Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  V. That on the day after the receipt of this letter, that is, on the 28th August, 1779, he, the said Warren Hastings, made a reply to the said letter; and without any remark whatsoever on the allegation of the Rajah, stating to him his engagement, that he, the said Rajah, should not be called upon in future, he says, “I now repeat my demand, that you do, on the receipt of this, without evasion or delay, pay the five lac of rupees into the hands of Mr. Thomas Graham, who has orders to receive it from you, and, in case of your refusal, to summon the two battalions of sepoys under the command of Major Camac to Benares, that measures may be taken to oblige you to a compliance; and in this case, the whole expense of the corps, from the time of its march, will fall on you.”

  VI. That the said Rajah did a second and third time represent to the said Warren Hastings that he had broke his promise, and the said Hastings did in no manner deny the same, but did, in contempt thereof, as well as of the original treaty between the Company and the Rajah, order two battalions of troops to march into his territories, and in a manner the most harsh, insulting, and despotic, as if to provoke that prince to some act of resistance, did compel him to the payment of the said second unjust demand; and did extort also the sum of two thousand pounds, on pretence of the charge of the troops employed to coerce him.

  VII. That the third year, that is to say, in the year 1780, the same demand was, with the same menaces, renewed, and did, as before, produce several humble remonstrances and submissive complaints, which the said Hastings did always treat as crimes and offences of the highest order; and although in the regular subsidy or tribute, which was monthly payable by treaty, fifty days of grace were allowed on each payment, and after the expiration of the said fifty days one quarter par cent only was provided as a penalty, he, the said Warren Hastings, on some short delay of payment of his third arbitrary and illegal demand, did presume of his own authority to impose a fine or mulct of ten thousand pounds on the said Rajah; and though it does not appear whether or no the same was actually levied, the said threat was soon after followed by an order from the said Hastings for the march of troops into the country of Benares, as in the preceding year.

  VIII. That, these violent and insulting measures failing to provoke the Rajah, and he having paid up the whole demand, the said Warren Hastings, being resolved to drive him to extremities, did make on the said Rajah a sudden demand, over and above the ordinary tribute or subsidy of 260,000l. per annum, and over and above the 50,000l. extraordinary, to provide a body of cavalry for the service of the Bengal government.

  IX. The demand, as expressed in the Minute of Consultation, and in the public instructions of the board to the Resident to make the requisition, is “for such part of the cavalry entertained in his service as he can spare”; and the demand is in this and in no other manner described by the Governor-General and Council in their letter to the Court of Directors. But in a Narrative of the said Warren Hastings’s, addressed to Edward Wheler, Esquire, it appears, that, upon the Rajah’s making difficulties, according to the representation of the said Hastings, relative to the said requisition, the correspondence concerning which the said Hastings hath fraudulently suppressed, he, the said Hastings, instead of adhering to the requisition of such cavalry as the Rajah could spare, and which was all that by the order of Council he was authorized to make, did, of his own private and arbitrary authority, in some letter which he hath suppressed, instruct the Resident, Markham, to make a peremptory demand for two thousand cavalry, which he well knew to be more than the Rajah’s finances could support, estimating the provision for the same at 96,000l. a year at the lowest, though the expense of the same would probably have been much more: which extravagant demand the said Hastings could only have made in hopes of provoking the Rajah to some imprudent measure or passionate remonstrance. And this arbitrary demand of cavalry was made, and peremptorily insisted on, although in the original treaty with the said Rajah it was left entirely optional whether or not he should keep up any cavalry at all, and in the Minute of Consultation it was expressly mentioned to be thus optional, and that for whatsoever cavalry he, the said Rajah, should furnish, he should be paid fifteen rupees per month for each private, and so in proportion for officers: yet the demand aforesaid was made without any offer whatsoever of providing the said payment according to treaty.

  X. That the said Hastings did soon after, but upon what grounds does not appear by any Minute of Council, or from any correspondence contained in his Narrative, reduce the demand to fifteen hundred, and afterwards to one thousand: by which he showed himself to be sensible of the extravagance of his first requisition.

  XI. That, in consequence of these requisitions, as he asserts in his Narrative aforesaid, the Rajah “did offer two hundred and fifty horse, but sent none.” But the said Hastings doth not accompany his said Narrative with any voucher or document whatever; and therefore the account given by the Rajah, and delivered to the said Warren Hastings himself, inserted by the said Warren Hastings himself in his Narrative, and in no part thereof attempted to be impeached, is more worthy of credit: that is to say, —

  “With respect to the horse, you desired me in your letter to inform you of what number I could afford to station with you. I sent you a particular account of all that were in my service, amounting to one thousand three hundred horse, of which several were stationed at distant places; but I received no answer to this. Mr. Markham delivered me an order to prepare a thousand horse. In compliance with your wishes I collected five hundred horse, and a substitute for the remainder, five hundred burkundasses [matchlock-men], of which I sent you information; and I told Mr. Markham that they were ready to go to whatever place they should be sent. No answer, however, came from you on this head, and I remained astonished at the cause of it. Repeatedly I asked Mr. Markham about an answer to my letter about the horse; but he told me that he did not know the reason of no answer having been sent. I remained astonished.”

  XII. That the said Hastings is guilty of an high offence in not giving an answer to letters of such importance, and in concealing the said letters from the Court of Directors, as well as much of his correspondence with the Residents, — and more particularly in not directing to what place the cavalry and matchlock-men aforesaid should be sent, when the Rajah had declared they were ready to go to whatever service should be destined for them, and afterwards in maliciously accusing the Rajah for not having sent the same.

  XIII. That, on the 3d of February, 1781, a new demand for the support of the three fictitious battalions of sepoys aforesaid was made by the said Warren Hastings; but whilst the Rajah was paying by instalments the said arbitrary demand, the said Rajah was alarmed with some intelligence of secret projects on foot for his ruin, and, being well apprised of the malicious and revengeful temper of the said Hastings, in order to pacify him, if possible, offered to redeem himself by a large ransom, to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds sterling, to be paid for the use of the Company. And it appears that the said alarm was far from groundless; for Major Palmer, one of the secret and confidential agents of the said Hastings, hath sworn, on the 4th of December, 1781, at the desire of the said Warren Hastings, before Sir Elijah Impey, to the following effect, that is to say: “That the said Warren Hastings had told him, the said Palmer, that he, the said Hastings, had rejected the offer of two hundred thousand pounds made by the Rajah of Benares for the public service, and that he was resolved to convert the faults committed by the Rajah into a public benefit, and would exact the sum of five hundred thousand pounds, as a punishment for his breach of engagements with the government of Bengal, and acts of misconduct in his zemindary; and if the Rajah should absolutely refuse the demand, that he would deprive him of his zemindary, or transfer the sovereignty thereof to the Nabob of Oude.”

  XIV. And Mr. Anderson, in his declaration from Sindia’s camp, of the 4th of January, 1782, did also, at the desire of Mr. Hastings, depose (though not on oath) concerning a conversation between him and the said Hastings (but mentioning nei
ther the time nor place where the same was held); in which conversation, after reciting the allegations of the said Hastings relative to several particulars of the delay and backwardness of the Rajah in paying the aforesaid extra demand, and his resolution to exact from the Rajah “a considerable sum of money to the relief of the Company’s exigencies,” he proceeds in the following words: “That, if he [the Rajah] consented, you [the said Warren Hastings] were desirous of establishing his possessions on the most permanent and eligible footing; but if he refused, you had it in your power to raise a large sum for the Company by accepting an offer which had been made for his districts by the Vizier.” And the said Anderson, in the declaration aforesaid, made at the request of the said Hastings, and addressed to him, expressed himself as follows: “That you told me you had communicated our designs to Mr. Wheler [his only remaining colleague]; and I believe, but I do not positively recollect, you said he concurred in them.” But no trace of any such communication or concurrence did, at the time referred to, or at any time ever after, appear on the Consultations, as it ought to have done; and the said Hastings is criminal for having omitted to enter and record the proceeding. That the said Wheler did also declare, but a considerable time after the date of the conversations aforesaid, that, “on the eve of the Governor-General’s departure, the said Hastings had told him that the Rajah’s offences (not stating what offences, he having paid up all the demands, ordinary and extraordinary) were declared to require early punishment; and as his wealth was great, and the Company’s exigencies pressing, it was thought a measure of policy and of justice to exact from him a large pecuniary mulct for their relief. The sum to which the Governor declared his resolution to extend the fine was forty or fifty lacs; his ability to pay it was stated as a fact that could not admit of a doubt; and the two alternatives on which the Governor declared himself to have resolved were, to the best of my recollection, either a removal from his zemindary entirely, or, by taking immediate possession of all his forts, to obtain out of the treasure deposited in them the above sum for the Company.”

  XV. That in the declaration of the said Wheler the time of the conversation aforesaid is stated to be on the eve of the Governor’s departure, and then said to be confidential; nor is it said or insinuated that he knew or ever heard thereof at a more early period, though it appears by Major Palmer’s affidavit that the design of taking, not four or five, but absolutely five, hundred thousand pounds from the Rajah, was communicated to him as early as the month of June. And it does not appear by the declarations of the said Wheler he did ever casually or officially approve of the measure; which long concealment and late communication, time not being allowed to his colleague to consider the nature and consequences of such a project, or to advise any precaution concerning the same, is a high misdemeanor.

  XVI. That the said Hastings, having formed a resolution to execute one of the three violent and arbitrary resolutions aforesaid, — namely, to sell the Company’s sovereignty over Benares to the Nabob of Oude, or to dispossess the Rajah of his territories, or to seize upon his forts, and to plunder them of the treasure therein contained, to the amount of four or five hundred thousand pounds, — did reject the offer of two hundred thousand pounds, tendered by the said Rajah for his redemption from the injuries which he had discovered that the said Hastings had clandestinely meditated against him, although the sum aforesaid would have been a considerable and seasonable acquisition at that time: the said Hastings being determined, at a critical period, to risk the existence of the British empire, rather than fail in the gratification of his revenge against the said Rajah.

  XVII. That the first of his three instituted projects, namely, the depriving the Rajah of his territories, was by himself considered as a measure likely to be productive of much odium to the British government: he having declared, whatever opinions he might entertain of its justice, “that it would have an appearance of severity, and might furnish grounds unfavorable to the credit of our government, and to his own reputation, from the natural influence which every act of rigor, exercised in the persons of men in elevated situations, is apt to impress on those who are too remote from the scene of action to judge, by any evidence of the facts themselves, of their motives or propriety.” And the second attempt, the sum of money which he aimed at by attacking the fortresses of the Rajah, and plundering them of the treasure supposed to be there secured, besides the obvious uncertainty of acquiring what was thus sought, would be liable to the same imputations with the former. And with regard to the third project, namely, the sale of the Company’s sovereignty to the Nabob of Oude, and his having actually received proposals for the same, it was an high offence to the Company, as presuming, without their authority or consent, to put up to sale their sovereign rights, and particularly to put them up to sale to that very person against whom the independence of the said province had been declared by the Governor-General and Council to be necessary, as a barrier for the security of the other provinces, in case of a future rupture with him. It was an heinous injury to the said Rajah to attempt to change his relation without his consent, especially on account of the person to whom he was to be made over for money, by reason of the known enmity subsisting between his family and that of the Nabob, who was to be the purchaser; and it was a grievous outrage on the innocent inhabitants of the zemindary of Benares to propose putting them under a person long before described by himself to the Court of Directors “to want the qualities of the head and heart requisite for his station”; and a letter from the British Resident at Oude, transmitted to the said Court, represents him “to have wholly lost, by his oppressions, the confidence and affections of his own subjects”; and whose distresses, and the known disorders in his government, he, the said Hastings, did attribute solely to his own bad conduct and evil character; admitting also, in a letter written to Edward Wheler, Esquire, and transmitted to the Court of Directors, “that many circumstances did favor suspicion of his [the said Nabob’s] fidelity to the English interest, the Nabob being surrounded by men base in their characters and improvident in their understandings, his favorites, and his companions of his looser hours. These had every cause to dread the effect of my influence on theirs; and both these, and the relations of the family, whose views of consequence and power were intercepted by our participation in the administration of his affairs, entertained a mortal hatred to our nation, and openly avowed it.” And the said Hastings was well aware, that, in case the Nabob, by him described in the manner aforesaid, on making such purchase, should continue to observe the terms of his father’s original covenants and engagements with the Rajah, and should pay the Company the only tribute which he could lawfully exact from the said Rajah, it was impossible that he could, for the mere naked and unprofitable rights of a sovereignty paramount, afford to offer so great a sum as the Rajah did offer to the said Hastings for his redemption from oppression; such an acquisition to the Nabob (while he kept his faith) could not possibly be of any advantage whatever to him; and that therefore, if a great sum was to be paid by the Nabob of Oude, it must be for the purpose of oppression and violation of public faith, to be perpetrated in the person of the said Nabob, to an extent and in a manner which the said Hastings was then apprehensive he could not justify to the Court of Directors as his own personal act.

  PART III. EXPULSION OF THE RAJAH OF BENARES.

  I. That the said Warren Hastings, being resolved on the ruin of the Rajah aforesaid, as a preliminary step thereto, did, against the express orders of the Court of Directors, remove Francis Fowke, Esquire, the Company’s Resident at the city of Benares, without any complaint or pretence of complaint whatsoever, but merely on his own declaration that he must have as a Resident at Benares a person of his own special and personal nomination and confidence, and not a man of the Company’s nomination, — and in the place of the said Francis Fowke, thus illegally divested of his office, did appoint thereto another servant of the Company of his own choice.

  II. That, soon after he had removed the Comp
any’s Resident, he prepared for a journey to the upper provinces, and particularly to Benares, in order to execute the wicked and perfidious designs by him before meditated and contrived: and although he did communicate his purpose privately to such persons as he thought fit to intrust therewith, he did not enter anything on the Consultations to that purpose, or record the principles, real or pretended, on which he had resolved to act, nor did he state any guilt in the Rajah which he intended to punish, or charge him, the said Rajah, with entertaining any hostile intentions, the effects of which were to be prevented by any strong measure; but, on the contrary, he did industriously conceal his real designs from the Court of Directors, and did fallaciously enter on the Consultations a minute declaratory of purposes wholly different therefrom, and which supposed nothing more than an amicable adjustment, founded on the treaties between the Company and the Rajah, investing himself by his said minute with “full power and authority to form such arrangements with the Rajah of Benares for the better government and management of his zemindary, and to perform such acts for the improvement of the interest which the Company possesses in it, as he shall think fit and consonant to the mutual engagements subsisting between the Company and the Rajah”; and for this and other purposes he did invest himself with the whole power of the Council, giving to himself an authority as if his acts had been the acts of the Council itself: which, though a power of a dangerous, unwarrantable, and illegal extent, yet does plainly imply the following limits, namely, that the acts done should be arranged with the Rajah, that is, with his consent; and, secondly, that they should be consonant to the actual engagements between the parties; and nothing appears in the minute conferring the said power, which did express or imply any authority for depriving the Rajah of his government, or selling the sovereignty thereof to his hereditary enemy, or for the plunder of his fort-treasures.