their own feelings, and prefer their complaints before we offer to redress them. —
But now came the magnificent paragraph, to which he requested their Lordships attention: —
I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity of official language, in saying, the majesty of Justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs, and the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishments, before trial, and even before accusation. —
This strutting and pompous apology for not listening to the voice of real justice and mercy, he was very much surprised to find had met the approbation of Sir John Macpherson, of whose good sense and understanding he had heard a good report, but who, by the minute which he added, proved that he had not studied and corrected his taste for the sublime and beautiful from the immortal leader of this prosecution. If he dad done so, he would have felt and treated this passage as it deserved — as a piece of bombastic jargon, unworthy of the sober approbation of the understanding. The Majesty of Justice, in the eyes of Mr. Hastings, was a being of terrific horror — a dreadful idol placed in the gloom of graves, accessible only to cringing supplication, and which must be approached with offerings, and worshipped by sacrifice. The majesty of Mr. Hastings was a being whose decrees were written with blood, and whose oracles were at once obscure and terrible. From such an idol (exclaims Mr. Sheridan) I turn my eyes with horror — I turn them here to this dignified and high tribunal, where the Majesty of Justice really sits enthroned. — Here I perceive the Majesty of Justice in her proper robes of truth and mercy — chaste and simple — accessible and patient — awful without severity — inquisitive without meanness. — I see her enthroned and sitting in judgment on a great and momentous cause, in which the happiness of millions is involved. — Pardon me, my Lords, if I presume to say, that in the decision of this great cause you are to be envied, as well as venerated. You possess the highest distinction of the human character; for when you render your ultimate voice on this cause, illustrating the dignity of the ancestors from whom you spring — justifying the solemn asseveration which you make — vindicating the people of whom you are a part — and manifesting the intelligence of the times in which you live — you will do such an act of mercy and blessing to man, as no men but yourselves are able to grant.
My Lords, I have done!
FINIS.
SPEECH OF MR. SHERIDAN, IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON FRIDAY THE 21ST OF APRIL, 1798, ON THE MOTION TO ADDRESS HIS MAJESTY, ON THE PRESENT ALARMING STATE OF AFFAIRS.
MR. SHERIDAN rose and said: “I trust, Sir, that it will be impossible for any man who views the situation of the country at this moment, to conceive that I rise to oppose any part of the present Address. Undoubtedly, if I had been present upon a former occasion, when the Right Honourable and Learned Gentleman brought in his Bill for the better defence of the country, tho’ I might have excepted to particular passages, I should certainly have given it my most cordial and zealous support: and in doing so I beg to have it understood, that in the main points of it, I do not consider it as having conferred any new powers upon the Crown. Sir, I trust there is no man who does not know that in cases of peril out of the ordinary course and contemplation of the law, the King is armed with full powers to call out the whole energy of the kingdom. In domestic outrages, this is in the power of a common constable; undoubtedly then it is not supposed by the Constitution, that in the danger and apprehension of a foreign invasion the King is to be a mere looker on. In that respect, therefore, I think that whatever service any man may give, he will do no more
than he is bound by his allegiance to do. But what I wish superadded to this is, to see a superior zeal to animate the country; a zeal which it is not in the power of any Minister to call forth.
Sir, in times like these, a common spirit will not do; and when I say that I wish to see a superior spirit animate the country, I rejoice to say that I do see it rising: yet at the same time I must also say, that there is a sort of supineness and apathy I admit, which I hope and trust this House will supply. All society is interested in the subject of an invasion; it is a topic of universal conversation and curiosity; but, really there are those who consider it as a strange phaenomenon which they may wonder at, but which they have no business with: they seem to wait for it as a shew, rather than dread it as a peril. And, Sir, this does not proceed from disaffection or disloyalty, from want of good will, or from attachment to the enemy, much less does it proceed from any sullenness, or resentment of wrongs and injuries which they may feel; but from a sort of supineness and apathy, which makes them not sufficiently alive and awake to the real danger that surrounds us. Sir, symptoms of this supineness appeared, I am sorry to say, in the voluntary subscriptions. I confess for one, that I was a friend to that measure; and I hope the House will not think it arises from any vanity, that I call their attention to the motion which I then made.
I moved, Sir, after having recommended the voluntary subscriptions without any Bill, in order to give the country an opportunity for doing this, for giving a practical pledge, for shewing that upon this one subject at least they would be unanimous and cordial, I moved, Sir, the suspension of the Assessed Tax Bill for one month. I should be sorry, indeed, that any men who had voted with me upon that question, should afterwards revile the measure as a begging box; for what sort of consistency would mine be, of recommending the suspension of the Assessed Tax Bill, if I should immediately turn back, and call it a begging box of the Ministers: — I should be sorry, I say, to think that any such language should have been made use of; I wished the measure of voluntary contributions to be tried without the Bill, because I wished it as a practical pledge and proof of the zeal and spirit of the country. At present, however, no inference is to be made from the names of persons who contributed to the assessed taxed, not appearing in that list.
Delphi Complete Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan Page 85
