Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  The next thing that is remarkable and singular in the principles upon which the Governor-General acted is, that, when he is engaged in a vicious system which clearly leads to evil consequences, he thinks himself bound to realize all the evil consequences involved in that system. All other men have taken a directly contrary course: they have said, “I have been engaged in an evil system, that led, indeed, to mischievous consequences, but I have taken care, by my own virtues, to prevent the evils of the system under which I acted.”

  We say, then, not only that he governed arbitrarily, but corruptly, — that is to say, that he was a giver and receiver of bribes, and formed a system for the purpose of giving and receiving them. We wish your Lordships distinctly to consider that he did not only give and receive bribes accidentally, as it happened, without any system and design, merely as the opportunity or momentary temptation of profit urged him to it, but that he has formed plans and systems of government for the very purpose of accumulating bribes and presents to himself. This system of Mr. Hastings’s government is such a one, I believe, as the British nation in particular will disown; for I will venture to say, that, if there is any one thing which distinguishes this nation eminently above another, it is, that in its offices at home, both judicial and in the state, there is less suspicion of pecuniary corruption attaching to them than to any similar offices in any part of the globe, or that have existed at any time: so that he who would set up a system of corruption, and attempt to justify it upon the principle of utility, that man is staining not only the nature and character of office, but that which is the peculiar glory of the official and judicial character of this country; and therefore, in this House, which is eminently the guardian of the purity of all the offices of this kingdom, he ought to be called eminently and peculiarly to account. There are many things, undoubtedly, in crimes, which make them frightful and odious; but bribery, filthy hands, a chief governor of a great empire receiving bribes from poor, miserable, indigent people, this is what makes government itself base, contemptible, and odious in the eyes of mankind.

  My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find some specious color, and appear as a more severe and rigid execution of justice. Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety. Conquest may cover its baldness with its own laurels, and the ambition of the conqueror may be hid in the secrets of his own heart under a veil of benevolence, and make him imagine he is bringing temporary desolation upon a country only to promote its ultimate advantage and his own glory. But in the principles of that governor who makes nothing but money his object there can be nothing of this. There are here none of those specious delusions that look like virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor. If you look at Mr. Hastings’s merits, as he calls them, what are they? Did he improve the internal state of the government by great reforms? No such thing. Or by a wise and incorrupt administration of justice? No. Has he enlarged the boundary of our government? No: there are but too strong proofs of his lessening it. But his pretensions to merit are, that he squeezed more money out of the inhabitants of the country than other persons could have done, — money got by oppression, violence, extortion from the poor, or the heavy hand of power upon the rich and great.

  These are his merits. What we charge as his demerits are all of the same nature; for, though there is undoubtedly oppression, breach of faith, cruelty, perfidy, charged upon him, yet the great ruling principle of the whole, and that from which you can never have an act free, is money, — it is the vice of base avarice, which never is, nor ever appears even to the prejudices of mankind to be, anything like a virtue. Our desire of acquiring sovereignty in India undoubtedly originated first in ideas of safety and necessity; its next step was a step of ambition. That ambition, as generally happens in conquest, was followed by gains of money; but afterwards there was no mixture at all; it was, during Mr. Hastings’s time, altogether a business of money. If he has extirpated a nation, I will not say whether properly or improperly, it is because (says he) you have all the benefit of conquest without expense; you have got a large sum of money from the people, and you may leave them to be governed by whom and as they will. This is directly contrary to the principles of conquerors. If he has at any time taken any money from the dependencies of the Company, he does not pretend that it was obtained from their zeal and affection to our cause, or that it made their submission more complete: very far from it. He says they ought to be independent, and all that you have to do is to squeeze money from them. In short, money is the beginning, the middle, and the end of every kind of act done by Mr. Hastings: pretendedly for the Company, but really for himself.

  Having said so much about the origin, the first principle, both of that which he makes his merit and which we charge as his demerit, the next step is, that I should lay open to your Lordships, as clearly as I can, what the sense of his employers, the East India Company, and what the sense of the legislature itself, has been upon those merits and demerits of money.

  My Lords, the Company, knowing that these money transactions were likely to subvert that empire which was first established upon them, did, in the year 1765, send out a body of the strongest and most solemn covenants to their servants, that they should take no presents from the country powers, under any name or description, except those things which were publicly and openly taken for the use of the Company, — namely, territories or sums of money which might be obtained by treaty. They distinguished such presents as were taken from any persons privately, and unknown to them, and without their authority, from subsidies: and that this is the true nature and construction of their order I shall contend and explain afterwards to your Lordships. They have said, nothing shall be taken for their private use; for though in that and in every state there may be subsidiary treaties by which sums of money may be received, yet they forbid their servants, their governors, whatever application they might pretend to make of them, to receive, under any other name or pretence, more than a certain, marked, simple sum of money, and this not without the consent and permission of the Presidency to which they belong. This is the substance, the principle, and the spirit of the covenants, and will show your Lordships how radicated an evil this of bribery and presents was judged to be.

  When these covenants arrived in India, the servants refused at first to execute them, — and suspended the execution of them, till they had enriched themselves with presents. Eleven months elapsed, and it was not till Lord Clive reached the place of his destination that the covenants were executed: and they were not executed then without some degree of force. Soon afterwards the treaty was made with the country powers by which Sujah ul Dowlah was reëstablished in the province of Oude, and paid a sum of 500,000l. to the Company for it. It was a public payment, and there was not a suspicion that a single shilling of private emolument attended it. But whether Mr. Hastings had the example of others or not, their example could not justify his briberies. He was sent there to put an end to all those examples. The Company did expressly vest him with that power. They declared at that time, that the whole of their service was totally corrupted by bribes and presents, and by extravagance and luxury, which partly gave rise to them, and these, in their turn, enabled them to pursue those excesses. They not only reposed trust in the integrity of Mr. Hastings, but reposed trust in his remarkable frugality and order in his affairs, which they considered as things that distinguished his character. But in his defence we have him quite in another character, — no longer the frugal, attentive servant, bred to business, bred to book-keeping, as all the Company’s servants are; he now knows nothing of his own affairs, knows not whether he is rich or poor, knows not what he has in the world. Nay, people are brought forward to say that they know better than he does what his affairs are. He is not like a careful man bred in a counting-house, and by the Directors put into an office of the highest trust on account of the regularity of his affairs; he is like one buried in the contemplation of the stars, and knows nothing of the things i
n this world. It was, then, on account of an idea of his great integrity that the Company put him into this situation. Since that he has thought proper to justify himself, not by clearing himself of receiving bribes, but by saying that no bad consequences resulted from it, and that, if any such evil consequences did arise from it, they arose rather from his inattention to money than from his desire of acquiring it.

  I have stated to your Lordships the nature of the covenants which the East India Company sent out. Afterwards, when they found their servants had refused to execute these covenants, they not only very severely reprehended even a moment’s delay in their execution, and threatened the exacting the most strict and rigorous performance of them, but they sent a commission to enforce the observance of them more strongly; and that commission had it specially in charge never to receive presents. They never sent out a person to India without recognizing the grievance, and without ordering that presents should not be received, as the main fundamental part of their duty, and upon which all the rest depended, as it certainly must: for persons at the head of government should not encourage that by example which they ought by precept, authority, and force to restrain in all below them. That commission failing, another commission was preparing to be sent out with the same instructions, when an act of Parliament took it up; and that act, which gave Mr. Hastings power, did mould in the very first stamina of his power this principle, in words the most clear and forcible that an act of Parliament could possibly devise upon the subject. And that act was made not only upon a general knowledge of the grievance, but your Lordships will see in the reports of that time that Parliament had directly in view before them the whole of that monstrous head of corruption under the name of presents, and all the monstrous consequences that followed it.

  Now, my Lords, every office of trust, in its very nature, forbids the receipt of bribes. But Mr. Hastings was forbidden it, first, by his official situation, — next, by covenant, — and lastly, by act of Parliament: that is to say, by all the things that bind mankind, or that can bind them, — first, moral obligation inherent in the duty of their office, — next, the positive injunctions of the legislature of the country, — and lastly, a man’s own private, particular, voluntary act and covenant. These three, the great and only obligations that bind mankind, all united in the focus of this single point, — that they should take no presents.

  I am to mark to your Lordships, that this law and this covenant did consider indirect ways of taking presents — taking them by others, and such like — directly in the very same light as they considered taking them by themselves. It is perhaps a much more dangerous way; because it adds to the crime a false, prevaricating mode of concealing it, and makes it much more mischievous by admitting others into the participation of it. Mr. Hastings has said, (and it is one of the general complaints of Mr. Hastings,) that he is made answerable for the acts of other men. It is a thing inherent in the nature of his situation. All those who enjoy a great superintending trust, which is to regulate the whole affairs of an empire, are responsible for the acts and conduct of other men, so far as they had anything to do with appointing them, or holding them in their places, or having any sort of inspection into their conduct. But when a Governor presumes to remove from their situations those persons whom the public authority and sanction of the Company have appointed, and obtrudes upon them by violence other persons, superseding the orders of his masters, he becomes doubly responsible for their conduct. If the persons he names should be of notorious evil character and evil principles, and if this should be perfectly known to himself, and of public notoriety to the rest of the world, then another strong responsibility attaches on him for the acts of those persons.

  Governors, we know very well, cannot with their own hands be continually receiving bribes, — for then they must have as many hands as one of the idols in an Indian temple, in order to receive all the bribes which a Governor-General may receive, — but they have them vicariously. As there are many offices, so he has had various officers for receiving and distributing his bribes; he has a great many, some white and some black agents. The white men are loose and licentious; they are apt to have resentments, and to be bold in revenging them. The black men are very secret and mysterious; they are not apt to have very quick resentments, they have not the same liberty and boldness of language which characterize Europeans; and they have fears, too, for themselves, which makes it more likely that they will conceal anything committed to them by Europeans. Therefore Mr. Hastings had his black agents, not one, two, three, but many, disseminated through the country: no two of them, hardly, appear to be in the secret of any one bribe. He has had likewise his white agents, — they were necessary, — a Mr. Larkins and a Mr. Croftes. Mr. Croftes was sub-treasurer, and Mr. Larkins accountant-general. These were the last persons of all others that should have had anything to do with bribes; yet these were some of his agents in bribery. There are few instances, in comparison of the whole number of bribes, but there are some, where two men are in the secret of the same bribe. Nay, it appears that there was one bribe divided into different payments at different times, — that one part was committed to one black secretary, another part to another black secretary. So that it is almost impossible to make up a complete body of all his bribery: you may find the scattered limbs, some here and others there; and while you are employed in picking them up, he may escape entirely in a prosecution for the whole.

  The first act of his government in Bengal was the most bold and extraordinary that I believe ever entered into the head of any man, — I will say, of any tyrant. It was no more or less than a general, almost exceptless confiscation, in time of profound peace, of all the landed property in Bengal, upon most extraordinary pretences. Strange as this may appear, he did so confiscate it; he put it up to a pretended public, in reality to a private corrupt auction; and such favored landholders as came to it were obliged to consider themselves as not any longer proprietors of the estates, but to recognize themselves as farmers under government: and even those few that were permitted to remain on their estates had their payments raised at his arbitrary discretion; and the rest of the lands were given to farmers-general, appointed by him and his committee, at a price fixed by the same arbitrary discretion.

  It is necessary to inform your Lordships that the revenues of Bengal are, for the most part, territorial revenues, great quit-rents issuing out of lands. I shall say nothing either of the nature of this property, of the rights of the people to it, or of the mode of exacting the rents, till that great question of revenues, one of the greatest which we shall have to lay before you, shall be brought before your Lordships particularly and specially as an article of charge. I only mention it now as an exemplification of the great principle of corruption which guided Mr. Hastings’s conduct.

  When the ancient nobility, the great princes, (for such I may call them,) a nobility, perhaps, as ancient as that of your Lordships, (and a more truly noble body never existed in that character,) — my Lords, when all the nobility, some of whom have borne the rank and port of princes, all the gentry, all the freeholders of the country, had their estates in that manner confiscated, — that is, either given to themselves to hold on the footing of farmers, or totally confiscated, — when such an act of tyranny was done, no doubt some good was pretended. This confiscation was made by Mr. Hastings, and the lands let to these farmers for five years, upon an idea which always accompanies his acts of oppression, the idea of moneyed merit. He adopted this mode of confiscating the estates, and letting them to farmers, for the avowed purpose of seeing how much it was possible to take out of them. Accordingly, he set them up to this wild and wicked auction, as it would have been, if it had been a real one, — corrupt and treacherous, as it was, — he set these lands up for the purpose of making that discovery, and pretended that the discovery would yield a most amazing increase of rent. And for some time it appeared so to do, till it came to the touchstone of experience; and then it was found that there was a defalcation from these mo
nstrous raised revenues which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious, and horrid an act of treachery. At the end of five years what do you think was the failure? No less than 2,050,000l. Then a new source of corruption was opened, — that is, how to deal with the balances: for every man who had engaged in these transactions was a debtor to government, and the remission of that debt depended upon the discretion of the Governor-General. Then the persons who were to settle the composition of that immense debt, who were to see how much was recoverable and how much not, were able to favor, or to exact to the last shilling; and there never existed a doubt but that not only upon the original cruel exaction, but upon the remission afterwards, immense gains were derived. This will account for the manner in which those stupendous fortunes which astonish the world have been made. They have been made, first by a tyrannous exaction from the people who were suffered to remain in possession of their own land as farmers, — then by selling the rest to farmers at rents and under hopes which could never be realized, and then getting money for the relaxation of their debts. But whatever excuse, and however wicked, there might have been for this wicked act, namely, that it carried upon the face of it some sort of appearance of public good, — that is to say, that sort of public good which Mr. Hastings so often professed, of ruining the country for the benefit of the Company, — yet, in fact, this business of balances is that nidus in which have been nustled and bred and born all the corruptions of India, first by making extravagant demands, and afterwards by making corrupt relaxations of them.