Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  In other parts of this long remonstrance, as well as in other remonstrances no less serious, he says, “that it is difficult for him to save himself alive; that in all his affairs Mr. Hastings had given full powers to the gentlemen here,” (meaning the English Resident and Assistants,) “who have done whatever they chose, and still continue to do it. I never expected that you would have brought me into such apprehension, and into so weak a state, without writing to me on any one of those subjects; since I have not the smallest connection with anybody except yourself. I am in such distress, both day and night, that I see not the smallest prospect of deliverance from it, since you are so displeased with me as not to honor me with a single letter.”

  In another remonstrance he thus expresses himself. “The affairs of this world are unstable, and soon pass away: it would therefore be incumbent on the English gentlemen to show some friendship for me in my necessities, — I, who have always exerted my very life in the service of the English, assigned over to them all the resources left in my country, stopped my very household expenses, together with the jaghires of my servants and dependants, to the amount of 98,98,375 rupees. Besides this, as to the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and uncle, which were granted to them for their support, agreeable to engagements, you are the masters, — if the Council have sent orders for the stopping their jaghires also, stop them. I have no resources left in my country, and have no friends by me, being even distressed in my daily subsistence. I have some elephants, horses, and the houses which I inhabit: if they can be of any service to my friends, they are ready. Whenever you can discover any resources, seize upon them: I shall not interfere to prevent you. In my present distress for my daily expenses, I was in hopes that they would have excused some part of my debt. Of what use is it for me to relate my situation, which is known to the whole world? This much is sufficient.”

  The truth of all these representations is nowhere contested by Mr. Hastings. It is, indeed, admitted in something stronger than words; for, upon account of the Nabob’s condition, and the no less distressed condition of his dominions, he thought it fit to withdraw from him and them a large body of the Company’s troops, together with all the English of a civil description, who were found no less burdensome than the military. This was done on the declared inability of the country any longer to support them, — a country not much inferior to England in extent and fertility, and, till lately at least, its equal in population and culture.

  It was to a prince, in a state so far remote from freedom, authority, and opulence, so penetrated with the treatment he had received, and the behavior he had met with from Mr. Hastings, that Mr. Hastings has chosen to attribute a disposition so very generous and munificent as, of his own free grace and mere motion, to make him a present, at one donation, of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds sterling. This vast private donation was given at the moment of vast instant demands severely exacted on account of the Company, and accumulated on immense debts to the same body, — and all taken from a ruined prince and almost desolated territory.

  Mr. Hastings has had the firmness, with all possible ease and apparent unconcern, to request permission from the Directors to legalize this forbidden present for his own use. This he has had the courage to do at a time when he had abundant reason to look for what he has since received, — their censure for many material parts of his conduct towards the people from whose wasted substance this pretended free gift was drawn. He does not pretend that he has reason to expect the smallest degree of partiality, in this or any other point, from the Court of Directors. For, besides his complaint, first stated, of having never possessed their confidence, in a late letter (in which, notwithstanding the censures of Parliament, he magnifies his own conduct) he says, that, in all the long period of his service, “he has almost unremittedly wanted the support which all his predecessors had enjoyed from their constituents. From mine,” says he, “I have received nothing but reproach, hard epithets, and indignities, instead of rewards and encouragement.” It must therefore have been from some other source of protection than that which the law had placed over him that he looked for countenance and reward in violating an act of Parliament which forbid him from taking gifts or presents on any account whatsoever, — much less a gift of this magnitude, which, from the distress of the giver, must be supposed the effect of the most cruel extortion.

  The Directors did wrong in their orders to appropriate money, which they must know could not have been acquired by the consent of the pretended donor, to their own use. They acted more properly in refusing to confirm this grant to Mr. Hastings, and in choosing rather to refer him to the law which he had violated than to his own sense of what he thought he was entitled to take from the natives: putting him in mind that the Regulating Act had expressly declared “that no Governor-General, or any of the Council, shall, directly or indirectly, accept, receive, or take, of or from any person or persons, or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any of the aforesaid.” Here is no reserve for the case of a disclosure to the Directors, and for the legalizing the breach of an act of Parliament by their subsequent consent. The illegality attached to the action at its very commencement, and it could never be afterwards legalized: the Directors had no such power reserved to them. Words cannot be devised of a stronger import or studied with more care. To these words of the act are opposed the declaration and conduct of Mr. Hastings, who, in his letter of January, 1782, thinks fit to declare, that “an offer of a very considerable sum of money was made to him, both on the part of the Nabob and his ministers, as a present, which he accepted without hesitation.” The plea of his pretended necessity is of no avail. The present was not in ready money, nor, as your Committee conceive, applicable to his immediate necessities. Even his credit was not bettered by bills at long periods; he does not pretend that he raised any money upon them; nor is it conceivable that a banker at Benares would be more willing to honor the drafts of so miserable, undone, and dependent a person as the Nabob of Oude than those of the Governor-General of Bengal, which might be paid either on the receipt of the Benares revenue, or at the seat of his power, and of the Company’s exchequer. Besides, it is not explicable, upon any grounds that can be avowed, why the Nabob, who could afford to give these bills as a present to Mr. Hastings, could not have equally given them in discharge of the debt which he owed to the Company. It is, indeed, very much to be feared that the people of India find it sometimes turn more to their account to give presents to the English in authority than to pay their debts to the public; and this is a matter of a very serious consideration.

  No small merit is made by Mr. Hastings, and that, too, in a high and upbraiding style, of his having come to a voluntary discovery of this and other unlawful practices of the same kind. “That honorable court,” says Mr. Hastings, addressing himself to his masters, in his letter of December, 1782, “ought to know whether I possess the integrity and honor which are the first requisites of such a station. If I wanted these, they have afforded me too powerful incentives to suppress the information which I now convey to them through you, and to appropriate to my own use the sums which I have already passed to their credit, by their unworthy, and pardon me if I add dangerous reflections, which they have passed upon me for the first communication of this kind”; and he immediately adds, what is singular and striking, and savors of a recriminatory insinuation, “and your own experience will suggest to you that there are persons who would profit by such a warning.” To what Directors in particular this imputation of experience is applied, and what other persons they are in whom experience has shown a disposition to profit of such a warning, is a matter highly proper to be inquired into. What Mr. Hastings says further on this subject is no less worthy of attention:— “that he could have concealed these transactions, if he had a wrong motive, from theirs and the public eye forever.” It is undoubtedly true, that, whether the observation be applicable to the particular case
or not, practices of this corrupt nature are extremely difficult of detection anywhere, but especially in India; but all restraint upon that grand fundamental abuse of presents is gone forever, if the servants of the Company can derive safety from a defiance of the law, when they can no longer hope to screen themselves by an evasion of it. All hope of reformation is at an end, if, confiding in the force of a faction among Directors or proprietors to bear them out, and possibly to vote them the fruit of their crimes as a reward of their discovery, they find that their bold avowal of their offences is not only to produce indemnity, but to be rated for merit. If once a presumption is admitted, that, wherever something is divulged, nothing is hid, the discovering of one offence may become the certain means of concealing a multitude of others. The contrivance is easy and trivial, and lies open to the meanest proficient in this kind of art; it will not only become an effectual cover to such practices, but will tend infinitely to increase them. In that case, sums of money will be taken for the purpose of discovery and making merit with the Company, and other sums will be taken for the private advantage of the receiver.

  It must certainly be impossible for the natives to know what presents are for one purpose, or what for the other. It is not for a Gentoo or a Mahometan landholder at the foot of the remotest mountains in India, who has no access to our records and knows nothing of our language, to distinguish what lacs of rupees, which he has given eo nomine as a present to a Company’s servant, are to be authorized by his masters in Leadenhall Street as proper and legal, or carried to their public account at their pleasure, and what are laid up for his own emolument.

  The legislature, in declaring all presents to be the property of the Company, could not consider corruption, extortion, and fraud as any part of their resources. The property in such presents was declared to be theirs, not as a fund for their benefit, but in order to found a legal title to a civil suit. It was declared theirs, to facilitate the recovery out of corrupt and oppressive hands of money illegally taken; but this legal fiction of property could not nor ought by the legislature to be considered in any other light than as a trust held by them for those who suffered the injury. Upon any other construction, the Company would have a right, first, to extract money from the subjects or dependants of this kingdom committed to their care, by means of particular conventions, or by taxes, by rents, and by monopolies; and when they had exhausted every contrivance of public imposition, then they were to be at liberty to let loose upon the people all their servants, from the highest rank to the lowest, to prey upon them at pleasure, and to draw, by personal and official authority, by influence, venality, and terror, whatever was left to them, — and that all this was justified, provided the product was paid into the Company’s exchequer.

  This prohibition and permission of presents, with this declaration of property in the Company, would leave no property to any man in India. If, however, it should be thought that this clause in the act should be capable, by construction and retrospect, of so legalizing and thus appropriating these presents, (which your Committee conceive impossible,) it is absolutely necessary that it should be very fully explained.

  The provision in the act was made in favor of the natives. If such construction prevails, the provision made as their screen from oppression will become the means of increasing and aggravating it without bounds and beyond remedy. If presents, which when they are given were unlawful, can afterwards be legalized by an application of them to the Company’s service, no sufferer can even resort to a remedial process at law for his own relief. The moment he attempts to sue, the money may be paid into the Company’s treasury; it is then lawfully taken, and the party is non-suited.

  The Company itself must suffer extremely in the whole order and regularity of their public accounts, if the idea upon which Mr. Hastings justifies the taking of these presents receives the smallest countenance. On his principles, the same sum may become private property or public, at the pleasure of the receiver; it is in his power, Mr. Hastings says, to conceal it forever. He certainly has it in his power not only to keep it back and bring it forward at his own times, but even to shift and reverse the relations in the accounts (as Mr. Hastings has done) in what manner and proportion seems good to him, and to make himself alternately debtor or creditor for the same sums.

  Of this irregularity Mr. Hastings himself appears in some degree sensible. He conceives it possible that his transactions of this nature may to the Court of Directors seem unsatisfactory. He, however, puts it hypothetically: “If to you,” says he, “who are accustomed to view business in an official and regular light, they should appear unprecedented, if not improper.” He just conceives it possible that in an official money transaction the Directors may expect a proceeding official and regular. In what other lights than those which are official and regular matters of public account ought to be regarded by those who have the charge of them, either in Bengal or in England, does not appear to your Committee. Any other is certainly “unprecedented and improper,” and can only serve to cover fraud both in the receipt and in the expenditure. The acquisition of 58,000 rupees, or near 6000l., which appears in the sort of unofficial and irregular account that he furnishes of his presents, in his letter of May, 1782, must appear extraordinary indeed to those who expect from men in office something official and something regular. “This sum,” says he, “I received while I was on my journey to Benares.” He tells it with the same careless indifference as if things of this kind were found by accident on the high-road.

  Mr. Hastings did not, indeed he could not, doubt that this unprecedented and improper account would produce much discussion. He says, “Why these sums were taken by me, why they were (except the second) quietly transferred to the Company’s account, why bonds were taken for the first and not for the rest, might, were this matter to be exposed to the view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures.”

  This matter has appeared, and has furnished, as it ought to do, something more serious than conjectures. It would in any other case be supposed that Mr. Hastings, expecting such inquiries, and considering that the questions are (even as they are imperfectly stated by himself) far from frivolous, would condescend to give some information upon them; but the conclusion of a sentence so importantly begun, and which leads to such expectations, is, “that to these conjectures it would be of little use to reply.” This is all he says to public conjecture.

  To the Court of Directors he is very little more complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was never done before.

  “Were your Honorable Court to question me upon these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company’s benefit, at times in which the Company very much stood in need of them; that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory could at this distance of time verify.”

  He here professes not to be certain of the motives by which he was himself actuated in so extraordinary a concealment, and in the use of such extraordinary means to effect it; and as if the acts in question were those of an absolute stranger, and not his own, he gives various loose conjectures concerning the motive to them. He even supposes, in taking presents contrary to law, and in taking bonds for them as his own, contrary to what he admits to be truth and fact, that he might have acted without any distinct motive at all, or at least such as his memory could reach at that distance of time. That immense distance, in the faintness of which his recollection is so completely lost as to set him guessing at his motives for his own conduct, was from the 15th of January, 1781, when the bonds at his own request were given, to the date of this letter, which is the 22d
of May, 1782, — that is to say, about one year and four months.

  As to the other sums, for which no bond was taken, the ground for the difference in his explanation is still more extraordinary: he says, “I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest.” The rest of these sums, which were not worth his care, are stated in his account to be greater than those he was so solicitous (for some reason which he cannot guess) to cover under bonds: these sums amount to near 53,000l.; whereas the others did not much exceed 40,000l. For these actions, attended with these explanations, he ventures to appeal to their (the Directors’) breasts for a candid interpretation, and “he assumes the freedom to add, that he thinks himself, on such a subject, and on such an occasion, entitled to it”; and then, as if he had performed some laudable exploit, in the accompanying letter he glories in the integrity of his conduct; and anticipating his triumph over injustice, and the applauses which at a future time he seems confident he shall receive, says he, “The applause of my own breast is my surest reward: your applause and that of my country is my next wish in life.” He declares in that very letter that he had not at any time possessed the confidence with them which they never withheld from the meanest of his predecessors. With wishes so near his heart perpetually disappointed, and, instead of applauses, (as he tells us,) receiving nothing but reproaches and disgraceful epithets, his steady continuance for so many years in their service, in a place obnoxious in the highest degree to suspicion and censure, is a thing altogether singular.