by Edmund Burke
My Lords, you have here also the lights of our religion, you have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity, — a religion which so much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the Person who was the Master of Nature chose to appear Himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression, — knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself “the servant of all.”
My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons,
I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.
I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose Parliamentary trust he has betrayed.
I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.
I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.
I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.
I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.
SPEECHES IN THE IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL.
SPEECH ON THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.
April and May, 1789.
NOTE.
After Mr. Burke had concluded the opening speeches, the first article of the impeachment was brought forward, on the 22d of February, 1788, by Mr. Fox, and supported by Mr. Grey on the 25th. After the evidence upon this article had been adduced, it was summed up and enforced by Mr. Anstruther, on the 11th day of April following.
The next article with which the Commons proceeded was brought forward on the 15th of April, 1788, by Mr. Adam, and supported by Mr. Pelham; and the evidence, in part upon the second article of charge, was summed up and enforced, on the 3d of June, by Mr. Sheridan.
On the 21st of April, 1789, Mr. Burke opened the sixth charge, bribery and corruption, in the following speech, which was continued on the 25th of April, and on the 6th and 7th May, in the same session.
SPEECH
ON
THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.
FIRST DAY: TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1789.
My Lords, — An event which had spread for a considerable time an universal grief and consternation through this kingdom, and which in its issue diffused as universal and transcendent a joy, has in the circumstances both of our depression and of our exaltation produced a considerable delay, if not a total suspension, of the most important functions of government.
My Lords, we now resume our office, — and we resume it with new and redoubled alacrity, and, we trust, under not less propitious omens than when we left it, in this House, at the end of the preceding session. We come to this duty with a greater degree of earnestness and zeal, because we are urged to it by many and very peculiar circumstances. This day we come from an House where the last steps were taken (and I suppose something has happened similar in this) to prepare our way to attend with the utmost solemnity, in another place, a great national thanksgiving for having restored the sovereign to his Parliament and the Parliament to its sovereign.
But, my Lords, it is not only in the house of prayer that we offer to the First Cause the acceptable homage of our rational nature, — my Lords, in this House, at this bar, in this place, in every place where His commands are obeyed, His worship is performed. And, my Lords, I must boldly say, (and I think I shall hardly be contradicted by your Lordships, or by any persons versed in the law which guides us all,) that the highest act of religion, and the highest homage which we can and ought to pay, is an imitation of the Divine perfections, as far as such a nature can imitate such perfections, and that by this means alone we can make our homage acceptable to Him.
My Lords, in His temple we shall not forget that His most distinguished attribute is justice, and that the first link in the chain by which we are held to the Supreme Judge of All is justice; and that it is in this solemn temple of representative justice we may best give Him praise, because we can here best imitate His divine attributes. If ever there was a cause in which justice and mercy are not only combined and reconciled, but incorporated, it is in this cause of suffering nations, which we now bring before your Lordships this second session of Parliament, unwearied and unfatigued in our persevering pursuit; and we feel it to be a necessary preliminary, a necessary fact, a necessary attendant and concomitant of every public thanksgiving, that we should express our gratitude by our virtues, and not merely with our mouths, and that, when we are giving thanks for acts of mercy, we should render ourselves worthy of them by doing acts of mercy ourselves. My Lords, these considerations, independent of those which were our first movers in this business, strongly urge us at present to pursue with all zeal and perseverance the great cause we have now in hand. And we feel this to be the more necessary, because we cannot but be sensible that light, unstable, variable, capricious, inconstant, fastidious minds soon tire in any pursuit that requires strength, steadiness, and perseverance. Such persons, who we trust are but few, and who certainly do not resemble your Lordships nor us, begin already to say, How long is this business to continue? Our answer is, It is to continue till its ends are obtained.
We know, that, by a mysterious dispensation of Providence, injury is quick and rapid, and justice slow; and we may say that those who have not patience and vigor of mind to attend the tardy pace of justice counteract the order of Providence, and are resolved not to be just at all. We, therefore, instead of bending the order of Nature to the laxity of our characters and tempers, must rather confirm ourselves by a manly fortitude and virtuous perseverance to continue within those forms, and to wrestle with injustice, until we have shown that those virtues which sometimes wickedness debauches into its cause, such as vigor, energy, activity, fortitude of spirit, are called back and brought to their true and natural service, — and that in the pursuit of wickedness, in the following it through all the winding recesses and mazes of its artifices, we shall show as much vigor, as much constancy, as much diligence, energy, and perseverance, as any others can do in endeavoring to elude the laws and triumph over the justice of their country. My Lords, we have thought it the more necessary to say this, because it has been given out that we might faint in this business. No: we follow, and trust we shall always follow, that great emblem of antiquity, in which the person who held out to the end of a long line of labors found the reward of all the eleven in the twelfth. Our labor, therefore, will be our reward; and we will go on, we will pursue with vigor and diligence, in a manner suitable to the Commons of Great Britain, every mode of corruption, till we have thoroughly eradicated it.
I think it necessary to say a word, too, upon another circumstance, of which there is some complaint, as if some injustice had arisen from voluntary delay on our part.
I have already alluded to, first, the melancholy, then the joyful occasion of this delay; and I shall now make one remark on another part of the complaint, which I understand was formally made to your
Lordships soon after we had announced our resolution to proceed in this great cause of suffering nations before you. It has been alleged, that the length of the pursuit had already very much distressed the person who is the object of it, — that it leaned upon a fortune unequal to support it, — and that 30,000l. had been already spent in the preliminary preparations for the defence.
My Lords, I do admit that all true, genuine, and unadulterated justice considers with a certain degree of tenderness the person whom it is called to punish, and never oppresses those by the process who ought not to be oppressed but by the sentence of the court before which they are brought. The Commons have heard, indeed, with some degree of astonishment, that 30,000l. hath been laid out by Mr. Hastings in this business. We, who have some experience in the conduct of affairs of this nature, we, who profess to proceed with regard not to the economy so much as to the rigor of this prosecution, (and we are justified by our country in so doing,) upon a collation and comparison of the public expenses with those which the defendant is supposed to have incurred, are much surprised to hear it. We suppose that his solicitors can give a good account to him of those expenses, — that the thing is true, — and that he has actually, through them, incurred this expense. We have nothing to do with this: but we shall remove any degree of uneasiness from your Lordships’ minds, and from our own, when we show you in the charge which we shall bring before you this day, that one bribe only received by Mr. Hastings, the smallest of his bribes, or nearly the smallest, the bribe received from Rajah Nobkissin, is alone more than equal to have paid all the charges Mr. Hastings is stated to have incurred; and if this be the case, your Lordships will not be made very uneasy in a case of bribery by finding that you press upon the sources of peculation.
It has also been said that we weary out the public patience in this cause. The House of Commons do not call upon your Lordships to do anything of which they do not set the example. They have very lately sat in the Colchester Committee as many, within one or two, days successively as have been spent in this trial interruptedly in the course of two years. Every cause deserves that it should be tried according to its nature and circumstances; and in the case of the Colchester Committee, in the trial of paltry briberies of odd pounds, shillings, and pence, in the corruption of a returning officer, who is but a miller, they spent nearly the same number of days that we have been inquiring into the ruin of kingdoms by the peculation and bribery of the chief governor of the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. Therefore God forbid that we should faint at thrice thirty days, if the proceedings should be drawn into such a length, when for a small crime as much time has been spent as has yet been spent in this great cause!
Having now cleared the way with regard to the local and temporary circumstances of this case, — having shown your Lordships that too much time has not been spent in it, — having no reason to think, from the time which has hitherto been spent, that time will be unnecessarily spent in future, — I trust your Lordships will think that time ought neither to be spared nor squandered in this business: we will therefore proceed, article by article, as far as the discretion of the House of Commons shall think fit, for the justice of the case, to limit the inquiry, or to extend it.
We are now going to bring before your Lordships the sixth article. It is an article of charge of bribery and corruption against Mr. Hastings; but yet we must confess that we feel some little difficulty in limine. We here appear in the name and character not only of representatives of the Commons of Great Britain, but representatives of the inhabitants of Bengal: and yet we have had lately come into our hands such ample certificates, such full testimonials, from every person in whose cause we complain, that we shall appear to be in the strangest situation in the world, — the situation of persons complaining, who are disavowed by the persons in whose name and character they complain. This would have been a very great difficulty in the beginning, especially as it is come before us in a flood-tide of panegyric. No encomium can be more exalted or more beautifully expressed. No language can more strongly paint the perfect satisfaction, the entire acquiescence, of all the nations of Bengal, and their wonderful admiration of the character of the person whom we have brought as a criminal to your bar upon their part. I do admit that it is a very awkward circumstance; but yet, at the same time, the same candor which has induced the House of Commons to bring before you the bosom friends and confidants of Mr. Hastings as their evidence will not suffer them to suppress or withhold for a moment from your Lordships this universal voice of Bengal, as an attestation in Mr. Hastings’s favor, and we shall produce it as a part of our evidence. Oh, my Lords, consider the situation of a people who are forced to mix their praises with their groans, who are forced to sign, with hands which have been in torture, and with the thumb-screws but just taken from them, an attestation in favor of the person from whom all their sufferings have been derived! When we prove to you the things that we shall prove, this will, I hope, give your Lordships a full, conclusive, and satisfactory proof of the misery to which these people have been reduced. You will see before you, what is so well expressed by one of our poets as the homage of tyrants, “that homage with the mouth which the heart would fain deny, but dares not.” Mr. Hastings has received that homage, and that homage we mean to present to your Lordships: we mean to present it, because it will show your Lordships clearly, that, after Mr. Hastings has ransacked Bengal from one end to the other, and has used all the power which he derives from having every friend and every dependant of his in every office from one end of that government to the other, he has not, in all those panegyrics, those fine high-flown Eastern encomiums, got one word of refutation or one word of evidence against any charge whatever which we produce against him. Every one knows, that, in the course of criminal trials, when no evidence of alibi can be brought, when all the arts of the Old Bailey are exhausted, the last thing produced is evidence to character. His cause, therefore, is gone, when, having ransacked Bengal, he has nothing to say for his conduct, and at length appeals to his character. In those little papers which are given us of our proceedings in our criminal courts, it is always an omen of what is to follow: after the evidence of a murder, a forgery, or robbery, it ends in his character: “He has an admirable character; I have known him from a boy; he is wonderfully good; he is the best of men; I would trust him with untold gold”: and immediately follows, “Guilty, — Death.” This is the way in which, in our courts, character is generally followed by sentence. The practice is not modern. Undoubtedly Mr. Hastings has the example of criminals of high antiquity; for Caius Verres, Antonius, and every other man who has been famous for the pillage and destruction of provinces, never failed to bring before their judges the attestations of the injured to their character. Voltaire says, “Les bons mots sont toujours redits.” A similar occasion has here produced a similar conduct. He has got just the same character as Caius Verres got in another cause; and the laudationes, which your Lordships know always followed, to save trouble, we mean ourselves to give your Lordships; we mean to give them with this strong presumption of guilt, that in all this panegyric there is not one word of defence to a single article of charge; they are mere lip-honors: but we think we derive from those panegyrics, which Mr. Hastings has had sent over as evidence to supply the total want of it, an indication of the impossibility of attaining it. Mr. Hastings has brought them here, and I must say we are under some difficulty about them, and the difficulty is this. We think we can produce before your Lordships proofs of barbarity and peculation by Mr. Hastings; we have the proofs of them in specific provinces, where those proofs may be met by contrary proofs, or may lose their weight from a variety of circumstances. We thought we had got the matter sure, that everything was settled, that he could not escape us, after he had himself confessed the bribes he had taken from the specific provinces. But in what condition are we now? We have from those specific provinces the strongest attestations that there is not any credit to be paid to his own acknowledgments. In short, we have the co
mplaints, concerning these crimes of Mr. Hastings, of the injured persons themselves; we have his own confessions; we shall produce both to your Lordships. But these persons now declare, that not only their own complaints are totally unfounded, but that Mr. Hastings’s confessions are not true, and not to be credited. These are circumstances which your Lordships will consider in the view you take of this wonderful body of attestation.
It is a pleasant thing to see in these addresses the different character and modes of eloquence of different countries. In those that will be brought before your Lordships you will see the beauty of chaste European panegyric improved by degrees into high, Oriental, exaggerated, and inflated metaphor. You will see how the language is first written in English, then translated into Persian, and then retranslated into English. There may be something amusing to your Lordships in this, and the beauty of these styles may, in this heavy investigation, tend to give a little gayety and pleasure. We shall bring before you the European and Asiatic incense. You will have the perfume-shops of the two countries.
One of the accusations which we mean to bring against Mr. Hastings is upon the part of the Zemindar Radanaut, of the country of Dinagepore. Now hear what the Zemindar says himself. “As it has been learned by me, the mutsuddies, and the respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings, Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from us by deceit and force, and ruined the country, therefore we, upon the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution, civility and justice, superior to the conduct of the most learned, and, by representing what is fact, wipe away the doubts that have possessed the minds of the ministers of England; that Mr. Hastings is possessed of fidelity and confidence, and yielding protection to us; that he is clear of the contamination of mistrust and wrong, and his mind is free of covetousness or avarice. During the time of his administration no one saw other conduct than that of protection to the husbandman, and justice. No inhabitant ever experienced afflictions, no one ever felt oppression from him; our reputations have always been guarded from attacks by his prudence, and our families have always been protected by his justice. He never omitted the smallest instance of kindness towards us, but healed the wounds of despair with the salve of consolation by means of his benevolent and kind behavior, never permitting one of us to sink in the pit of despondence. He supported every one by his goodness, overset the designs of evil-minded men by his authority, tied the hand of oppression with the strong bandage of justice, and by these means expanded the pleasing appearance of happiness and joy over us. He reëstablished justice and impartiality. We were during his government in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and ease, and many of us are thankful and satisfied. As Mr. Hastings was well acquainted with our manners and customs, he was always desirous, in every respect, of doing whatever would preserve our religious rites, and guard them against every kind of accident and injury, and at all times protected us. Whatever we have experienced from him, and whatever happened from him, we have written without deceit or exaggeration.”
