Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  VII. That, on the said Warren Hastings’s representation of the transaction aforesaid to the Court of Directors, they did heavily and justly censure the said Warren Hastings for the same, and did convey their censure to him, recommending relief to the suffering prince, but without any order for sending a new Resident: being, as it may be supposed, prevented from taking that step by the faith of the treaty made at Chunar.

  VIII. That all the oppressions foreseen by him, the said Warren Hastings, when he made the article aforesaid in the treaty of Chunar, did actually happen: for, immediately on the removal of the British Resident, the country of Furruckabad was subjected to the discretion of a certain native manager of revenue, called Almas Ali Khân, who did impoverish and oppress the country and insult the prince, and did deprive him of all subsistence from his own estates, — taking from him even his gardens and the tombs of his ancestors, and the funds for maintaining the same.

  IX. That, on complaint of those proceedings, the said Hastings did of his own authority, and without communicating with his Council, direct the native collector aforesaid to be removed, and the territory of Furruckabad to be left to the sole management of its natural prince. But in a short time the said Hastings, pretending to receive many complaints purporting that the tribute to the Nabob remained wholly unpaid, and the agent to the prince of Furruckabad at the Presidency, and afterwards chief manager to the prince aforesaid, having, as the said Warren Hastings saith, “had the insolence to propagate a report that the interference to which his master owed the power he then enjoyed was purchased through him,” he, the said Hastings, did again (but, as before, without the Council) “withdraw his protection and interference altogether,” on or about the month of August, 1782, and did signify his resolution, through the Resident, Middleton, to the Nabob Vizier. But the said Hastings asserts that “the consequence of this his own second dereliction of the prince of Furruckabad was an aggravated renewal of the severities exercised against his government, and the reappointment of a sezauwil, with powers delegated or assumed, to the utter extinction of the rights of Muzuffer Jung, and actually depriving him of the means of subsistence.” And the said Hastings did receive, on the 16th of February, 1783, from the prince aforesaid, a bitter complaint of the same to the following tenor.

  “The miseries which have fallen upon my country, and the poverty and distress which have been heaped upon me by the reappointment of the sezauwil, are such, that a relation of them would, I am convinced, excite the strongest feelings of compassion in your breast. But it is impossible to relate them: on one side, my country ruined and uncultivated to a degree of desolation which exceeds all description; on the other, my domestic concerns and connections involved in such a state of distress and horror, that even the relations, the children, and the wives of my father are starving in want of daily bread, and are on the point of flying voluntary exiles from their country and from each other.”

  But although the said Hastings did, on the 16th of February, receive and admit the justice of the said complaint, and did not deny the urgent necessity of redress, the said letter containing the following sentence, “If there should be any delay in your acceptance of this proposal, my existence and the existence of my family will become difficult and doubtful,” — and although he did admit the interference to be the more urgently demanded, “as the services of the English troops have been added to enforce the authority of the sezauwil,” — and although he admits also, that, even before that time, similar complaints and applications had been made, — yet he did withhold the said letter of complaint, a minute of which he asserts he had, at or about that time, prepared for the relief of the sufferer, from the Board of Council, and did not so much as propose anything relative to the same for seven months after, viz., until the 6th of October, 1783: the said letter and minute being, as he asserts, “withheld, from causes not necessary to mention, from presentation.” By which means the said country and prince did suffer a long continuance of unnecessary hardship, from which the said Hastings confessed it was his duty to relieve them, and that a British Resident was necessary at Furruckabad, “from a sense of submission to the implied orders of the Court of Directors in their letter of 1783, lately received, added to the conviction I have LONG SINCE entertained of the necessity of such an appointment for the preservation of our national credit, and the means of rescuing an ancient and respectable family from ruin.”

  And the said Warren Hastings did at length perform what he thought had long since been necessary; and in contradiction to his engagements with the Nabob in the treaty of Chunar, and against his strong remonstrances, urging his humiliation from this measure, and the faith of the agreement, and against his own former declaration that it concerned the reputation of our government to remove our participation in the oppressions which he, the said Hastings, supposed the prince of Furruckabad must undergo, did once more recommend to the Council a British Resident at Furruckabad, and the withdrawing the native sezauwil: no course being left to the said Hastings to take which was not a violation of some engagement, and a contradiction to some principle of justice and policy by him deliberately advanced and entered on record.

  That Mr. Willes being appointed Resident, and having arrived at Furruckabad on the 25th of February, 1784, with instructions to inquire minutely into the state of the country and the ruling family, he, the said Resident, Willes, in obedience thereto, did fully explain to him, the Governor-General, the said Warren Hastings, (he being then out of the Company’s provinces, at Lucknow, on a delegation which respected this very country, as part of the dependencies of Oude,) the situation of the province of Furruckabad; but the said Warren Hastings did not take or recommend any measure whatsoever for the relief thereof in consequence of the said representation, nor even communicate to the Council-General the said representation; and it was not until the 28th of June, 1783 [1785?], that is, sixteen months from the arrival of the Resident at his station, that anything was laid before the board relative to the regulation or relief of the distressed country aforesaid, and that not from the said Warren Hastings, but from other members of the Council: which purposed neglect of duty, joined to the preceding wilful delay of seven months in proposing the said relief originally, caused near two years’ delay. And the said Warren Hastings is further culpable in not communicating to the Council Board the order which he had, of his own authority, and without any powers from them, given to the said Resident, Willes, and did thereby prevent them from taking such steps as might counteract the ill effects of the said order; which order purported, that the said Willes was not to interfere with the Nabob of Furruckabad’s government, for the regulation of which he was in effect appointed to the Residency, — declaring as follows: “I rely much on your moderation and good judgment, which I hope will enable you to regulate your conduct towards the Nabob and his servants in such a manner, that, without interfering in the executive part of his government, you may render him essential service by your council and advice.” And this restriction the said Hastings did impose, which totally frustrated the purpose of the Resident’s mission, though he well knew, and had frequently stated, the extreme imbecility and weakness of the said Nabob of Furruckabad, and his subjection to unworthy servants; and in the Minute of Consultation upon which he founded the appointment did state the Nabob of Furruckabad “as a weak and unexperienced young man, who had abandoned himself entirely to the discretion of his servants, and the restoration of his independence was followed by a total breach of the engagements he had promised to fulfil, attended by pointed instances of contumacy and disrespect”; and in the said minute the said Hastings adds, (as before mentioned,) his principal servant and manager had propagated a report that the “interference” (namely, his, the said Hastings’s, interference) “to which his master owed the power he then enjoyed was purchased by him,” the principal servant aforesaid: yet he, the said Hastings, who had assigned on record the character of the said Nabob, and the conduct of his servants, and the aforesaid report of his p
rincipal servant, so highly dishonorable to him, the said Hastings, as reasons for taking away the independency of the Nabob of Furruckabad, and the subjecting him to the oppression of the Nabob of Oude’s officer, Almas Ali, did again himself establish the pretended independence of the said prince of Furruckabad, and the real independence of his corrupt and perfidious servants, not against the Nabob of Oude, but against a British Resident appointed by himself (“as a character eminently qualified for such a charge”) for the correction of those evils, and for rendering the prince aforesaid an useful ally to the Company, and restoring his dominions to order and plenty.

  That the said Hastings did not only disable the Resident at Furruckabad by his said prohibitory letter, but did render his very remaining at all in that station perfectly precarious by a subsequent letter, rendering him liable to dismission by the Vizier, — thereby changing the tenure of the Resident’s office, and changing him from a minister of the Company, dependent on the Governor-General and Council, to a dependant upon an unresponsible power, — in this also acting without the Council, and by his own usurped authority: and accordingly the said Resident did declare, in his letter of the 24th of April, 1785, “that the situation of the country was more distressful than when he [the prince of Furruckabad] addressed himself for relief in 1783, and that he was sorry to say that his appointment at Furruckabad was of no use”; that, though the old tribute could not be paid, owing to famine and other causes, it was increased by a new imposition, making the whole equal the entire gross produce of the revenue; that therefore there will not be “anything for the subsistence of the Nabob and family.” And the uncles of the said Nabob of Furruckabad, the brethren of the late Ahmed Khân, (who had rendered important services to the Company,) and their children, in a petition to the Resident, represented that soon after the succession of Muzuffer Jung “their misery commenced. The jaghires [lands and estates] on which they subsisted were disallowed. Our distress is great: we have neither clothes nor food. Though we felt hurt at the idea of explaining our situation, yet, could we have found a mode of conveyance, we would have proceeded to Calcutta for redress. The scarcity of grain this season is an additional misfortune. With difficulty we support life. From your presence without the provinces we expect relief. It is not the custom of the Company to deprive the zemindars and jaghiredars of the means of subsistence. To your justice we look up.”

  This being the situation of the person and family of the Nabob of Furruckabad and his nearest relations, the state of the country and its capital, prevented from all relief by the said Warren Hastings, is described in the following words by the Resident, Willes.

  “Almas Ali has taken the purgunnah of Marara at a very inadequate rent, and his aumils have seized many adjacent villages: the purgunnahs of Cocutmow and Souje are constantly plundered by his people. The collection of the ghauts near Futtyghur has been seized by the Vizier’s cutwal, and the zemindars in four purgunnahs are so refractory as to have fortified themselves in their gurries, and to refuse all payments of revenue. This is the state of the purgunnahs. And Furruckabad, which was once the seat of great opulence and trade, is now daily deserted by its inhabitants, its walls mouldering away, without police, without protection, exposed to the depredations of a banditti of two or three hundred robbers, who, night after night, enter it for plunder, murdering all who oppose them. The ruin that has overtaken this country is not to be wondered at, when it is considered that there has been no state, no stable government, for many years. There has been the Nabob Vizier’s authority, his ministers’, the Residents’ at Lucknow, the sezauwils’, the camp authority, the Nabob Muzuffer Jung’s, and that of twenty duans or advisers: no authority sufficiently predominant to establish any regulations for the benefit of the country, whilst each authority has been exerted, as opportunity offered, for temporary purposes.

  “Such being the present deplorable state of Furruckabad and its districts, in the ensuing year it will be in vain to look for revenue, if some regulations equal to the exigency be not adopted. The whole country will be divided between the neighboring powerful aumils, the refractory zemindars, and banditti of robbers; and the Patans, who might be made useful subjects, will fly from the scene of anarchy. The crisis appears now come, that either some plan of government should be resolved on, so as to form faithful subjects on the frontier, or the country be given up to its fate: and if it be abandoned, there can be little doubt but that the Mahrattas will gladly seize on a station so favorable to incursions into the Vizier’s dominions, will attach to their interests the Hindoo zemindars, and possess themselves of forts, which, with little expense being made formidable, would give employment perhaps to the whole of our force, should it be ever necessary to recover them.”

  That the Council at Calcutta, on the representation aforesaid made by the Resident at Furruckabad, did propose and record a plan for the better government of the said country, but did delay the execution of the same until the arrangements made by the said Hastings with the Nabob Vizier should be known; but the said Hastings, as far as in him lay, did entirely set aside any plan that could be formed for that purpose upon the basis of a British Resident at Furruckabad, by engaging with the said Nabob Vizier that no British influence shall be employed within his dominions, and he has engaged to that prince not to abandon him to any other mode of relation; and he has informed the Court of Directors that the territories of the Nabob of Oude will be ruined, if Residents are sent into them, observing, that “Residents never will be sent for any other purposes than those of vengeance and corruption.”

  That the said Warren Hastings did declare to the Court of Directors, that in his opinion the mode of relief most effectual, and most lenient with regard to Furruckabad, would be to nominate one of the family of the prince to superintend his affairs and to secure the payments; but this plan, which appears to be most connected with the rights of the ruling family, whilst it provides against the imbecility of the natural lord, and is free from his objection to a Resident, is the only one which the said Hastings never has executed, or even proposed to execute.

  That the said Hastings, by the agreements aforesaid, has left the Company in such an alternative, that they can neither relieve the said prince of Furruckabad from oppression without a breach of the engagements entered into by him, the said Hastings, with the Nabob Vizier in the name of the Company, nor suffer him to remain under the said oppression without violating all faith and all the rules of justice with regard to him. And the said Hastings hath directly made or authorized no less than six revolutions in less than five years in the aforesaid harassed province; by which frequent and rapid changes of government, all of them made in contradiction to all his own declared motives and reasons for the several acts successively done and undone in this transaction, the distresses of the country and the disorders in its administration have been highly aggravated; and in the said irregular proceedings, and in the gross and complicated violations of faith with all parties, the said Hastings is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

  VI. — DESTRUCTION OF THE RAJAH OF SAHLONE.

  I. That the late Nabob of Oude, Sujah ul Dowlah, did (on what reasons of policy or pretences of justice is unknown) dispossess a certain native person of distinction, or eminent Rajah, residing in the country of Sahlone, “the lineal descendant of the most powerful Hindoo family in that part of Hindostan,” of his patrimonial estate, and conferred the same, or part of the same, on his, the Nabob’s, mother, as a jaghire, or estate, for the term of her life: and the mother of the Nabob, in order to quiet the country, and to satisfy in some measure the principal and other inhabitants, did allow and pay a certain pension to the said Rajah; which pension, on the general confiscation of jaghires, made at the instigation of the said Warren Hastings, and by the letting the lands so confiscated to farmers at rack-rents, was discontinued and refused to be paid; and the discontinuance of the said pension, “on account of the personal respect borne to the Rajah, (as connections with him are sought for, and tho
ught to confer honor,)” did cause an universal discontent and violent commotions in the district of Sahlone, and other parts of the province of Oude, with great consequent effusion of blood, and interruption, if not total discontinuance, to the collection of the revenues in those parts, other than as the same was irregularly, and with great damage to the country, enforced by British troops.