Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  “I cannot avoid remarking, that, excepting the city of Benares itself, the province depending upon it is in effect without a government, the Naib exercising only a dependent jurisdiction without a principal. The Rajah is without authority, and even his name disused in the official instruments issued or taken by the manager. The representation of his situation shall be the subject of another letter; I have made this already too long, and shall confine it to the single subject for the communication of which it was begun. This permit me to recapitulate. The administration of the province is misconducted, and the people oppressed; trade discouraged, and the revenue, though said to be exceeded in the actual collections by many lacs, (for I have a minute account of it, which states the net amount, including jaghires, as something more than fifty-one lacs,) in danger of a rapid decline, from the violent appropriation of its means; the Naib or manager is unfit for his office; a new manager is required, and a system of official control, — in a word, a constitution: for neither can the board extend its superintending powers to a district so remote from its observation, nor has it delegated that authority to the Resident, who is merely the representative of government, and the receiver of its revenue in the last process of it; nor, indeed, would it be possible to render him wholly so, for reasons which I may hereafter detail.”

  My Lords, you have now heard — not from the Managers, not from records of office, not from witnesses at your bar, but from the prisoner himself — the state of the country of Benares, from the time that Mr. Hastings and his delegated Residents had taken the management of it. My Lords, it is a proof, beyond all other proof, of the melancholy state of the country, in which, by attempting to exercise usurped and arbitrary power, all power and all authority become extinguished, complete anarchy takes place, and nothing of government appears but the means of robbing and ravaging, with an utter indisposition to take one step for the protection of the people.

  Think, my Lords, what a triumphal progress it was for a British governor, from one extremity of the province to the other, (for so he has stated it,) to be pursued by the cries of an oppressed and ruined people, where they dared to appear before him, — and when they did not dare to appear, flying from every place, even the very magistrates being the first to fly! Think, my Lords, that, when these unhappy people saw the appearance of a British soldier, they fled as from a pestilence; and then think, that these were the people who labored in the manner which you have just heard, who dug their own wells, whose country would not produce anything but from the indefatigable industry of its inhabitants; and that such a meritorious, such an industrious people, should be subjected to such a cursed anarchy under pretence of revenue, to such a cursed tyranny under the pretence of government!

  “But Jagher Deo Seo was unfit for his office.”— “How dared you to appoint a man unfit for his office?”— “Oh, it signified little, without their having a constitution.”— “Why did you destroy the official constitution that existed before? How dared you to destroy those establishments which enabled the people to dig wells and to cultivate the country like a garden, and then to leave the whole in the hands of your arbitrary and wicked Residents and their instruments, chosen without the least idea of government and without the least idea of protection?”

  God has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason, that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked. The human faculties and reason are in such cases deranged; and therefore this man has been dragged by the just vengeance of Providence to make his own madness the discoverer of his own wicked, perfidious, and cursed machinations in that devoted country.

  Think, my Lords, of what he says respecting the military. He says there is no restraining them, — that they pillage the country wherever they go. But had not Mr. Hastings himself just before encouraged the military to pillage the country? Did he not make the people’s resistance, when the soldiers attempted to pillage them, one of the crimes of Cheyt Sing? And who would dare to obstruct the military in their abominable ravages, when they knew that one of the articles of Cheyt Sing’s impeachment was his having suffered the people of the country, when plundered by these wicked soldiers, to return injury for injury and blow for blow? When they saw, I say, that these were the things for which Cheyt Sing was sacrificed, there was manifestly nothing left for them but flight. — What! fly from a Governor-General? You would expect he was bearing to the country, upon his balmy and healing wings, the cure of all its disorders and of all its distress. No: they knew him too well; they knew him to be the destroyer of the country; they knew him to be the destroyer of their sovereign, the destroyer of the persons whom he had appointed to govern under him; they knew that neither governor, sub-governor, nor subject could enjoy a moment’s security while he possessed supreme power. This was the state of the country; and this the Commons of England call upon your Lordships to avenge.

  Let us now see what is next done by the prisoner at your bar. He is satisfied with simply removing from his office Jagher Deo Seo, who is accused by him of all these corruptions and oppressions. The other poor, unfortunate man, who was not even accused of malversations in such a degree, and against whom not one of the accusations of oppression was regularly proved, but who had, in Mr. Hastings’s eye, the one unpardonable fault of not having been made richer by his crimes, was twice imprisoned, and finally perished in prison. But we have never heard one word of the imprisonment of Jagher Deo Seo, who, I believe, after some mock inquiry, was acquitted.

  Here, my Lords, I must beg you to recollect Mr. Hastings’s proceeding with Gunga Govind Sing, and to contrast his conduct towards these two peculators with his proceeding towards Durbege Sing. Such a comparison will let your Lordships into the secret of one of the prisoner’s motives of conduct upon such occasions. When you will find a man pillaging and desolating a country, in the manner Jagher Deo Seo is described by Mr. Hastings to have done, but who takes care to secure to himself the spoil, you will likewise find that such a man is safe, secure, unpunished. Your Lordships will recollect the desolation of Dinagepore. You will recollect that the rapacious Gunga Govind Sing, (the coadjutor of Mr. Hastings in peculation,) out of 80,000l. which he had received on the Company’s account, retained 40,000l. for his own use, and that, instead of being turned out of his employment and treated with rigor and cruelty, he was elevated in Mr. Hastings’s grace and favor, and never called upon for the restoration of a penny. Observe, my Lords, the difference in his treatment of men who have wealth to purchase impunity, or who have secrets to reveal, and of another who has no such merit, and is poor and insolvent.

  We have shown your Lordships the effects of Mr. Hastings’s government upon the country and its inhabitants; and although I have before suggested to you some of its effects upon the army of the Company, I will now call your attention to a few other observations on that subject. Your Lordships will, in the first place, be pleased to attend to the character which he gives of this army. You have heard what he tells you of the state of the country in which it was stationed, and of the terror which it struck into the inhabitants. The appearance of an English soldier was enough to strike the country people with affright and dismay: they everywhere, he tells you, fled before them. And yet they are the officers of this very army who are brought here as witnesses to express the general satisfaction of the people of India. To be sure, a man who never calls Englishmen to an account for any robbery or injury whatever, who acquits them, upon their good intentions, without any inquiry, will in return for this indemnity have their good words. We are not surprised to find them coming with emulation to your bar to declare him possessed of all virtues, and that nobody has or can have a right to complain of him. But we, my Lords, protest against these indemnities; we protest against their good words; we protest against their testimonials; and we insist upon your Lordships trying him, not upon what this or that officer says of his good conduct, but upon the proved result of the actions tried before you. Withou
t ascribing, perhaps, much guilt to men who must naturally wish to favor the person who covers their excesses, who suffers their fortunes to be made, you will know what value to set upon their testimony. The Commons look on those testimonies with the greatest slight, and they consider as nothing all evidence given by persons who are interested in the very cause, — persons who derive their fortunes from the ruin of the very people of the country, and who have divided the spoils with the man whom we accuse. Undoubtedly these officers will give him their good word. Undoubtedly the Residents will give him their good word. Mr. Markham, and Mr. Benn, and Mr. Fowke, if he had been called, every servant of the Company, except some few, will give him the same good word, every one of them; because, my Lords, they have made their fortunes under him, and their conduct has not been inquired into.

  But to return to the observations we were making upon the ruinous effects in general of the successive governments which had been established at Benares by the prisoner at your bar. These effects, he would have you believe, arose from the want of a constitution. Why, I again ask, did he destroy the constitution which he found established there, or suffer it to be destroyed? But he had actually authorized Mr. Markham to make a new, a regular, an official constitution. Did Mr. Markham make it? No: though he professed to do it; it never was done: and so far from there being any regular, able, efficient constitution, you see there was an absolute and complete anarchy in the country. The native inhabitants, deprived of their ancient government, were so far from looking up to their new masters for protection, that, the moment they saw the face of a soldier or of a British person in authority, they fled in dismay, and thought it more eligible to abandon their houses to robbery than to remain exposed to the tyranny of a British governor. Is this what they call British dominion? Will you sanction by your judicial authority transactions done in direct defiance of your legislative authority? Are they so injuriously mad as to suppose your Lordships can be corrupted to betray in your judicial capacity (the most sacred of the two) what you have ordained in your legislative character?

  My Lords, I am next to remind you what this man has had the insolence and audacity to state at your bar. “In fact,” says he, “I can adduce very many gentlemen now in London to confirm my assertions, that the countries of Benares and Gazipore were never within the memory of Englishmen so well protected, so peaceably governed, or more industriously cultivated than at the present moment.”

  Your Lordships know that this report of Mr. Hastings which has been read was made in the year 1784. Your Lordships know that no step was taken, while Mr. Hastings remained in India, for the regulation and management of the country. If there was, let it be shown. There was no constitution framed, nor any other means taken for the settlement of the country, except the appointment of Ajeet Sing in the room of Durbege Sing, to reign like him, and like him to be turned out. Mr. Hastings left India in February, 1785; he arrived here, as I believe, in June or July following. Our proceedings against him commenced in the sessions of 1786; and this defence was given, I believe, in the year 1787. Yet at that time, when he could hardly have received any account from India, he was ready, he says, to produce the evidence (and no doubt might have done so) of many gentlemen whose depositions would have directly contradicted what he had himself deposed of the state in which he, so short a time before, had left the country. Your Lordships cannot suppose that it could have recovered its prosperity within that time. We know you may destroy that in a day which will take up years to build; we know a tyrant can in a moment ruin and oppress: but you cannot restore the dead to life; you cannot in a moment restore fields to cultivation; you cannot, as you please, make the people in a moment restore old or dig new wells: and yet Mr. Hastings has dared to say to the Commons that he would produce persons to refute the account which we had fresh from himself. We will, however, undertake to show you that the direct contrary was the fact.

  I will first refer you to Mr. Barlow’s account of the state of trade. Your Lordships will there find a full exposure of the total falsehood of the prisoner’s assertions. You will find that Mr. Hastings himself had been obliged to give orders for the change of almost every one of the regulations he had made. Your Lordships may there see the madness and folly of tyranny attempting to regulate trade. In the printed Minutes, page 2830, your Lordships will see how completely Mr. Hastings had ruined the trade of the country. You will find, that, wherever he pretended to redress the grievances which he had occasioned, he did not take care to have any one part of his pretended redress executed. When you consider the anarchy in which he states the country through which he passed to have been, you may easily conceive that regulations for the protection of trade, without the means of enforcing them, must be nugatory.

  Mr. Barlow was sent, in the years 1786 and 1787, to examine into the state of the country. He has stated the effect of all those regulations, which Mr. Hastings has had the assurance to represent here as prodigies of wisdom. At the very time when our charge was brought to this House, (it is a remarkable period, and we desire your Lordships to advert to it,) at that time, I do not know whether it was not on the very same day that we brought our charge to your bar, Mr. Duncan was sent by Lord Cornwallis to examine into the state of that province. Now, my Lords, you have Mr. Duncan’s report before you, and you will judge whether or not, by any regulation which Mr. Hastings had made, or whether through any means used by him, that country had recovered or was recovering. Your Lordships will there find other proofs of the audacious falsehood of his representation, that all which he had done had operated on the minds of the inhabitants very greatly in favor of British integrity and good government. Mr. Duncan’s report will not only enable you to decide upon what he has said himself, it will likewise enable you to judge of the credit which is due to the gentlemen now in London whom he can produce to confirm his assertions, that the country of Benares and Gazipore were never, within the memory of Englishmen, so well protected and cultivated as at the present moment.

  Instead, therefore, of a speech from me, you shall hear what the country says itself, by the report of the last commissioner who was sent to examine it by Lord Cornwallis. The perfect credibility of his testimony Mr. Hastings has established out of Lord Cornwallis’s mouth, who, being asked the character of Mr. Jonathan Duncan, has declared that there is nothing he can report of the state of the country to which you ought not to give credit. Your Lordships will now see how deep the wounds are which tyranny and arbitrary power must make in a country where their existence is suffered; and you will be pleased to observe that this statement was made at a time when Mr. Hastings was amusing us with his account of Benares.

  Extract of the Proceedings of the Resident at Benares, under date the 16th February, 1788, at the Purgunnah of Gurrah Dehmah, &c. Printed Minutes, page 2610.

  “The Resident, having arrived in this purgunnah of Gurrah Dehmah from that of Mohammedabad, is very sorry to observe that it seems about one third at least uncultivated, owing to the mismanagement of the few last years. The Rajah, however, promises that it shall be by next year in a complete state of cultivation; and Tobarck Hossaine, his aumeen, aumil, or agent, professes his confidence of the same happy effects, saying, that he has already brought a great proportion of the land, that lay fallow when he came into the purgunnah in the beginning of the year, into cultivation, and that, it being equally the Rajah’s directions and his own wish, he does not doubt of being successful in regard to the remaining part of the waste land.”

  Report, dated the 18th of February, at the Purgunnah of Bulleah.

  “The Resident, having come yesterday into this purgunnah from that of Gurrah Dehmah, finds its appearance much superior to that purgunnah in point of cultivation; yet it is on the decline so for that its collectible jumma will not be so much this year as it was last, notwithstanding all the efforts of Reazel Husn, the agent of Khulb Ali Khân, who has farmed this purgunnah upon a three years’ lease, (of which the present is the last,) during which his, that is, the head far
mer’s, management cannot be applauded, as the funds of the purgunnah are very considerably declined in his hands: indeed, Reazel Husn declares that this year there was little or no khereef, or first harvest, in the purgunnah, and that it has been merely by the greatest exertions that he has prevailed on the ryots to cultivate the rubby crop, which is now on the ground and seems plentiful.”

  Report, dated the 20th of February, at the Purgunnah of Khereed.

  “The Resident, having this day come into the purgunnah of Khereed, finds that part of it laying between the frontiers of Bulleah, the present station, and Bansdeah, (which is one of the tuppahs, or subdivisions, of Khereed,) exceedingly wasted and uncultivated. The said tuppah is sub-farmed by Gobind Ram from Kulub Ali Bey, and Gobind Ram has again under-rented it to the zemindars.”

  Report, dated the 23d February, at the Purgunnah of Sekunderpoor.

  “The Resident is set out for Sekunderpoor, and is sorry to observe, that, for about six or seven coss that he had further to pass through the purgunnah of Kereebs, the whole appeared one continued waste, as far as the eye could reach, on both sides of the road. The purgunnah Sekunderpoor, beginning about a coss before he reached the village, an old fort of that name, appeared to a little more advantage; but even here the crops seem very scanty, and the ground more than half fallow.”