Extract of a Letter from the Vizier to Mr. Macpherson, received the 21st April, 1785.
"With respect to the expenses of the gentlemen who are here, I have before written in a covered manner; I now write plainly, that I have no ability to give money to the gentlemen, because I am indebted many lacs of rupees to the bankers for the payment of the Company's debt. At the time of Mr. Hastings's departure, I represented to him that I had no resources for the expenses of the gentlemen. Mr. Hastings, having ascertained my distressed situation, told me that after his arrival in Calcutta he would consult with the Council, and remove from hence the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every person except the gentlemen in office here. At this time that all the concerns are dependent upon you, and you have in every point given ease to my mind, according to Mr. Hastings's agreement, I hope that the expenses of the gentlemen maybe removed from me, and that you may recall every person residing here beyond the gentlemen in office. Although Major Palmer does not at this time demand anything for the gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them anything, yet the custom of the English gentlemen is, when they remain here, they will in the end ask for something. This is best, that they should be recalled."
I think so, too; and your Lordships will think so with me; but Mr. Hastings, who says that he himself thought thus in September, 1781, and engaged to recall these gentlemen, was so afraid of their powerful friends and patrons here, that he left India, and left all that load of obloquy upon his successors. He left a Major Palmer there, in the place of a Resident: a Resident of his own, as your Lordships must see; for Major Palmer was no Resident of the Company's. This man received a salary of about 23,000l. a year, which he declared to be less than his expenses; by which we may easily judge of the enormous salaries of those who make their fortunes there. He was left by Mr. Hastings as his representative of peculation, his representative of tyranny. He was the second agent appointed to control all power ostensible and unostensible, and to head these gentlemen whose "custom," the Nabob says, "was in the end to ask for money." Money they must have; and there, my Lords, is the whole secret.
I have this day shown your Lordships the entire dependence of Oude on the British empire. I have shown you how Mr. Hastings usurped all power, reduced the prince to a cipher, and made of his minister a mere creature of his own,—how he made the servants of the Company dependent on his own arbitrary will, and considered independence a proof of corruption. It has been likewise proved to your Lordships that he suffered the army to become an instrument of robbery and oppression, and one of its officers to be metamorphosed into a farmer-general to waste the country and embezzle its revenues. You have seen a clandestine and fraudulent system, occasioning violence and rapine; and you have seen the prisoner at the bar acknowledging and denouncing an abandoned spirit of rapacity without bringing its ministers to justice, and pleading as his excuse the fear of offending your Lordships and the House of Commons. We have shown you the government, revenue, commerce, and agriculture of Oude ruined and destroyed by Mr. Hastings and his creatures. And to wind up all, we have shown you an army so corrupted as to pervert the fundamental principles of justice, which are the elements and basis of military discipline. All this, I say, we have shown you; and I cannot believe that your Lordships will consider that we have trifled with your time, or strained our comments one jot beyond the strict measure of the text. We have shown you a horrible scene, arising from an astonishing combination of horrible circumstances. The order in which you will consider these circumstances must be left to your Lordships.
At present I am not able to proceed further. My next attempt will be to bring before you the manner in which Mr. Hastings treated movable and immovable property in Oude, and by which he has left nothing undestroyed in that devoted country.