I. That, in consequence of the treaty of Chunar, the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, did send official instructions respecting the various articles of the said treaty to the said Resident, Middleton; and that, in a postscript, the said Hastings did forbid the resumption of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân's jaghire, "until circumstances may render it more expedient and easy to be attempted than the present more material pursuits of government make it appear": thereby intimating a positive limitation of the indefinite term in the explanatory minute above recited, and confining the suspension of the article to the pressure of the war.
II. That, soon after the date of the said instructions, and within two months of the signature of the treaty of Chunar, the said Hastings did cause Sir Elijah Impey, Knight, his Majesty's chief-justice at Fort William, to discredit the justice of the crown of Great Britain by making him the channel of unwarrantable communication, and did, through the said Sir Elijah, signify to the Resident, Middleton, his, the said Hastings's, "approbation of a subsidy from Fyzoola Khân."
III. That the Resident, in answer, represents the proper equivalent for two thousand horse and one thousand foot (the forces offered to Mr. Johnson by Fyzoola Khân) to be twelve lacs, or 120,000l. sterling and upwards, each year; which the said Resident supposes is considerably beyond what he, Fyzoola Khân, will voluntarily pay: "however, if it is your wish that the claim should be made, I am ready to take it up, and you may he assured nothing in my power shall be left undone to carry it through."
IV. That the reply of the said Hastings doth not appear; but that it does appear on record that "a negotiation" (Mr. Johnson's) "was begun for Fyzoola Khân's cavalry to act with General Goddard, and, on his [Fyzoola Khân's] evading it, that a sum of money was demanded."
V. That, in the months of February, March, and April, the Resident, Middleton, did repeatedly propose the resumption of Fyzoola Khân's jaghire, agreeably to the treaty of Chunar; and that, driven to extremity (as the said Hastings supposes) "by the public menaces and denunciations of the Resident and minister," Hyder Beg Khân, a creature of the said Hastings, and both the minister and Resident acting professedly on and under the treaty of Chunar, "the Nabob Fyzoola Khân made such preparations, and such a disposition of his family and wealth, as evidently manifested either an intended or an expected rupture."
VI. That on the 6th of May the said Hastings did send his confidential agent and friend, Major Palmer, on a private commission to Lucknow; and that the said Palmer was charged with secret instructions relative to Fyzoola Khân, but of what import cannot be ascertained, the said Hastings in his public instructions having inserted only the name of Fyzoola Khân, as a mere reference (according to the explanation of the said Hastings) to what he had verbally communicated to the said Palmer; and that the said Hastings was thereby guilty of a criminal concealment.
VII. That some time about the month of August an engagement happened between a body of Fyzoola Khân's cavalry and a part of the Vizier's army, in which the latter were beaten, and their guns taken; that the Resident, Middleton, did represent the same but as a slight and accidental affray; that it was acknowledged the troops of the Vizier were the aggressors; that it did appear to the board, and to the said Hastings himself, an affair of more considerable magnitude; and that they did make the concealment thereof an article of charge against the Resident, Middleton, though the said Resident did in truth acquaint them with the same, but in a cursory manner.
VIII. That, immediately after the said "fray" at Daranagur, the Vizier (who was "but a cipher in the hands" of the minister and the Resident, both of them directly appointed and supported by the said Hastings) did make of Fyzoola Khân a new demand, equally contrary to the true intent and meaning of the treaty as his former requisitions: which new demand was for the detachment in garrison at Daranagur to be cantoned as a stationary force at Lucknow, the capital of the Vizier; whereas he, the Vizier, had only a right to demand an occasional aid to join his army in the field or in garrison during a war. But the said new demand being evaded, or rather refused, agreeably to the fair construction of the treaty, by the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, the matter was for the present dropped.
IX. That in the letter in which the Resident, Middleton, did mention "what he calls the fray" aforesaid, the said Middleton did again apply for the resumption of the jaghire of Rampoor; and that, the objections against the measure being now removed, (by the separate peace with Sindia,) he desired to know if the board "would give assurances of their support to the Vizier, in case, which" (says the Resident) "I think very probable, his [the Vizier's] own strength should be found unequal to the undertaking."
X. That, although the said Warren Hastings did make the foregoing application a new charge against the Resident, Middleton, yet the said Hastings did only criminate the said Middleton for a proposal tending "at such a crisis to increase the number of our enemies," and did in no degree, either in his articles of charge or in his accompanying minutes, express any disapprobation whatever of the principle; that, in truth, the whole proceedings of the said Resident were the natural result of the treaty of Chunar; that the said proceedings were from time to time communicated to the said Hastings; that, as he nowhere charges any disobedience of orders on Mr. Middleton with respect to Fyzoola Khân, it may be justly inferred that the said Hastings did not interfere to check the proceedings of the said Middleton on that subject; and that by such criminal neglect the said Hastings did make the guilt of the said Middleton, whatever it might be, his own.
I. That on the charges and for the misdemeanors above specified, together with divers other accusations, the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, in September, 1782, did remove the aforesaid Middleton from his office of Resident at Oude, and did appoint thereto John Bristow, Esquire, whom he had twice before, without cause, recalled from the same; and that about the same time the said Hastings did believe the mind of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân to be so irritated, in consequence of the above-recited conduct of the late Resident, Middleton, and of his, the said Hastings's, own criminal neglect, that he, the said Hastings, found it necessary to write to Fyzoola Khân, assuring him "of the favorable disposition of the government toward him, while he shall not have forfeited it by any improper conduct"; but that the said assurances of the Governor-General did not tend, as soon after appeared, to raise much confidence in the Nabob, over whom a public instrument of the same Hastings was still holding the terrors of a deprivation of his jaghire, and an exile "among his other faithless brethren across the Ganges."
II. That, on the subject of Fyzoola Khân, the said Hastings, in his instructions to the new Resident, Bristow, did leave him to be guided by his own discretion; but he adds, "Be careful to prevent the Vizier's affairs from being involved with new difficulties, while he has already so many to oppress him": thereby plainly hinting at some more decisive measures, whenever the Vizier should be less oppressed with difficulties.
III. That the Resident, Bristow, after acquainting the Governor-General with his intentions, did under the said instructions renew the aforesaid claim for a sum of money, but with much caution and circumspection, distantly sounding Allif Khân, the vakeel (or envoy) of Fyzoola Khân at the court of the Vizier; that "Allif Khân wrote to his master on the subject, and in answer he was directed not to agree to the granting of any pecuniary aid."
IV. That the Resident, Bristow, did then openly depute Major Palmer aforesaid, with the concurrence of the Vizier, and the approbation of the Governor-General, to the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, at Rampoor; and that the said Palmer was to "endeavor to convince the Nabob that all doubts of his attachment to the Vizier are ceased, and whatever claims may be made on him are founded upon the basis of his interest and advantage and a plan of establishing his right to the possession of his jaghire."
That the sudden ceasing of the said doubts, without any inquiry of the slightest kind, doth warrant a strong presumption of the Resident's conviction that they never really existed, but were artfully feigned, as a pretence for some harsh interposition; and that the indecent mockery of establishing, as a matter of favor, for a pecuniary consideration, rights which were never impeached but by the treaty of Chunar, (an instrument recorded by Warren Hastings himself to be founded on falsehood and injustice,) doth powerfully prove the true purpose and object of all the duplicity, deceit, and double-dealing with which that treaty was projected and executed.
V. That the said Palmer was instructed by the Resident, Bristow, with the subsequent approbation of the Governor-General, "to obtain from Fyzoola Khân an annual tribute"; to which the Resident adds,—"If you can procure from him, over and above this, a peshcush [or fine] of at least five lacs, it would be rendering an essential service to the Vizier, and add to the confidence his Excellency would hereafter repose in the attachment of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân." And that the said Governor-General, Hastings, did give the following extraordinary ground of calculation, as the basis of the said Palmer's negotiation for the annual tribute aforesaid.
"It was certainly understood, at the time the treaty was concluded, (of which this stipulation was a part,) that it applied solely to cavalry: as the Nabob Vizier, possessing the service of our forces, could not possibly require infantry, and least of all such infantry as Fyzoola Khân could furnish; and a single horseman included in the aid which Fyzoola Khân might furnish would prove a literal compliance with the said stipulation. The number, therefore, of horse implied by it ought at least to be ascertained: we will suppose five thousand, and, allowing the exigency for their attendance to exist only in the proportion of one year in five, reduce the demand to one thousand for the computation of the subsidy, which, at the rate of fifty rupees per man, will amount to fifty thousand per mensem. This may serve for the basis of this article in the negotiation upon it."
VI. That the said Warren Hastings doth then continue to instruct the said Palmer in the alternative of a refusal from Fyzoola Khân. "If Fyzoola Khân shall refuse to treat for a subsidy, and claim the benefit of his original agreement in its literal expression, he possesses a right which we cannot dispute, and it will in that case remain only to fix the precise number of horse which he shall furnish, which ought at least to exceed twenty-five hundred."
VII. That, in the above-recited instruction, the said Warren Hastings doth insinuate (for he doth not directly assert),—
1st. That we are entitled by treaty to five thousand troops, which he says were undoubtedly intended to be all cavalry.
2d. That the said Hastings doth then admit that a single horseman, included in the aid furnished by Fyzoola Khân, would prove a literal compliance.
3d. That the said Hastings doth next resort again to the supposition of our right to the whole five thousand cavalry.
4th. That the said Hastings doth afterwards think, in the event of an explanation of the treaty, and a settlement of the proportion of cavalry, instead of a pecuniary commutation, it will be all we can demand that the number should at least exceed twenty-five hundred.
5th. That the said Hastings doth, in calculating the supposed time of their service, assume an arbitrary estimate of one year of war to four of peace; which (however moderate the calculation may appear on the average of the said Hastings's own government) doth involve a principle in a considerable degree repugnant to the system of perfect peace inculcated in the standing orders of the Company.
6th. That, in estimating the pay of the cavalry to be commuted, the said Hastings doth fix the pay of each man at fifty rupees a month; which on five thousand troops, all cavalry, (as the said Hastings supposes the treaty of Lall-Dang to have meant,) would amount to an expense of thirty lacs a year, or between 300,000l. or 400,000l. And this expense, strictly resulting (according to the calculations of the said Hastings) from the intention of Sujah ul Dowlah's grant to Fyzoola Khân, was designed to be supported out of a jaghire valued at fifteen lacs only, or something more than 150,000l. of yearly revenue, just half the amount of the expense to be incurred in consideration of the said jaghire.
And that a basis of negotiation so inconsistent, so arbitrary, and so unjust is contrary to that uprightness and integrity which should mark the transactions of a great state, and is highly derogatory to the honor of this nation.
VIII. That, notwithstanding the seeming moderation and justice of the said Hastings in admitting the clear and undoubted right of Fyzoola Khân to insist on his treaty, the head of instruction immediately succeeding doth afford just reason for a violent presumption that such apparent lenity was but policy, to give a color to his conduct: he, the said Hastings, in the very next paragraph, bringing forth a new engine of oppression, as follows.
"To demand the surrender of all the ryots [or peasants] of the Nabob Vizier's dominions to whom Fyzoola has given protection and service, or an annual tribute in compensation for the loss sustained by the Nabob Vizier in his revenue thus transferred to Fyzoola Khân.
"You have stated the increase of his jaghire, occasioned by this act, at the moderate sum of fifteen lacs. The tribute ought at least to be one third of that amount.
"We conceive that Fyzoola Khân himself may be disposed to yield to the preceding demand, on the additional condition of being allowed to hold his lands in ultumgaw [or an inheritable tenure] instead of his present tenure by jaghire [or a tenure for life]. This we think the Vizier can have no objection to grant, and we recommend it; but for this a fine, or peshcush, ought to be immediately paid, in the customary proportion of the jumma, estimated at thirty lacs."
IX. That the Resident, Bristow, (to whom the letter containing Major Palmer's instructions is addressed,) nowhere attributes the increase of Fyzoola Khân's revenues to this protection of the fugitive ryots, subjects of the Vizier; that the said Warren Hastings was, therefore, not warranted to make that a pretext of such a peremptory demand. That, as an inducement to make Fyzoola Khân agree to the said demand, it is offered to settle his lands upon a tenure which would secure them to his children; but that settlement is to bring with it a new demand of a fine of thirty lacs, or 300,000l. and upwards; that the principles of the said demand are violent and despotic, and the inducement to acquiescence deceitful and insidious; and that both the demand and the inducement are derogatory to the honor of this nation.
X. That Major Palmer aforesaid proceeded under these instructions to Rampoor, where his journey "to extort a sum of money" was previously known from Allif Khân, vakeel of Fyzoola Khân at the Vizier's court; and that, notwithstanding the assurances of the friendly disposition of government given by the said Hastings, (as is herein related,) the Nabob Fyzoola Khân did express the most serious and desponding apprehensions, both by letter and through his vakeel, to the Resident, Bristow, who represents them to Major Palmer in the following manner.
"The Nabob Fyzoola Khân complains of the distresses he has this year suffered from the drought. The whole collections have, with great management, amounted to about twelve lacs of rupees, from which sum he has to support his troops, his family, and several relations and dependants of the late Rohilla chiefs. He says, it clearly appears to be intended to deprive him of his country, as the high demand you have made of him is inadmissible. Should he have assented to it, it would be impossible to perform the conditions, and then his reputation would be injured by a breach of agreement. Allif Khân further represents, that it is his master's intention, in case the demand should not be relinquished by you, first to proceed to Lucknow, where he proposes having an interview with the Vizier and the Resident; if he should not be able to obtain his own terms for a future possession of his jaghire, he will set off for Calcutta in order to pray for justice from the Honorable the Governor-General. He observes, it is the custom of the Honorable Company, when they deprive a chief of his country, to grant him some allowance. This he expects from Mr. Hastings's bounty; but if he should be disappointed, he will certainly set off upon a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and renounce the cares of the world.—He directs his vakeel to ascertain whether the English intend to deprive him of his country; for if they do, he is ready to surrender it, upon receiving an order from the Resident."
XI. That, after much negotiation, the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, "being fully sensible that an engagement to furnish military aid, however clearly the conditions might be stated, must be a source of perpetual misunderstanding and inconveniencies," did at length agree with Major Palmer to give fifteen lacs, or 150,000l. and upwards, by four instalments, that he might be exempted from all future claims of military service; that the said Palmer represents it to be his belief, "that no person, not known to possess your [the said Hastings's] confidence and support in the degree that I am supposed to do, would have obtained nearly so good terms"; but from what motive "terms so good" were granted, and how the confidence and support of the said Hastings did truly operate on the mind of Fyzoola Khân, doth appear to be better explained by another passage in the same letter, where the said Palmer congratulates himself on the satisfaction which he gave to Fyzoola Khân in the conduct of this negotiation, as he spent a month in order to effect "by argument and persuasion what he could have obtained in an hour by threats and compulsions."
I. That, in the course of the said negotiation for establishing the rights of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, Major Palmer aforesaid did communicate to the Resident, Bristow, and through the said Resident to the Council-General of Bengal, the full and direct denial of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân to all and every of the charges made or pretended to be made against him, as follows.
"Fyzoola Khân persists in denying the infringement on his part of any one article in the treaty, or the neglect of any obligation which it imposed upon him.
"He does not admit of the improvements reported to be made in his jaghire, and even asserts that the collections this year will fall short of the original jumma [or estimate] by reason of the long drought.
"He denies having exceeded the limited number of Rohillas in his service;
"And having refused the required aid of cavalry, made by Johnson, to act with General Goddard.
"He observes, respecting the charge of evading the Vizier's requisition for the cavalry lately stationed at Daranagur, to be stationed at Lucknow, that he is not bound by treaty to maintain a stationary force for the service of the Vizier, but to supply an aid of two or three thousand troops in time of war.
"Lastly, he asserts, that, so far from encouraging the ryots [or peasants] of the Vizier to settle in his jaghire, it has been his constant practice to deliver them up to the Aumil of Rohilcund, whenever he could discover them."
II. That, in giving his opinions on the aforesaid denials of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, the said Palmer did not controvert any one of the constructions of the treaty advanced by the said Nabob.
That, although the said Palmer, "from general appearances as well as universal report, did not doubt that the jumma of the jaghire is greatly increased," yet he, the said Palmer, did not intimate that it was increased in any degree near the amount reported, as it was drawn out in a regular estimate transmitted to the said Palmer expressly for the purposes of his negotiation, which was of course by him produced to the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and to which specifically the denial of Fyzoola Khân must be understood to apply.
That the said Palmer did not hint any doubt of the deficiency affirmed by Fyzoola Khân in the collections for the current year: and,
That, if any increase of jumma did truly exist, whatever it may have been, the said Palmer did acknowledge it "to have been solemnly relinquished (in a private agreement) by the Vizier."
That, although the said Palmer did suppose the number of Rohillas (employed "in ordinary occupations) in Rampoor alone to exceed that limited by the treaty for his [Fyzoola Khân's] service," yet the said Palmer did by no means imply that the Nabob Fyzoola Khân maintained in his service a single man more than was allowed by treaty; and by a particular and minute account of the troops of Fyzoola Khân, transmitted by the Resident, Bristow, to the said Palmer, the number was stated but at 5,840, probably including officers, who were not understood to be comprehended in the treaty.
That the said Palmer did further admit it "to be not clearly expressed in the treaty, whether the restriction included Rohillas of all descriptions"; but, at any rate, he adds, "it does not appear that their number is formidable, or that he [Fyzoola Khân] could by any means subsist such numbers as could cause any serious alarm to the Vizier; neither is there any appearance of their entertaining any views beyond the quiet possession of the advantages which they at present enjoy."
And that, in a subsequent letter, in which the said Palmer thought it prudent "to vindicate himself from any possible insinuation that he meant to sacrifice the Vizier's interest," he, the said Palmer, did positively attest the new claim on Fyzoola Khân for the protection of the Vizier's ryots to be wholly without foundation, as the Nabob Fyzoola Khân "had proved to him [Palmer], by producing receipts of various dates and for great numbers of these people surrendered upon requisition from the Vizier's officers."
III. That, over and above the aforesaid complete refutation of the different charges and pretexts under which exactions had been practised, or attempted to be practised, on the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, the said Palmer did further condemn altogether the principle of calculation assumed in such exactions (even if they had been founded in justice) by the following explanation of the nature of the tenure by which, under the treaty of Lall-Dang, the Nabob Fyzoola Khân held his possessions as a jaghiredar.
"There are no precedents in the ancient usage of the country for ascertaining the nuzzerana [customary present] or peshcush [regular fine] of grants of this nature: they were bestowed by the prince as rewards or favors; and the accustomary present in return was adapted to the dignity of the donor rather than to the value of the gift,—to which it never, I believe, bore any kind of proportion."
IV. That a sum of money ("which of course was to be received by the Company") being now obtained, and the "interests both of the Company and the Vizier" being thus much "better promoted" by "establishing the rights" of Fyzoola Khân than they could have been by "depriving him of his independency," when every undue influence of secret and criminal purposes was removed from the mind of the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, Esquire, he, the said Hastings, did also concur with his friend and agent, Major Palmer, in the vindication of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and in the most ample manner.
That the said Warren Hastings did now clearly and explicitly understand the clauses of the treaty, "that Fyzoola Khân should send two or three [and not five] thousand men, or attend in person, in case it was requisite."
That the said Warren Hastings did now confess that the right of the Vizier under the treaty was at best "but a precarious and unserviceable right; and that he thought fifteen lacs, or 150,000l. and upwards, an ample equivalent," (or, according to the expression of Major Palmer, an excellent bargain,) as in truth it was, "for expunging an article of such a tenor and so loosely worded."
And, finally, that the said Hastings did give the following description of the general character, disposition, and circumstances of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân.
"The rumors which had been spread of his hostile designs against the Vizier were totally groundless, and if he had been inclined, he had not the means to make himself formidable; on the contrary, being in the decline of life, and possessing a very fertile and prosperous jaghire, it is more natural to suppose that Fyzoola Khân wishes to spend the remainder of his days in quietness than that he is preparing to embark in active and offensive scenes which must end in his own destruction."
V. Yet that, notwithstanding this virtual and implied crimination of his whole conduct toward the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and after all the aforesaid acts systematically prosecuted in open violation of a positive treaty against a prince who had an hereditary right to more than he actually possessed, for whose protection the faith of the Company and the nation was repeatedly pledged, and who had deserved and obtained the public thanks of the British government,—when, in allusion to certain of the said acts, the Court of Directors had expressed to the said Hastings their wishes "to be considered rather as the guardians of the honor and property of the native powers than as the instruments of oppression," he, the said Hastings, in reply to the said Directors, his masters, did conclude his official account of the final settlement with Fyzoola Khân with the following indecent, because unjust, exultation:—
"Such are the measures which we shall ever wish to observe towards our allies or dependants upon our frontiers."
Copy of a Letter from Warren Hastings, Esquire, to William Devaynes, Esquire, Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, dated Cheltenham, 11th of July, 1785, and printed by order of the House of Commons.
To William Devaynes, Esquire, Chairman of the Honorable the Court of Directors.
Sir,—The Honorable Court of Directors, in their general letter to Bengal by the "Surprise," dated the 16th March, 1784, were pleased to express their desire that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents mentioned in my address of the 22d May, 1782, was received, what were my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors, and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits on my own account.
I have been kindly apprised that the information required as above is yet expected from me. I hope that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the Presidency when the "Surprise" arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed, to the day of my final departure from it, by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes which compose our Consultations of that period, that the submission which my respect would have enjoined me to pay to the command imposed on me was lost to my recollection, perhaps from the stronger impression which the first and distant perusal of it had left on my mind that it was rather intended as a reprehension for something which had given offence in my report of the original transaction than as expressive of any want of a further elucidation of it.
I will now endeavor to reply to the different questions which have been stated to me in as explicit a manner as I am able. To such information as I can give the Honorable Court is fully entitled; and where that shall prove defective, I will point out the easy means by which it may be rendered more complete.
First, I believe I can affirm with certainty, that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter above mentioned were received at or within a very few days of the dates which are prefixed to them in the account; but as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a greater degree of accuracy to the account. Perhaps the Honorable Court will judge this sufficient for any purpose to which their inquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your Accountant-General, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account that I ever kept of it. In this each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it.
For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the Council, or of the Court of Directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the Honorable the Court of Directors of the 22d May, 1782: namely, that "I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory at that distance of time could verify; and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest." It will not be expected that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily, or with a strong probability, follow them.
I have said that the three first sums of the account were paid into the Company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expense of a detachment which was formed and employed against Mahdajee Sindia under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly apprised the Court of Directors in my letter of the 29th November, 1780. The other two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made public, though intended for public service, and actually applied to it. The exigencies of the government were at that time my own, and every pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized them; but neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our Proceedings every little aid which I could thus procure, nor do I know how I could have stated it, without appearing to court favor by an ostentation which I disdain, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have laid an equal claim. I should have deemed it particularly dishonorable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiors, and bound them by oath not to receive them. I was therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it, which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the money to be brought directly to my own house, or to that of any person known to be in trust for me: for these reasons I caused it to be transported immediately to the treasury. There, you well know, Sir, it could not be received without being passed to some credit, and this could only be done by entering it as a loan or as a deposit: the first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit I am utterly ignorant: possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed.
Although I am firmly persuaded that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of the Court of Directors. They had answered my purpose of public utility, and I had almost totally dismissed them from my remembrance. But when fortune threw a sum in my way of a magnitude which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time in which I received it made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprise my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally: hastily, perhaps to prevent the vigilance and activity of secret calumny; and generally, because I knew not the exact amount of the sum, of which I was in the receipt, but not in the full possession. I promised to acquaint them with the result as soon as I should be in possession of it, and in the performance of my promise I thought it consistent with it to add to the account all the former appropriations of the same kind: my good genius then suggesting to me, with a spirit of caution which might have spared me the trouble of this apology, had I universally attended to it, that, if I had suppressed them, and they were afterwards known, I might be asked what were my motives for withholding part of these receipts from the knowledge of the Court of Directors and informing them of the rest.
It being my wish to clear up every doubt upon this transaction, which either my own mind could suggest or which may have been suggested by others, I beg leave to suppose another question, and to state the terms of it in my reply, by informing you that the indorsement on the bonds was made about the period of my leaving the Presidency, in the middle of the year 1781, in order to guard against their becoming a claim on the Company, as part of my estate, in the event of my death occurring in the course of the service on which I was then entering.
This, Sir, is the plain history of the transaction. I should be ashamed to request that you would communicate it to the Honorable Court of Directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favor of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect which is due to them as a body, and to the assurances which I derive from your experienced civilities that you will kindly overlook the trouble imposed by it.
I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your very humble and most obedient servant,
(Signed) WARREN HASTINGS.
My Lords,—The gentlemen who have it in command to support the impeachment against Mr. Hastings have directed me to open the cause with a general view of the grounds upon which the Commons have proceeded in their charge against him. They have directed me to accompany this with another general view of the extent, the magnitude, the nature, the tendency, and the effect of the crimes which they allege to have been by him committed. They have also directed me to give an explanation (with their aid I may be enabled to give it) of such circumstances, preceding the crimes charged on Mr. Hastings, or concomitant with them, as may tend to elucidate whatever may be found obscure in the articles as they stand. To these they wished me to add a few illustrative remarks on the laws, customs, opinions, and manners of the people concerned, and who are the objects of the crimes we charge on Mr. Hastings. The several articles, as they appear before you, will be opened by other gentlemen with more particularity, with more distinctness, and, without doubt, with infinitely more ability, when they come to apply the evidence which naturally belongs to each article of this accusation. This, my Lords, is the plan which we mean to pursue on the great charge which is now to abide your judgment.
My Lords, I must look upon it as an auspicious circumstance to this cause, in which the honor of the kingdom and the fate of many nations are involved, that, from the first commencement of our Parliamentary process to this the hour of solemn trial, not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen between the two Houses.
My Lords, there are persons who, looking rather upon what was to be found in our records and histories than what was to be expected from the public justice, had formed hopes consolatory to themselves and dishonorable to us. They flattered themselves that the corruptions of India would escape amidst the dissensions of Parliament. They are disappointed. They will be disappointed in all the rest of their expectations which they have formed upon everything, except the merits of their cause. The Commons will not have the melancholy unsocial glory of having acted a solitary part in a noble, but imperfect work. What the greatest inquest of the nation has begun its highest tribunal will accomplish. At length justice will be done to India. It is true that your Lordships will have your full share in this great achievement; but the Commons have always considered that whatever honor is divided with you is doubled on themselves.
My Lords, I must confess, that, amidst these encouraging prospects, the Commons do not approach your bar without awe and anxiety. The magnitude of the interests which we have in charge will reconcile some degree of solicitude for the event with the undoubting confidence with which we repose ourselves upon your Lordships' justice. For we are men, my Lords; and men are so made, that it is not only the greatness of danger, but the value of the adventure, which measures the degree of our concern in every undertaking. I solemnly assure your Lordships that no standard is sufficient to estimate the value which the Commons set upon the event of the cause they now bring before you. My Lords, the business of this day is not the business of this man, it is not solely whether the prisoner at the bar be found innocent or guilty, but whether millions of mankind shall be made miserable or happy.
Your Lordships will see, in the progress of this cause, that there is not only a long, connected, systematic series of misdemeanors, but an equally connected system of maxims and principles invented to justify them. Upon both of these you must judge. According to the judgment that you shall give upon the past transactions in India, inseparably connected as they are with the principles which support them, the whole character of your future government in that distant empire is to be unalterably decided. It will take its perpetual tenor, it will receive its final impression, from the stamp of this very hour.
It is not only the interest of India, now the most considerable part of the British empire, which is concerned, but the credit and honor of the British nation itself will be decided by this decision. We are to decide by this judgment, whether the crimes of individuals are to be turned into public guilt and national ignominy, or whether this nation will convert the very offences which have thrown a transient shade upon its government into something that will reflect a permanent lustre upon the honor, justice, and humanity of this kingdom.
My Lords, there is another consideration, which augments the solicitude of the Commons, equal to those other two great interests I have stated, those of our empire and our national character,—something that, if possible, comes more home to the hearts and feelings of every Englishman: I mean, the interests of our Constitution itself, which is deeply involved in the event of this cause. The future use and the whole effect, if not the very existence, of the process of an impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors before the peers of this kingdom upon the charge of the Commons will very much be decided by your judgment in this cause. This tribunal will be found (I hope it will always be found) too great for petty causes: if it should at the same time be found incompetent to one of the greatest,—that is, if little offences, from their minuteness, escape you, and the greatest, from their magnitude, oppress you,—it is impossible that this form of trial should not in the end vanish out of the Constitution. For we must not deceive ourselves: whatever does not stand with credit cannot stand long. And if the Constitution should be deprived, I do not mean in form, but virtually, of this resource, it is virtually deprived of everything else that is valuable in it. For this process is the cement which binds the whole together; this is the individuating principle that makes England what England is. In this court it is that no subject, in no part of the empire, can fail of competent and proportionable justice; here it is that we provide for that which is the substantial excellence of our Constitution,—I mean, the great circulation of responsibility, by which (excepting the supreme power) no man, in no circumstance, can escape the account which he owes to the laws of his country. It is by this process that magistracy, which tries and controls all other things, is itself tried and controlled. Other constitutions are satisfied with making good subjects; this is a security for good governors. It is by this tribunal that statesmen who abuse their power are accused by statesmen and tried by statesmen, not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality. It is here that those who by the abuse of power have violated the spirit of law can never hope for protection from any of its forms; it is here that those who have refused to conform themselves to its perfections can never hope to escape through any of its defects. It ought, therefore, my Lords, to become our common care to guard this your precious deposit, rare in its use, but powerful in its effect, with a religious vigilance, and never to suffer it to be either discredited or antiquated. For this great end your Lordships are invested with great and plenary powers: but you do not suspend, you do not supersede, you do not annihilate any subordinate jurisdiction; on the contrary, you are auxiliary and supplemental to them all.
Whether it is owing to the felicity of our times, less fertile in great offences than those which have gone before us, or whether it is from a sluggish apathy which has dulled and enervated the public justice, I am not called upon to determine,—but, whatever may be the cause, it is now sixty-three years since any impeachment, grounded upon abuse of authority and misdemeanor in office, has come before this tribunal. The last is that of Lord Macclesfield, which happened in the year 1725. So that the oldest process known to the Constitution of this country has, upon its revival, some appearance of novelty. At this time, when all Europe is in a state of, perhaps, contagious fermentation, when antiquity has lost all its reverence and all its effect on the minds of men, at the same time that novelty is still attended with the suspicions that always will be attached to whatever is new, we have been anxiously careful, in a business which seems to combine the objections both to what is antiquated and what is novel, so to conduct ourselves that nothing in the revival of this great Parliamentary process shall afford a pretext for its future disuse.
My Lords, strongly impressed as they are with these sentiments, the Commons have conducted themselves with singular care and caution. Without losing the spirit and zeal of a public prosecution, they have comported themselves with such moderation, temper, and decorum as would not have ill become the final judgment, if with them rested the final judgment, of this great cause.
With very few intermissions, the affairs of India have constantly engaged the attention of the Commons for more than fourteen years. We may safely affirm we have tried every mode of legislative provision before we had recourse to anything of penal process. It was in the year 1774 [1773?] we framed an act of Parliament for remedy to the then existing disorders in India, such as the then information before us enabled us to enact. Finding that the act of Parliament did not answer all the ends that were expected from it, we had, in the year 1782, recourse to a body of monitory resolutions. Neither had we the expected fruit from them. When, therefore, we found that our inquiries and our reports, our laws and our admonitions, were alike despised, that enormities increased in proportion as they were forbidden, detected, and exposed,—when we found that guilt stalked with an erect and upright front, and that legal authority seemed to skulk and hide its head like outlawed guilt,—when we found that some of those very persons who were appointed by Parliament to assert the authority of the laws of this kingdom were the most forward, the most bold, and the most active in the conspiracy for their destruction,—then it was time for the justice of the nation to recollect itself. To have forborne longer would not have been patience, but collusion; it would have been participation with guilt; it would have been to make ourselves accomplices with the criminal.
We found it was impossible to evade painful duty without betraying a sacred trust. Having, therefore, resolved upon the last and only resource, a penal prosecution, it was our next business to act in a manner worthy of our long deliberation. In all points we proceeded with selection. We have chosen (we trust it will so appear to your Lordships) such a crime, and such a criminal, and such a body of evidence, and such a mode of process, as would have recommended this course of justice to posterity, even if it had not been supported by any example in the practice of our forefathers.
First, to speak of the process: we are to inform your Lordships, that, besides that long previous deliberation of fourteen years, we examined, as a preliminary to this proceeding, every circumstance which could prove favorable to parties apparently delinquent, before we finally resolved to prosecute. There was no precedent to be found in the Journals, favorable to persons in Mr. Hastings's circumstances, that was not applied to. Many measures utterly unknown to former Parliamentary proceedings, and which, indeed, seemed in some degree to enfeeble them, but which were all to the advantage of those that were to be prosecuted, were adopted, for the first time, upon this occasion. In an early stage of the proceeding, the criminal desired to be heard. He was heard; and he produced before the bar of the House that insolent and unbecoming paper which lies upon our table. It was deliberately given in by his own hand, and signed with his own name. The Commons, however, passed by everything offensive in that paper with a magnanimity that became them. They considered nothing in it but the facts that the defendant alleged, and the principles he maintained; and after a deliberation not short of judicial, we proceeded with confidence to your bar.
So far as to the process; which, though I mentioned last in the line and order in which I stated the objects of our selection, I thought it best to dispatch first.
As to the crime which we chose, we first considered well what it was in its nature, under all the circumstances which attended it. We weighed it with all its extenuations and with all its aggravations. On that review, we are warranted to assert that the crimes with which we charge the prisoner at the bar are substantial crimes,—that they are no errors or mistakes, such as wise and good men might possibly fall into, which may even produce very pernicious effects without being in fact great offences. The Commons are too liberal not to allow for the difficulties of a great and arduous public situation. They know too well the domineering necessities which frequently occur in all great affairs. They know the exigency of a pressing occasion, which, in its precipitate career, bears everything down before it,—which does not give time to the mind to recollect its faculties, to reinforce its reason, and to have recourse to fixed principles, but, by compelling an instant and tumultuous decision, too often obliges men to decide in a manner that calm judgment would certainly have rejected. We know, as we are to be served by men, that the persons who serve us must be tried as men, and with a very large allowance indeed to human infirmity and human error. This, my Lords, we knew and we weighed before we came before you. But the crimes which we charge in these articles are not lapses, defects, errors of common human frailty, which, as we know and feel, we can allow for. We charge this offender with no crimes that have not arisen from passions which it is criminal to harbor,—with no offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, ferocity, treachery, cruelty, malignity of temper,—in short, in [with?] nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral principle, that does not manifest an inveterate blackness of heart, dyed in grain with malice, vitiated, corrupted, gangrened to the very core. If we do not plant his crimes in those vices which the breast of man is made to abhor, and the spirit of all laws, human and divine, to interdict, we desire no longer to be heard upon this occasion. Let everything that can be pleaded on the ground of surprise or error, upon those grounds be pleaded with success: we give up the whole of those predicaments. We urge no crimes that were not crimes of forethought. We charge him with nothing that he did not commit upon deliberation,—that he did not commit against advice, supplication, and remonstrance,—that he did not commit against the direct command of lawful authority,—that he did not commit after reproof and reprimand, the reproof and reprimand of those who were authorized by the laws to reprove and reprimand him. The crimes of Mr. Hastings are crimes not only in themselves, but aggravated by being crimes of contumacy. They were crimes, not against forms, but against those eternal laws of justice which are our rule and our birthright. His offences are, not in formal, technical language, but in reality, in substance and effect, high crimes and high misdemeanors.
So far as to the crimes. As to the criminal, we have chosen him on the same principle on which we selected the crimes. We have not chosen to bring before you a poor, puny, trembling delinquent, misled, perhaps, by those who ought to have taught him better, but who have afterwards oppressed him by their power, as they had first corrupted him by their example. Instances there have been many, wherein the punishment of minor offences, in inferior persons, has been made the means of screening crimes of an high order, and in men of high description. Our course is different. We have not brought before you an obscure offender, who, when his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the power of the prosecution, gives even to public justice something of the appearance of oppression: no, my Lords, we have brought before you the first man of India, in rank, authority, and station. We have brought before you the chief of the tribe, the head of the whole body of Eastern offenders, a captain-general of iniquity, under whom all the fraud, all the peculation, all the tyranny in India are embodied, disciplined, arrayed, and paid. This is the person, my Lords, that we bring before you. We have brought before you such a person, that, if you strike at him with the firm and decided arm of justice, you will not have need of a great many more examples. You strike at the whole corps, if you strike at the head.
So far as to the crime: so far as to the criminal. Now, my Lords, I shall say a few words relative to the evidence which we have brought to support such a charge, and which ought to be equal in weight to the charge itself. It is chiefly evidence of record, officially signed by the criminal himself in many instances. We have brought before you his own letters, authenticated by his own hand. On these we chiefly rely. But we shall likewise bring before you living witnesses, competent to speak to the points to which they are brought.
When you consider the late enormous power of the prisoner,—when you consider his criminal, indefatigable assiduity in the destruction of all recorded evidence,—when you consider the influence he has over almost all living testimony,—when you consider the distance of the scene of action,—I believe your Lordships, and I believe the world, will be astonished that so much, so clear, so solid, and so conclusive evidence of all kinds has been obtained against him. I have no doubt that in nine instances in ten the evidence is such as would satisfy the narrow precision supposed to prevail, and to a degree rightly to prevail, in all subordinate power and delegated jurisdiction. But your Lordships will maintain, what we assert and claim as the right of the subjects of Great Britain, that you are not bound by any rules of evidence, or any other rules whatever, except those of natural, immutable, and substantial justice.
God forbid the Commons should desire that anything should be received as proof from them which is not by nature adapted to prove the thing in question! If they should make such a request, they would aim at overturning the very principles of that justice to which they resort; they would give the nation an evil example that would rebound back on themselves, and bring destruction upon their own heads, and on those of all their posterity.
On the other hand, I have too much confidence in the learning with which you will be advised, and the liberality and nobleness of the sentiments with which you are born, to suspect that you would, by any abuse of the forms, and a technical course of proceeding, deny justice to so great a part of the world that claims it at your hands. Your Lordships always had an ample power, and almost unlimited jurisdiction; you have now a boundless object. It is not from this district or from that parish, not from this city or the other province, that relief is now applied for: exiled and undone princes, extensive tribes, suffering nations, infinite descriptions of men, different in language, in manners, and in rites, men separated by every barrier of Nature from you, by the Providence of God are blended in one common cause, and are now become suppliants at your bar. For the honor of this nation, in vindication of this mysterious Providence, let it be known that no rule formed upon municipal maxims (if any such rule exists) will prevent the course of that imperial justice which you owe to the people that call to you from all parts of a great disjointed world. For, situated as this kingdom is, an object, thank God, of envy to the rest of the nations, its conduct in that high and elevated situation will undoubtedly be scrutinized with a severity as great as its power is invidious.
It is well known that enormous wealth has poured into this country from India through a thousand channels, public and concealed; and it is no particular derogation from our honor to suppose a possibility of being corrupted by that by which other empires have been corrupted, and assemblies almost as respectable and venerable as your Lordships' have been directly or indirectly vitiated. Forty millions of money, at least, have within our memory been brought from India into England. In this case the most sacred judicature ought to look to its reputation. Without offence we may venture to suggest that the best way to secure reputation is, not by a proud defiance of public opinion, but by guiding our actions in such a manner as that public opinion may in the end be securely defied, by having been previously respected and dreaded. No direct false judgment is apprehended from the tribunals of this country; but it is feared that partiality may lurk and nestle in the abuse of our forms of proceeding. It is necessary, therefore, that nothing in that proceeding should appear to mark the slightest trace, should betray the faintest odor of chicane. God forbid, that, when you try the most serious of all causes, that, when you try the cause of Asia in the presence of Europe, there should be the least suspicion that a narrow partiality, utterly destructive of justice, should so guide us that a British subject in power should appear in substance to possess rights which are denied to the humble allies, to the attached dependants of this kingdom, who by their distance have a double demand upon your protection, and who, by an implicit (I hope not a weak and useless) trust in you, have stripped themselves of every other resource under heaven!
I do not say this from any fear, doubt, or hesitation concerning what your Lordships will finally do,—none in the world; but I cannot shut my ears to the rumors which you all know to be disseminated abroad. The abusers of power may have a chance to cover themselves by those fences and intrenchments which were made to secure the liberties of the people against men of that very description. But God forbid it should be bruited from Pekin to Paris, that the laws of England are for the rich and the powerful, but to the poor, the miserable, and defenceless they afford no resource at all! God forbid it should be said, no nation is equal to the English in substantial violence and in formal justice,—that in this kingdom we feel ourselves competent to confer the most extravagant and inordinate powers upon public ministers, but that we are deficient, poor, helpless, lame, and impotent in the means of calling them to account for their use of them! An opinion has been insidiously circulated through this kingdom, and through foreign nations too, that, in order to cover our participation in guilt, and our common interest in the plunder of the East, we have invented a set of scholastic distinctions, abhorrent to the common sense and unpropitious to the common necessities of mankind, by which we are to deny ourselves the knowledge of what the rest of the world knows, and what so great a part of the world both knows and feels. I do not deprecate any appearance which may give countenance to this aspersion from suspicion that any corrupt motive can influence this court; I deprecate it from knowing that hitherto we have moved within the narrow circle of municipal justice. I am afraid, that, from the habits acquired by moving within a circumscribed sphere, we may be induced rather to endeavor at forcing Nature into that municipal circle than to enlarge the circle of national justice to the necessities of the empire we have obtained.
This is the only thing which does create any doubt or difficulty in the minds of sober people. But there are those who will not judge so equitably. Where two motives, neither of them perfectly justifiable, may be assigned, the worst has the chance of being preferred. If, from any appearance of chicane in the court, justice should fail, all men will say, better there were no tribunals at all. In my humble opinion, it would be better a thousand times to give all complainants the short answer the Dey of Algiers gave a British ambassador, representing certain grievances suffered by the British merchants,—"My friend," (as the story is related by Dr. Shaw,) "do not you know that my subjects are a band of robbers, and that I am their captain?"—better it would be a thousand times, and a thousand thousand times more manly, than an hypocritical process, which, under a pretended reverence to punctilious ceremonies and observances of law, abandons mankind without help and resource to all the desolating consequences of arbitrary power. The conduct and event of this cause will put an end to such doubts, wherever they may be entertained. Your Lordships will exercise the great plenary powers with which you are invested in a manner that will do honor to the protecting justice of this kingdom, that will completely avenge the great people who are subjected to it. You will not suffer your proceedings to be squared by any rules but by their necessities, and by that law of a common nature which cements them to us and us to them. The reports to the contrary have been spread abroad with uncommon industry; but they will be speedily refuted by the humanity, simplicity, dignity, and nobleness of your Lordships' justice.
Having said all that I am instructed to say concerning the process which the House of Commons has used, concerning the crimes which they have chosen, concerning the criminal upon whom they attach the crimes, and concerning the evidence which they mean to produce, I am now to proceed to open that part of the business which falls to my share. It is rather an explanation of the circumstances than an enforcement of the crimes.
Your Lordships of course will be apprised that this cause is not what occurs every day, in the ordinary round of municipal affairs,—that it has a relation to many things, that it touches many points in many places, which are wholly removed from the ordinary beaten orbit of our English affairs. In other affairs, every allusion immediately meets its point of reference; nothing can be started that does not immediately awaken your attention to something in your own laws and usages which you meet with every day in the ordinary transactions of life. But here you are caught, as it were, into another world; you are to have the way pioneered before you. As the subject is new, it must be explained; as it is intricate as well as new, that explanation can be only comparatively short: and therefore, knowing your Lordships to be possessed, along with all other judicial virtues, of the first and foundation of them all, judicial patience, I hope that you will not grudge a few hours to the explanation of that which has cost the Commons fourteen years' assiduous application to acquire,—that your Lordships will not disdain to grant a few hours to what has cost the people of India upwards of thirty years of their innate, inveterate, hereditary patience to endure.
My Lords, the powers which Mr. Hastings is charged with having abused are the powers delegated to him by the East India Company. The East India Company itself acts under two very dissimilar sorts of powers, derived from two sources very remote from each other. The first source of its power is under charters which the crown of Great Britain was authorized by act of Parliament to grant; the other is from several charters derived from the Emperor of the Moguls, the person in whose dominions they were chiefly conversant,—particularly that great charter by which, in the year 1765, they acquired the high-stewardship of the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. Under those two bodies of charters, the East India Company, and all their servants, are authorized to act.
As to those of the first description, it is from the British charters that they derive the capacity by which they are considered as a public body, or at all capable of any public function. It is from thence they acquire the capacity to take from any power whatsoever any other charter, to acquire any other offices, or to hold any other possessions. This, being the root and origin of their power, renders them responsible to the party from whom all their immediate and consequential powers are derived. As they have emanated from the supreme power of this kingdom, the whole body and the whole train of their servants, the corporate body as a corporate body, individuals as individuals, are responsible to the high justice of this kingdom. In delegating great power to the East India Company, this kingdom has not released its sovereignty; on the contrary, the responsibility of the Company is increased by the greatness and sacredness of the powers that have been intrusted to it. Attempts have been made abroad to circulate a notion that the acts of the East India Company and their servants are not cognizable here. I hope on this occasion your Lordships will show that this nation never did give a power without annexing to it a proportionable degree of responsibility.
As to their other powers, the Company derives them from the Mogul empire by various charters from that crown, and from the great magistrates of that crown, and particularly by the Mogul charter of 1765, by which they obtained the dewanny, that is, the office of lord high-steward, of the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. By that charter they bound themselves (and bound inclusively all their servants) to perform all the duties belonging to that new office, and to be held by all the ties belonging to that new relation. If the Mogul empire had existed in its vigor, they would have been bound, under that responsibility, to observe the laws, rights, usages, and customs of the natives, and to pursue their benefit in all things: for this duty was inherent in the nature, institution, and purpose of the office which they received. If the power of the sovereign from whom they derived these powers should by any revolution in human affairs be annihilated or suspended, their duty to the people below them, which was created under the Mogul charter, is not annihilated, is not even suspended; and for their responsibility in the performance of that duty, they are thrown back upon that country (thank God, not annihilated) from whence their original power, and all subsequent derivative powers, have flowed. When the Company acquired that high office in India, an English corporation became an integral part of the Mogul empire. When Great Britain virtually assented to that grant of office, and afterwards took advantage of it, Great Britain guarantied the performance of all its duties. Great Britain entered into a virtual act of union with that country, by which we bound ourselves as securities to preserve the people in all the rights, laws, and liberties which their natural, original sovereign was bound to support, if he had been in condition to support them. By the disposition of events, the two duties, flowing from two different sources, are now united in one. The people of India, therefore, come in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, but in their own right, to the bar of this House, before the supreme royal justice of this kingdom, from whence originally all the powers under which they have suffered were derived.
It may be a little necessary, when we are stating the powers the Company have derived from their charter, and which we state Mr. Hastings to have abused, to state in as short and as comprehensive words as I can (for the matter is large indeed) what the constitution of that Company is,—I mean chiefly, what it is in reference to its Indian service, the great theatre of the abuse. Your Lordships will naturally conceive that it is not to inform you, but to revive circumstances in your memory, that I enter into this detail.
You will therefore recollect, that the East India Company had its origin about the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, a period of projects, when all sorts of commercial adventures, companies, and monopolies were in fashion. At that time the Company was constituted with extensive powers for increasing the commerce and the honor of this country; because increasing its commerce, without increasing its honor and reputation, would have been thought at that time, and will be thought now, a bad bargain for the country. The powers of the Company were, under that charter, merely commercial. By degrees, as the theatre of operation was distant, as its intercourse was with many great, some barbarous, and all of them armed nations, nations in which not only the sovereign, but the subjects, were armed, it was found necessary to enlarge their powers. The first power they obtained was a power of naval discipline in their ships,—a power which has been since dropped; the next was a power of law martial; the next was a power of civil, and, to a degree, of criminal jurisdiction, within their own factories, upon their own people and their own servants; the next was (and here was a stride indeed) the power of peace and war. Those high and almost incommunicable prerogatives of sovereignty, which were hardly ever known before to be parted with to any subjects, and which in several states were not wholly intrusted to the prince or head of the commonwealth himself, were given to the East India Company. That Company acquired these powers about the end of the reign of Charles the Second; and they were afterwards more fully, as well as more legally, given by Parliament after the Revolution. From this time, the East India Company was no longer merely a mercantile company, formed for the extension of the British commerce: it more nearly resembled a delegation of the whole power and sovereignty of this kingdom sent into the East. From that time the Company ought to be considered as a subordinate sovereign power: that is, sovereign with regard to the objects which it touched; subordinate with regard to the power from whence its great trust was derived.
Under these successive arrangements things took a course very different from their usual order. A new disposition took place, not dreamt of in the theories of speculative politicians, and of which few examples in the least resembling it have been seen in the modern world, none at all in the ancient. In other instances, a political body that acts as a commonwealth was first settled, and trade followed as a consequence of the protection obtained by political power; but here the course of affairs was reversed. The constitution of the Company began in commerce and ended in empire. Indeed, wherever the sovereign powers of peace and war are given, there wants but time and circumstance to make these powers supersede every other. The affairs of commerce will fall at last into their proper rank and situation. However primary in their original intention, they will become secondary. The possession, therefore, and the power of assertion of these great authorities coinciding with the improved state of Europe, with the improved state of arts in Europe, with the improved state of laws, and, what is much more material, the improved state of military discipline, more and more perfected every day with us,—universal improvement in Europe coinciding with the general decay of Asia, (for the proud day of Asia is passed,) this improvement coinciding with the relaxation and dissolution of the Mogul government, with the decline of its warlike spirit, with the total disuse of the ancient strictness of the military discipline established by Tamerlane, the India Company came to be what it is, a great empire, carrying on, subordinately, a great commerce; it became that thing which was supposed by the Roman law irreconcilable to reason and propriety,—eundem negotiatorem et dominum: the same power became the general trader, the same power became the supreme lord.