by Edmund Burke
These, my Lords, are the state of the distresses in the year 1782, and your Lordships will see that they continued almost, with only occasional reliefs, during the period of that whole year. Now we enter into the year 1783, to show you that it continued during the whole time; and then I shall make a very few remarks upon it.
I will now read to your Lordships a part of Mr. Holt’s evidence, by which it is proved that Mr. Hastings was duly advertised of all these miserable and calamitous circumstances.
“Q. Whether you saw a letter of intelligence from Fyzabad containing a relation of the treatment of the women in the Khord Mohul? — A. Yes, I did, and translated it. — Q. From whom did it come? — A. Hoolas Roy. — Q. Who was he? — A. An agent of the Resident at Fyzabad, employed for the purpose of transmitting information to the Resident. — Q. Was that paper transmitted to Mr. Hastings? — A. To the best of my recollection, it was transmitted to the Board, after I had attested it. — Q. Do you remember at what distance of time after the receipt of the intelligence respecting the distresses of the Khord Mohul that paper was transmitted to Calcutta? — A. I cannot say. — Q. Do you believe it was transmitted within ten months after the time it was received? — A. I understood it to be a letter received just before it was transmitted. — Q. Then you understand it was transmitted as soon as received? — A. Yes, in the course of three days. — Q. Can you bring to your mind the time at which the translation was made? — A. To the best of my recollection, it was in January, 1784. — Q. Whether the distresses that had been complained of had ceased for above a twelvemonth before the distresses of the Khord Mohul? — A. I understood they were new distresses. — Q. Then you state that that account transmitted in 1784 was, as you understand, an account of new distresses? — A. Yes.”
I shall now refer your Lordships to page 899 of your printed Minutes.
[The Managers for the Commons acquainted the House, that they would next read the paper of intelligence which had been authenticated by Mr. Holt, in his evidence at the bar, relative to the miserable situation of these women, which they meant to bring home to Mr. Hastings.]
An Extract of a Consultation of the 17th February, 1784.
“At a Council: present, the Honorable Warren Hastings, Esq., Governor-General, President, Edward Wheler and John Stables, Esqrs.; Mr. Macpherson absent from the Presidency for the benefit of his health: the following letter and its inclosures were received from Mr. Bristow on the 8th instant, and circulated.
“‘Honorable Sir, and Gentlemen, — I have the honor to forward, for your further information, the inclosure No. 3; it contains a relation of the hardships endured by the ladies of the late Vizier’s zenanah.’
(Signed) ‘JOHN BRISTOW.’
“Translation of a Paper of Intelligence from Fyzabad.
“‘The ladies, their attendants, and servants were still as clamorous as last night. Letafit, the darogah, went to them, and remonstrated with them on the impropriety of their conduct, at the same time assuring them that in a few days all their allowances would be paid, and should that not be the case, he would advance them ten days’ subsistence, upon condition that they returned to their habitations. None of them, however, consented to his proposal, but were still intent upon making their escape through the bazaar, and in consequence formed themselves in the following order, — the children in the front, behind them the ladies of the seraglio, and behind them again their attendants; but their intentions were frustrated by the opposition which they met with from Letafit’s sepoys. The next day Letafit went twice to the women, and used his endeavors to make them return into the zenanah, promising to advance them ten thousand rupees, which, upon the money being paid down, they agreed to comply with; but night coming on, nothing transpired.
“‘On the day following, their clamors were more violent than usual. Letafit went to confer with them on the business of yesterday, offering the same terms. Depending upon the fidelity of his promises, they consented to return to their apartments, which they accordingly did, except two or three of the ladies, and most of their attendants. Letafit went then to Hossmund Ali Khân, to consult with him about what means they should take. They came to a resolution of driving them in by force, and gave orders to their sepoys to beat any one of the women who should attempt to move forward; the sepoys accordingly assembled, and each one being provided with a bludgeon, they drove them, by dint of beating, into the zenanah. The women, seeing the treachery of Letafit, proceeded to throw stones and bricks at the sepoys, and again attempted to get out; but finding that impossible, from the gates being shut, they kept up a continual discharge till about twelve o’clock, when, finding their situation desperate, they returned into the Rung Mohul, and forced their way from thence into the palace, and dispersed themselves about the house and gardens. After this they were desirous of getting into the Begum’s apartments; but she, being apprised of their intentions, ordered the doors to be shut. In the mean time Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khân posted sentries to secure the gates of the Lesser Mohul. During the whole of this conflict, the ladies and women remained exposed to the view of the sepoys.
“‘The Begum then sent for Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khân, whom she severely reprimanded, and insisted upon knowing the cause of this infamous behavior. They pleaded in their defence the impossibility of helping it, as the treatment the women had met with had only been conformable to his Excellency the Vizier’s orders. The Begum alleged, that, even admitting that the Nabob had given these orders, they were by no means authorized in this manner to disgrace the family of Sujah Dowlah, and should they not receive their allowances for a day or two, it could be of no great moment; what had passed was now at an end, but that the Vizier should certainly be acquainted with the whole of the affair, and that whatever he directed she should implicitly comply with. The Begum then sent for two of the children who were wounded in the affray of last night, and after endeavoring to soothe them, she again sent to Letafit and Hossmund Ali Khân, and in the presence of the children again expressed her disapprobation of their conduct, and the improbability of Asoph ul Dowlah’s suffering the ladies and children of Sujah Dowlah to be disgraced by being exposed to the view of the sepoys. Upon which Letafit produced the letter from the Nabob, representing that he was amenable only to the order of his Excellency, and that whatever he ordered it was his duty to obey; and that, had the ladies thought proper to have retired quietly to their apartments, he would not have used the means he had taken to compel them. The Begum again observed, that what had passed was now over. She then gave the children four hundred rupees and dismissed them, and sent word by Sumrud and the other eunuchs, that, if the ladies would peaceably retire to their apartments, Letafit would supply them with three or four thousand rupees for their present expenses, and recommended them not to incur any further disgrace, and that, if they did not think proper to act agreeably to her directions, they would do wrong. The ladies followed her advice, and about ten at night went back to the zenanah. The next morning the Begum waited upon the mother of Sujah Dowlah, and related to her all the circumstances of the disturbance. The mother of Sujah Dowlah returned for answer, that, after there being no accounts kept by crores of revenue, she was not surprised that the family of Sujah Dowlah, in their endeavors to procure subsistence, should be obliged to expose themselves to the meanest of the people. After bewailing their misfortunes and shedding many tears, the Begum took her leave and returned home.’”
As a proof of the extremity of the distress which reigned in the Khord Mohul, your Lordships have been told that these women must have perished through famine, if their gaolers, Captain Jaques and Major Gilpin, had not raised money upon their own credit, and supplied them with an occasional relief. And therefore, when they talk of his peculation, of his taking but a bribe here and a bribe there, see the consequences of his system of peculation, see the consequences of a usurpation which extinguishes the natural authority of the country, see the consequences of a clandestine correspondence that does not let the injuries
of the country come regularly before the authorities in Oude to relieve it, consider the whole mass of crimes, and then consider the sufferings that have arisen in consequence of it.
My Lords, it was not corporal pain alone that these miserable women suffered. The unsatisfied cravings of hunger and the blows of the sepoys’ bludgeons could touch only the physical part of their nature. But, my Lords, men are made of two parts, — the physical part, and the moral. The former he has in common with the brute creation. Like theirs, our corporeal pains are very limited and temporary. But the sufferings which touch our moral nature have a wider range, and are infinitely more acute, driving the sufferer sometimes to the extremities of despair and distraction. Man, in his moral nature, becomes, in his progress through life, a creature of prejudice, a creature of opinions, a creature of habits, and of sentiments growing out of them. These form our second nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society in which Providence has placed us. This sensibility of our moral nature is far more acute in that sex which, I may say without any compliment, forms the better and more virtuous part of mankind, and which is at the same time the least protected from the insults and outrages to which this sensibility exposes them. This is a new source of feelings, that often make corporal distress doubly felt; and it has a whole class of distresses of its own. These are the things that have gone to the heart of the Commons.
We have stated, first, the sufferings of the Begum, and, secondly, the sufferings of the two thousand women (I believe they are not fewer in number) that belong to them, and are dependent upon them, and dependent upon their well-being. We have stated to you that the Court of Directors were shocked and astonished, when they received the account of the first, before they had heard the second. We have proved they desired him to redress the former, if, upon inquiry, he found that his original suspicions concerning their conduct were ill-founded. He has declared here that he did not consider these as orders. Whether they were orders or not, could anything have been more pressing upon all the duties and all the sentiments of man than at least to do what was just, — that is, to make such an inquiry as in the result might justify his acts, or have entitled them to redress? Not one trace of inquiry or redress do we find, except we suppose, as we hear nothing after this of the famine, that Mr. Bristow, who seems to be a man of humanity, did so effectually interpose, that they should no longer depend for the safety of their honor on the bludgeons of the sepoys, by which alone it seems they were defended from the profane view of the vulgar, and which we must state as a matter of great aggravation in this case.
The counsel on the other side say that all this intelligence comes in an anonymous paper without date, transmitted from a newspaper-writer at Fyzabad. This is the contempt with which they treat this serious paper, sent to Mr. Hastings himself by official authority, — by Hoolas Roy, who was the news-writer at Fyzabad, — the person appointed to convey authentic intelligence concerning the state of it to the Resident at Lucknow. The Resident received it as such; he transmitted it to Mr. Hastings; and it was not till this hour, till the counsel were instructed (God forgive them for obeying such instructions!) to treat these things with ridicule, that we have heard this Hoolas Roy called a common news-writer of anonymous information, and the like. If the information had come in any way the least authentic, instead of coming in a manner the most authentic in which it was possible to come to Mr. Hastings, he was bound by every feeling of humanity, every principle of regard to his own honor and his employers’, to see whether it was true or false; if false, to refute it; if true, to afford redress: he has done neither. Therefore we charge him with being the cause; we charge upon him the consequences, with all the aggravations attending them; and we call both upon justice and humanity for redress, as far as it can be afforded to these people, and for the severest punishments which your Lordships can inflict upon the author of these evils. If, instead of the mass of crimes that we have brought before you, this singly had been charged upon the prisoner, I will say that it is a greater crime than any man has ever been impeached for before the House of Lords, from the first records of Parliament to this hour.
I need not remind your Lordships of one particular circumstance in this cruel outrage. No excuse or pretence whatever is brought forward in its justification. With respect to the Begums, they have been charged with rebellion; but who has accused the miserable inhabitants of the Khord Mohul of rebellion, or rebellious designs? What hearsay is there, even, against them of it? No: even the persons permitted by Mr. Hastings to rob and destroy the country, and who are stated by him to have been so employed, — not one of that legion of locusts which he had sent into the country to eat up and devour the bread of its inhabitants, and who had been the cause both of the famine itself and of the inability of the Begums to struggle with it, — none of these people, I say, ventured even a hearsay about these women.
Were the sufferers few? There were eight hundred of them, besides children. Were they persons of any rank and consequence? We are told that they were persons of considerable rank and distinction, connected with and living under the protection of women of the first rank in Asia. Were they persons not deserving pity? We know that they were innocent women and children, not accused, and unsuspected, of any crime. He has taken into his head to speak contemptuously of these women of the Khord Mohul: but your Lordships will consider both descriptions generally with some respect; and where they are not objects of the highest respect, they will be objects of your compassion. Your Lordships, by your avenging justice, will rescue the name of the British government from the foulest disgrace which this man has brought upon it.
An account of these transactions, as we have proved by Mr. Holt’s evidence, was regularly transmitted and made known to him. But why do I say made known to him? Do not your Lordships know that Oude was his, — that he treated it like his private estate, — that he managed it in all its concerns as if it were his private demesne, — that the Nabob dared not do a single act without him, — that he had a Resident there, nominated by himself, and forced upon the Nabob, in defiance of the Company’s orders? Yet, notwithstanding all this, we do not find a trace of anything done to relieve the aggravated distresses of these unfortunate people.
These are some of the consequences of that abominable system which, in defiance of the laws of his country, Mr. Hastings established in Oude. He knew everything there; he had spies upon his regular agents, and spies again upon them. We can prove, (indeed, he has himself proved,) that, besides his correspondence with his avowed agents, Major Palmer and Major Davy, he had secret correspondence with a whole host of agents and pensioners, who did and must have informed him of every circumstance of these affairs. But if he had never been informed of it at all, the Commons contend, and very well and justly contend, that he who usurps the government of a country, who extinguishes the authority of its native sovereign, and places in it instruments of his own, and that in defiance of those whose orders he was bound to obey, is responsible for everything that was done in the country. We do charge him with these acts of delinquencies and omissions, we declare him responsible for them; and we call for your Lordships’ judgment upon these outrages against humanity, as cruel perhaps as ever were suffered in any country.
My Lords, if there is a spark of manhood, if there is in your breasts the least feeling for our common humanity, and especially for the sufferings and distresses of that part of human nature which is made by its peculiar constitution more quick and sensible, — if, I say, there is a trace of this in your breasts, if you are yet alive to such feelings, it is impossible that you should not join with the Commons of Great Britain in feeling the utmost degree of indignation against the man who was the guilty cause of this accumulated distress. You see women, whom we have proved to be of respectable rank and condition, exposed to what is held to be the last of indignities in that country, — the view of a base, insulting, ridiculing, or perhaps vainly pitying populace. You have before you the first women in Asia, who consider the
ir honor as joined with that of these people, weeping and bewailing the calamities of their house. You have seen that in this misery and distress the sons of the Nabob were involved, and that two of them were wounded in an attempt to escape: and yet this man has had the impudence to declare his doubts of the Nabob’s having had any children in the place, though the account of what was going on had been regularly transmitted to him. After this, what is there in his conduct that we can wonder at?
My Lords, the maintenance of these women had been guarantied by the Company; but it was doubly guarantied under the great seal of humanity. The conscience of every man, and more especially of the great and powerful, is the keeper of that great seal, and knows what is due to its authority. For the violation of both these guaranties, without even the vain and frivolous pretence of a rebellion, and for all its consequences, Mr. Hastings is answerable; and he will not escape your justice by those miserable excuses which he has produced to the Court of Directors, and which he has produced here in his justification. My Lords, that justification we leave with your Lordships.
We now proceed to another part of our charge, which Mr. Hastings has not thought proper to deny, but upon which we shall beg leave to make a few observations. You will first hear read to you, from the 17th article of our charge, the subject-matter to which we now wish to call your attention.
“That in or about the month of March, 1783, three of the said brothers of the Nabob, namely, Mirza Hyder Ali, Mirza Imayut Ali, and Mirza Syef Ali, did represent to the said Bristow that they were in distress for dry bread and clothes, and in consequence of such representation were relieved by the intervention of the said Bristow, but soon after the deputation of the said Warren Hastings to Oude, in the year 1784, that is to say, some time in or about the month of September, in the said year 1784, the said Mirza Hyder Ali, one of the three princes aforesaid, did fly to the province of Benares, and did remain there in great distress; and that, although the said Warren Hastings did write to the said Nabob an account of the aforesaid circumstances, in certain loose, light, and disrespectful expressions concerning the said Mirza Hyder Ali, he did not, as he was in duty bound to do, in any wise exert that influence which he actually and notoriously possessed over the mind of the said Nabob, for the relief of the said prince, the brother of the said Nabob, but, without obtaining any satisfactory and specific assurances, either from the said Nabob or the said minister, the said Warren Hastings did content himself with advising the said prince to return to his brother, the said Nabob.”
