i f
 
 OF
 
 ' I 
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 OP THE 
 
 MANAGERS AND COUNSEL 
 
 TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 E. A. BOND, 
 
 ASSISTANT KEEPEE OF THE MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BHITISH MUSEUM . 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHORITY OP THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS 
 OP HER MAJESTY'S TREASURY. 
 
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED BY GEOEGE E. EYEE AND WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY. 
 
 FOR HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS. 
 
 1859.
 
 3
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 INTRODUCTION ..... . _ i 
 
 SPEECH of the Rt. Hon. E. BURKE ; 15th February 1788 - 1 
 
 CONTINUATION; 16th February 1788 - - 45 
 
 CONTINUATION; 18th February 1788 - - - 101 
 
 CONCLUSION; 19th February 17.88 - - 152 
 
 SPEECH of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox ; 22d February 1788 - 183 
 
 SPEECH of C. GKEY, Esq. ? 25th February 1788 - 265 
 
 SPEECH of J. ANSTRUTHER, Esq. ; llth April 1788 - 307 
 
 OBSERVATIONS of the Rt. Hon. E. BURKE; llth April 1788 - - 3G2 
 
 SPEECH of W. ADAM, Esq. ; 15th April 1788 - 368 
 
 SPEECH of the Rt. Hon. T.TELHAM; lth April 1788 - 436 
 
 SPEECH of R. B. SHERIDAN, Esq ; 3d June 1788 - 482 
 
 CONTINUATION ; 6th June 1788 - 560 
 
 CONTINUATION; 10th June 1788 - - 627 
 
 CONCLUSION; 13th June 1788 - - 659
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE Trial of Warren Hastings, not only is interesting to us 
 at the present day as an instance of proceedings on an 
 impeachment by the House of Commons for high crimes and 
 misdemeanors in office, but will always be regarded as honour- 
 able to the country from the motives which originated it and 
 the purposes it was intended to serve. For, whatever other 
 feelings mingled in the prosecution, it was mainly brought 
 about by the generous sympathy of at least one great and 
 noble mind, enkindling that of the nation at large, in the 
 alleged oppression of a remote people, unallied in race, his- 
 tory or religion, and even uncomplaining of their own 
 wrongs. And no object could be nobler than that it aimed 
 at; for its purpose was, at the first birth of an empire 
 destined to embrace nearly a third part of the population of 
 the globe, to purify the principles of its government from 
 the taint of imputed faithlessness and cupidity. And, though 
 generations are passed away since this great public prose- 
 cution agitated the minds of all classes in this country, 
 it deserves no less consideration now, when events such as 
 have of late occurred in India force us to trace out with 
 all anxiety the causes, remote as well as immediate, which 
 may have given them birth. 
 
 But there is another nature of interest attaching to the 
 trial of Warren Hastings, and which appeals more directly 
 to all cultivated intellects the interest we feel in the efforts 
 of genius of the highest character, exerted in the conduct 
 of the prosecution, and especially displaying itself in elo- 
 quence, the fame of which has reached our own day, as 
 of unprecedented brilliancy.
 
 ii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The present publication will afford the best means for 
 studying the merits of the prosecution, and, for the first 
 time, furnish an opportunity of appreciating the character 
 of the eloquence it gave occasion to. The speeches delivered 
 by Fox and Sheridan, and their opponents, Law, Plumer and 
 Dallas, remain unknown except by the meagrest outline 
 reports. Burke's alone have appeared in print at full length ; 
 yet not as they were delivered in Westminster Hall, but 
 prepared for publication by himself, and greatly altered, not 
 only in diction, but in the suppression of parts and introduc- 
 tion of new matter. 
 
 The speeches of Prosecutors and Counsel for the Defence 
 will now be published as nearly in their original words as 
 they have been preserved to us : and, since each party 
 laboured to the utmost to display or dissect the evidence 
 with the greatest advantage to its own side, we shall, in 
 reading them, have the best possible assistance in weighing 
 the truth of the charges produced in the impeachment. 
 
 It will be convenient for the reader of these speeches to 
 have at hand a short narrative of the series of events which 
 formed the foundation of the charges they refer to. These 
 are connected with only a small part of the great measures 
 which distinguished Mr. Hastings' administration of India. 
 We shall have no occasion to speak of his wars with the 
 Mahrattas, or the struggle for possession of the Carnatic 
 with Hyder Ali. For, although these great efforts of 
 our then feeble power in the East may have given occa- 
 sion for the course of policy arraigned by Mr. Hastings' 
 accusers, they are not among the transactions included in 
 the Articles of impeachment. The matters referred to in 
 the actual charges against him, especially in the Articles 
 opened in the speeches comprised in the present volume, are 
 mainly connected with the early revolutions in the govern- 
 ment of Bengal, the history of the province of Oude, and 
 of its dependency, the zamindary of Benares. 
 
 For the purpose in view, the proposed sketch of events 
 need be commenced at no earlier period than that of Lord
 
 INTRODUCTION. iii 
 
 dive's return to England, in the year 1760, after his me- 
 morable restorntion of the power of the Company, reduced 
 to almost its last gasp by the successes of their opponent, 
 Suraj-ud-Dowla, Nawab of Bengal. The government of the Revolutions 
 Presidency of Calcutta had been left in the hands ofso 1 * 
 
 of Bengal. 
 
 Mr. Hoi well, one of the survivors of the horrors of the Black 
 Hole not as permanent Governor, but as holder of the office 
 until the arrival of Mr. Vansittart, then President of Madras, 
 who had been nominated to the appointment. The settle- 
 ment made by Clive of the affairs of Bengal survived but 
 a short time his vacation of office. He had established Mir 
 Jaffier as Nawab, and under the shelter of his protection the 
 Nawab ruled in security. But when Clive was no longer 
 at hand, disorder overspread the country. Pie was assailed 
 from without by the Shah Zada, the eldest son of the Mogul, 
 assisted by Suja-ud-Dowla, Nawab of Oude. During the 
 progress of the war, the Shah Zada, by the death of his 
 father, became Emperor, under the name of Shah Alem, and 
 continued hostilities against Mir Jaffier, with increased 
 power and activity. The Nawab was upheld by his 
 English protectors, whose forces, under the command of 
 Colonel Calliaud, effectually co-operated with his native 
 troops, commanded by his son Miran. In the course of the 
 campaign, an event happened which led to a revolution in the 
 government of the province, and under circumstances which 
 are dwelt on in Mr. Burke's general opening of the prosecu- 
 tion as illustrative of the rapacity of the English servants of 
 the Company. Miran was struck by lightning in his tent 
 during a storm. His troops mutinied, and turned their arms 
 against their prince, the Nawab. To add to the confusion, a 
 contest ensued between the native chiefs for the succession 
 to the high office of commander of the Nawab's army, and 
 Mr. Holwell and his Council adopted the side of Cossim AH 
 Khan, son-in-law of Mir Jaffier. In return for the assistance 
 which they were prepared to extend to him, and by which he 
 would be assured of the office, and be raised to the position 
 of the virtual ruler of the country, he guaranteed by treaty 
 
 a 2
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings mem- 
 ber of the 
 Council of 
 Calcutta, 
 
 the immediate discharge of arrears of payments due from the 
 Nawab, and the concession of the provinces of Burdwan, 
 Midnapore and Chittagong. As was probably foreseen, the 
 revolution, which was, in fact, commenced by the act of 
 forming a special agreement of such a character with the 
 NawaVs principal officer of state, it was found necessary to 
 work out to its full completion in the sequel. Mutual 
 jealousies and distrust increased between Mir Jaffier and 
 the government of Calcutta, and the intrigues of the NawaVs 
 son-in-law, Cossim Ali Khan, introduced disorder into the 
 province, and destroyed the authority of the Nawab 
 over his own vassals. The misrule which prevailed gave 
 excuse for the interference of the English. Mir Jaffier was 
 deposed, and Cossim Ali Khan raised to his place ; and 
 the late Nawab, having surrendered on the condition of per- 
 sonal security, was removed to Calcutta. It is charged by 
 Mr. Burke upon the English promoters of this revolution, 
 that they were influenced by promises of enormous pre- 
 sents from the new Nawab. Throughout the transactions, 
 Mr. Hastings, then the Company's Resident at the NawaVs 
 court, was actively employed, though, as only the instrument 
 of higher authority, he might decline responsibility for the 
 measures he helped to carry out. 
 
 In August, 1761, after the completion of this revolution, 
 Mr. Hastings was promoted to the office of Member of the 
 Council of Calcutta, and thus acquired a voice in the 
 direction of the affairs of the Presidency. But, as regarded 
 the principal subject which occupied the deliberations of the 
 Board while he continued a junior member of it, namely, the 
 regulation of the commercial intercourse of the agents and 
 servants of the Company Avith the subjects of the Nawab of 
 Bengal, as also in respect to other transactions connected with 
 the treatment of that Prince, it is said he was an unwilling 
 party to the proceedings of the majority. Abusing their 
 right of interfering in the NawaVs affairs, acquired by the 
 great services rendered to him, the more powerful section 
 of the Council took the course of unjustly supporting the
 
 INTRODUCTION. V 
 
 civil servants of the Company in a selfish and extreme abuse 
 of the commercial privileges allowed them, even to the 
 resistance of the authority of the Nawab; while, on the 
 other hand, they shamefully abandoned to his cupidity and 
 vengeance chiefs in allegiance to him who had incurred his 
 resentment, but whom the Company were pledged to pro- 
 tect. Mr. Hastings' experience of the system of govern- 
 ment in the province, and clearer comprehension of the 
 Company's real interests, made him a steady opponent of 
 such policy ; and his views were justified by the events 
 which followed. Quarrels soon ensued between the Council 
 and the Nawab, growing more and more envenomed, until 
 the Company was forced to take up arms against the Prince 
 of their own creation. Nor was the contest which ensued 
 one of slight account. The revolted Nawab had secured 
 the assistance of the Mogul, Shah Alem, and the Nawab 
 \Vazir of Oude, Suja-ud-Dowla ; and, in the alarm raised 
 in England by the severity of the struggle, the hero of 
 Plassy, who since his return to England had experienced 
 little favour from the Directors, was appealed to to resume 
 his post at Calcutta, with absolute powers for settling the 
 affairs of the Presidency. 
 
 But, however impolitic and unjust in its origin, the 
 contest had been carried on with vigour and success by 
 the Company's servants. Mir Cossim was everywhere 
 defeated, and at length compelled to flight; his allies, at 
 the same time, making absolute submission to the con- 
 querors. Nor were Mr. \ r ansittart and his Council wanting 
 in turning to the full advantage of the Company the oppor- 
 tunity now in their hands for more effectually controlling 
 the affairs of the province. The previous Nawab, Mir Restoration 
 Jaffier, originally created by Lord Clive, was reinstated ; wab, Mir 
 his restoration to power being acknowledged by the pay- 
 ment of heavy sums for the expenses of the war, and 
 other concessions. Dying shortly after, in January, 1765, 
 his eldest surviving son, Nujem-ud-Dowla, was selected 
 by the Governor and Council of Calcutta to succeed him,
 
 VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and this fresh opportunity of enlarging and confirming the 
 power and privileges of the English was not neglected. 
 Treaty with By a treaty concluded with the new Nawab, the military 
 son defence of the country was placed in the hands of the 
 
 English ; the civil government was virtually secured to 
 them ; and, to divest the Nawab of the power of thwarting 
 or resisting their influence henceforward, he was bound 
 to place the entire management of all the affairs of 4he 
 government of his country in the hands of a deputy, or Naib 
 Subah, to be nominated by the Governor and Council. 
 
 To this important office the Nawab was anxious to 
 appoint Nundcomar, a man of corrupt character, and who, 
 while acting as Minister of the late Nawab, Mir Jaffier, 
 had been suspected of treacherous conduct towards the 
 English. The selection was resisted by the Governor and 
 Council, who appointed an able and trusty minister, Moham- 
 med Reza Khan. 
 
 This advantageous settlement of the province of Bengal 
 had been already concluded when Lord Clive returned to 
 India, invested with unusual powers, in April, 1765. He 
 found, when he took possession of his office, that not only 
 was the danger which had appeared so formidable already 
 averted, but that the possessions and authority of the Com- 
 Troatv of pany had received considerable enlargement. He at once bent 
 
 Allahabad. . * 
 
 his mind to the task of securing the advantages gained, and 
 adding to them by fresh agreements with the Nawab. With 
 this view he made a progress up the country in person, and 
 concluded a joint treaty with the Mogul Emperor, the Nawab 
 of Bengal, and the Nawab Wazir of Oude, by which their 
 relations with each other and with the Company were more 
 carefully defined. This is the treaty of Allahabad ; a 
 treaty which forms an epoch in the history of the period, 
 and which is frequently referred to in the arguments on the 
 prosecution of the charges against Mr. H astings. The Mogul 
 Avas obliged to resign all claims to arrears of tribute from 
 Bengal ; to surrender certain jagirs previously secured to 
 him; and to grant the famous firman, dated on the 12th of
 
 INTRODUCTION. vii 
 
 August, 1765, conceding the diwani or collectorship in 
 Bengal, Behar and Orissa, to the East India Company. 
 On the other part, he was to receive an annual tribute of 
 twenty-six lacs of rupees, equal to 260,000?., and to be put 
 in possession of the countries of Corah and Allahabad. 
 
 The Nawab of Bengal, Nujem-ud-Dowla, was required 
 to associate two other persons with Mohammed Reza Khan 
 in the office of Kaib Subah ; to make over the management 
 of the subahdary, and resign the entire revenues, to the 
 Company ; a pension of fifty lacs of rupees, or 500,OOOZ., 
 being reserved for himself. 
 
 A demand was made upon Suja-ud-Dowla, the Nawab 
 Wazir of Oude, for the payment of fifty lacs of rupees 
 towards the expenses of the late war; but he was fully 
 reinstated in his dominions, with the exception of Corah and 
 Allahabad, made over to the Mogul. Connected with the Zamindary 
 
 /> /"y ! i i T of Benares. 
 
 settlement or (Jude, an arrangement was concluded respect- 
 ing its dependencies, the zamindaries of Benares and Ghazi- 
 pore ; and to this more particular attention must be drawn, 
 as the affairs of these districts form a principal foundation 
 for the charges preferred against Warren Hastings. 
 
 The zamindary of Ghazipore, part of the province of 
 Oude, had been acquired through a course of clever intrigue 
 by a native named Manseram. He was succeeded by his 
 son, Bulwant Sing, who, by following his father's arts, 
 succeeded in greatly enlarging his dignity and influence. 
 To the zamindary of Ghazipore he procured the addition of 
 that of Benares ; and, when the contest broke out between 
 his chief lord, the Nawab of Oude, and the English, he 
 had attained such a degree of wealth and power that he was 
 able to treat with the English as an independent Prince, 
 and actually brought a large force into the field in their 
 support against the Nawab. It was ever the policy of the 
 Company to protect those of the native Princes who, under 
 whatever circumstances, had adopted their interests. While 
 Suja-ud-Dowla, therefore, the opponent of the English in 
 their recent struggle with the Nawab of Bengal, was, from
 
 Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 motives of policy, to be restored to his dominions, his rebel- 
 lious feudary, Bulwant Sing, Raja of Benares, was not to 
 be abandoned to his vengeance. Express provision was 
 made in the treaty of Allahabad that Bulwant Sing was to 
 retain his possessions in full security, and without any 
 addition being made to the annual payment he had been 
 before liable to, as tribute to the Nawab. 
 
 In this final settlement of the affairs of the Presidency 
 Mr. Hastings had no share. In November, 1764, he had re- 
 
 Engiand. signed his seat in the Council of Calcutta, and returned to 
 England. After four years of inactivity, and owing, it is 
 said, to the favourable impression produced by his evidence 
 before a Committee of the House of Commons on the affairs 
 of India, his application for further employment under 
 the Company was accepted, and in the spring of 1769 he 
 embarked again for India, to fill the post of second in the 
 
 ment p ^ int " Council of Madras. He was moved to the Council of Cal- 
 cutta in December, 1771, and in April of the ensuing year 
 was installed in the office of President. His administration 
 commenced at a period of the greatest depression of the 
 Company's affairs. In addition to the exhaustion of the 
 treasury occasioned by a war in the Carnatic, a famine 
 had prevailed, during the years 1769 and 1770, of such 
 severity that a third of the population was estimated to 
 have perished through its effects. A great deficiency in the 
 ordinary revenue was the consequence ; and the financial 
 embarrassments of the Company were so great that, after 
 exhausting their credit with the Bank of England in loans, 
 they were compelled to have recourse to the Imperial 
 Government for assistance. The opportunity was seized by 
 the Ministers of the day to effect a resettlement of the 
 government of India? and, in the summer of 1772, two 
 Acts were passed for regulating the financial affairs and the 
 government of the Company. The main alteration intro- 
 duced consisted in the establishment of a Governor General 
 and Council in Calcutta, to have supreme authority in
 
 INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 India, and in the creation of a Supreme Court of Judi- 
 cature, the decisions of which were to be guided by the 
 principles and practice of English law. 
 
 During the interval between the succession of Mr. Hast- 
 ings as President of the Council of Calcutta and his creation 
 as Governor General, measures were passed requiring notice 
 from their influence on events referred to in the trial. The office of 
 Directors had signified their intention to abolish the office 
 of native Naib Diwan, and to transfer the execution of his 
 duties to the Council. The office included two depart- 
 ments ; that of the collection and regulation of the revenue, 
 and the general administration of the affairs of the pro- 
 vince. By express orders from the Directors, the Naib 
 Subah, Mohammed Reza Khan, was not only deposed 
 from his office, but arrested, and held prisoner in Cal- 
 cutta on charges of fraud and peculation. The office itself 
 was divided. A native functionary, under the title of Roy 
 Roy an, was appointed to assist the Council as super- 
 intendent of the district divisions; and to this office Raja 
 Goordass, son of Mohammed Reza Khan's bitter enemy, 
 the Raja Nundcomar, was nominated ; Nundcomar himself 
 having been recommended to the place by the Directors, on 
 the express ground of his enmity to Mohammed Reza Khan. 
 This ill-treated, but apparently innocent officer, was held in 
 confinement for a considerable time before being brought to 
 trial, and then acquitted of the charges against him. 
 
 Shitab Roy, Diwan of Patna, who had been arrested 
 at the same time as Mohammed Reza Khan, Avas also tried, 
 and honourably acquitted. He died shortly after his release, 
 and his death has been ascribed to a broken heart, produced 
 by his sense of the indignities and suspicions he had been 
 subjected to. By other authority this assertion is disputed ; 
 and it is pointed out that, on the close of the investigation 
 into his conduct, he was appointed Roy Royan of Behar, 
 with the addition of the office of Naib Nazim. His son 
 was at once nominated his successor by Mr. Hastings, as
 
 3C INTRODUCTION. 
 
 an expression of his high sense of the father's integrity 
 and merit.* 
 
 The chief portion of the functions of the second depart- 
 ment, or the office of Naib Nazim, viz. the guardianship of 
 the young Nawab, were conferred on Munny Begum, widow 
 of the late Nawab, Mir Jaffier. 
 
 TheRohiii&s. Meanwhile, in the ever-changing condition of Indian poli- 
 tics, occurrences had taken place which already required a 
 modification of the treaty of Allahabad. Deprived of real 
 power by the successive agreements he had been compelled 
 to conclude with the English, the Mogul had been residing at 
 Allahabad, in enjoyment of the districts conceded to him by 
 the treaty. But, although condemned to inactivity and 
 obscurity by the exigencies of English policy, he nursed 
 an eager longing to parade himself in all the outward glories 
 of royalty in the ancient capital of the Mogul empire. He 
 had set his heart on being crowned at Delhi. In order to 
 accomplish this, in despite of the opposition of the English, 
 he was induced to cultivate an alliance with the Mahrattas, 
 whose power at that period overawed every neighbouring 
 state. Having assured himself of the support of these formid- 
 able marauders, and the assistance of Suja-ud-Dowla, Nawab 
 of Oude, who, while cautious not to incur the resentment 
 of the English, looked for an oportunity of serving his own 
 interest in any troubles which might ensue, he set out with 
 a small army from Allahabad. While detained by the rains 
 in the neighbourhood of Furruckabad, on his route to Delhi, 
 he was joined by certain of the Mahratta leaders, with whom 
 he had settled the hard terms of their support ; and on the 
 25th of December, 1771, he made his entry into the capital. 
 But few days were suffered to elapse before it appeared 
 with what object the Mahratta chiefs had given their assist- 
 ance towards gratifying the ambition of the Mogul. The 
 country of the Rohillas lay between the Ganges and the 
 mountains, and bordering on the north-west portion of Oude. 
 
 * Mill's History of India. Note by Wilson, Vol. III., p. 548.
 
 INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 The people who held it were descendants of Afghans, who 
 had received the district from the Mogul in reward for 
 services rendered in war. The country itself was of great 
 fertility. It had long been coveted by successive Nawabs of 
 Oude ; and had also attracted the dangerous attention 
 of the Mahrattas, by proposals made to them for its conquest 
 many years before by a predecessor of Suja-ud-Dowln. It 
 was his countenance and assistance in the plundering of this 
 country which was now exacted from the Mogul Emperor 
 by these ruthless robbers. The Emperor's terrors helped to 
 persuade him to yield to their demands. By resuming the 
 government of the district of Delhi into his own hands he 
 had dispossessed a Rohilla chief, Zaluta Khan, who had acted 
 as his deputy ; and he feared the consequence of his resent- 
 ment of this injury. The lands of this chief lay apart from 
 the remaining district, and nearly contiguous to Delhi itself. 
 The Emperor's consent to the proposed expedition was given. 
 The territories of Zaluta Khan were overrun and laid waste, 
 and the whole body of Mahrattas now threatened the general 
 country of the Rohillas. 
 
 The power of these people though they are said to have 
 numbered 25,000 men in arms was unequal to resist the 
 invasion they were threatened w r ith. In their despair, they 
 sought aid from the neighbouring state of Oude. The policy 
 followed by Suja-ud-Dowla on the emergency appears to 
 have been to extract money from the Rohillas under the 
 pretence of protecting them from the Mahrattas, and to rely 
 upon the English for the force requisite to check the course 
 of these invaders, whom he regarded with apprehension on 
 his own account. Proposals to this effect were made by him 
 to the President and Council of Calcutta, through Sir Robert 
 Barker, then commanding the English troops in the neigh- 
 bourhood. Assent was given to the proposals, in a letter 
 from the Presidency, dated the 3d of February, 1772. But 
 the efforts of Suja-ud-Dowla to treat with the Mahrattas 
 were unsuccessful, and they effected a partial invasion of 
 the country of the Rohillas. On the 17th of June, a treaty
 
 Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of alliance was concluded between the Wazir and the Rohillas, 
 the most important condition of which was, that the latter should 
 pay a sum of forty lacs of rupees into the hands of the Wazir, 
 to be applied to purchasing the Avithdrawal of the Mahrattas 
 from their half-executed enterprise, or supplying sufficient 
 protection against them from his own resources. Of this sum 
 only five lacs were actually paid to the Wazir. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Mahrattas, who had retired across the 
 Ganges previous to the rainy season, again threatened an 
 incursion into the Rohilla country. The promised aid of the 
 Wazir was very partially given, the only semblance of 
 assistance afforded being from a body of English troops, 
 under Sir Robert Barker, who guarded the frontier of the 
 Wazir himself, but in some measure overawing the Mahrattas 
 by his presence. The Rohillas were accordingly thrown on 
 their own resources, and they saved their country only by 
 the expedient of purchasing the mercy of the Mahrattas by a 
 money payment. Throughout these transactions the Govern- 
 ment of Calcutta had acted on the principle of protecting 
 the Rohillas by strengthening the Wazir and threatening 
 the Mahrattas, should they expose themselves by advancing 
 far into the country ; and had uniformly expressed confidence 
 on the ultimate withdrawal of the Mahrattas, on account of 
 the revolution recently effected in their own country. 
 SieNawab h When the immediate danger had passed away, it 
 Benares at became evident that measures were required for more 
 effectually securing the country against a repetition of the 
 late danger. With a view to concluding the necessary 
 arrangements on the spot, Mr. Hastings obtained the sanc- 
 tion of the Council to his proceeding in person up the 
 country to hold an interview Avith the Wazir. He accord- 
 ingly met Suja-ud-Dowla at Benares, in the month of June, 
 1773, and received from him propositions of undisguised self- 
 interest, and fatal to the Rohillas, but which Mr. Hastings 
 was induced to accede to. 
 
 The difficulty before him lay, not only in providing against 
 further Mahratta incursions, but in dealing with the Mogul
 
 INTRODUCTION. Xlil 
 
 Emperor himself powerless to assist, but dangerous in the 
 countenance he was able to give to those who could force 
 him into a participation in their projects. In the recent 
 events he had become a resistless tool in the hands of the 
 MahrattaSj who had not scrupled to force him to their 
 purposes by open violence. They had extorted from him a 
 grant of the important provinces of Allahabad and Corah, 
 lately conceded to him by the English, and which, lying 
 within the boundaries of the province of Oude, would, in the 
 occupation of the Mahrattas, have exposed that district, as 
 well as other neighbouring states under English protection, 
 to obvious danger. 
 
 The propositions of the Wazir were nothing less than 
 First, that the English should assist him in the absolute 
 conquest and annexation of the country of the Rohillas, on 
 the ground of its having ever been a source of danger to his 
 own province, from the predatory habits and turbulent 
 character of its rulers, and the probability of their allying 
 themselves, in self-defence, with the still more dangerous 
 Mahrattas. Secondly, that he should be put in possession of 
 Corah and Allahabad, an actual part of his territories, and 
 which the Mogul Emperor had shown himself unable to 
 maintain on his own account. The inducement offered to 
 the English to agree to these proposals was, the payment by 
 the Wazir of the entire expenses of the war and a sum of 
 forty lacs of rupees into the treasury at Calcutta, for the 
 first, and the payment of fifty lacs of rupees, within two 
 years, for the second condition. It is not our object 
 to examine into the justice or policy of the proposed agree- 
 ment, and we are content with the simple statement that the 
 terms were, according to Mr. Hastings' own statement, agreed 
 to, but that, after things were thus adjusted, the Wazir him- 
 self, " fearing that he had engaged beyond his ability, 
 desired to decline the Rohilla expedition." It was agreed, 
 however, that the monthly charge for the expenses of the 
 English troops, when engaged in the service of the Wazir,
 
 XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 should be fixed at 210,000 rupees.* In one respect 
 Mr. Hasting showed his consideration for his engagements 
 with his allies. He bound the Wazir to respect the rights 
 of Cheyt Sing, the Raja of Benares, and to confirm him in 
 all his independent privileges and power. 
 
 It is to be remarked, that, on the return of Mr. Hastings 
 from his visit to Benares, he procured the sanction of the 
 Council to the establishment of a resident agent at the 
 Court of the Nawab of Oude, to be the instrument for con- 
 ducting affairs which could not be as conveniently treated of 
 through written communications : and he further procured 
 to himself the exclusive power of nominating and removing 
 the Resident, and of corresponding with him independently 
 of the Board. The first exercise of this authority was in the 
 appointment of Mr. Middleton as Resident at Lucknow. 
 
 The professed reluctance of the Wazir to engage in the 
 Rohilla enterprise was not of long duration. In the month 
 of November he made a formal application to the Govern- 
 ment at Calcutta for their assistance in subduing the country. 
 The English co-operation was recommended by Mr. Hastings, 
 and agreed to by the Council. The events which followed 
 are well known. In the beginning of the year 1774, the 
 united forces of the Wazir and the Company commenced 
 operations against the devoted Rohiilas. After a determined 
 resistance, these warlike people were effectually scattered, and 
 their country subdued. The expressed object of the Wazir 
 was the extirpation of the whole race, and his troops, tardy 
 enough on occasions of hard fighting, were unwearied 
 in the work of plunder and destruction. The cruelties com- 
 mitted in the country by their hands exceeded the usual 
 horrors of invasion. 
 TheSu- The day fixed by the Act of Parliament for the commence- 
 
 premeCoun- J * 
 
 cil - ment of the new form of the governing body, was the 1st of 
 
 August. 1774. Henceforward the Government of Bengal was 
 
 O ' o 
 
 * Letter of Hastings to L. Sulivan, Esq., dated 12th October, 1773. 
 Gleig's Memoirs of Warren Hastings, vol. I., p. 353.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 supreme over the other Presidencies, and was to consist of a 
 Governor General and Council of four. The action of the 
 Board was regulated by the will of the majority, the 
 Governor General having only a casting vote. The new 
 Council was to consist of Mr. Bar well, already experienced 
 in the government, and three members to come from 
 England, namely, General Clavering, Colonel Monson and 
 Mr. Francis. It will not be necessary to go into the history of 
 the dissensions which prevailed at the Board from their first 
 sittings, till the members of it were separated by the deaths 
 of two of their number, General Clavering and Colonel 
 Monson, and the eventual retirement of Mr. Francis. We 
 shall only observe, that it was a plea put forward by 
 Mr. Hastings, in his Defence to the charges of the House 
 of Commons, that some of the acts he was made responsible 
 for were in fact the resolutions of the majority of the 
 Council, to which he was opposed. 
 
 The earliest acts of the hostile majority of the Council 
 were, the condemnation of the Rohilla war ; the withdrawal of 
 Middleton, the Resident at the court of the Wazir of Oude, 
 and the appointment of Mr. Bristow in his place ; peremp- 
 tory orders to Suja-ud-Dowla to retire from Rohilcund, 
 and a demand of immediate payment of the forty lacs of 
 rupees for which he had bound himself. At the beginning 
 of the year 1775, however, Suja-ud-Dowla died, and was 
 succeeded by his son, Asoff-ud-Dowla. On the 21st of May 
 a treaty was concluded with the new Nawab, in which the 
 Company were made to guarantee to him the provinces of 
 Corah and Allahabad ; and the Nawab made over to the 
 Company his property, the territory of Cheyt Sing, the Raja 
 of Benares, yielding a revenue of twenty -two lacs of rupees ; 
 consented to increase the monthly allowance for the service 
 of the Company's troops to 260,000 rupees; and took upon 
 himself the unpaid balance due to the Company from his 
 father. 
 
 This short view of the course of events in the provinces of 
 Bengal and Oude will serve to introduce the transactions
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 brought most prominently forward in the Articles of Charge 
 on which the impeachment of Hastings was based, and more 
 particularly in the first and second Articles, which are urged 
 against him in the remarkable speeches comprised in the 
 present volume. The first of these relates especially to the 
 treatment of Cheyt Sing, the Zamindar of Benares and 
 Ghazipore. 
 
 tio'nof*'" ^ w ^ ke remembered under what terms Bulwant Sing, 
 Benares. the R a j a O f Benares and Ghazipore, was secured in his 
 territories in the treaty of Benares. But, by an oversight 
 in the wording of the terms of the agreement, its benefits 
 were secured only to the individual, and not to his successors. 
 On occasion, therefore, of the death of Bulwant Sing, which 
 took place in October, 1770, the right was claimed by the 
 Nawab Wazir, Suja-ud-Dowla, to take the territories into his 
 own hand ; but, mainly by the exertion of English influence, 
 he was induced to renew the grant of territory to Cheyt 
 Sing, on his agreeing to the payment of an additional rent 
 or tribute of two and a half lacs per annum, 
 
 In the treaty of Benares, of 1773, Mr. Hastings engaged 
 the Wazir to execute a grant, confirming to Cheyt Sing and 
 his heirs the territories of Ghazipore and Benares, and 
 protecting him against encroachments on his authority or 
 exaction of rent or tribute beyond the stipulated amount ; 
 and this was fixed at 22 lacs 48,000 rupees. To this grant 
 Mr. Hastings added the guarantee of his seal. 
 
 In the month of March, 1775, shortly after the death of 
 the Nawab Wazir, Suja-ud-Dowla, the Bengal Government 
 was again called upon to interfere in behalf of Cheyt Sing, 
 who complained of attempts made by the new Nawab, 
 Asoif-ud-Dowla, to force from him his tribute in advance ; 
 and Mr. Bristow, the Resident at the Wazir's court, was 
 instructed by the Council to remonstrate against such 
 injustice. But an important change in the condition of 
 Cheyt Sing was impending. In consequence of the non- 
 payment by Asoff-ud-Dowla of arrears of sums for which 
 his father was engaged, he was forced into new arrange-
 
 INTRODUCTION. XVli 
 
 ments by the majority of the Council, and was obliged to 
 consent to the transfer of the sovereignty and tribute of 
 Benares and Ghazipore to the Company. This agreement 
 was concluded in May, 1775 ; and it necessarily jeopardised, 
 if it did not immediately annihilate, what independency Cheyt 
 Sing had hitherto virtually enjoyed. For, while under the 
 sovereignty of the Nawab of Oude, he had the protection 
 of the English to guard him from encroachments of the 
 Nawab ; but now, holding immediately under the Company, 
 he had no shield against an arbitrary exercise of their 
 superiority. In the arrangements made on occasion of this 
 transfer of sovereignty, an addition to his authority was given 
 in the powers of administering justice, and in the right of 
 coinage ; and he was recommended, but not required, to 
 maintain a body of 2,000 cavalry, for which the Company 
 was to pay fifteen rupees per month for each private, and for 
 officers in proportion, while engaged in the Company's 
 service. On the 7th of July, 1778, intelligence was received 
 by Mr. Hastings of a war having sprung up between Great 
 Britain and France, and information, derived from Lord 
 Stormont, then ambassador at Paris, was added of machi- 
 nations at the French court against the English possessions 
 in the East. The scheme of defence of the country devised 
 by Mr. Hastings necessitated a large expenditure of the 
 Company's money ; and he proposed to the Council, and 
 received their sanction, to demand from Cheyt Sing, as 
 having a common interest in the security of the country, the 
 payment of a sum of five lacs of rupees towards the general 
 expenses. To this demand Cheyt Sing yielded a ready 
 assent ; and, although he subsequently pleaded inability to 
 meet the payment, he eventually fulfilled his engagement. 
 The same amount was demanded in the two succeeding years 
 1779 and 1780, but paid with irregularity and reluctance. 
 In the latter year an additional demand was made of a force 
 of 2,000 cavalry, which on remonstrance from Cheyt Sing 
 was reduced to 500. He could only be induced, however, 
 to promise the number of 250, and none were actually 
 
 b
 
 XV111 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 furnished. It is to be remarked, that, notwithstanding the 
 difficulty experienced by Cheyt Sing in remitting his contri- 
 bution for the year 1780, he actually pressed on Mr. Hast- 
 ings, in that year, a present of two lacs of rupees, hoping, by 
 the influence of the gift, to induce him to remit the exac- 
 tion. Mr. Hastings accepted the present and applied it to 
 the Company's service, but insisted, nevertheless, on the 
 full payment of the original demand. 
 
 Extreme dissatisfaction was felt at the hesitations and 
 delays of Cheyt Sing in furnishing the contributions 
 demanded of him. He had the reputation of great wealth, 
 from the known accumulation of riches in his capital 
 of Benares, through the influx of devotees resorting to it 
 as a sacred city. His existence as an independent Prince 
 had been mainly owing to the Company's protection and 
 influence. Mr. Hastings, moreover, had always advocated his 
 interests, and seems to have felt a personal resentment at 
 his efforts to evade the exactions he hud arbitrarily sub- 
 jected him to. 
 
 With a mind thus ill-disposed towards the Raja, 
 Mr. Hastings set out on a personal visit to Benares, having 
 invested himself, by the assent of Mr. Wheler, the only 
 remaining member of Council, with the entire power of 
 Governor General and Council for the purposes of his 
 journey. He reached Benares on the 14th of August, 1781, 
 and, acting on a predetermined resolution of evincing his 
 displeasure, he forbad the Raja's proifered visit, and sent 
 him a paper of charges, to which he required an immediate 
 answer. Notwithstanding that Cheyt Sing's reply was 
 couched in terms of abject submission, he was ordered under 
 arrest. It is not necessary to dwell on the events which 
 followed this indignity. The people of the city rose in 
 insurrection. A body of 205 sepoys were cut to pieces the 
 Raja was liberated Mr. Hastings himself was forced to 
 escape to Chunar and it was only after the greatest risks to 
 himself and the detachments which came to his assistance 
 that the troops of the Raja, numbering 2,000 trained men,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 with as many armed husbandmen and volunteers, were over- 
 powered, and the forts of Pateeta and Bidgey Ghur taken. 
 Cheyt Sing himself fled the country, and found shelter with 
 Madajee Scindia. His zamindary was considered forfeited, 
 and was conferred on his lineal successor, Mehipnarain, 
 whose stepfather, Durbejey Sing, was appointed Naib, or 
 deputy, and thus invested with the actual government of the 
 district. The issue of the revolution was unsatisfactory. 
 Durbejey Sing proved an incompetent administrator, and 
 was as backward in the important duty of paying up the 
 balances of the tribute as Cheyt Sing himself. He was 
 deposed from his office, and thrown into prison in November, 
 1782; was liberated after six months' detention, and again 
 and more rigorously imprisoned from March, 1784, to 
 March, 1785, when he died. Jugger Deo was selected to 
 fill the place of Durbejey Sing ; and he, as it is charged, 
 in order to meet Mr. Hastings' demands, oppressed and 
 harassed the inhabitants of the province, and reduced it to 
 such a state of exhaustion that his removal too became 
 necessary, a year after his appointment. Such is the 
 outline of events which form the basis of the first of the 
 Articles of Charge against Mr. Hastings. 
 
 The spoliation of the Begums or Princesses of Oude, 
 widow and mother of the Nawab Wazir, Suja-ud-Dowla, 
 named Munny Begum and the Bow Begum, form the sub- 
 ject of the second Article. The younger of the ladies 
 had, on the death of her husband, the Nawab, been allowed 
 to retain possession of the treasures, supposed to be very 
 considerable, which he had accumulated, and which during 
 his lifetime he had entrusted to her care. The question had, 
 indeed, arisen in the Supreme Council whether her claim to 
 the treasures should be supported by them, it being a 
 custom of Mohammedan law that the property of the father 
 descends to the son, with the reserve of a small portion 
 only to the widow. The disposition of Mr. Hastings was to 
 give the treasures to the new Nawab, as a matter of legal 
 right, and as a means i<y enable him to pay off the balances 
 
 b 2
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 due from his father to the Company. His judgment, how- 
 ever, was overruled by the majority of the Council, and 
 the Princess retained the treasures. Both ladies, moreover, 
 were invested with jagirs, or government revenue from 
 certain lands, of which they had the control and manage- 
 ment, assigned them for the support of themselves and the 
 immense family of children and dependents left behind him 
 by the deceased Nawab, numbering, it is stated, about 2,000 
 persons. 
 
 The history of the Company's connexion with the province 
 of Oude, already briefly stated, will serve to show the 
 importance it was to them that its affairs should be orderly 
 and well regulated, and its finances clear from embarrass- 
 ment. By the treaty of Fyzabad, concluded with Asoft-ud- 
 Dowla in the month of May, 1775, the Nawab was bound to 
 maintain a brigade of the Company's troops at a fixed rate 
 of allowance. In 1777, a stipulation was made for his 
 entertainment of a second temporary brigade of English 
 troops, on the express condition that the expense of its 
 maintenance should be charged upon him ff for so long a 
 " time only as he should require the corps for his service." 
 Several detached corps were also placed under his pay, and 
 part of his own troops placed under English officers. But 
 the Nawab was charged with general mismanagement and 
 oppressive rule of his province, and his obligations to the 
 Company were at all times very imperfectly fulfilled. His 
 revenues yearly fell off, and his debts increased. To meet 
 his first difficulties he had appealed to the Bow Begum for 
 assistance out of his father's treasures, his own right to which 
 he never ceased to uphold. Soon after his succession, he 
 succeeded in extorting in several payments a sum of twenty- 
 six lacs of rupees, or 260,000^. ; and in the same year, 1775, 
 a further sura of thirty lacs, 300,000^., was paid to him by 
 the Begum, upon a covenant, guaranteed by the Resident 
 of the Company at the Wazir'a court, on his own respon- 
 sibility, that no further demand should be made upon her. 
 Perpetual complaints, notwithstanding, were received from
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 the Begum by the Governor and Council of renewed 
 attempts by the Nawab to force her to disgorge further 
 sums from the coveted treasure. These dissensions had 
 reached so great a height at the beginning of the year 1778 
 that the elder Begum had resolved to quit Fyzabad and 
 make a pilgrimage to Mecca ; and, in the month of March of 
 that year, the Council, Mr. Hastings being at the time in 
 the ascendant, directed their Resident to protect the Bow 
 Begum, in virtue of their guarantee to the covenant 
 of 1775. 
 
 Things were in this state in Oude when Mr. Hastings 
 determined on his visit to Benares ; and it was part of his 
 purpose to extend his progress to Lucknow itself, with a view 
 to arranging the distracted affairs of the province, as soon 
 as he had transacted his intended business with Cheyt Sing. 
 It is to be noted that he had already re-appointed his first 
 nominee, Middleton, removed by the majority of the Council, 
 to the post of Resident at Lucknow, in direct opposition to 
 the commands of the Directors. The insurrection of Benares 
 took place in August, 1781. Mr. Hastings withdrew to 
 Chunar, and Asoff-ud-Dowla showed his consciousness of his 
 own good faith and allegiance by repairing to him there, 
 and thus placing himself completely in his power. It is 
 hardly to be doubted that, before setting out from Calcutta, 
 Mr. Hastings had arranged in his mind, in part at least, the 
 course he was now about to follow in dealing with the 
 difficulties of the province. He was, no doubt, mainly 
 influenced by the pressing necessity for funds to support 
 the enormous efforts required of his government at that 
 juncture of the Company's affairs : and, in addition to motives 
 which he might have brought with him from Calcutta, he 
 found fresh pretexts for stripping the Begums of the wealth 
 they enjoyed in reports, stated to have been brought to him 
 at Chunar, of their intrigues in instigating Cheyt Sing to 
 resistance to his wishes, and of actual insurrectionary move- 
 ments of portions of their troops in support of the rebellious
 
 XXll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Raja. The result of these influences on his mind was shown 
 in the terms of the treaty concluded with Asoff-ud-Dowla at 
 Chunar, on the 19th Sept, 1781. The JSawab was to be 
 relieved from the pay of all English troops, saving the single 
 brigade originally left with Suja-ud-Dowla, and one regiment 
 of sepoys for a guard for the Resident ; and permission was 
 granted to him to resume such of the jagirs within his 
 territories as he might wish, on the condition of paying 
 pensions, equivalent to the net rent, to such of the holders as 
 had the Company's guarantee. As no advantages appeared 
 in the treaty, as given to the Company in return for these 
 concessions, it was clear that there were other secret under- 
 standings between the Governor General and the Wazir ; 
 and it subsequently came to light that the Wazir had 
 agreed to strip the Begums of both their treasure and their 
 jagirs, and to apply the proceeds to liquidating his debts to 
 the Company. 
 
 The Wazir, having once undertaken to adopt this extreme 
 measure, was not suffered to draw back from his engage- 
 ment. The orders sent by Mr. Hastings to Middleton, the 
 Resident at Lucknow, were most peremptory, to force him 
 to immediate measures to resume the jagirs and to seize 
 the treasure. Middleton's own hesitation and reluctance 
 was severely reprimanded, and he was encouraged himself 
 to proceed to the confiscation of the jagirs, and thus con- 
 strain the Wazir to act in order to preserve the appearance 
 of his own authority. The jagirs were, in fact, resumed ; and 
 the Wazir himself, accompanied by the Resident, proceeded 
 with his troops to surround the Begum's palace at Fyzabad, in 
 order to effect the seizure of the treasure deposited there. 
 They reached the palace on the 12th of January. Failing to 
 gain their object by persuasion and negotiation, the outer 
 enclosure of the palace was stormed. But Oriental 
 scruples prohibited the violation of the sanctity of the 
 zanana, or apartments of the females. The treasure, there- 
 fore, was etill out of their reach. The means resorted to
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXlii 
 
 for getting it into their hands were more Oriental than 
 European. The two chief ministers of the Begums, 
 eunuchs and aged men, who had in fact the control of the 
 treasure, were seized by the Wazir, and put in confinement. 
 By the severities they were made to endure the elder Begum's 
 compassion was excited, and the amount of the bond given 
 by the Wazir for the balance due to the Company for the 
 year 1779-80 was paid. But the eunuchs were not released. 
 The balance for 1780-81 remained unsettled; and, not- 
 withstanding vehement assertions of the Begums that they 
 had given up the whole of their property excepting personal 
 goods, the ministers were put in irons and deprived of 
 food, until, in their extremity, they gave their bond for the 
 required amount, undertaking to procure it within a given 
 period out of their own means and credit. Still, however, 
 they were held in captivity. The Begums, in payment of 
 the bond of their ministers, had delivered up what they 
 asserted to be the whole of their remaining effects. More 
 than 500,000?. had been wrung out of them before the end 
 of February, 1782. There remained a balance of 50,000?. to 
 be extorted, according to the Resident's computation; half 
 that amount, according to the ministers themselves. The 
 confinement of the ministers was persevered in ; and in the 
 month of June they were removed to Lucknow, where they 
 were submitted, as may be inferred from documents pro- 
 duced, to bodily torture. These cruelties, however, failed 
 of their object ; no more money was forthcoming ; and on 
 the 2d of December following, the Resident, on his own 
 authority, ordered their release. During the whole of this 
 period the Begums themselves, and their families, were 
 strictly confined to their palaces. 
 
 A further incident remains to be noticed, in connexion 
 with Mr. Hastings' interview with the "Wazir at Chunar. 
 A present of ten lacs of rupees, 100,000?., was offered 
 him by the Wazir, and accepted. It was given, however, 
 in bills on a native banker ; and these it was not possible
 
 XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to negotiate at the time. Mr. Hastings made no conceal- 
 ment of his acceptance of the gift, and appears to have 
 eventually applied it to the Company's service, having, it 
 is true, asked and been refused their permission to retain it 
 to himself, as a reward for his services. 
 
 Mr. Hast- Conscious that, in acting throughout these proceedings on 
 the'in-^ n * s own so ^ e P ower an d responsibility, he had exposed him- 
 and"Iffil n; se ^ t suspicion and perhaps to censure, Mr. Hastings, 
 before returning to Calcutta, drew up, for the information 
 of the Council, a full narrative of the insurrection of 
 Benares, appending copies of official letters and papers 
 connected with it. And, because the evidence of the 
 implication of the Begums of Oude in the rebellion of 
 Cheyt Sing could not be made apparent by the official 
 documents in his possession, he accepted a proposal from 
 Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice, then at Benares on a 
 visit of inspection of the courts of justice, to proceed to 
 Lucknow, and take affidavits of the natives and English 
 officers who had knowledge of such acts of the Begum as 
 indicated her complicity in the insurrection, so as to place 
 the evidence on record. Accordingly, the Chief Justice, in a 
 hasty visit to Lucknow, about a month after the date of the 
 treaty of Chunar, received the affidavits, as he had pro- 
 posed; and these Mr. Hastings took care to add to the 
 Appendix of documents in support of the Narrative of the 
 Insurrection. 
 
 Prosecution In addition to the transactions of Benares, and the 
 comar. treatment of the Begums of Oude, which form the subjects 
 of the two Articles of charge brought forward in the 
 series of speeches comprised in the present volume, some 
 notice will be required of topics insisted on in the great 
 speech in which Mr. Burke opened the whole prosecution, 
 surveying the general grounds of the Impeachment. Compre- 
 hensive as it is, this speech is, after all, but a fragment of what 
 he appears to have designed to make it. What was actually 
 delivered is more introduct ory to and illustrative than
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 confirmatory of the Charges ; and his object appears to have 
 been to prepare the minds of the Peers, by pictures of the 
 character of Mr. Hastings' government, for the Charges 
 which were to follow. It was pointed out to him by his 
 fellow Managers that the scheme of his address was too 
 vast, and he accordingly brought it abruptly to a conclusion. 
 The principal subjects of the Articles he makes no mention 
 of ; but others, not included in the impeachment, he dwells 
 on with much vehemence and minuteness. Such are the 
 circumstances of the prosecution of the Raja Nundcomar in 
 the Criminal Court of Calcutta, and the cruelties stated to 
 have been perpetrated in the provinces of Rungpore and 
 Chittagong by Deby Sing. 
 
 The facts connected with the history of Nundcomar are 
 these : During the reign of Suraj-ud-Dowla, Nawab of 
 Bengal, the author of the atrocious suffocation of our country- 
 men in the Black Hole of Calcutta, Nundcomar, a Brahman of 
 the first rank, held the office of Faujdar, or native magistrate, 
 of Hoogley. Subsequently, after Mir Jaffier's overthrow, 
 while the deposed Nawab was living in detention in Cal- 
 cutta, Nundcomar used his opportunity to win his con- 
 fidence ; and, when advanced again by another revolution 
 to his former dignity, this Prince selected him for the post 
 of his chief minister. Very unfavourable opinions were 
 entertained of Nundcomar's character by the Government 
 of Calcutta, and on the death of Mir Jaffier, Nundcomar 
 was set aside, and the place of chief minister to the new 
 Nawab was conferred on Mohammed Reza Khan. From 
 this time Nundcomar remained out of all public employ- 
 ment ; but, when Mohammed Reza Khan and Shitab Roy 
 fell under the suspicions of the Company, being known to 
 bear ill-will towards the former, his assistance was courted 
 in the investigation into the conduct of these ministers in 
 their respective offices. As has been stated, they were both 
 acquitted of the charges preferred against them. 
 
 When, on the introduction of the new scheme of 
 government at Calcutta in 1774, the suspicion with which
 
 XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the members of the Council lately sent from England 
 scrutinised the previous measures of Mr. Hastings had 
 settled into a steady opposition, and a readiness was 
 shown at the Council board to receive charges against 
 the Governor General, Nundcomar appeared as his accuser. 
 The manner of bringing forward his allegations was so 
 far peculiar that they were presented at the Board by 
 Mr. Francis, in a paper Avhich he stated he had received 
 privately from Nundcomar himself, with the request to lay 
 them before the Council. In this paper Nundcomar com- 
 plained of neglect and affronts from Mr. Hastings, and pro- 
 ceeded to set forth accusations against him of having received 
 bribes from Mohammed Reza Khan and Shitab Roy, to 
 induce him to connive at their escape from conviction. He 
 imputed to him other less important crimes ; and concluded 
 with charging him with having received from various per- 
 sons as presents, in transactions of a public nature, a sum 
 amounting to more than 44,000. In a second letter, Nund- 
 comar reiterated charges of corruption against Mr. Hastings, 
 and petitioned to be heard at the Council board in support 
 of his accusations. 
 
 A motion by one of the members of the Council for 
 making these statements the ground of an investigation into 
 the Governor General's conduct, and for summoning Nund- 
 comar to give evidence before the Board, was warmly 
 supported by the majority. But Mr. Hastings resisted the 
 inquiry. He refused to suffer charges, personal against 
 himself, to be discussed, offering at the same time to allow 
 the Council to form a committee to inquire into the 
 alleged crimes; but he declared he would not meet 
 Nundcomar, nor suffer him to be examined at the Board. 
 He then dissolved the Council, and, with his supporter, 
 Mr. Barwell, withdrew. The remaining members denied 
 the legality of the dissolvttion, and continued sitting. 
 Nundcomar was called before them, but added nothing 
 
 y O 
 
 material to the statements contained in his letters. The 
 majority of the Council passed resolutions requiring the
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXV11 
 
 Governor General to pay over suras stated to have been 
 received by him from Munny Begum, and consulted the 
 Company's attorney on the legal course to be pursued for 
 the recovery of the money. A reference to the Directors 
 was recommended, and both parties made their representations 
 to the Court ; the hostile majority of the Council stating in 
 their letter that the discoveries now made threw a clear light 
 on the means practised by the Governor General in amassing 
 the large fortune he was said to possess of upwards of forty 
 lacs of rupees, 400,0007. 
 
 Proceedings being thus for a time suspended, Xundcomar 
 himself was subjected to a legal prosecution on a charge 
 of conspiring, with Joseph Fowke and others, to repre- 
 sent the Governor-General as having caused a false accu- 
 sation to be preferred by a native against Joseph Fowke, 
 and for a similar conspiracy against Mr. Barwell. The 
 prisoners were all acquitted on the first indictment, but 
 Xundcomar and Fowke were convicted on the second. 
 Quickly following this first prosecution of Xundcomar, 
 was another on a charge of forging and uttering a bond 
 for 48,021 rupees in the year 1770. He was committed 
 for trial on the first examination of the charge, and con- 
 fined in the public prison. On the 9th of June, 1775, 
 his trial commenced before the Chief Justice, Sir Elijah 
 Impey, and on the 15th he was found guilty, and con- 
 demned to death by hanging. Great efforts were made to 
 suspend the execution of the sentence, but it was suffered 
 to be carried out. The prosecution of Xundcomar was 
 ascribed to Mr. Hastings' instigations, by those who judged 
 unfavourably of his previous conduct ; and he endeavoured 
 to repel the suspicion by a solemn denial on oath before the 
 Supreme Court that he was in any respect instrumental to 
 it, adding that the evidence of Xundcomar against him was 
 entirely closed before the trial commenced. 
 
 But the subject which Mr. Burke dwelt upon with the most y sin s- 
 impassioned eloquence was, the cruelties stated to have been
 
 XXVlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 practised by a certain Deby Sing in his government of the 
 district of Dinagepore and Rungpore, under the following 
 circumstances : The Raja of Dinagepore had died in the 
 summer of 1780, leaving an adopted son, a minor. The suc- 
 cession was contested by another of the family, and decision 
 between the claimants was referred to the Governor General 
 and Council. This was given in favour of the adopted son, 
 and a fine was paid of four lacs of rupees. Deby Sing, who 
 some years before had held the appointment of Deputy 
 Steward to the Provincial Council of Moorshedabad, received 
 the province, in farm, for two years. He was accused of a 
 general system of extortion in his management of the district, 
 and with special acts of cruelty and oppression to the natives 
 of all classes. By the time of the expiration of the term of 
 his tenancy insurrectionary movements showed themselves 
 in the province, and Mr. Paterson was commissioned to 
 report upon its administration and condition. His report 
 charged Deby Sing with all the enormities he had been 
 accused of, and was accompanied by statements, collected 
 from native inhabitants of the district, comprising minute 
 particulars of the acts referred to. Deby Sing was sum- 
 moned to Calcutta, and examined upon these charges ; and 
 the result of his representations was the appointment of a 
 commission of three gentlemen to make further inquiry into 
 the truth of the accusations embodied in Mr. Paterson's 
 report. The conclusions they arrived at were at variance 
 with those of the previous commissioner, and Deby Sing 
 was exonerated from the charges laid against him.* 
 
 Although, in the preceding slight sketch, I have confined 
 myself to that series of transactions on which was mainly 
 
 * See a Note by Mr. Wilson to Mill's notice of Burke's opening speech in 
 the trial of Warren Hastings, where he asserts that Mr. Paterson himself had 
 at that time become convinced of the untrustworthincss of the evidence on 
 which he had grounded his report. Mill's History of India, vol. v.. p. 110. 
 The reports of Mr. Paterson, with accompanying documents, collected to sub- 
 stan'iat>; the charges against Deby Sing, have, I believe, never been published. 
 They are, however, preserved in MS., and a copy of them will, on the com- 
 pletion of the present publication, be deposited in the British Museum.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 grounded the impeachment of Warren Hastings, it will be 
 proper to point out other incidents and circumstances which, 
 if they formed no part of the crimes imputed to him, were 
 certainly in as great a measure the cause of the proceedings 
 against him. 
 
 Mr. Hastings' responsibility of office commenced with his 
 occupation of the post of second in the Council of Calcutta, in of CounclK 
 December, 1771, and his instalment in the office of Governor 
 of the Presidency, early in the following year. During the 
 interval between this elevation to power and the introduction 
 of the new form of government in August, 1 774, when the Pre- 
 sident and Council of Calcutta was made supreme over the 
 other governments, the President himself taking the title of 
 Governor General of Bengal, Mr. Hastings wag able to con- 
 duct the affairs of his province very much according to his 
 own views, and some of the measures he then carried out 
 were afterwards laid to his charge as acts of corruption and 
 misgovernment. On the formation of the new Council, how- 
 ever, the new members, General Clavering, Colonel Monson 
 and Mr. Francis, were not long in making evident their 
 disapproval of the acts of the late Board. Concurring in a 
 distrust of the Governor General and condemnation of his 
 policy, and uniformly acting and voting together, they 
 became the majority and ruling portion of the Council ; 
 and Mr. Hastings' views of finance, and of policy in the 
 relations of the Company with the various native states 
 his selection of officers for the collection and management of 
 the revenues, and of agents at the courts of the native princes 
 were uniformly thwarted and reversed. This period 
 extended from the autumn of 1774 to the death of 
 Colonel Monson in September, 1776, when, by his casting 
 vote, Mr. Hastings, having the steady support of one mem- 
 ber of the Council, Mr. Barwell, recovered the ascendancy, 
 and was able once more to follow his own views. And 
 it was not only at his own Council Board that Mr. Hast- 
 ings felt the loss of his influence in the government. At
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 home, the arbiters in the differences between him and the 
 majority of the Council gave their countenance to his oppo- 
 nents ; and, in a letter of the Directors, of the 18th of 
 December, 1775, in which the subject of the contentions 
 in the Council are discussed, their approval of the conduct of 
 the majority, and censure of Mr. Hastings' previous acts 
 of government, are expressed in the strongest terms. In 
 aggravation of the opposition accumulated against him, the 
 first Minister of the Crown, Lord North, lent his influence 
 to stimulate the action of the party opposed to him in the 
 Court of Directors. Colonel Macleane, whom Mr. Hastings 
 had commissioned to watch over and protect his interests and 
 honour, and to acquaint him with proceedings at home, 
 and whom he had charged with a formal power of presenting 
 his resignation of office under certain conditions of circum- 
 stances, sent him notice from England of efforts made by 
 Lord North to obtain from the East India Proprietors an 
 address to the Crown for the removal of Mr. Hastings him- 
 self and Mr. Barwell, but that the motion was thrown out 
 by a large majority. 
 
 Influenced by the general opposition he witnessed of both 
 Directors and Government to Mr. Hastings' cause, Colonel 
 Macleane acted on the power entrusted to him, and presented 
 Mr. Hastings' resignation. Accordingly, on the 18th of June, 
 in 1777, despatches arrived at Calcutta from England, 
 announcing the acceptance by the Directors of Mr. Hastings' 
 resignation, and appointing Mr. Wheler to fill his place. 
 An effort was immediately made by General Cluvering and 
 Mr. Francis to act upon these letters, and they declared 
 Mr. Hastings to have vacated his office. But Mr. Hastings 
 was now recovering the power in the Council to which his 
 superiority of office intitled him. As early as May, 1775, 
 he had written to withdraw from Colonel Macleane the 
 powers he had given him ; and he now refused to be bound 
 by his exercise of them. Appeal was made to the only 
 power in Calcutta capable of determining the legality of the
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXI 
 
 question at issue, and the Judges of the Supreme Court 
 decided it in Mr. Hastings' favour. Henceforward the 
 ascendancy in the Council, and consequent supremacy in the 
 government of the country, became more and more secured 
 in his hands. In November of the same year, 1777, the 
 death of General Clavering reduced still further the strength 
 of the opposition, once so overwhelming ; and, finally, in 
 1780, his quarrels with Mr. Francis resulted in a duel, 
 in which the latter was severely wounded, and so much 
 affected in his health as to be obliged, a few months after- 
 wards, to return to England. 
 
 Mr. Hastings signalised his recovery of power by the 
 direct reversal of measures which had been adopted by the 
 Council. He applied himself to measures for re-establishing 
 the finances of the country ; and, freeing his mind to the 
 consideration of the great events in progress or impending 
 in the subordinate Presidencies, he entered into designs for 
 enlarging and establishing the dominions of the Company in 
 the Carnatic and in Bombay. 
 
 But, though liberated from the restraint hitherto imposed Proceedings 
 on him by his subordinates in office, Mr. Hastings even- ment - 
 tually discovered that the contest he had carried on at 
 his own Council Board was to be renewed elsewhere, and 
 under circumstances more threatening to his peace of mind 
 and reputation. Affairs in India had continued to attract 
 increasing attention from the Legislature. The charter of the 
 Company was shortly to expire ; and it was universally felt 
 that the time was come for such an adjustment of its future 
 constitution as should put it in a measure under the control 
 of the King's ministers. Meanwhile, successive acts were 
 passed from 1778 to 1781, continuing the Company's privileges 
 from year to year, the subject being not fully ripe for legisla- 
 tion. In all these acts it was provided that no change should 
 take place in the persons forming the Governor General 
 and Council of Calcutta. Other circumstances concurred to 
 brino: the affairs of India under the notice of Parliament.
 
 XXX11 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Petitions were received from many quarters against the 
 pretensions of the Supreme Court of Judicature; and on 
 the 12th of February, 1781, a Select Committee was 
 appointed to take into consideration the administration 
 of justice in the Bengal Presidency. Mr. Burke was a 
 member of this Committee. On the 30th of April, 178!, 
 a Secret Committee was appointed to inquire into the 
 origin of the war in the Carnatic, and into the state of 
 the British possessions on the coasts. This Committee was 
 presided over by Mr. Henry Dundas, Lord Advocate of 
 Scotland, By both of these Committees searching inquiries 
 were instituted, and several reports presented to the House, 
 accompanied with copies of numerous and important docu- 
 ments. Moreover, they both considered it within the limits 
 of their instructions to investigate the circumstances con- 
 nected with Mr. Hastings' resignation, and reported un- 
 favourably respecting that transaction. 
 
 The resignation of Lord North occurred in March, 1782, 
 and was followed by the accession of the Marquess of Hock- 
 ingham, who was himself an early patron of Mr. Hastings. 
 Mr. Burke, who had been private secretary to the Marquess 
 uring his first ministry, Avas now attached to the govern- 
 ment by the office of Paymaster of the forces. The 
 suspicions he had long ago conceived of abuses in the 
 government of India had been strengthened by the in- 
 vestigations of the Committee, of which he had procured 
 the appointment, and in the proceedings of which he had 
 taken an active part. His disapproval of Mr. Hastings' 
 conduct had grown into determined hostility, much inflamed 
 it is 'said, by the representations of his kinsman William 
 Burke, * agent for the Raja of Tanjore, as well as of 
 Mr. Francis, recently returned from India. 
 
 Earnest in his object of effecting a thorough reformation of 
 the system of government in India, he threatened resignation 
 unless the new ministers consented to adopt his views; 
 
 * Macknight's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 423.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXlii 
 
 and the weight of the government was turned against 
 Mr. Hastings in the proceedings which quickly ensued.* 
 
 On the 5th of April, 1782, Mr. Dundas, Lord Advocate 
 of Scotland, moved for a Committee of the whole House to 
 consider the reports of the Secret Committee on Indian 
 affairs, of which he was chairman ; and on the 10th of the 
 same month a similar motion was made by the chairman of 
 the Select Committee. 
 
 On the 15th and 25th of April, Mr. Dundas read a series 
 of resolutions, one hundred and twelve in number, reflecting 
 on the course of government in the three Presidencies, 
 and especially condemning the schemes of conquest and en- 
 largement of dominions of the Company entered into by 
 Mr. Hastings, and recommending his recall. The portion of 
 these resolutions relating to the government of Bengal were 
 not put to vote ; but those impugning the conduct of Sir 
 Thomas Runibold, President of Madras, were moved and 
 carried on the 29th of April. 
 
 On the 30th of May, Mr. Dundas moved a resolution, 
 that it was the duty of the Directors to recall Mr. Hastings 
 and Mr. Hornby, President of the Council of Bombay, on 
 the ground of their having " acted in a manner repugnant to 
 the honour and policy of this nation, and thereby brought 
 great calamities on India," and carried the motion. The 
 Directors, in obedience to the sense of the House, resolved 
 that Mr. Hastings should be recalled ; but, referring their 
 order to a General Court of Proprietors for confirmation, 
 it was by a large majority rescinded. 
 
 On the 14th of April, in the following session, in moving 
 for leave to bring in a bill for reforming the government of 
 India, Mr. Dundas again proposed the recall of Mr. Hast- 
 ings ; but no further steps were taken by the House. 
 
 On the 25th of the same month, in a debate on the bill 
 to empower the East India Company to borrow money, 
 Mr. Burke made a powerful speech, principally directed 
 
 * Gleig's Memoirs of Warren Hastings, vol. ii. p. 474. 
 C
 
 XXXI V INTRODUCTION. 
 
 against Mr. Hastings, and denouncing him as " the grand 
 delinquent of all India;" and, in answer to a speech of 
 Governor Johnstone, in Mr. Hasting's defence, he pledged 
 himself " that he would bring to justice, as far as in him 
 lay, the greatest delinquent that India ever saw." 
 
 Meantime the Marquess of Rockingham had died, and had 
 been succeeded in the ministry by Lord Shelburne, who 
 resigned on the 5th of April, 1783. The coalition ministry 
 of Mr. Fox and Lord North succeeded ; and was terminated 
 by the failure in the House of Lords of the famous bill 
 for remodelling the government of the East India Com- 
 pany, introduced and passed through the Commons by 
 Mr. Fox. A new ministry was formed under Mr. Pitt, 
 who, after a dissolution, succeeded in passing an act, in 
 August, 1784, for the better government of the East India 
 Company, the principal feature of which was the institution 
 of a Board of Control, to be chosen by the Crown. 
 , In moving for leave to introduce his bill, on the 18th of 
 November, 1783, Mr. Fox had complained of the conduct 
 of the East India Proprietors in opposing the expressed 
 wish of the House on the subject of Mr. Hastings' recall, 
 and, in the latter part of this speech, had gone through the 
 principal instances of misgovernment and oppression he 
 charged him with, in reference to his treatment of Cheyt 
 Sing and the Begums of Oude,and to the Kohilla and Mahratta 
 wars. In a subsequent debate on the same bill, on the 
 1st of December, Mr. Burke renewed his charges against 
 Mr. Hastings, and complained that the East India Pro- 
 prietors had, since the beginning of the session, " again 
 made it a request to their favourite and your culprit to keep 
 his post, and thanked and applauded him." 
 
 But the engrossment of parties in the general question 
 of reform of the Company prevented any further special 
 proceedings against individuals serving in India : and an 
 attempt of Mr. Burke, on the 30th of July, 1784, to obtain 
 a vote of the House for the production of papers relative to 
 the treatment of the ministers of the Begums of Oude was
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXV 
 
 resisted by Mr. Pitt, and high encomiums were passed by 
 Ministers on the government of Mr. Hastings. 
 
 In the session following the passing of the new India 
 bill, a disposition was shown to return to the course com- 
 menced in the session of 1782 ; and, on the 20th of June, 
 1785, Mr. Burke gave notice, "that he would at a future 
 day make a motion respecting the conduct of a gentleman 
 just returned from India." The reference was of course to 
 Mr. Hastings, who had at length voluntarily resigned his 
 office, and had arrived in England a few days previous to 
 the motion. 
 
 The session was at its close ; and it is possible that the - 
 pressure of other more vital affairs, or party considerations, ment - 
 might have occasioned a postponement or abandonment of 
 the threatened prosecution. But Mr. Hastings himself and 
 his friends were now impatient to bring to a final issue the 
 question between him and his accusers. On the very first 
 day of the session of 1786, Major Scott, the authorised 
 and devoted agent of Mr. Hastings, rose in the House, 
 and reminded Mr. Burke of his notice of motion of the 
 preceding session, calling on him to name a day for redeem- 
 ing his pledge. The challenge was accepted, and on the 
 17th of February Mr. Burke opened the subject by causing 
 the vote of censure passed on Mr. Hastings in 1782 to be 
 read, and recommended, should an inquiry satisfy the House of 
 the truth of the charges produced, that they should proceed to 
 an impeachment. As a preliminary to the inquiry he moved, 
 " That copies of all correspondence since the month of 
 January, 1782. between Warren Hastings, Esq., Governor 
 General of Bengal, and the court of Directors, as well before 
 as since the return of the said Governor General, relative 
 to presents and other money particularly received by the 
 said Governor General, be laid before this House." 
 
 On several succeeding days Mr. Burke moved for a great 
 variety of other papers bearing on the proposed charges; 
 but, on the 3d of March, was resisted by Mr. Pitt and 
 Mr. Dundas, in a motion for papers relating to the treaty 
 
 c *>,
 
 XXXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of peace with the Malirattas, on the ground of their approval 
 of the treaty, and was defeated by majorities of two to one 
 in two divisions forced upon the House on the question. 
 
 On the 4th of April, Mr. Burke charged Mr. Hastings with 
 " sundry high crimes and misdemeanors," and produced the 
 nine first Articles of his charge, delivering at the table the 
 remaining Articles, making in all twenty-two in number, in 
 the course of the few following days. 
 
 On the 26th of April, Mr. Hastings petitioned to be 
 heard in answer to the Articles, and prayed to be allowed a 
 copy of them. Both requests were allowed by the House, 
 despite the opposition of Mr. Burke to the latter of the 
 two, on the ground of the Articles being " merely a general 
 collection of accusatory facts," subject to be hereafter ma- 
 terially altered by the Committee to whom they would be 
 referred. And, notwithstanding a further motion by Mr. 
 Burke that the House should resolve itself into a Committee 
 to examine witnesses, similarly rejected by a large majority, 
 Mr. Hastings was heard in his defence at the Bar of the 
 House on the 1st of May and two following days. The 
 Defence was prepared in writing, and read partly by Mr. Has- 
 tings himself, and partly by Mr. Markhain, a son of the 
 Archbishop of York, and the clerks of the House. It 
 was afterwards ordered to be laid on the table of the 
 House, and to be printed. Mr. Burke suffered little time 
 to be lost in prosecuting the charges. He himself, on 
 the 1st of June, brought forward the first Article, relating 
 to the war against the Rohillas, moving that it contained 
 " grounds sufficient to charge Mr. Hastings with high 
 crimes and misdemeanors." After a debate of two days' 
 duration, and in which Mr. Dundas and Mr. Wilberforce 
 spoke against it, the motion was negatived by 119 to 
 67, the division taking place at half-past seven in the 
 morning. 
 
 On the 13th of June, the second Article, relating to Be- 
 nares, was opened by Mr. Fox ; and, to the consternation of 
 Mr. Hastings' friends, the Prime Minister, Mr. Pitt, contrary
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXVii 
 
 to the expectation of them and the House in general, spoke in 
 support of the charge, though, in respect to much of the 
 transaction, justifying Mr. Hastings' conduct. Notwith- 
 standing that some of the Ministers declined following their 
 chief, the motion was carried by a majority of 119 to 79. 
 
 No further proceedings were taken during the remainder 
 of this session. On the first day of the meeting of the 
 House in 1787, Mr. Burke announced his intention of re- 
 suming the introduction of the several Articles of charge on 
 the 1st of the following month. Accordingly, on the 1st of 
 February, Mr. Middleton was called before the House in Com- 
 mittee, to give evidence relating to the circumstances con- 
 tained in the charge relating to Oude ; and on the 7th of 
 the same month the charge itself was moved by Mr. Sheridan, 
 in that famous speech of which nothing but a short abstract 
 has been preserved, but which, according to the opinion of 
 the principal members on either side of the House, eclipsed 
 all previous displays of eloquence ever made within their 
 Avails. From the excitement it produced it was judged 
 right to adjourn the debate. On the following day it was 
 resumed. The motion was supported by Mr. Pitt, and was 
 carried by 175 to 68. 
 
 Mr. Burke's object was now secured. The impeachment 
 of Warren Hastings was assented to by the House of 
 Commons. On the 19th of February, in a debate on the 
 mode of proceeding in the case, Mr. Burke complained of 
 Mr. Hastings being at liberty after the votes already passed 
 affirming his criminality. But the severity proposed was 
 objected to by Mr. Pitt. 
 
 The remaining Articles were discussed, and, on the 2d of 
 April, the report of the Committee on the Articles of Charge 
 was brought up. 
 
 The next step in the pi'oceedings was the appointment of 
 a Committee to draw tip special Articles of impeachment. 
 
 On the presentation of the name of Mr. Francis, objection 
 was made to his nomination on the ground of his alleged
 
 XXXviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 personal hostility to the person accused, and he was rejected 
 by a majority of 96 to 44. 
 
 On the 9th of May, the Articles which had been brought up 
 from the Committee on the 25th of April were debated on, 
 and, on the 10th, a vote for impeachment was carried without 
 a division. Mr. Burke, accompanied by the members of the 
 House of Commons, proceeded to the bar of the House of 
 Lords, and formally impeached Warren Hastings, Esquire, 
 of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. 
 
 On the llth of May, Mr. Hastings was committed to the 
 custody of the Serjeant-at-arms ; and, on the 23d, the Ser- 
 jeant-at-arms intimated that he had, in obedience to the 
 commands of the House, delivered Mr. Hastings to the 
 Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. 
 
 On the 5th of December, a copy was received from the 
 Lords of the Answer delivered at the bar of their House by 
 Mr. Hastings to the Articles exhibited against him by the 
 Commons. The answer was read, and a reply was drawn 
 up by a Committee, from which again Mr. Francis was 
 excluded by a special vote. 
 
 On the llth, the Committee who had drawn up the reply 
 to Mr. Hastings' answer were appointed Managers of the 
 prosecution. On this occasion, too, a motion was made for 
 the introduction of the name of Mr. Francis, but was rejected 
 by a majority of 120 to 52.* The names of the Committee 
 of Managers were, Right Hon. Edmund Burke, Right Hon. 
 C. J. Fox, R. B. Sheridan, Hon. T. Pelham, afterwards second 
 Earl of Chichester, Right Hon. W. Windham, Sir Gilbert 
 Elliott, Bart., Charles Grey, afterwards Earl Grey, William 
 Adam, Sir John Anstruther, M. A. Taylor, James Viscount 
 Maitland, afterwards Earl of Lauderdale, Dudley Long, 
 
 * When Mr. Burke found he -was not to have the assistance of Mr. Francis, 
 he declared, " in the presence of God and of the world, that he looked upon the 
 business of the impeachment as damned, seeing he was deprived of the assis- 
 tance of the man who, of all persons, was, from local knowledge, the best 
 qualified to assist in the undertaking. He said he would proceed, however, 
 let the event be what it would." History of the Trial, 8vo,, 1796 ; Pref. p. 13.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXXIX 
 
 General J. Burgoyne, Hon. George A. North, afterwards 
 Earl of Guilford, Hon. Andrew St. John, Colonel Fitzpatrick, 
 Roger Wilbraham, John Courtenay, Sir James Erskine, 
 afterwards St. Clair, Bart., and Right Hon. Fred. Montagu. 
 
 The preliminary proceedings concluded by Mr. Hastings 
 being brought to the bar of the House of Lords, and admitted 
 to bail. The commencement of the trial was appointed for 
 the second day of the ensuing session. 
 
 The Counsel retained by the Managers were Dr. Scott 
 and Dr, Laurence, with Mr. Mansfield, Mr. Piggott, Mr. 
 Richard Burke (brother of the Manager), and Mr. Douglas. 
 The Counsel retained by Mr. Hastings were Mr. Law, after- 
 wards Lord Ellenborough, Mr. Plumer, afterwards Vice- 
 Chancellor of England and Master of the Rolls, and 
 Mr. Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. 
 The Solicitors for the Prosecution were Messrs. Wallis and 
 Troward. Mr. Shaw acted for Mr. Hastings. 
 
 By request from the House of Lords to the King, 
 Westminster Hall was fitted up for the trial ; the body of 
 the Hall being occupied with a wooden structure for the 
 purpose. The Court was so arranged as to correspond 
 exactly with the House of Lords. A throne was erected to 
 represent the presence of the King, and was occupied by the 
 Lord Chancellor. Places were allotted to the members of 
 the House of Commons, and on the opposite side were seats 
 for the Peeresses. Boxes were erected, one on either side 
 the throne, for the accommodation of the King, should he 
 desire to attend, with his suite, and for the Prince of Wales 
 and royal family. 
 
 The Queen, the Prince of Wales and others of the royal 
 family, were present on the first day of the trial, the 13th of 
 February, 1 788. 
 
 The Lords went in formal procession from their House to 
 the Hall, attended by the Judges. 
 
 The proceedings opened with the usual proclamation?. 
 Mr. Hastings appeared with his bail, and knelt before the 
 Court. He was arraigned by the Lord Chancellor, and the
 
 Xl INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Articles of Charge, the answer and replication, were then 
 read ; in which two days were occupied. On the third day, 
 the 15th of February, Mr. Burke opened the Prosecution in 
 a speech which occupied four days in its delivery, and which 
 is the first of the series comprised in the present work. 
 
 The trial itself, from the opening of the proceedings to 
 the vote of the Lords of acquittal on the last of the charges, 
 extended over seven sessions of Parliament, from February, 
 1788, to April, 1795, and occupied one hundred and forty- 
 eight sittings of the Court, together with several days' 
 debates on the verdict on the several Articles of Charge 
 in the House of Lords. 
 
 Of the twenty articles of impeachment presented at the 
 bar of the House of Lords only the first, second, fourth, sixth, 
 and portions of the seventh and fourteenth, relating to 
 Benares, the Begums of Oude, to presents or bribes, and to 
 contracts, were proceeded on. In the course of the trial 
 many points of constitutional law and precedent were 
 evolved, occasioning long arguments on either side, and 
 frequent adjournments of the Lords to their own House for 
 their consideration. Of these, and of other incidents of the 
 trial, it appears unadvisable to attempt to give a narrative 
 in this Introduction. A complete history of the proceed- 
 ings was published at the time by Debrett, and has been 
 regarded as accurate and impartial.* It extends to consi- 
 derable length, forming an octavo volume of nearly eight 
 hundred pages of double column. 
 
 Scheme of The present publication has been undertaken by the 
 
 publication. 
 
 authority of the late Government, at the suggestion of the 
 then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Cornewall 
 Lewis. 
 
 The scheme of the work embraces the speeches of the 
 Managers for the House of Commons, in opening and sup- 
 
 * A condensed history of the trial, yet occupying two hundred pages of his 
 work, is given by Mill in his History of British India, book vi., chapter 2. Au 
 excellent review of the proceedings will also be found in Adolphus' History 
 of England, vol. vi., p. 138. .
 
 INTRODUCTION. . xli 
 
 porting the several Articles of Charge, and in summing up 
 the evidence ; the answers of the Counsel for the Defence ; 
 and the replies of <the Managers. The evidence, oral and 
 documentary, was printed as the trial proceeded, and fills 
 nine folio volumes. The present work, therefore, completes 
 the material brought forward by both prosecution and defence. 
 The remaining unpublished matter consists of arguments 
 and discussions between the Managers and Counsel relative 
 to forms of proceeding and to admission of evidence. 
 
 A few words may be added respecting the authenticity Reports 
 of the reports of the speeches, and the copies made use speeches. 
 of for the present publication. Every sitting of the Court 
 was attended by a short-hand writer, from the office of 
 Mr. Gurney, commissioned to take exact notes of the pro- 
 ceedings by the Committee of Managers. Several copies of 
 these reports were provided for the solicitors of the Managers. 
 A nearly complete set is preserved in the library of Lincoln's 
 Inn ; and I take the opportunity of expressing my gratitude 
 to the Benchers for their liberal loan of such portions of it 
 as could be of service to me in preparing the text of the 
 speeches. This copy was procured from the late Mr. John 
 Adolphus, whose careful analysis of the proceedings of the 
 trial, inserted in his History of England, bears witness to 
 his patient study of its contents. But Mr. Adolphus had 
 become possessed of more than one copy of the reports. He 
 had, in fact, considerable portions of four or five sets, all 
 transcripts from the same draft. From the residue of these a 
 further nearly complete copy was procured, and this has fur- 
 nished the present texts of all the speeches, saving those of 
 Mr. Burke and Mr. Adam. The report of Mr. Adam's speech 
 was wanting ; and, although the speech of Mr. Burke formed 
 part of the series, it was found on examination to be a copy 
 of it in the form as revised by himself, and subsequently 
 printed in the general edition of his works, published by 
 Messrs. Rivington, in 1827. Of one portion only of the 
 second day's speech could a copy of the original report be 
 discovered, either in the set of the proceedings in the Lin- 
 coln's Inn library, or in the broken sets from which it had
 
 xlii . INTRODUCTION. 
 
 been formed. It was amongst the latter and was found to 
 contain numerous alterations in the handwriting of Burke 
 himself. After many fruitless attempts to procure elsewhere 
 an entire copy of the original report of the speech, appli- 
 cation Avas made at the office of the descendants of Mr. Gur- 
 ney, when it appeared that the actual short-hand notes of 
 the reporters were still preserved. By the courtesy of 
 Mr. Joseph Gurney, an extended transcript was obtained, 
 and this supplies the text here published. A comparison of 
 it with the composition already referred to, as corrected by 
 Mr. Burke for publication, shows the freedom he allowed 
 himself in the alterations introduced. Not only is the lan- 
 guage carefully revised, but the speech may be said to be 
 remodelled. Many passages, in some instances containing 
 charges of crimination, are suppressed, and new arguments 
 and illustrations are freely introduced. The revised com- 
 position doubtless displays greater condensation of argument 
 and refinement of diction, but is, I think, surpassed in 
 energy of expression by the unaltered report of the words 
 and ideas as they flowed from his imagination in the warmth 
 of their first conception. 
 
 But it appears that, at the commencement of the trial, the 
 solicitors for Mr. Hastings also employed a short-hand 
 writer to note the proceedings, for their own use. An 
 imperfect set of these reports, endorsed as belonging to 
 Mr. Shaw, solicitor for Mr. Hastings, was acquired by the 
 British Museum in the year 1848. The fact of the exis- 
 tence of these two independent reports of at least some of 
 the speeches will serve to explain the low estimation ex- 
 pressed in some quarters of the general accuracy of the 
 short-hand writers, in especial reference to their notes of 
 these proceedings.* Nothing can be more marked than the 
 
 *In the biography of Lord Ellenborough by Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the 
 Chief Justices of England, this opinion of the inefficiency of short- hand writers 
 of the time is very strongly expressed, and his Lordship gives the following 
 amusing instance of their misapprehension of Burke's language : 
 
 " Burke, having observed that ' virtue does not depend upon climates and 
 degrees,' he was reported to have said ' virtue does not depend upon climaxes 
 and trees.' " Vol. III. p. 124. I find the blunder in Hastings' short-hand 
 writer's report of Burke's second day's speech. The words used are, ' climaxes 
 such as these.'
 
 INTRODUCTION. xliii 
 
 contrast between the two performances. Mr. Gurney's 
 reports have every appearance of having been taken with 
 scrupulous fidelity. The others are very imperfect, and 
 beset with inaccuracies throughout; and when they have 
 been regarded as the standard of merit of the reporters of 
 the time, they will, of course, have justified the severest 
 reflexions on their incompetency. 
 
 Of the several speeches contained in the present volume, 
 copies of reports have been examined in the following 
 different forms. It is to be understood that copies of 
 Gurney's reports are in the hands of the Editor of this pub- 
 lication, and others in the Library of Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 I. Burkes general Opening of the Prosecution) \2th, 15th, 
 16th, and \8th of February, 1788: 1. A recent copy, extended 
 from the original short-hand notes preserved in Mr. Gurney's 
 office, and printed from for the present text. 2. Gurney's 
 report, quoted as 'revised copy/ being altered by Burke to 
 the form as printed in the collection of his works published 
 in 1827. 3. The report of the short-hand writer employed 
 by Mr. Hastings' solicitor, preserved in the British Museum 
 and marked Additional MS. 17,074. 4. A fragment of Gur- 
 ney's report of the second day's speech, partially corrected 
 by Burke himself. 
 
 II. Fox's Opening of the First Charge, the 22nd of Fe- 
 bruary, 1788: 1. Gurney's contemporaneous report. 2. The 
 report of the short-hand writer employed for Mr. Hastings, 
 now Additional MS. 17,067, in the British Museum. 
 
 III. Grey's Speech in Support of the First Charge, the 
 25th of February, 1788: 1. Gurney's contemporaneous 
 report. 2. Report of the short -hand writer employed for 
 Mr. Hastings, preserved in the British Museum, as the 
 Additional MS. 17,067. 
 
 IV. A nstruther's Speech in summing up the Evidence on 
 the First Charge, the \\th of April, 1788 : 1. Gurney's re- 
 port. '2. Mr. Hastings' short-hand writer's report, preserved 
 in the British Museum, as the Additional MS. 17,068.
 
 xliv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 V. Adam's Opening of the Second Charge, the 15th of 
 April, 1788: 1. Gurney's report, from the copy in Lincoln's 
 Inn Library. 2. Gurney's report altered, and with addi- 
 tional corrections, apparently by Mr. Adam himself, pre- 
 served in the British Museum, as the Additional MS. 17,075. 
 3. Mr. Hastings' short-hand writer's report in the British 
 Museum, marked Additional MS. 17,068. 
 
 VI. Pelham's Speech in Support of the Second Charge, 
 the \th of April, 1788: !. Gurney's report. 2. Mr. Hast- 
 ings' short-hand writer's report, preserved in the British 
 Museum, as the Additional MS. 17,068. 
 
 VII. Sheridan's Summing of the Evidence on the Second 
 Charge, the 3rd, 6th, 10th and 13*A, of June, 1788: 
 Gurney's report. 
 
 The texts of all the speeches now published are given 
 from Gurney's reports ; and these, although, as has been 
 said, recording apparently with admirable precision the 
 words of the speakers, have frequently been found very 
 deficient in grammatical correctness. It has been a work 
 of difficulty to remedy this defect without altering the words 
 of the report : yet, in many instances, change of punctuation 
 and fresh division of the sentences has succeeded in restoring 
 a grammatical structure to passages apparently most per- 
 plexed ; and, where this Avas insufficient, the alteration of a 
 word or the introduction of one wanting for the sense, and 
 marked by brackets, has been ventured on. Where the 
 language of the speaker was evidently broken and inter- 
 rupted in the delivery, it has been judged proper to suffer 
 the sentence to remain incomplete, as reported. 
 
 In the writing of proper names of persons and places, and 
 of Indian terms, modern orthography has been substituted 
 for the unsettled forms of the period of the trial. 
 
 In the course of the speeches, frequent reference is made 
 to letters, documents, and other evidence bearing upon the 
 points discussed. Considerable trouble has been taken to 
 verify these quotations by copies found, in most cases, either
 
 INTRODUCTION. xlv 
 
 in the evidence, printed at the time of the trial, or in 
 the appendices to the numerous reports of the Committees 
 of the House of Commons on Indian affairs appointed in the 
 year 1782 ; and references to such printed copies are given 
 in the notes. 
 
 The preparation of the texts of the remaining speeches 
 is being proceeded with, and the publication will be com- 
 pleted in three more volumes.
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES 
 CONTAINED IN VOL. I. 
 
 SPEECH OP THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE, MANAGER FOR 
 THE HOUSE OP COMMONS, IN OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT ; 
 15TH FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Importance of the case, 2 ; Moderation of the Commons, 4 ; 
 Magnitude of the crime, 6 ; Nature of the evidence, 8 ; Evasion 
 by niceties of the law, 10 ; Objects of the address, 12 ; Powers 
 of the Company, ib.; Its constitution, 14 ; Servants of the 
 Company, 16; Mr. Hastings' plea of imperfect education, 21 ; 
 Unlawful emoluments, 22; Employment of banyas, or native 
 stewards, 24 ; Acts of servants of the Company put in writing, 
 28 ; System subverted by Mr. Hastings, 30 ; Repudiation of 
 his own recorded declarations, 31 ; Races of India, 33 ; The 
 Gentus, ib. ; Caste, 34; Hindu laws, 36; Religion, 37; 
 Ancient institutions subverted, 38 ; Mohammedan dynasty, 39 ; 
 Tartar dynasty, ib. ; Era of Akbar Khan, 41 ; Era of indepen- 
 dent subahdars, 42 ; Era of British rule, 43. 
 
 CONTINUATION OP THE SPEECH OF THE EIGHT HON. EDMUND 
 BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN OPENING 
 THE IMPEACHMENT ; 16TH FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Intention of the Speaker, 45 ; Opportunity of benefiting 
 India by British rule, 46; Suraj-ud-Dowla, Nawab of Bengal, 
 47; Acquisition of Bengal by Great Britain, 48 ; Mir Jaffier, 
 Nawab, ib. ; Revolutions by servants of the Company, 49 ; 
 Cossim Ali Khan, ib. ; Council of Calcutta, 50 ; Revolution in 
 Bengal, ib.; Story of the Three Seals, 52; Inquiry by the 
 Directors, 55 ; Mr. Hastings acting as judge, ib. ; General 
 Calliand's defence, 56 ; Resolution of the Council, 58 ; Collu- 
 sion of the parties, 59; Continuation of plot to remove Mir 
 Jaffier, ib. ; Death of Miran, son of the Nawab, 60;- Character 
 of Mr. Vansittart, 61 ; Proposal of Cossim Ali to murder Mir 
 Jaffier, ib.; Overthrow of Mir Jaffier, 62; Accession of Cossim 
 Ali, 63 ; His persecution of the family of Seits, 64 ; Murder 
 of Ramarain, ib.; Abuse by servants of the Company of privi- 
 lege of free transit of goods, 65 ; Treaty for its restriction, ib.; 
 Exemption of Mr. Vansittart and Mr. Hastings, ib. ; Overthrow 
 of Cossim Ali and restoration of Mir Jaffier, 67 ; Characters of 
 Mohammed Reza Khan and Nundcomar, 68 ; Office of Naib
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. xlvii 
 
 Subah, 69 ; Death of the Xawab, ib. ; Mission of Lord Clive, 
 70; Procures the diwanni of Bengal from the Mogul, 71 ; His 
 intervention in behalf of the Raja of Benares, 72 ; State of the 
 Nawab upheld by him, ib. ; Misgovernment by Lord Olive's 
 successors, 73 ; Presents prohibited by the Company, ib. ; 
 Commission by Parliament for government of India, ib. ; 
 Mr. Hastings appointed, ib. ; Management of the revenue, 74 ; 
 Periods of Mr. Hastings' criminality, ib. ; Principles of his 
 government, 75 ; His plea of a variation of standard of morality, 
 76 ; His claim of arbitrary power, ib. ; Arguments against 
 arbitrary power, 79 ; Mohammedan governments, 82 ; Plea of 
 sanction of arbitrary power in India, 84 ; Institutes of Genghis 
 Khan, ib. ; Institutes of Tamerlane, 85 ; Punishment of faith- 
 less governors in the East, 89 ; And of practice of bribery, 90 ; 
 Provincial constitutions of Hindustan, 91 ; No arbitrary 
 power, 92 ; Mr. Hastings' plea of having to govern by his own 
 practice, 93 ; His plea of ignorance, 94 ; Plea of acquittal by 
 Parliament, 95 ; Plea of the Company's approval, 96 ; Testi- 
 mony of native Princes in his favour, 97 ; Method of future 
 proceedings in the charge, 98. 
 
 CONTINUATION OP THE SPEECH OE THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND 
 BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN OPENING 
 THE IMPEACHMENT ; 18iH FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Curtailment of the Speech, 101 ; Mr. Hastings' pecuniary 
 corruption, 102 ; His consciousness of the evil of arbitrary 
 power, ib. ; His bribery, 103; His avarice, 104; Receiving 
 presents, 107; Confiscation of the landed property in Bengal, 
 109; Lands let to farm, 110; Defalcations in revenue, ib.', 
 Corrupt practices in letting the land, 111 ; Mr. Hastings' banya, 
 Cantoo Baboo, 112; Sale of offices, &c., 114; Merits of mem- 
 bers of the Council, 115; Corruption in the service, ib. ; 
 Inquiries stayed by Mr. Hastings, ib. ; Xundcomar's charges 
 against Mr. Hastings, 116; Refusal of Mr. Hastings to answer 
 to them, 117; Prosecution and execution of Nundcomar, 118; 
 Suppression of inquiry into his accusations, 119; Punishment 
 by Mr. Hastings of his accusers, 121 ; Mr. Hastings' pecula- 
 tions, ib. ; Effect of guilt in warping the understanding, 123; 
 Evasion of explanation of receipt of presents, 124 ; Provincial 
 Councils for revenue, 125 ; Mr. Hastings' preponderance in the 
 Council of Bengal, 126 ; Formation of the Council for the 
 revenue, ib. ; Appointment of Gunga Govind Sing as secretary, 
 127 ; The Council his tool, 128 ; Expense of the Council, ib. ; 
 Bad character of Gunga Govind Sing, 129 ; Employed in 
 receiving bribes for Mr. Hastings, 130 ; The Dinagepore bribe, 
 131; Succession to the Rajaship of Dinagepore, 132; Deby 
 Sing guardian of the Raja, 134 ; No account rendered by him, 
 135 ; His history, 136 ; Conduct as Diwan of Moorshedabad, 
 137; Farms tax on prostitutes, ib. ; Obtains the farm of Rung- 
 pore, 138; His oppression of the country, 13.9; His cruelties, 
 141; Mr. Paterson commissioned to inquire, 148; His report, 
 ib. ; Loss of cast, 149.
 
 xlviii CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. 
 
 CONCLUSION OF THE SPEECH OP THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND 
 BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN OPENING 
 THE IMPEACHMENT ; 19TH FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Treatment of Mr. Paterson by the Council, 152; Accused by 
 Deby Sing, 153; A second commission appointed, 154 ; Favour 
 shown to Deby Sing, 155; Wrongs of inhabitants of Rungpore 
 unredressed, 15(5; Unworthy appointment by Mr. Hastings, ib. ; 
 Provincial Councils, 157 ; System of bribery, ib. ; Character 
 of Mr. Goodlad, 159 ; Gunga Govind Sing's power over the 
 Committee of Revenue, 161 ; He takes bribes, 162; Mr. Hast- 
 ings' consideration for him 011 leaving India, 163; Bribe re- 
 ceived by Mr. Hastings through his hands, 165; Character of 
 Gunga Govind Sing, 166; His private services to Mr. Hastings, 
 167; Grant of lands to him recommended by Mr. Hastings, 
 168; Belonged to the Raja of Dinagepore, ib.; Grant of the 
 infant Raja void, 170; Gunga Govind Sing's appeal to the 
 absolute power of the Government, 171; Case of Lucknant 
 Nundy, 173; Illegal grants of land by Mr. Hastings, 175; 
 Conduct of the Council relative to the grant to Gunga Govind 
 Sing, ib. ; Mr. Hasting's government founded on bribery, 177; 
 Sale of Behar, 178; Bribe received, ib. ; Recapitulation of 
 charges, 179; Greatness of the cause, 180. 
 
 SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES JAMES Fox, MANAGER 
 
 FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN OPENING THE FlRST 
 
 ARTICLE OF CHARGE, RELATING TO BENARES ; 22ND FE- 
 BRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Function of the House of Commons in impeachments, 183; 
 His pride in representing the House, 186; Union of parties in 
 the prosecution, ib. ; Prosecution not committed to Ministers, 
 188 ; Simplicity of the subject of the charge, 190 ; Not touched 
 on by Mr. Burke, 191; Managers intitled to respect, 192; 
 Their duty to act in the spirit of judges, ib. ; Truth of the 
 charge, 193; Denial by Mr. Hastings of statement respecting 
 Raja Bulwant Sing, 194 ; Bulwant Sing's services to the Com- 
 pany, ib. ; Grant of Benares by the Nawab of Oude to Cheyt 
 Sing, 195; Confirmed by Mr. Hastings, 196 ; Cheyt Sing pro- 
 tected against the Nawab, ib. ; The sovereignty of Benares 
 transferred to the English, 197; The English bound by the 
 grant to Cheyt Sing, ib. ; Cheyt Sing's annual tribute, 198; 
 Mr. Hastings' opinion of his independence, ib. ; Criminal juris- 
 diction and right of coinage granted to him, 199 ; His tribute 
 limited, 200 ; Conditions attached to his power, ib. ; Engage- 
 ments to Cheyt Sing explained away by Mr. Hastings, 202 ; 
 Right of fining him claimed by Mr. Hastings, 203; Conse- 
 quences of his paying his tribute at Benares, 205 ; Advantages 
 of Cheyt Sing's assistance in time of war, 207 ; Recommendation 
 to him from the Council to maintain a body of cavalry, 208 ; 
 Cheyt Sing's independent authority, 209 ; Recapitulation ; 
 Mr. Hastings' Narrative of the insurrection of Benares, 21 1 ; 
 His Defence in the House of Commons, 212 ; Breach of agree-
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. 
 
 ment with Cheyt Sing, 213 ; Requisition on Cheyt Sing for con- 
 tribution for the war, 214; Renewal of the demand, 218; 
 Acquiescence of Mr. Francis, 220 ; Merits of the party in the 
 Council opposed to Mr. Hastings, 221 ; Acquiescence of the 
 Directors, 222 ; The exaction illegal, 224 ; Reference to opinions 
 of Mr. Pitt, ib. ; Compliance of Cheyt Sing, 225 ; Object of 
 Mr. Hastings to ruin Cheyt Sing, ib. ; Cause of personal resent- 
 ment, 226 ; Cheyt Sing's punctuality of payment, 228 ; De- 
 mand of cavalry from Cheyt Sing, 230 ; His present to 
 Mr. Hastings, 231 ; Pretence of delay in payment of the troops 
 from Cheyt Sing's unpunctuality, 234 ; Recapitulation, ib. ; 
 Consequences of receiving Cheyt Sing's rent through the Resi- 
 dent, 235; Fine levied on Cheyt Sing, 236; Mr. Hastings' 
 plea of benefiting the Company by the fine, 238 ; His visit to 
 Benares, 239; His reception of Cheyt Sing, 240; Letter of 
 reproach, 241 ; Offer of fine by Cheyt Sing, ib. ; His answer to 
 the letter, 242 ; Its submissiveness, 243 ; Mr. Hastings' obser- 
 vations on the letter, 244 ; Parallel between the prisoner and 
 Alexander the Great, 245; Arrest of Cheyt Sing, 246; Offences 
 imputed to Cheyt Sing, 248 ; Contradicted by his conduct, 249 ; 
 Abstinence from allusion to his present, 251 ; The rebellion 
 chargeable on Mr. Hastings, 252 ; Recapitulation, 253 ; 
 Mr. Hastings' delegation 'of his authority, 254 ; Other matters 
 in the present charge, 254 ; Renumeration of charges, 255 ; 
 Miserable condition of Cheyt Sing, 256 ; Effects of paying his 
 tribute at Benares, 257; Delay in paying the exactions, 258; 
 Necessity for retrieving character of British justice, 259 ; Conse- 
 quences of acquitting Mr. Hastings, 260 ; Purity of the tribunal 
 in question, 262 ; Concluding remarks, 263 ; Precision in the 
 articles of impeachment, 264. 
 
 SPEECH OF CHARLES GEEY, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF 
 COMMONS, IN SUPPORT OF THE FIRST ARTICLE OF CHARGE, 
 RELATING TO BENARES ; 2oTH FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Parts of the charge assigned to the Manager, 265 ; Indepen- 
 dent right of Cheyt Sing, 265 ; Secured by treaties, 267 ; 
 Definition of the Companv's rights of sovereignty, ib. ; Claims 
 upon Cheyt Sing's gratitude, 269; Arbitrary exactions not 
 justified by feudal law, 270 ; Crimes imputed to Cheyt Sing, 
 272: Rapacity of Mr. Hastings, 274; Concealment of his 
 purpose in visiting Benares, ib. ; His prevarication, 275 ; Offer 
 of the Nawab of Oude to purchase Benares, 276 ; Cheyt Sing's 
 expressions of submission, ib. ; Places himself in Mr. Hastings' 
 power, 277 ; His arrest, 278 ; Exasperation of his subjects, 279 ; 
 Imputation of rebellion against him, 280 ; Letter of submission 
 after his escape, 281; Reduction of the country, 282; Tyran- 
 nical conduct of Mr. Hastings, 282 ; Plunderof Bidjey Ghur,284; 
 Conditions offered to the Rani, 285 ; Licentiousness of the 
 soldiers, 286 ; Resulting from Mr. Hastings' orders, 287 His 
 prohibition of provision for the Rani, 291 ; Failure of object of 
 securing money, 292 ; Impolitic settlement of the country, 293 : 
 Succession of Mehipnaraim, 294 ; Control exercised by the 
 Resident, 295 ; Abuses introduced into the government. 296; 
 
 tl
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. 
 
 Deposition of Mehipnaraim, 297 ; His demands of an inquiry, 
 '299 ; Imprisonment of his minister, 300 ; Ruin of the country, 
 302 ; Conclusion, 305. 
 
 SPEECH OF JOHN ANSTRUTHEK, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE 
 OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING UP THE EVIDENCE ON THE FIRST 
 ARTICLE OF CHARGE, RELATING TO BENARES; HTH APRIL, 
 1788. 
 
 Completeness of the evidence, .'507; Evidence derived from 
 Mr. Hastings, 308 ; Rank and condition of Bulwant Sing, ib. ; 
 Company's guarantee of independence to Bulwant Sing, 310 ; 
 Treaty of Allahabad, ib. ; Succession of Cheyt Sing, 312 ; 
 Renewal of stipulations in his favour, ib. ; Protected against 
 the Nawab's encroachments, 313 ; Mr. Hastings' assertion that 
 he was an amil, 314 ; Disregard by Mr. Hastings of Cheyt 
 Sing's rights, 316; Sovereignty of Benares granted to the 
 Company, 317; Mr. Hastings' plea of being controlled by his 
 Council, ib. ; Cheyt Sing's independence, 320 ; Propositions 
 of Mr. Hastings respecting the government of Benares, 322 ; 
 Payment of tribute at Benares, 325 ; Appointment of Mr. Fowke 
 as Resident at Benares, 326 , Plan for the defence of India in 
 1778, 328; Exactions from Cheyt Sing, ib. ; Dispute in the 
 Council respecting them, 329 ; Mis-statements of Mr. Hastings, 
 330 ; Demands of money on Cheyt Sing, ib. ; His remon- 
 strances, 331 ; Charged with failure in remitting money for 
 Major Carnac, 333; No entry of complaint in records of the 
 Council, 334 ; Demand of cavalry, 335 ; No record of his dis- 
 affection, 336 ; Extraordinary power assumed by Mr. Hastings, 
 337 ; Charge against Cheyt Sing of rebellion, 338 ; Of corre- 
 spondence with the Mahrattas, 339 ; Mr. Hastings influenced 
 by personal resentment, ib. ; His charges against Cheyt Sing, 
 341 ; Mr. Fowke's removal from Benares, 342; Arrest of Cheyt 
 Sing, 344 ; Presumption of his refusal to pay his fine, 345 ; 
 Colonel Gardner's evidence, 346 ; Tumult occasioned by Cheyt 
 Sing's imprisonment, 347 ; Affidavits collected by Mr. Hast- 
 ings for his justification, 348 ; His appeal to the conduct of 
 his predecessors, 349 ; Bulwant Sing's independency, 350 ; 
 Right of fining asserted by Mr. Hastings, 351 ; His claim of 
 despotic power, 352 ; Mr. Hastings' letters respecting the trea- 
 sures taken at Bidgey Ghur, 354 ; Settlement of the province of 
 Benares, 356 ; Mr. Benn's evidence, ib, ; Expulsion of Durbejey 
 Sing, 358 ; Expulsion of Jagger-deo-Sing, 359 ; Conclusion, 
 &c., 361. 
 
 OBSERVATIONS OF THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE, MANAGER 
 FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON THE EVIDENCE ON THE 
 FIRST CHARGE ; HTH APRIL, 1788. 
 
 Imprisonment of Durbejey Sing, 362 ; His insolvency, 363 ; 
 Degradation caused by imprisonment, 364 ; Durbejey Sing's 
 deprivation of his books in prison, 365 ; Cheyt Sing's caste, 
 366 ; The insult offered to him when under arrest, ib.
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. li 
 
 SPEECH OF WILLIAM ADAM, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE 
 OF COMMONS, IN OPENING- THE SECOND CHARGE, RELATING TO 
 THE BEGUMS OF OUDE ; 15TH APRIL, 1788 
 
 The crimes charged in the Impeachment different from those 
 tried in ordinary courts, 368 ; Prolixity of the Articles, 369 ; 
 Contents of the several paragraphs of the Second Article, 370 ; 
 Description of the country of Oude, 3/2 ; Its revenue, 373 ; 
 Province of Benares, 374 ; English connection with Oude, ib. ; 
 The Rohilla war, 375 ; Debt arising from it, 376 ; Resident in 
 Oude, 377 ; The Begums, ib.; Regard shown to women in India, 
 3/8 ; Property of the Begums, 3/9 ; Their jagirs, ib.; Treasures 
 belonging to the Bow Begum, 383; Opinions of the Supreme 
 Council respecting the treasures, 381 ; The Nawab's claim upon 
 them, 382; Appeal of the Begum to Mr. Hastings, 383; Opinion 
 of the Nawab respecting the treasures, 385 ; Property of Munny 
 Begum, 386; Guarantees to the Bow Begum, 387; Letter of 
 Mr. Hastings to the Nawab in her behalf, 389 ; Mr. Hastings' 
 sentiments on filial piety, 390 ; Guarantee to Munny Begum, 
 391 ; Treaty signed by the Nawab, and guaranteed by the Com- 
 
 Eany, 394 ; Duties of Mr. Hastings, 395 ; Illegal delegation of 
 is power, 396 ; Appointment of special agent at Lucknow, 
 397 ; Recal of Mr. Bristow, and reappointment of Mr. Middle- 
 ton, ib. ; Assumption of the government of Oude, 400 ; Ver- 
 dict in the case of Rafael v. Yerelst, 402 ; Mr. Hastings' journey 
 to Benares and Oude, 403 ; Date of his Narrative of the Insur- 
 rection in Benares, 404 ; Treaty of Chunar, 405 ; Delay in 
 communicating it to the Council, 406; Charges against the 
 Begums fabricated by Sir Elijah Impey, 408 ; Mr. Hastings' 
 explanation of the treaty, 409 ; Interruption by Mr. Hastings, 
 ib. ; The Begums deprived of their jagirs, 410 ; Seizure of 
 their treasures, 411 ; Proceedings of Sir Elijah Impey, 412; 
 Reluctance of the Nawab, 413; Manner of resumption of the 
 jagirs, 414; Letter of Mr. Hastings to Mr. Middleton urging 
 the measure, ib. ; Purity of British justice, 416; Storm of 
 Fyzabad by Mr. Middleton, 417; He is blamed by Mr. Hastings 
 for allowing time to the Begums to treat, ib. ; Imprisonment 
 of the Begums' ministers, 418 ; Treatment of the family of the 
 late Nawab, 419 ; Advice of Sir Elijah Impey to Mr. Hastings 
 to collect affidavits to justify his acts, 423 ; Mirza Saadat AH 
 reflected on in the affidavits, 424 ; Determination of Mr. Hast- 
 ings to seize the treasures of the Begums, 425 ; Pretended 
 rebellion in Oude, 426 ; Absence of proceedings to convict, 
 427 ; Order of the Directors to restore the jagirs, 428 ; 
 Minute of Mr. Hastings, 429 ; Criminality of Mr. Hastings, 
 430 ; Pleas of Mr. Hastings in justification. 432 ; Conclusion, 
 434. 
 
 SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS PELHAM, MANAGER FOR 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUPPORT OF THE SECOND ARTICLE 
 OF THE CHARGE, RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF OUDE ; 16TH 
 APRIL, 1788. 
 
 Present charge the basis of the Impeachment, 436 ; Influence 
 of Mr. Hastings' friends in his favour, 437 ; Assistance of Eng-
 
 Hi CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. 
 
 lish troops in the resumption of the jagirs, 439 ; Mr. Hastings' 
 letters to the Directors, 440; Their disapproval, 441; 
 An inquiry proposed, 443; Disinclination of the Directors 
 to remove Mr. Hastings, ib. ; Acciisation by Mr. Hastings of 
 Middleton and Johnson, ib. ; Evidence of Middleton against 
 Mr. Hastings, 444 ; Mr. Hastings' secret orders to Middleton, 
 445 ; Public feeling in favour of Mr. Hastings, 446; Character 
 of his Defence in the House of Lords, 447 ; Assertions in his 
 Defence in the House of Commons, 448 ; His- responsibility for 
 the acts of his agents, 449 ; Cause of the first removal of 
 Middleton, 450; The two English brigades in the service of the 
 Nawab, ib. ; The Nawab'a minister a dependant of Mr. Hastings, 
 452; Responsibility of Mr. Hastings for the transactions in 
 Oude, 443 ; Mr. Hastings' visit to Oude, 454 ; His unwilling- 
 ness to see the Nawab, 455 ; Absence of proof of rebellion in Oude, 
 456 ; Treaty of Chunar, 457 ; His advice to the Nawab to make 
 the resumption of the jagirs general, 458 ; Unwillingness of the 
 Nawab to seize the jagirs, 460 ; Mr. Hastings' disappointment 
 of the booty of Bidjey Ghur, 463 ; He covets the treasures of the 
 Begums, 464 ; Suspicions of the Begums' encouragement of 
 Cheyt Sing's rebellion, 465 ; Mr. Hastings' plea of incomplete 
 education, 466 ; Arguments in favour of the Begums, ib. ; 
 Nature of the affidavits taken by Sir Elijah Impey, 468 ; Letter 
 of Middleton to Mr. Hastings, charging the Begums with 
 resistance to the resumption of the jagirs, 470; Appeal of the 
 Begum to Middleton for protection, 471 ; Remonstrances of the 
 Begums construed into rebellion, 473 ; Withdrawal of the Eng- 
 lish guarantee, 474; Sums taken ffom the Begums, ib. ; 
 Sufferings of the family of the late Nawab, 475 ; Comparison 
 with cruelties practised by the Spanish in Mexico, 479. 
 
 SPEECH OP RICHARD BRINSLEY SHEKIDAN, ESQ., MANAGER FOR 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING UP THE EVIDENCE 
 ON THE SECOND ARTICLE OF CHARGE, RELATING TO THE 
 BEGUMS OF OUDE ; SRD JUNE, 1788. 
 
 Absence of personal motives in the prosecution, 482 ; 
 Justification of severe terms used by the Managers, 483 ; 
 Necessity of remedy of rnisgovernment in India, 484 ; Full 
 proof of the charges, 486 ; Nature of the evidence, ib. ; 
 Mr. Hastings' Defences, 487 ; Prejudices of natives of India 
 respecting their women, 492; Sacredness of the zanana, 493; 
 Filial duty highly regarded, 494 ; The Nawab's obligations to 
 his mother, ib. ; The Bow Begum left by the late Nawab to 
 Mr. Hastings' protection, 495 ; The claim disregarded by 
 Mr. Hastings, 496; Disputes between the Bow Begum and her 
 son, the Nawab, ib. ; Her loans to the Nawab, 497 ; Treaty 
 between the Bow Begum and the Nawab respecting the treasures, 
 498 ; Part of the sum to be paid in goods, 499 ; The goods 
 claimed by the Nawab as his own, ib. ; The Begum's right advo- 
 cated by Mr. Hastings, 500; Her right to the treasures not 
 questioned, 502 ; Self-contradictions of Mr. Hastings, ib. ; His 
 plea of non-responsibility, by being in the minority at the Board, 
 G04 ; The Begum's right to the treasures guaranteed by treaty,
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. liii 
 
 507; The Nawab's ignorance of the pretended rebellion, ib. j 
 Draft of the Nawab on the treasures, ib. ; Denial by Mr. Has- 
 tings of his own Defences, 509 ; His denial of the guarantee, ib. ; 
 Middleton's dissuasion of the Begum from a pilgrimage to 
 Mecca, 510; Complaints of the Begum against the Nawab, 511 ; 
 Recommendation by Middleton of the recognition of the 
 Begum's claims, ib. ; Demands of the Begum for provision for 
 the late Nawab's family, 513 ; Letter of the Council on the sub- 
 ject, 514 ; The Nawab's treaty with the Begum, ib. ; Middleton's 
 signature to the treaty, 517 ; Date of the treaty, 519 ; Guaran- 
 tee in favour of the elder Begum, 520 ; Mr. Hastings' sanction 
 of the guarantee, 521 ; Evidence of Mr. Purling on the two 
 earlier treaties for protection of the Begums, 522 ; Departure 
 of Mr. Hastings for the upper provinces, 524 ; His acceptance of 
 a bribe from the Nawab, ib.', Distressed condition of the Nawab, 
 525 ; Silence of Mr. Hastings on the subject, 528 ; His subse- 
 quent report to the Directors, ib. ; Statement that the money 
 was not paid at the time, 530 ; Contradictions respecting the 
 transaction, 531 ; Plea of state necessity, 533; Treaty of 
 Chunar, 534 ; Engagement to relieve the Nawab from the 
 support of the Company's officers, 536 ; Rapacity of the English 
 army in Oude, 540; Stipulation for the resumption of the 
 jagirs, 541 ; Engagement of the Nawab to surrender the manage- 
 ment of his treasury, 543 ; Seizure of the Begum's treasures 
 suggested by the loss of the plunder of Bidjey Ghur, 545 ; 
 Evidence against the Begums collected by Sir Elijah Impey, 547 ; 
 Sir Elijah Impey's contradictions, 549 ; His assertion that he 
 did not inform the Nawab of the object of his mission, 552 ; 
 That Mr. Hastings put no questions to him concerning the 
 affidavits, 553 ; That he himself never looked into the affidavits, 
 ib. His conduct in receiving the affidavits, 555 ; Affidavit 
 of Rani Golaub Kooer, 556 ; Affidavits of Deond Sing, 557. 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERI- 
 DAN, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OP COMMONS, IN 
 SUMMING UP THE EVIDENCE ox THE SECOND ARTICLE OF 
 CHARGE, RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF OUDE ; GTH JUNE, 
 
 1788. 
 
 Mr. Hastings' charge against the Begums of hostility against 
 the Company, 560; His attempt to give weight to the affidavits 
 by employing Sir Elijah Irnpey, 562 ; His complaint of 
 Mr. Burke's efforts to discredit the affidavits, 563 ; Affidavit of 
 Munshi Mohammed Morand, 564 ; Affidavit of Ahland Sing, ib. ; 
 Affidavit of Denoo Sing Subahdar, 566 ; Affidavit of Ram Sing, 
 56/ ; Affidavit of Hurdeal Sing, ib. ; Affidavit of Bejv Sing 
 Subahdar, 568 ; Affidavit of Merun Munshi, ib. ; Affidavit of 
 Hyder Beg Khan, 56J ; Affidavit of Mr. Middleton, ib. ; Affi- 
 davit of Col. Hannay, 570 ; Statement respecting troops raised 
 at Fyzabad, 571 ; Capt. Gordon's account of affairs at Tanda, 
 ib. ; Affidavit of Major Macdonald, 5/2 ; Affidavit of Capt. 
 Williams, 575 ; Affidavit of Capt. Gordon, ib. ; Suppression of 
 the fact of the Begum having saved Capt, Gordon, 576 ; Am-
 
 Hv CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. 
 
 davit of M. Mordelaifr, ib. ; Second affidavit of Col. Hannay, ib. ; 
 Character of evidence in the affidavits, 578 ; Uncertain infor- 
 mation respecting the rebellion, 579; Difficulty of fixing the 
 date of the rebellion, ib. ; Period of the Nawab's return to Luck- 
 now, 581 ; Assertion that he was accompanied by 2,000 horse, 
 582; Silence of the Nawab respecting the rebellion, 583; 
 Troops sent by the Begums to Cheyt Sing, 584 ; Mr. Hastings' 
 reason for not accusing Saadat All of rebellion, 588 ; Conduct 
 of Shumshire Khan at Tanda, ib. ; The Begum's assistance to 
 Capt. Gordon, 589 ; Observations on Capt. Gordon's affidavit, 
 591 ; Mutilation of Middleton's letter-books, 592; Efforts of 
 Middleton to explain away the Begum's assistance to Capt. Gor- 
 don, 594 ; Charge against the Begums of inciting the jagirdars 
 to insurrection, 599 ; Offer of Mr. Hastings to aid the Nawab 
 with troops in resuming the jagirs, 600 ; Commotions in Oude 
 caused by the rapacity of English officers, 601 ; Evidence of 
 Col. Hannay's rapacity, 603; Humanity of Major Naylor, 604; 
 Desolation of the country, 606 ; Plea of Mr. Hastings of false 
 persuasion of the Begum's guilt, 608 ; Omission of noticing his 
 suspicions to the Council, 609; Plea of want of leisure, 611 ; 
 Of interruption of communication, 612 ; Of withdrawal of papers 
 by Middleton, 613 ; Forged date to a letter of Middleton's of 
 , information against the Begums, 615 ; Forged date of a letter of 
 Mr. Hastings, 616 ; Mr. Hastings' reasons for withholding the 
 intelligence, 617; His expectation of an insurrection, 619; 
 His assertion of the general belief that he was directed by Provi- 
 dence, 619 ; Evidence furnished by Mr. Hastings against him- 
 self, 620 ; Abuse of prudence in the service of vice, 621 ; 
 Seizure of the treasures not proposed by the Nawab, 623 ; His 
 submission to Mr. Hastings, 624. 
 
 CONTINUATION OP THE SPEECH OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERI- 
 DAN, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN 
 SUMMING UP THE EVIDENCE OF THE SECOND ARTICLE OF 
 CHARGE, RELATING TO THE BEGUMS or OUDE ; IOTH JUNE, 
 
 1788. 
 
 Compulsion exercised over the Nawab, 62/ ; Assertion of Sir 
 Elijah Impey that he had no conversation respecting the affidavits 
 with Mr. Hastings, 628 ; Assertion that he never examined the 
 affidavits, 629 ; Suppression of Mr. Scott's testimony, 631 ; 
 Suppression of testimony of Hoolas Roy, ib. ; Contradictory 
 accounts by Mr. Hastings of his knowledge of the rebellion, 633 ; 
 And respecting the seizures of the treasures, 634 ; His admis- 
 sion of an inaccuracy in his first Defence, 636; The Begums 
 influenced by personal resentment towards him, 637 ; Correspon- 
 dence between Mr. Hastings, Mr. Middleton, and Sir Elijah 
 Impey, 637 ; Their distrust of each other, 638 ; Mr. Hastings 
 accusation of Middleton of accepting a bribe, ib. ; Contradic- 
 tion of dates of two letters of Middleton, 639 ; Difficulty of 
 Middleton with regard to seizing the jagirs, 640 ; Instructions 
 of Mr. Hastings, ib. ; Alternative of seizing the treasures instead 
 of the jagirs, 641 ; Letter of Middleton of the 2nd December
 
 NTS OF THE SPEECH !>'. lv 
 
 to Sir Elijah Impey, 642; Affected ignorance of Mr. Hastings' 
 order to seize the treasures, 643; Letter of Middleton of the 
 6th December, 644; Difference in proposals contained in the 
 two letters, 645 ; Probability of instructions from Mr. Hastings 
 of the 1st December, ib.; Subsequent hesitation of Middleton, 
 646; His correspondence with Sir Elijah Impey, 647; His 
 persuasion of the Nawab to order the resumption of the jagirs, 
 648 ; Letter of Mr. Hastings urging Middleton to prosecute 
 the seizure of the treasures, 649 ; Attempt of Mr. Hastings to 
 absolve himself from responsibility, 651 ; Answer of Middleton 
 to Mr. Hastings, ib. ; Accompanied by a private letter con- 
 tradicting it, 652; Other letters of Middleton, 654; Suppres- 
 sion of a letter from Mr. Hastings to the Begum, 656 ; Letter 
 of Mr. Hastings to Middleton disapproving his forbearance, 657. 
 
 CONCLUSION OP THE SPEECH OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 
 ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING 
 UP THE EVIDENCE ox THE SECOND ARTICLE OF CHARGE, 
 
 RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF OuDE ', 13TH JUNE, 1788. 
 
 Explanation of the production of the private letters between Mr. 
 Hastings and Middleton, 659; Mr. Hastings suspicious of Middle- 
 ton, 660 ; He recalls Middleton, 661 ; Complaint against him at 
 the Board, 662 ; The private letters produced by Mr. Hastings to 
 support his accusation, ib. ; Their value as evidence, 663 ; 
 Original orders for seizing the treasures subsequent to private orders 
 for resuming the jagirs, 664 ; Letter of Middleton written with a 
 view to justify the resumption of the jagirs, ib. ; Falsehood of 
 Mr. Hastings' account of the transaction, 665; Dissection of 
 Middleton's public letter of the 27th Dec., 666 ; Rebellion 
 desired by Mr. Hastings to justify the seizure of the jagirs, 
 669 ; Suggestion of Middleton for the seizure of Fyzula Khan's 
 jagir, 670; Private correspondence between Sir Elijah Impey 
 and Middleton, 671 ; Assertion of Sir Elijah Impey of ignorance 
 respecting the affidavits, after his return to Chunar, 672 ; Private 
 letter of Middleton to Mr. Hastings, dissuading him from the 
 seizure of the jagirs, ib. ; Letter of Johnson to the same effect, 
 675 ; Angry letter from Mr. Hastings to Middleton, 677 ; And 
 to the Nawab, 678 ; Order for march of troops into the country, 
 ib. ; Submission of the Xa\vab, 679 ; Correspondence of Mid- 
 dleton with the Begum respecting the resumption of her jagir, 
 681 ; Letter of the Xawab to Middleton, 685; Letter of the 
 Begum to Mr. Hastings, 486 ; His answer to the Begum not 
 produced, 688 : Validity of the private letters as evidence, ib. ; 
 Baseness of instigating filial violence, 689 ; Violation of engage- 
 ment to the Begum for an equivalent to her jagir, 691 ; Pre- 
 tended sale of her goods, 692 ; Imprisonment of her ministers, 
 ib. ; Attempt to fasten on the Begum fresh debts to the Com- 
 pany, 693 ; Assertion of Mr. Hastings that the transactions were 
 just and honourable, 694 ; Extortion of money from the Begums 
 by cruelties practised upon her ministers, 696 ; Ill-treatment of 
 the Begums, 702; Sufferings of the women in the Khourd 
 Mahal, 705 ; Responsibility of Mr. Hastings, 707 ; Middleton
 
 CONTENTS OF THE SPEECHES. 
 
 the express agent of Mr. Hastings, 709 ; Severities ordered by 
 Mr. Hastings, 711; Forbearance of Middleton reproved by 
 Mr. Hastings, 71-; Order of Mr. Hastings to dissuade the 
 Nawab from a settlement with the Begums, 714; Answer of 
 Middleton to Mr. Hastings' accusation of forbearance, ib. ; In- 
 formation from Bristow to Mr. Hastings of the sufferings of the 
 women in the Khourd Mahal, 71"; Release of the ministers by 
 Bristow, ib. ; Suppression by Mr. Hastings of inquiry ordered 
 by the Directors, 717; His attempt to include the Council in 
 the responsibility, 7 IB; His proceedings concealed from the 
 Council, 712; Letters of the Council to the Directors, ib. ; 
 Forged date to Mr. Hastings' Narrative of the Insurrection of 
 Benares, 7-0 ; Falsehoods in the Narrative, ib. ; Deliberacy of 
 his guilt, 7^3 ; Stifling of inquiry, ib. ; Resumption of the 
 jagirs disapproved by the Directors, 724 ; Inquiry moved for 
 at the Council Board, 725 ; Proposed by Mr. Hastings, 726 ; 
 Conclusion, 728.
 
 SPEECHES 
 
 TRIAL OP WAEEEN HASTINGS, ESQ. 
 
 SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. EDMUND BURKE, 
 MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN 
 OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT ; 15 FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, The gentlemen who have it in command to 
 support the impeachment against Mr. Hastings, late Governor 
 General of Bengal, have directed me to open a general view 
 of the grounds upon which the Commons have proceeded in 
 their charge against him; to open a general view of the 
 extent, the magnitude, the nature, the tendency and effect, 
 of the crimes with which they have charged him ; and they 
 have also directed me to give such an explanation, as, with 
 their aid, I may be enabled to give, of such circumstances, 
 preceding or concomitant with the crimes with which they 
 charge him, as may tend to explain whatever may be found 
 obscure in the charges as they stand. And they have further 
 commanded me, and enabled me I hope and trust, to give to 
 your Lordships such an explanation of anything in the laws, 
 customs, opinions and manners, of the people concerned, and 
 who are the objects of the crimes with which they charge 
 him, as may tend to remove all doubt and ambiguity from 
 the minds of your Lordships upon these subjects. The 
 several Articles, as they appear before you, will be opened 
 by the other gentlemen with more distinctness, and without 
 doubt with infinitely more particularity, when they come to 
 apply the evidence that they adduce to each charge. This
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 Unanimity 
 Houses 
 
 secution. 
 
 15 FE&.1788. i s the plan, my Lords, that we mean to pursue on the great 
 charge which is now before your Lordships. 
 
 My Lords, I confess that in this business I come before 
 y ur Lordships with a considerable degree of animation, 
 because I think it is a most auspicious circumstance in a 
 prosecution like this, in which the honour of this kingdom 
 and that of many nations is involved, that from the commence- 
 ment of our preliminary process to the hour of this solemn 
 trial, not the smallest difference of opinion has arisen between 
 the two houses. My Lords, there were persons who, looking 
 rather upon what was to be found in the journals of Parlia- 
 ment than what was to be expected from the public justice of 
 Parliament, had formed hopes consolatory to them and 
 unfavourable to us. There were persons who entertained 
 hopes that the corruptions of India should have escaped 
 amongst the dissensions of Parliament: but they are dis- 
 appointed. They will be disappointed in all the rest of their 
 expectations which they had formed upon everything except 
 the merits of the cause. The Commons will not have the 
 melancholy and unsocial glory of having acted a right part 
 in an imperfect work. What the greatest inquest of the 
 nation has begun, its highest tribunal will accomplish. 
 Justice will be done to India. It is true your Lordships 
 will have your full share in this great and glorious work ; 
 but we shall always consider that any honour that is divided 
 with your Lordships will be more than doubled to ourselves. 
 My Lords, I must confess that, amongst all these encourag- 
 ing prospects, the Commons do not approach your Lordships' 
 
 importance bar without some considerable degree of anxiety. I hope and 
 of trust that the magnitude of the interests which we have in 
 nan ^ w iU reconcile some degree of solicitude for the event 
 with the undoubting confidence with which we repose 
 ourselves upon your Lordships' justice. For we are so made, 
 my Lords, that it is not only the greatness of the danger but 
 the value of the stake that excites our concern in every 
 undertaking ; and I do assure your Lordships for I am 
 authorised to say it that no standard is sufficient to esti- 
 mate the value which the Commons set upon the fate of the 
 ca s e which they now bring before yon. For, my Lords, 
 cannot be conceived God forbid that it should be conceived. 
 that the business of this day is the business of this man. 
 The question is, not solely whether the prisoner at the bar 
 be found innocent or be found guilty, but whether millions 
 of mankind shall be miserable or happy. You do not decide
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. & 
 
 the case only ; you fix a rule. For your Lordships will 
 undoubtedly see, in the course of this cause, that there is not 
 only a long, connected, systematic, course of misdemeanours, 
 but an equally connected system of maxims and principles 
 invented to justify them, upon which your Lordships must 
 judge. It is according to the judgment that you shall pro- 
 nounce upon the past transactions of India, connected with 
 those principles, that the whole rule, tenure, tendency and 
 character, of our future government in India is to be finally 
 decided My Lords, it will take its course and work its 
 whole impression from the business of this hour. My Lords, The credit 
 it is not only the interest of a great empire which is concerned, oftheem" r 
 which is now a most considerable part of the British empire, cernSf" 
 but, my Lords, the credit and honour of the British nation 
 will themselves be decided by this decision. My Lords, they 
 will stand or fall thereby. We are to decide by the case of this 
 gentleman whether the crimes of individuals are to be turned 
 into public guilt and national ignominy, or whether this 
 nation will convert these offences, which have thrown a 
 transient shade on its glory, into a judgment that will reflect 
 a permanent lustre on the honour, justice and humanity, of 
 this kingdom. 
 
 My Lords, there is another consideration which has caused Theconsti- 
 solicitude to the Commons, equal to those other two great ^rt 
 
 interests that are affected I mean the interest of our trial by im- 
 empire in India and the interest of the national character 
 something that if possible comes more home to the hearts and 
 feelings of every Englishman I mean the nature of our 
 constitution itself, which is deeply involved in the event of 
 this cause. For the consequence and purport of an impeach- 
 ment for high crimes and misdemeanours before the Peers of 
 this kingdom, upon a charge of the Commons, will very much 
 be decided by your decision. For, my Lords, if this tribunal 
 should be found, as I hope it will always be found, too great 
 for trifling and petty causes ; if it should at the same time 
 be found incompetent to one of the greatest which can come 
 before you ; if the lesser from their smallness escape you, 
 and the greatest from their magnitude oppress you : it is 
 impossible that the high end of this judicature can be 
 answered. 
 
 My Lords, I do not know whether it is owing to the polish Rarity of 
 of our times, less fertile perhaps in great offences than those p^hnie' 
 that have gone before us, or whether it is from a sluggish for abuse of 
 
 i i.'ii Tiiii T IT- authority. 
 
 apathy which has dulled and enervated public justice 1 am 
 
 A 2
 
 4 Opening of the Impeachment ; 
 
 15 FEB. 1788. not called upon to determine, but, whatever the cause is, it is 
 now sixty-three years since any impeachment, grounded on 
 an abuse of authority and misdemeanour in office, has been 
 brought before this tribunal. The last that I recollect is that 
 of Lord Macclesfield in the year 1725.* So that the oldest 
 process known to the constitution of this country has now 
 upon its revival some appearance of novelty. And at this 
 time, when all Europe is perhaps in a state of great agita- 
 tion, when antiquity has lost all its effect and reverence on 
 the minds of men, and when novelty still retains the sus- 
 picions that always will be attached to novelty, we have 
 been very anxious indeed, in a business like this, so to 
 conduct ourselves that nothing in the revival of this great 
 parliamentary process should afford an excuse for its future 
 value and disuse. Whatever does not stand Avith credit cannot stand 
 ptriai a by long ; and if the constitution should be deprived I mean not 
 tnent? h i n form, but virtually of this resource, we should certainly 
 be deprived of all its other valuable parts ; because this is 
 the cement which binds it all together, this is the individuat- 
 ing principle that makes England what England is. This 
 it is by which the magistracy and all other things are direct- 
 ed, and must be tried and controlled. It is by this tribunal 
 that statesmen who abuse their power are tried before states- 
 men and by statesmen, upon solid principles of state mora- 
 lity. It is here that those who by an abuse of power have 
 polluted the spirit of all laws can never hope for the least 
 protection from any of its forms. It is here that those who 
 have refused to conform themselves to the protection of law 
 can never hope to escape through any of its defects. Your 
 Lordships have great and plenary powers ; you do not super- 
 sede, you do not annihilate, any subordinate jurisdictions ; on 
 the contrary you are auxiliary and supplemental to them 
 all. Here it is that no subject in any part of the empire can 
 be refused justice. Here it is that we provide for that which 
 is the great, substantial, excellence of our constitution I 
 mean, that great circulation of responsibility, by which, 
 excepting the supreme power, no man in any condition can 
 escape his responsibility to the laws of his country. 
 Moderation My Lords, impressed as we were with the weight and con- 
 
 oftheCom- ',. r , ,, .. ,. & . . 
 
 inonsinin- sequence of this mode of parliamentary proceeding, resolving 
 
 thc'prosccu- to lay hold on this great security, the Commons have con- 
 
 tion. 
 
 * See a " Report from the Lords' Committee appointed to examine Precedents 
 relative to the State of the Impeachment against Warren Hastings, Esquire." 
 Ordered to be printed 19th April, 1791.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 5 
 
 ducted themselves with such care, without losing the spirit is FEB. 178S. 
 and zeal of a public prosecution they have comported them- 
 selves in this prosecution with such moderation, with such 
 temper and such decorum, as would not ill become the final 
 judgment if with them rested the final judgment of this 
 great cause. 
 
 My Lords, we say that, with very few interruptions indeed, 
 the affairs of India have constantly engaged the attention of 
 the House of Commons for more than fourteen years. We 
 say that we tried every method of legislative provision before 
 we had recourse to anything that was a mode of punishment. 
 We say, my Lords, that we came forward in the year 1774 
 and passed an act for putting an end to these disorders. 
 Finding that that act of Parliament did not answer all the 
 ends that were expected from it finding that that act of 
 Parliament fell short of our expectations we had in the 
 year 1782 recourse to a body of monitory resolutions. But 
 when we found that our laws, when we found that our 
 admonitions were despised, that enormities were increased in 
 proportion to what was to be effected ; when we found that 
 legal authority seemed to skulk and conceal its head like 
 outlawed guilt ; when we found that those who were 
 appointed by Parliament to assert the authority [of the laws] 
 of this kingdom were the most forward and most active in 
 opposition to them ; then it was time for the justice of the 
 nation to exert itself. To have forborne any longer would 
 not have been patience, but collusion a participation in 
 guilt, and [making ourselves] almost parties with the crimi- 
 nal. When we found ourselves in that situation, we raised 
 heaven and earth on the occasion ; we attempted everything 
 in order to know whether we could find and feel our way, if 
 possible, to avoid a painful duty without betraying a sacred ' 
 trust. My Lords, we found it impossible. 
 
 Having therefore resolved on the mode of appeal and 
 proceeding, it was our next business to find something that 
 was worthy of long deliberation. We have proceeded 
 accordingly. We have proceeded with calm selection ; and we 
 have chosen we trust it will appear to your Lordships such 
 a crime, such a criminal, such a body of evidence, such a 
 mode of process, as would have recommended this proceed- 
 ing to posterity, even if it had not been supported by the 
 example of our ancestors. 
 
 First, to speak of the process which we use. Besides that The process 
 long previous deliberation of fourteen years, when we examined n1yasaiast
 
 6 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15FEB.K88. every circumstance that could prove favourable to the delin- 
 quent whom we resolved to prosecute, there was no precedent 
 to be found in the journals favourable to him that was not 
 applied to ; and a number of things utterly unknown to former 
 parliamentary proceedings, which seemed in some degree to 
 favour the party that was to be prosecuted, were resorted to on 
 that occasion. My Lords, in the early stage of the proceedings 
 the criminal desired to be heard. My Lords, he was heard ; 
 and he produced before the bar of the House of Commons 
 that indecent and unbecoming paper which lies on our table, 
 deliberately given in by his own hand and signed with his 
 own name.* But, my Lords, the Commons passed by every- 
 thing in that paper with a magnanimity that became them. 
 They considered that the facts he alluded to must be main- 
 tained ; and, having used all manner of previous deliberation, 
 having given a large scope, even beyond former proceedings 
 of Parliament, to everything that could be said and every- 
 thing that could be suggested in his favour, then we pro- 
 ceeded with confidence to your Lordships' bar. So far as 
 to the process ; which, though I mentioned it last in the line 
 of order in which I stated things, I thought it best to 
 despatch first. 
 
 Nature and My Lords, in the next place I observe, with respect to the 
 
 magnitude .',.,' . , 
 
 of the crime, crime which we chose, we chose one winch we contemplated 
 in its nature, with all its circumstances, with all its exte- 
 nuations, and with all its aggravations ; and, on that review, 
 we are bold to say 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. They are crimes, my Lords truly, and 
 properly, and emphatically, crimes. The Commons are too 
 liberal not to allow for the difficulties of a great and arduous 
 public situation. They know too well that domineering 
 necessities will frequently occur in all great affairs. They 
 know that the exigencies of a great occasion, in its preci- 
 pitate career, do not give time to have recourse to fixed 
 principles, but that they oblige men frequently to decide in 
 a manner that calmer reason would certainly have rejected. 
 We know that, as we are to be served by men, the persons 
 
 * Hastings' answer to Burke's articles of impeachment was read by him 
 before the House of Commons on the 1st and 2nd of May, 1786. He obtained 
 leave to lay his minutes of defence on the table of the house, and they were 
 subsequently ordered to be printed.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 7 
 
 who serve us must be tried as men, and that there is a very ISFEB.ITSS. 
 large allowance indeed due to human infirmity and human 
 error. This, my Lords, we knew and had weighed before we 
 came to your Lordships' bar. But the crimes which we 
 charge in these Articles are not the lapses and defects and 
 errors of common human nature- and frailty, such as we 
 know and feel, and can allow for. They are crimes which 
 have their rise in the wicked dispositions of men ; they are 
 crimes that have their rise in avarice, rapacity, pride, cruelty, 
 ferocity, malignity of temper, haughtiness, insolence ; in 
 short, my Lords, in everything that manifests a heart black- 
 ened to the very blackest a heart dyed deep in blackness 
 a heart corrupted, vitiated and gangrened, to the very core. 
 If we do not plant the crimes that we charge [him with in] 
 those vices which the breast of man is made to abhor and its 
 laws to protect against, we desire no longer to be heard on 
 this occasion. Let everything be pleaded that can be 
 pleaded on the score of error and infirmity ; we give up the 
 whole. We stand on crimes that were crimes of delibe- 
 ration. We charge him with nothing that he did not commit 
 upon deliberation, that he did not commit against remon- 
 strance. We charge him with nothing that he did not 
 commit against command. We charge him with nothing 
 that he did not commit contrary to the advice, contrary to 
 the admonition and reprimand, of those who were authorised 
 by the laws to reprove and reprimand him. They were 
 crimes, not against forms, but against those eternal laws of 
 justice \vhich you are assembled here to assert ; which forms 
 are made to support and not to supersede in any instance 
 whatever. They were, not in formal and technical language, 
 but in real and absolute effect, high crimes and misde- 
 meanours. 
 
 So far as to the crimes. Now as to the criminal. We Character of 
 have not chosen to bring before you a poor, puny, trembling na?. cnmi " 
 delinquent, misled perhaps by the example of those who 
 ought to have kept him in awe, and afterwards oppressed by 
 their power, in order to make his punishment the means of 
 screening the greater offences of those that were above him. 
 We have not brought before your Lordships one of those 
 poor, obscure, offenders, in an inferior situation, who, when 
 his insignificance and weakness are weighed against the 
 power of the prosecution, gives even to public justice some- 
 thing of the appearance of oppression. No, my Lords; we 
 have brought before your Lordships the first man in rank,
 
 8 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 
 
 is FEB. 1788. authority and station. We have brought before you the head, 
 the chief, the captain-general in iniquity one in whom all 
 the frauds, all the peculations, all the violence, all the 
 tyranny, in India are embodied, disciplined and arrayed. 
 This is the person, my Lords, that we bring before you. 
 Then, if we have brought before you such a person, if you 
 strike at him you will not have need of a great many more 
 examples : you strike at the whole corps if you strike at 
 the head. 
 
 Nature of My Lords, so far as to the crime, and so far as to the 
 to e be V pro- lce criminal. Now, my Lords, I shall say a few words relative 
 to the evidence that we have to bring to support such a 
 charge, and which we think will be equal to the charge itself. 
 And we say that the evidence that we have determined to 
 bring before you is evidence of record, of weighty, official, 
 authentic, record, and signed by the hand of the criminal 
 himself in many instances. We have to bring before you 
 his own letters, authenticated by his own hand. We shall 
 bring before you also numbers of oral living witnesses, com- 
 petent to speak to the points to which they are brought 
 This, my Lords, we are ready to bring before you ; and I 
 trust that the evidence will be found such as cannot leave 
 the least doubt in your minds of the facts. And when you 
 consider them, when the facts are proved, I believe, from 
 their nature and effects, you can have no dxmbt of their 
 criminality. 
 
 My Lords, when we consider the late enormous power of 
 the prisoner, when we consider his criminal and indefati- 
 gable assiduity in the destruction of evidence, when we con- 
 sider the power that he had over all testimony, I believe 
 your Lordships, and I believe the world, will be astonished 
 that so much, so clear, so solid, and so conclusive, a body of 
 evidence has been obtained against him. My Lords, this I 
 say, that I have no doubt that in nine instances out of ten it 
 would satisfy the narrow precision which is supposed to pre- 
 vail, and which really does prevail to a degree, in all subord- 
 inate and delegated jurisdictions. 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 what- 
 ever, except those of natural, immutable and substantial, 
 justice. God forbid that the Commons should come before 
 your Lordships, and desire that anything should be received 
 as proof which is not in its own nature adapted to prove the 
 matter in question ! God forbid that they should do so ! for
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 9 
 
 they would then overturn the very principles of that justice 15 FEB. ITSS. 
 which they resort to your Lordships to obtain in favour of 
 their constituents, and in favour of the people of India ; they 
 would be giving an evil example, that would redound to their 
 own injury and bring mischief upon the heads of themselves 
 and all their posterity. God forbid, on the other hand, that 
 your Lordships should ever reject evidence on any pretended 
 nicety ! which I am sure you will not. I have too much 
 confidence in the learning with which you will be advised, and 
 the liberality and the nobleness of the sentiments with which 
 you were born, to suspect, in the smallest degree, that you 
 would, by any abuse of the forms and technical course of 
 proceedings, deny justice to so great a part of the world that 
 claims it at your hand. For your Lordships always had a- 
 boundless power I mean, always w r ithin the limits of justice. 
 Your Lordships always had a boundless power and unlimited 
 jurisdiction. You have now a boundless object. It is not Greatness of 
 from this country or the other, from this district or the fore^erciL 
 other, that relief is applied for, but from whole tribes of j[ c t t ^ 1 |'^ s " 
 suffering nations various descriptions of men, differing in the House, 
 language, in manners and in rights men separated by every 
 means from you. However, by the providence of God, they 
 are come here to supplicate justice at your Lordships' bar ; 
 and I hope and trust that there will be no rule, formed upon 
 municipal maxims, which will prevent the imperial justice 
 which you owe to the people that call to you from all parts 
 of a great, disjointed, empire. 
 
 Situated as this kingdom is an object, thank God ! of envy 
 to the rest of the world for its greatness and its power its 
 conduct, in that very elevated situation to which it has arisen, 
 will undoubtedly be scrutinised. It is well known that great 
 wealth has poured into this country from India ; and it is 
 no derogation to us to suppose the possibility of being cor- 
 rupted by that by which great empires have been corrupted, 
 and by which assemblies almost as respectable and venerable 
 as your Lordships' have been known to be indirectly shaken. 
 My Lords, when I say that forty millions of money have Necessity of 
 come from India to England, we ought to take great care f^hfsTcor- 
 that corruption does not follow ; and w r e may venture to say S^tSe 
 that the best way to secure a man's reputation is, not by a Y ealth , 
 
 i ^ n c 1.1- -L ^ i T drawn from 
 
 proud defiance ot public opinion, but by guiding one s actions India, 
 in such a way as that public opinion may afterwards and 
 not previously be defied. In such a situation, it is necessary 
 that nothing in your Lordships' proceedings should appear to
 
 10 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 Public re- 
 ports of the 
 probability 
 of justice 
 being 
 evaded by 
 niceties of 
 law. 
 
 is FEB. 1788. have the slightest trace, the faintest odour, of chicane God 
 forbid that, when you try the cause of Asia in the presence 
 of Europe, there should be the least suspicion that the cause 
 of Asia is not as good with you, because the abuse is com- 
 mitted by a British subject ! that it should be supposed 
 that that narrow partiality, so destructive of justice, should 
 guide us, that a British subject in power should have 
 rights which are denied to our humble allies, to our detached 
 dependents, to those who, at such a distance, depend upon 
 the breath of British justice and have deprived themselves 
 of every other resource under heaven ! 
 
 My Lords, I do not say this from any fear, doubt or hesita- 
 tion, as to what your Lordships will do none in the world. 
 God forbid I should ! But I say it on account of what you 
 all know, what is disseminated abroad among the public 
 that those who cannot defend themselves upon their merits 
 and their actions may defend themselves behind those fences 
 and intrenchments that are made to secure the liberty of 
 the people ; that power and the abusers of power should 
 cover themselves by those things which were made to secure 
 liberty. But God forbid it should be bruited abroad that 
 the laws of England are for the rich and the powerful ; but 
 that for the poor, the miserable and defenceless, they afford 
 no resource at all ! God forbid it should be said that we in 
 this kingdom know how to confer the most extravagant and 
 inordinate power upon public ministers, but that we are 
 poor, helpless, deficient and impotent, in the means of calling 
 them to account for it ! God forbid it should be said that no 
 nation under heaven equals the British in substantial violence 
 and in formal justice ! It shall never be said and I trust 
 that this cause will put an end to all conjectures of that kind, 
 which have been disseminated with so much industry through 
 this kingdom, and through foreign nations too that, in order 
 to cover our connivance and participation in guilt, and our 
 common share in the plunder of the East, we have invented 
 a set of scholastic distinctions, abhorrent to the general 
 sentiments of mankind, by which we are to deny ourselves 
 the knowledge of all that the rest of the world knows, and 
 what so gre.it a part of the world both knows and feels. 
 God forbid any appearance of that kind ! I do not deprecate 
 it from any suspicion of the House ; but I deprecate it from 
 knowing that hitherto we have moved within the circle of 
 municipal justice. I am afraid of moving within that circle. 
 It may be suspected that we should endeavour to force
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 11 
 
 nature into that, and not endeavour to enlarge the circle of is FEB. ires, 
 justice to the necessities of the empire that we have obtained. 
 This is the only thing which does create any doubt or 
 difficulty in the minds of the people. But if such a thing 
 should happen, in my humble opinion it would be better a 
 thousand times to give the short answer the Dey of Algiers 
 gave to a British ambassador, representing the rest of the 
 British merchants, " My friend," says he, as related by 
 Dr. Shaw, " do not you know that my subjects are a band 
 of robbers, and that I am their captain ?"* Better far it would 
 be a 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. No, my Lords, I have not the least suspicion 
 that such a thing will or can prevail in this House, nor 
 prevail in this kingdom. Your Lordships will exercise the 
 great plenary powers with which you are invested in a 
 manner that will do honour to your justice, to the protecting 
 justice of this kingdom, to the great people who are subjected 
 to it. It shall not be squared by any rules, but by their 
 necessities, and by that law of common justice which cements 
 them to us and us to them. No, my Lords, I do not think 
 though such opinions have been spread abroad, and been 
 spread abroad thus, because many persons have observed 
 at the Old Bailey and many subordinate tribunals that great 
 criminals have sometimes escaped, acquitted and stigmatised 
 that they who have no hope at all in the justice of their 
 cause can have any hope that, by some subtleties of form, 
 some mode of pleading, by something, in short, different 
 from the merits of the cause, they may prevail. Your 
 Lordships, as well as I, are abundantly apprised of those 
 reports that have been spread abroad with such uncommon 
 industry ; but which have only got abroad to be defeated and 
 entirely overturned by the humanity, simplicity, dignity 
 and nobleness, of your Lordships' justice. 
 
 Having said all that I mean to say and am instructed to 
 say concerning the process that the House of Commons have 
 
 * " For the answer that was once made by the Dey to consul Cole, on his 
 complaining of the injuries which the British vessels had met with from his 
 cruisers, must always be looked upon as fair and ingenuous. ' The Algerines,' 
 says he, ' are a company of rogues, and I am their captain.' " Travels or Obser- 
 vations relating to several 1'arts of Barbury and the Levant. By THOMAS 
 SHAW, D.D. 2nd edition. London, 4to. 1757, p. 257.
 
 12 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 15 FEB. 1783. used, concerning the crime that they have chosen for prose- 
 cution, concerning the criminal upon whom they attach the 
 crime, and concerning the evidence which they mean to pro- 
 duce, I must observe that they feel this day no want of 
 evidence in the cause to satisfy any measure or any mode of 
 justice that shall be chosen. What I have said I mean 
 rather as a protest relative to any future cause from India 
 that may come before you. 
 
 objects of I am now, my Lords, to proceed to open the charge. I hope 
 
 the present , . J _ - L . . 
 
 address. and trust that your Lordships will be so good as to suppose 
 that the business which falls to my share, which is rather 
 explanation of the circumstances than inforcement of the 
 crime, is not a thing that occurs every day in the ordinary 
 round of municipal affairs; that it has relation to many 
 things, that it touches many points, in many places, which 
 are wholly removed from the ordinary beaten orbit of our 
 English business. In other affairs every allusion immediately 
 meets its point of reference ; nothing can be started that 
 does not immediately waken your attention to something of 
 your own laws which you meet with every day in the ordinary 
 transactions of life : but here you are caught as it were into 
 another world ; here you are to have the way pioneered 
 before you. Your Lordships will see the absolute necessity 
 there is of having an explanation of every part of it. As it 
 is new, the business must be explained ; as it is intricate as 
 well as new, that explanation can be but comparatively short : 
 and therefore, knowing you to be possessed, along with all 
 other judicial virtues, of the first and foundation of them all, 
 judicial patience, I hope and trust that your Lordships 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 a few hours to 
 what has cost the people of India upwards of thirty years 
 of their innate, inveterate, hereditary, patience to endure. 
 
 Derivation MV Lords, the powers which Mr. Hastings is charged with 
 
 of powers of , . J , , , , u u Zi T-< 
 
 the East having abused are the powers delegated to him by the East 
 
 India Com- j n( ]i a Company. The East India Company itself acts under 
 
 two sorts of powers, derived from two sources. The first 
 
 source of its power is under a charter which the Crown was 
 
 authorised by act of Parliament to grant.* The next is from 
 
 * The East India Company was founded, under the title of " The Governor 
 and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies," by royal 
 charter, dated the 31st of December, 1600.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 13 
 
 several grants and charters indeed, as well as that great fun- 
 damental charter which it derived from the Emperor of the 
 Moguls, the person with whose dominions they are chiefly 
 conversant; particularly the great charter by which they 
 acquired the high stewardship of the kingdoms of Bengal, 
 Behar and Orissa, in 1765. Under those two charters they 
 act. As to the first, it is from that charter that they derive 
 the capacity by which they can be considered as a public body 
 at all, or capable of any public function : it is from thence 
 they acquire the capacity to take any other charter, to 
 acquire any other offices, or to hold any other possessions. 
 This being the root and origin of their power, it makes them 
 responsible to the party from whom that power is derived. 
 As they have emanated from the supreme power of this king- 
 dom, they themselves are responsible their body as a corpo- 
 rate body, themselves as individuals and the whole body 
 and train of their servants are responsible, to the high justice 
 of this kingdom. In delegating great power to the India 
 Company, this kingdom has not released its sovereignty. On 
 the contrary, its responsibility is increased by the greatness 
 and sacredness of the power given. For this power they are 
 and must be responsible ; and I hope this day your Lordships 
 will show that this nation never did give a power without 
 imposing a proportionable degree of responsibility. 
 
 As to the other power, which they derived from the Mogul Power re- 
 
 , . J , J , , ceivedfrom 
 
 empire by various charters from that crown, and par- the Mogul 
 ticularly by the charter of 1765, by which they obtained Emperor ' 
 the office of lord high steward, as I said, or diwnn, 
 of the kingdoms of Bengal, Behar 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 by the ties belonging to that new relation 
 they were bound to observe the laws, rights, usages and 
 customs, of the natives, and to pursue their benefit in all 
 things ; which was the nature, institution and purpose, of the 
 office which they received. If the power of the sovereign 
 from whom they derived these powers should be by any 
 misfortune in human affairs annihilated or suspended, the 
 duty to the people below, which they acquired under his 
 charter, is not suspended, is not annihilated, but remains in 
 all its force ; and, for the responsibility, they are thrown 
 back upon that country from whence their original power, 
 and along with it their responsibility, both emanated in 
 one and the same act. For when the Company acquired that
 
 ] 4> Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 io FEB. 1788. office in India, an English corporation became an integral 
 part of the Mogul empire When Great Britain assented to 
 that grant virtually, and afterwards took advantage of it, 
 Great Britain made a virtual act of union with that country, 
 by which they bound themselves as securities for their sub- 
 jects, to preserve the people in all rights, laws and liberties, 
 which their natural original sovereign was bound to inforce, 
 if he had been in a condition to inforce it. So that the 
 two duties flowing from two different sources are now united 
 in one, and come to have justice called for them at the bar 
 of this House, before the supreme royal justice of this king- 
 dom, from whence originally their powers were derived. 
 
 It may be a little necessary, when we are stating the 
 powers they have derived from their charter, and which we 
 state Mr. Hastings to have abused, to state, in as short and 
 ns comprehensive words as I can (for the matter is large 
 indeed) what the constitution of the Company is, and parti- 
 cularly what its constitution is in reference to its Indian 
 service ; where the great theatre of the abuse was situated, 
 and where those abuses were committed. 
 
 Constitu- Your Lordships will recollect that the East India Coin- 
 Company? pany and therefore I shall spare you a long history of that, 
 hoping and trusting that your Lordships will think it is not to 
 inform you, but to revive circumstances in your memory, that 
 I enter into this detail the East India Company had its 
 origin about the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, a period 
 when all sorts of companies, inventions and monopolies, were 
 in fashion. And at that time the Company was sent out 
 with large, extensive, powers for increasing the commerce and 
 the honour of this country : for to increase its commerce with- 
 out increasing its honour and reputation would have been 
 thought at that time, and will be thought now, a bad bargain 
 for the country. But their powers were under that charter 
 confined merely to commercial affairs. By degrees, as the 
 theatre of the operation was distant, as its intercourse was 
 with many great, some barbarous, and all of them armed 
 nations, where not only the sovereign but the subjects were 
 also armed in all places, 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 factory, within their own settlements, over 
 their own people and their own servants. The next was
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 15 
 
 and there was a stretch indeed the power of peace and war ; 
 those great, high, prerogatives of sovereignty which never 
 were known before to be parted with to any subjects. But Their sove- 
 those high sovereign powers were given to the East India mgn P wer - 
 Company. So that when it had acquired them all, which it 
 did about the end of the reign of Charles the Second,* the 
 East India Company did not seem to be merely a company 
 formed for the extension of the British commerce, but in 
 reality a delegation of the whole power and sovereignty of 
 this kingdom sent into the East. In that light the Company 
 began undoubtedly to be considered, and ought to be consi- 
 dered, as a subordinate sovereign power ; that is, sovereign 
 with regard to the objects which it touched, subordinate with 
 regard to the power from whence this great trust was 
 derived. 
 
 When the East India Company once appeared in that light, 
 things happened to it totally different from what has happened 
 in all other ordinary affairs, and from what has happened in all 
 the remote mysteries of politicians, or been dreamed of in the 
 world. For, in all other countries, a political body that acts 
 as a commonwealth is first settled, and trade follows as a neces- 
 sary consequence of the protection obtained by political 
 power. But here the affair was reversed : the constitution of 
 the Company began in commerce and ended in empire ; and 
 where powers of peace and war are given, it wants but time 
 and circumstance to make this supersede every other, and the 
 affairs of commerce fall into their proper rank and situation. 
 And accordingly it did happen that, the possession and 
 power of assertion of these great authorities coinciding with? 
 the improved state of Europe, with the improved state of 
 arts and the improved state of laws, and (what is much more 
 material) the improved state of military discipline ; that 
 coinciding with the general fall of Asia, with the relaxation 
 and dissolution of its governments, with the fall of its war- 
 like spirit, and the total disuse almost of all parts of military 
 discipline ; those coinciding, the India Company became 
 what it is, a great empire carrying on subordinately under 
 
 * The power of making peace or war with any prince or people " not 
 Christians " was conferred on the Company by Charles the Second, in the first 
 year of his restoration. The date of th- charter is 3rd . v pril, 1661. In the 
 year 1 698 a second and distinct company was incorporated by Parliament, by the 
 name of " The General Society of Traders to the East Indies." The two com- 
 - panics were united in the year 1702, and were completely incorporated in 
 1708.
 
 16 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEBj.788. the public authority a great commerce ; it became that 
 thing which was supposed by the Roman law so unsuitable 
 the same power was a trader, the same power was a Lord. 
 
 In this situation, the India Company, however, still pre- 
 served traces of its original mercantile character, and the 
 whole exterior order of its service is still carried on upon a 
 mercantile plan and mercantile principles : in fact, it is a 
 state in the disguise of a merchant, a great public office in 
 the disguise of a counting-house. Accordingly the whole 
 order and series, as I observed, is commercial ; while the 
 principal, inward, real, part of the Company is entirely 
 political. Accordingly the Company's service of which 
 the order and discipline is necessary to be explained to your 
 Lordships, that you may see in what manner the abuses have 
 affected it is commercial. 
 
 Order and I n the first place, all the persons who go abroad in the 
 
 discipline of ,~ , r . i i i ' 
 
 the Compa- Company s service enter as clerks in the counting-house, 
 lce> and are called by a name to correspond to it writers. In 
 that condition they are obliged to serve five years. The next 
 step is that of a factor, in which they are obliged to serve 
 three years. The next step they take is that of a junior 
 merchant, in which they are obliged to serve three years 
 more. Then they become a senior merchant, which is the 
 highest stage of advance in the Company's service, as a 
 rank by which they had pretensions, before the year 1774, 
 to the Council, to the succession of the Presidency, and to 
 whatever other honours the Company has to bestow. There- 
 fore the Company followed this idea in the particulars of their 
 service; having originally established factories in certain 
 places, which factories by degrees grew to the name of 
 Presidencies and Council, in proportion as the power and 
 influence of the Company increased, and as the political 
 began to predominate over the mercantile. And so it con- 
 tinued till the year 1773, when the legislature broke in, for 
 proper reasons urging them to it, upon that order of the 
 service, and appointed to the superior part persons who were 
 not intitled to it however some might have been by the 
 course and order of service, such as Mr. Hastings was. 
 But, whatever title they had from thence, their [legal] title 
 was derived from* an express act of Parliament, nominating 
 them to that Presidency. In all other respects, the whole 
 course of the service denominated by act of Parliament 
 
 * " the title they derived was from," &c. MS.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 17 
 
 does remain upon that footing that is, a commercial is FEB. uss. 
 footing. 
 
 Your Lordships see here a regular system, a regular order, 
 a regular course of gradation, which requires eleven years 
 before persons can arrive at the highest trusts and situations 
 in the Company's service. You will therefore be utterly 
 astonished when you know that, after so long a service and 
 -so long a probrtion was required, things very different have 
 happened, and that in a much shorter time persons have 
 been seen returning* to this kingdom with great and affluent 
 fortunes. It will be necessary for you to consider, and it will Order of the 
 be a great part of your inquiry, when we come before you brokeTi 
 to substantiate evidence against Mr. Hastings, to know how 
 that order came to be broken down completely, so that 
 scarce a trace of it for any good purpose remains. For, 
 though I will not deny that any order in a state may be 
 superseded by the presidency, when any great parts and 
 talents upon superior exigencies are called forth, yet I must 
 say the order of that service was formed upon wise prin- 
 ciples. It gave the persons who were put in that course of 
 probation an opportunity, if circumstances enabled them, of 
 acquiring experience ; it gave those w T ho watched them a 
 constant inspection upon them in all their progress ; it gave 
 them the necessity of acquiring a character in proportion to 
 their standing, that all they had gained by years should not 
 be lost by misconduct. It was a great, substantial, regula- 
 tion fit to be observed ; but scarcely a trace of it remains to 
 be discovered. For Mr. Hastings first broke through that 
 service by making offices which had no reference to grada- 
 tion, but which were superior in profit to those which the 
 highest gradation might have acquired. He established 
 whole systems of offices, and especially the systems of offices 
 established in 1781, which being new none of the rules of 
 gradation applied to them, and he filled them in such a 
 manner as suited best his own views and purposes ; so that 
 in effect the whole of that order, whatever merit was in it, 
 was by him broken down and subverted. The consequence 
 was that persons in the most immature stages of life have 
 been put to conduct affairs which required the greatest 
 maturity of judgment and the greatest possible temper and 
 moderation ; and effects consequent have followed upon 
 
 " you have seen persons returning," &c. MS. 
 B
 
 service. 
 
 18 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 i5FEB.i788.it. So far with respect to that order of the Company 
 service. 
 
 Peculiar!- My Lords, I must remark, before I go farther, that there is. 
 
 Company^ something peculiar in the service of the East India Company, 
 and different from that of any oilier nation that has ever 
 transferred its power from one country to another. The 
 East India Company in India is not the Bvitish nation. 
 When the Tartars entered into China and into Hindustan 
 when all the Goths and Vandals entered into Europe when 
 the Normans came into England they came as a nation. 
 The Company in India does not exist as a nation. Nobody 
 can go there that does not go in its service. Therefore the 
 English nation in India is nothing but a seminary for the 
 succession of officers. They are a nation of place-men. They 
 are a republic, a commonwealth, without a people. They are 
 a state made up wholly of magistrates. The consequence of 
 which is, that there is no people to control, to watch, to 
 balance against, the power of office. The power of office, so 
 far as the English nation is concerned, is the sole power in 
 the country. There is no corrective upon it whatever. The 
 consequence of which is, that, being a kingdom of magistrates,, 
 the esprit da corps is strong in ii; the spirit of the body by 
 which they consider themselves as having a common interest, 
 and a common interest separated both from the country that 
 sent them out and from the country in which they are, and 
 where there is no control by persons who understand their 
 language, w r ho understand their manners, or can apply their 
 conduct to the laws of the country. Such control does not 
 exist in India. Therefore confederacy is easy, and hss been 
 general among them ; and therefore your Lordships are not 
 to expect that that should happen in such a body which 
 never happened in the world in any body or corporation, 
 namely, that they should ever be a proper check and control 
 upon themselves : it is not in the nature of things. There is 
 a monopoly with an esprit du corps at home, called the India 
 Company, and there is an esprit du corps abroad ; and both 
 those systems are united into one body, animated with the 
 same spirit, that is, with the corporate spirit, which never 
 was a spirit which corrected itself in any time or circumstance 
 in the world, and which is such a thing as has not happened 
 to the Moors, to the Portuguese, to the Romans to go to 
 any old or new examples. It has not happened in any one 
 time or circumstance in the world, except in this. And out 
 of that has issued a series of abuses, at the head of which
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 19 
 
 Mr. Hastings has put himself, against the authority of the 15 FEB. nss. 
 East India Company at home and every authority in this 
 country. 
 
 My Lords, the next circumstance is an;l which is curious Emoiu- 
 too that the emoluments of office do not in any degree cor- facelnot 
 respond with the trust. For, under the name of junior mer- with nd ~ 
 chant, and senior merchant, and writer, and those other little their impor- 
 
 . , | 
 
 names of a counting-house, you have great magistrates ; you 
 have the administrators of revenues truly royal ; you have 
 judges civil, and in a great degree criminal, who pass judg- 
 ments upon the greatest properties of the country. You 
 have all these under these names ; and the emoluments that 
 belong to them are so weak, so inadequate to the dignity of 
 the character, that it is impossible I may say of that 
 service that it is absolutely impossible for the subordinate 
 parts of it to exist, to hope to exist, as Englishmen who 
 look at their home as their ultimate resource to exist in a 
 state of incorruption. In that service the rule that prevails 
 in many other countries is reversed. In other countries, 
 often the greatest situations are attended with but little 
 emoluments ; because g'ory, fame, reputation, the love, the 
 tears of joy, the honest applause of their country, pay those 
 great and weighty labours which in great situations are 
 sometimes required from the commonwealth ; but all other 
 countries pay in money what cannot be paid in fame and 
 reputation. But it is the reverse with the India Company. 
 All the subordinate parts of the gradation are officers, who, 
 notwithstanding the weight and importance of the offices and 
 dignities entrusted to them, are miserably provided for ; and 
 the heads, the chiefs, have great emoluments, securing them 
 against every mode of temptation. And this is the thing 
 Mr. Hastings has abused. He was at the head of the service, 
 He has corrupted his hands and sullied his government with Mr. Hast- 
 bribes. He has used oppression and tyranny in the place ot irgs ' 
 legal government ; and, instead of endeavouring to find 
 honest, honourable and adequate, rewards for the persons 
 who served the public, he has left them to prey upon it with- 
 out the smallest degree of control. He has neither supplied 
 nor taken care to supply, with that unbounded licence which 
 he used over the public revenues, an honest scale of emolu- 
 ments, suited to the vastness of the power given to the 
 Company's service. He has not employed the public revenue 
 for that purpose ; but has left them at large to prey upon 
 the country, and find themselves emoluments as they could. 
 
 E 2
 
 20 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 15 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Temptation 
 of officers to 
 plunder. 
 
 Youth of 
 
 persons 
 
 employed. 
 
 Junior ser- 
 vants exer- 
 cise judicial 
 powers. 
 
 These are the defects of that service. There is no honest 
 emolument, in much the greater part of it, correspondent to 
 the nature and answerable to the expectations of the people 
 who serve. There is an unbounded licence in almost all 
 other respects ; and, as one of the honestest and ablest ser- 
 vants of the Company said to me, it resembled the service of 
 the Mahrattas little pay, but unbounded licence to plunder. 
 This is the pay of the Company's service ; a service opened 
 to all dishonest emolument, shut up to all things that are 
 honest and fair. I do not say that the salaries would not 
 sound well here ; but when you consider the nature of the 
 trusts, the dignity of the situation, whatever the name of it. 
 is, the powers that are granted, and the hopes that every 
 man has of establishing himself at home, it is a source of 
 infinite grievance, of infinite abuse ; and we charge Mr. 
 Hastings, instead of stopping up, instead of endeavouring to 
 regulate, instead of endeavouring to correct, so grievous and 
 enormous an error, with having increased every part of it. 
 
 My Lords, the next circumstance which distinguishes the 
 East India Company is the youth of the persons who are 
 employed in the system of that service. They have almost 
 universally been sent out at that period of life, to begin their 
 progress and career in active life and in the use of power, 
 which in all other places has been employed in the course of 
 a rigid education. They have been sent there in fact to put 
 it in a few words with a perilous independence, with too 
 inordinate expectations, and with boundless power. They 
 are schoolboys without tutors; they are minors without 
 guardians. The world is let loose upon them with all its 
 temptations ; and they are let loose upon the world, with all 
 the powers that despotism can give. This is the situation of 
 the Company's servants. 
 
 There is one thing that is remarkable. They are to exer- 
 cise what your Lordships are now exercising high judicial 
 powers without the smallest study of any law, either general 
 or municipal. It is made a rule in the service, a rule con- 
 firmed even by the attempts that were made to regulate it 
 I mean confirmed by Sir Elijah Impey, when he undertook 
 to be legislator for India that the judicial character, which 
 is the last in study and the last in professional experience, 
 that to which all professional men ultimately look up, is 
 the first experimental situation of a Company's servant ; and 
 it is expressly said that the office and situation of a judge are 
 to be filled by the junior servants of the Company. And, as
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 21 
 
 the emolument is not equal to that of other situations, the 
 judicial service is to be taken as in transitu as a passage to 
 other things ; and, as soon as a man has supplied the defects 
 of his education by the advantage of experience, he is imme- 
 diately translated to another situation, and another young 
 man is sent there to learn, at the expense of the properties 
 of India, to fill a situation which he is not to fill.* 
 
 So with regard to the other situations. They arc the situations 
 
 . . ' 1*1 ii, 11 T rcquinnir 
 
 situations of great statesmen, which undoubtedly, according the training 
 to the practice of the world, require rather a large converse ufenf te 
 with men, to fill properly, and much intercourse in life, than 
 the study of books though that has its eminent service. 
 We know too that, in the habits of civilised life, in cultivated 
 society, there is imbibed by men a good deal of the solid 
 practice of government, of the true maxims of state, and 
 everything that enables a man to serve his country. But 
 these men are sent over to exercise functions at which a 
 statesman here would tremble, without any study, without 
 any of that sort of experience which forms men gradually and 
 insensibly to great affairs. These men are sent over to India 
 without maturity, without experience, without knowledge or 
 habits in cultivated life, to perform such functions as I will 
 venture to say the greatest statesmen are hardly equal to. 
 
 Mr. Hastings has himself, in his Defence before the House Mr.Hast- 
 of Commons, and in the Defences he has made before your im%rfect f 
 Lordships, lamented his own situation in this particular. It ancUx- ' 1 
 was much to be lamented indeed. How far it wiil form a pcrieuce. 
 justification for his conduct, when we come to examine that 
 conduct, will be seen ; how far it will furnish either extenu- 
 ation or palliation will likewise be seen. But so is the fact, 
 and so we must lament it, that the servants of the Company are 
 sent out young, are sent out with incompetent emoluments, 
 are sent out to a body that forms them into an esprit du corps ; 
 sent out in that situation without any control upon them, 
 without that which is the best thing in education, discipline, 
 restraint, order and subordination, which are education, 
 and all the rest of it are but subordinate to this great point. 
 
 My Lords, by means of this bad system of things it has so 
 happened, and does happen, that the very laws we have 
 made, the covenants the Company has got its servants to Covenants 
 enter into, and the orders that have been given, have proved, wit* 
 
 * " which, when he maj- be qualified to fill, he is no longer to hold.'' 
 Revised copy. 
 
 Company.
 
 22 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15 PEB. 1783. 
 
 Orders 
 against 
 unlawful 
 emolu- 
 ments. 
 
 How used 
 by Mr. 
 Hastings to 
 obtain 
 power over 
 his subordi- 
 nates. 
 
 as tilings have turned out, most noxious and mischievous to 
 the country, instead of beneficial. For the servants of the 
 Company are obliged, when they enter into the service, to 
 enter into it, not only with the general duty which attaches 
 upon all servants, but they enter into a specific covenant with 
 their masters to perform all the duties described in that cove- 
 nant, under heavy penalties. They are bound by them ; and 
 at every step of their progress, from writer to factor, from 
 factor to junior merchant, and from junior merchant to senior 
 merchant, they are bound to renew these covenants by 
 something I speak without offence which may be said to 
 resemble confirmation ni the church. They are obliged to 
 renew their obligation. This covenant would have been wise 
 and proper if it had been enforced. The orders of the Com- 
 pany have forbidden them to take any unlawful emoluments. 
 The act of Parliament has fulminated against them. What 
 is the consequence ? The consequence is that, there being 
 clear, positive laws, clear, positive covenants, and positive 
 engagements having no exception of circumstances in them 
 or difference quoad majus et minus, but every one who offends 
 against the law being liable to the law, he who has taken but 
 one penny of unlawful emolument and all have taken many 
 pennies of unlawful emolument dare not complain of the 
 most abandoned extortion and cruel oppression ; and he who 
 has taken a penny to do a good act is obliged to be silent 
 when he sees whole nations desolated about him. The great 
 criminal has the laws in his hand ; he is always able to prove 
 the small offence and crush the person entirely who has com- 
 mitted it. In consequence of which, Mr. Hastings has not 
 only obtained a vast power by this grand defect in the Com- 
 pany's service, but by distributing liberally the emoluments 
 of the Company, and by making it impossible for any man to 
 rise but through his favour, he has such a hold of corruption 
 that he has linked it, got it bound above, below, and on all 
 sides about him, by one common participation and connivance. 
 And accordingly he has had no complaint from the service 
 against him. He states it as one of his merits that there 
 has been no such complaint. No such complaint can exist. 
 The esprit du corps forbids it, in which an informer is the 
 most odious and detestable of all characters, and is hunted 
 down, and has always been hunted down, as a common enemy 
 of the common profit. He cannot do it ; because as nobody 
 is free from small offences, the great offender can always crush 
 the small one. And accordingly, what is singular, if you ex-
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 23 . 
 
 araine the correspondence of Mr. Hastings, you would imagine, 15 FEB. nss. 
 from many expressions very deliberately us?d by him, that 
 the Company's service was made out of the very filth and 
 dregs of mankind, the most degenerate public body that ever 
 existed in the world; but, if you examine his conduct 
 towards them, you would imagine he had lived in the specu- 
 lative schemes of visionary perfection. He was fourteen 
 years at the head of that service, and there is not one single 
 instance in which he endeavoured to detect corruption, 
 in which he ever attempted to punish it ; but the whole 
 service with that whole mass of enormity slept, as it were, 
 at once under his terror and his protection his protection if 
 they did not dare to move against him, his terror, [from his 
 power]* to pluck out individuals and make a public example 
 of them whenever he pleased. 
 
 And therefore the first thing to be observed is, that it Confederacy 
 
 i . ,. . m corrup- 
 
 is a service or confederacy, a. service or connivance, a tion.. 
 service of various systems of guilt, of which Mr. Hastings 
 was the head, protector and conniver. Not only as protector 
 and conniver, but we shall prove to your Lordships that, 
 when the Company were driven by shame not by incli- 
 nation, but by shame to order several prosecutions against 
 the delinquents, Mr. Hastings, not satisfied with the general General 
 connivance, directly contrary to the duty of his office, and 
 directly contrary to the express and positive law of the iU^,. 
 court of Directors, which law Parliament had bound upon 
 him as his duty not satisfied with that connivance, before 
 he went away passed a general pardon, which he was not 
 authorised to give, and at once ordered the whole body of 
 the prosecutions of the Company to be discharged. Then, 
 having had fourteen years' connivance, and then a general Mr. Hast- 
 release of all charges and actions of the Company being support v< 
 
 ven by usurpation, fraud and madness, in him, he now tio^pn^r- " 
 puts himself at the head, and expects the support of ru P tion< 
 that body which he fully discharged from all prosecutions. 
 You will find in the course of this business that, whenever, 
 by means that have been fortunately used but unfortunately 
 stopped, these charges have been brought against him of any 
 bribery, corruption or malversation, his point has been never 
 to answer one word to that bribery, corruption, malversation, 
 but to inquire of the whole service whether there was any 
 one man in it that would give him an ill word. He is just 
 
 * Revised copy.
 
 24 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15 FEE. 1788. in that situation in which he may well call witnesses to his 
 character ; but he will find himself utterly incapable of 
 justifying his conduct. So far with regard to that part of 
 the service. 
 
 My Lords, there is another part of the service which I 
 really omitted, but whether I should put it first or last I 
 must confess I am at some loss to decide ; because, though it 
 appears to be the lowest part of the service, it is by far the 
 most considerable and the most efficient; without a full con- 
 sideration and explanation of which, no part hardly of the 
 conduct of Mr. Hastings, and of many others that may t)e 
 in his situation, can be well understood. I have given you 
 an account of writers, factors, merchants, who exercise the 
 offices of judges, chancellors, ministers of state, and chan- 
 cellors of the exchequer, and managers of great revenues. 
 I have given you some description of them. But there, is 
 another description of men, whether in the Company's service 
 or not, that is of more importance than them all ; that is, a 
 description of character you have often read of, but which 
 
 c , ha j; acter of has not been sufficiently explained I mean the character of 
 
 the banyas, , -i r\ > ,1-1 
 
 or native a banya. When the Company s service was nothing but 
 mercantile, and they were utterly unacquainted with the 
 country, they used the intervention of certain factors among 
 the natives, who were called banyas. We called them so. 
 They were of the tribe or caste of the vaisyas* or merchants, 
 the Indians being distributed into tribes ; and the English 
 employed them as their factors in their dealing in the country; 
 and the name still continues when the functions of the banyas 
 have become totally different. A banya has other names too. 
 He is called diwan or steward : and indeed that is a term 
 with more propriety applied to him in several of the func- 
 tions which he occupies. He is by his office the steward of 
 the household of every European gentleman, and has the 
 care, management and ordering, of his servants. He is a 
 domestic servant. He is generally chosen out of that class 
 of natives Avho, by being habituated to misery and subjection, 
 can submit to any orders, and are fit for any of the basest 
 services. Having been themselves subject to oppression, 
 they are fitted perfectly for that is the true education to 
 oppress others. They serve an apprenticeship of servitude to 
 qualify them for the trade of tyranny. They are persons 
 without whom an European can do nothing. They know, 
 
 * The third primitive caste of the Hindus, exercising trade and agriculture.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 25 
 
 they themselves being trained in that way, all the ways, all 
 
 the little frauds, all the defensive armour, all the artifices and 
 
 contrivances, by which abject slavery secures itself against 
 
 the violence of power. They know all the lurking-holes, all 
 
 the winding recesses, of the unfortunate ; and they hunt out 
 
 distress and misery even to their last retreats. They know 
 
 the way they have suffered themselves and far from being 
 
 taught by these sufferings to abstain, they have only learned 
 
 the way of afflicting others. Without them, Europeans, with Their ser- 
 
 all their pompous names with all their consideration, are pc^bie'to 
 
 nothing. The moment a Company's servant comes there Europeans. 
 
 and they have the best intelligence of what is done at home 
 
 that class of people immediately make application to the 
 
 gentleman who comes to India. They take possession of him, 
 
 as if he were their inheritance. They have knowledge of the 
 
 country ; they have money ; and they have the arts of 
 
 making money. The gentleman who comes from home has 
 
 none of them: he has nothing but s : mplicity; he has nothing 
 
 but a desire of wealth, great indigence, and a disposition to 
 
 relieve himself. These banyas have all : they have money, 
 
 and a knowledge of the country ; and they know the means 
 
 of acquiring wealth. Accordingly they take possession ofEviiexer- 
 
 him ; and it is much to be lamented that they do continue a tneliMnflu- 
 
 tyranny not only over the people but over the master, who cuce ' 
 
 does nothing but give them the ticket of his name. So that 
 
 the man is connected and supported by an European who is 
 
 well supported at home, and from that moment forward it is 
 
 not the Englishman, but ii; is the black banya, that is the 
 
 master. He keeps the Englishman alive. 
 
 We know how young men are sent out of this country. We 
 know how happy we are soon to know they are no longer a 
 burden to their friends and parents, but are in a situation of 
 thriving. The banya knows it too. He supplies him with 
 money. But the chief way in which he is paid is the use of his 
 master's name and power ; and thus he goes into the country 
 with a commission in his hand which nothing can resist. 
 This banya thus empowered has not only the people under 
 his subjection, but his master also. The way he has him Their power 
 under his subjection is this he has that dreadful power over European 
 him which every creditor has over his debtor. The master is master - 
 no longer a master ; he is the tool in the hands of this man. 
 Actions the most abhorrent to his nature he must see done 
 before his face and thousands and thousands worse are done 
 in his absence and he dare not complain of them. The
 
 26 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 I.-, FEB. 1783. banya extorts, robs, murders, and gives him what proportion 
 of [the spoil] he pleases. If he should murmur at him, the 
 very power that was sent over to protect the people of 
 England, the very laws of England the very best things 
 being perverted when put into situations not fit for them 
 the very laws of England, which make the recovery of debts 
 more easy, give ten thousand times more power to the banya 
 over his master ; and the court [of justice] becomes a col- 
 lateral security for that abominable tyranny, executed over 
 Europeans as well as natives. So that, while we are here 
 boasting of British power, we are, in more than half the service, 
 nothing but the inferior tools and miserable instruments of the 
 tyranny which the lower part of the natives exercise, to the 
 disgrace of the British power and to the ruin of all that is 
 respectable among their own countrymen. They have sub- 
 verted the first houses ; totally ruined and undone the 
 country ; cheated and defrauded the revenue ; and kept 
 people in India under a miserable state of beggary ; until 
 something or other has relieved them from this servitude. 
 Which is the true reason that the Company's servants in 
 India, in order to free themselves from this horrid and 
 atrocious servitude, are obliged to become the tools of men 
 in power to get some office that may enable them to make 
 money to pay their debts, or to be the tools of Mr. Hastings. 
 Their caste. It is true that these people were originally the lowest castes 
 in the country ; but, after seeing the profit which these men 
 make, and that there is neither power, profession nor occu- 
 pation, to be had that a reputable person could have, men 
 born to better things, men of higher castes, have thrown 
 themselves into that disgraceful servitude, have become 
 menial servants to Englishmen, that they might rise by their 
 degradation. But they have prostituted their integrity; 
 they have equally lost their character ; and there is no 
 difference between the best and the worst. 
 
 Confirma- My Lords, this system Mr. Hastings has confirmed, estab- 
 systemby' lished, increased, and made the instrument of the greatest 
 h[ r s Hast " tyranny that ever was exercised, of the basest peculations, 
 and the most scandalous and iniquitous extortions upon the 
 country. You must distinguish this situation which I have 
 described of the banyas, of the servants in subordinate 
 situations, from that of the banyas who are such to persons 
 in higher authority. In that case the banya is in subordina- 
 tion, because he can be ruined by his superior ; whereas he 
 can always ruin his nominal superior in the other case.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke, 27 
 
 Mr. Hastings has brought forward his banya ; seated him in the 
 houses of the principal nobility ; invested him with revenues, His promo 
 and given him enormous jobs. He has put him over the banya! 1 ' 13 
 heads of the nobility, who really, for their grandeur, antiquity 
 and dignity, might almost be matched with your Lordships. 
 He has put him over their heads; made him the supreme 
 judge even of that very caste in which they exist ; and he has 
 under him, and by him, and by banyas of various kinds, 
 confirmed that power in such a way as will require, not only 
 great justice upon him, but great and wise provisions to pre- 
 vent the growth of that evil in future. 
 
 Such is that first or last I do not know which to call it 
 order in the Company's service, called a banya. Your Lordships 
 will see hereafter the necessity of describing, in the opening 
 of this case, the situation of a banya. You will see that no 
 Englishman, properly speaking, acts by himself; that he 
 must be made responsible for that person called his banya, 
 for the power he either uses under him or the power he has 
 acquired over him ; that these are the people through whom 
 all bribery, peculation, extortion, is practised with impunity ; 
 Localise they escape, in the night of their complexion and 
 situation, the inquiry that a white man dare not stand in this 
 country. Through the banyas he receives his bribes; 
 through them he decides falsely against the titles of the 
 people of the country ; through them Mr Hastings has Tyrannies 
 exercised oppressions which, I will venture to say, in his own lir. r Halt- b> 
 name, in his own character, daring as he is and he is the b n a ^^ TOUBh 
 most daring criminal that ever existed he dare never have 
 entered into. Therefore we shall show you that, both for 
 the sake of robbing with more force, with the stronger hand, 
 and at the same time for concealing that robbery, most of his 
 iniquities have been done through these banyas ; and that 
 he is not satisfied with one of them, but has had one, two, 
 three, others ; not confiding his secrets to Europeans, and 
 hardly any two of them knowing the secrets of each other. 
 This is the system of banyaism and of concealment which 
 Mr. Hastings, instead of eradicating out of the service, has 
 propagated by example, by support and by abuses, in the 
 most monstrous way in which power can be abused. 
 
 My Lords, having mentioned these circumstances of the 
 constitution of the Company's service from beginning to end, 
 I now shall mention to your Lordships one mercantile con- Excellence 
 stitution of the Company, so great, so excellent, so perfect, tfieTo^utu- 
 that I will venture to say that human wisdom has never company.
 
 28 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15 FEB. 1783. exceeded it, and that it was part of the guardianship, not 
 only of the East India Company, but of all the powers of 
 this country. It does so happen that there the counting-house 
 gave lessons to the state ; and it will always happen that, 
 if you can apply the regulations which private wisdom makes 
 for private interest to the concerns of the state, you will 
 then find that active, awakened and enlightened, principle of 
 self-interest has contrived a better system of things for the 
 guard of that interest than the droning wisdom of people 
 looking for good out of themselves I mean for the greater 
 part of mankind ever contrived for the public. And there- 
 fore I repeat it, that the regulations made by mercantile 
 men for their mercantile interest, when they have been able, 
 as in this case, to be applied to the discipline and order of 
 the state, have produced a discipline and order which no state 
 should be ashamed to copy, and without which such a state 
 cannot exist. It is perhaps the best contrivance that ever 
 has been thought of by the wit of man for the government 
 of a remote, large, disjointed, empire. For merchants, having 
 factors abroad in distant parts of the world, have obliged 
 them to carry out a minuteness and strictness of corre- 
 spondence which no state has ever used with regard to its 
 Their go- public ministers. And accordingly the Company has made 
 one l of cn it a fundamental part of their constitution that their whole 
 rceor<L 8and government shall be a written government. You will 
 observe in the course of the proceeding the propriety of 
 my now opening this to you. The government of the India 
 Company is a government of writing and a government of 
 record. The strictest court of justice in its proceedings is 
 not more a court of record than the India Company in all 
 its proceedings. 
 
 Their ser- In the first place, they oblige their servants to keep a diary 
 
 obliged to of all their transactions ; they are bound to it by their cove- 
 
 mi P ietter- S nan t- Then they oblige them, as a corrective upon that 
 
 books. diary, to keep a little book in which all their letters are 
 
 entered ; and they are bound to produce those books upon 
 
 requisition. Although they should be mixed with afiairs 
 
 concerning their own private negotiations and transactions 
 
 of commerce, or their closest and dearest concerns in private 
 
 life, these books are to be produced. But, as the great 
 
 Debates and corrective of all, they have ordered that every proceeding in 
 
 mcounci'P public council shall be written. No verbal debates : all shall 
 
 riting. in be writing, and all shall be record. All other bodies the 
 
 Houses of Lords and Commons, the Privy Council having
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 29 
 
 secret state deliberations, enter only resolves, discussions, 
 and final resolutions of affairs: the argument, the discussion, 
 the dissent, does not appear. But the East India Company 
 has proceeded much farther and done much more wisely ; 
 because they proceeded upon mercanti e principles ; and they 
 have ordered that all shall be written the proposition, the 
 argument, the dissent, the whole course of argument; and, 
 not only in their great council, but in every provincial 
 council and provincial derivation, even down to the minutest 
 ramification of their services. So that these books, up from 
 the lowest to the highest Presidency, are ordered to be trans- 
 mitted, duplicate and triplicate as they are, by every ship that 
 comes to Europe. Therefore an able servant of the Com- 
 pany, and high in their service, has mentioned to the Directors 
 how sacred this rule ought to be held. He says : 
 
 " It should be remembered tbat the basis upon which you rose to 
 power and have been able to stand the shock of repeated convulsions 
 has been the accuracy and simplicity of the mercantile method, which 
 makes every transaction in your service, and every expenditure, a matter 
 of record." * 
 
 My Lords, this method not only produced to them a more Advantages 
 accurate idea of the nature of their affairs and the nature of tem. es>s " 
 their expenditure, but it gave them no mean method of 
 knowing the characters of their servants, their capacities, 
 their ways of thinking, the turn and bias of their minds ; so 
 that that happened (if this were well used) to the East India 
 Company which never happened to the chief of a remote 
 government before, that in the most remote part of the world, 
 and with reference to the minutest parts of their service, it 
 was in the power of a man sitting in London to form an 
 accurate judgment of everything that happened upon the 
 Ganges. And the use of this was not only in discovering 
 what the nature, character and capacity, of their servants 
 was, but it found a means of detecting their wickedness, and 
 of proving it too, and of giving evidence and testimony of it 
 under their own hands. For your Lordships will observe 
 that in all evil practices no uniform method of proceeding 
 will serve. Innocence is plain, direct and simple ; guilt is a 
 crooked thing. The job of iniquity to-day may be covered 
 by specious reasons ; but, when the job of iniquity to-morrow 
 comes, the reasons that support the job of to-day expose the 
 iniquity of to-morrow. The man falls into contradiction, 
 
 * The -writer quoted is probably J. Z. Holwell.
 
 30 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 The system 
 subverted 
 by Mr. 
 Hastings. 
 
 is FEB. 1788. prevarication, confusion; and this hastens his detection. 
 This is the method by which these things can come to be 
 discovered. They see that the same false, specious, reasons 
 will not serve for different kinds and degrees of guilt ; and 
 the resource of one moment becomes the destruction of the 
 vice of another. Besides, they have not time to corrupt the 
 records. They are drawn out of their hands ; they are in 
 Europe ; they are the records of the Company ; perhaps 
 before Parliament- -before they have time to invent an 
 excuse for a directly contrary conduct. This is a great, a 
 material part of the constitution of the Company ; and, as I 
 said to your Lordships and I am not ashamed, or think it to 
 be much apologised for, in repeating it this is the funda- 
 mental part of the Company's service, and which, if first- 
 preserved as it ought to be, and then used as it ought to be, 
 would afford such a mode of governing a foreign empire as, I 
 will venture to say, few countries possess in governing the 
 most limited and narrow jurisdiction. 
 
 This was that great fundamental institution of the Com- 
 pany's service. Mr. Hastings subverted it and destroyed it. 
 He first destroyed it by sending agents whom he ordered to 
 deliver their correspondence to him, in order to be suppressed 
 and destroyed public agents, paid by the Company and its 
 servants. He has called upon them for their correspondence 
 with the Company's correspondents; lie has taken it into his 
 own hands and he has destroyed it correspondence upon the 
 most momentous affairs. He has destroyed it by making a 
 fatal, mischievous, distinction between public and private 
 correspondence ; whereas the Company made none. He has 
 said : " There are thousands of occasions in which it is not 
 proper to divulge your private correspondence, but there is 
 no occasion in which it is not necessary to communicate 
 your correspondence to those who are above you/' These 
 are the distinctions he has thought proper to make. 
 
 The next way without entering into all the ways in 
 which he has attempted to evade this regulation is, by 
 appointing spies pnd trader-agents, who shall carry on the 
 real state business, while there are public and ostensible 
 agents who are not in the secret. And the correspondence of 
 those private agents he has stopped and secreted ; and there 
 remains nothing but the shell and husk of a dry official 
 correspondence, which neither means anything nor was 
 intended to mean anything. 
 
 tiouof'hfs" ^" s ls the way in which he has defeated this excellent 
 
 Employ- 
 ment by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings of 
 secret 
 agents to 
 conduct 
 public bus; 
 ness.
 
 Speech of 3Ir. Burke. 31 
 
 institution. But be has taken a mode of ("fling it by dele- 
 gating out of his own bands the whole powers of the Company, 
 which he was bound to execute, into hands where they were 
 
 not bound to record their deliberation, where they were not record their 
 . . ,. 11- proceedings. 
 
 bound to record their assent or dissent unless they chose it, 
 
 and where, as in a gulf, a most important part, as we shall 
 prove, of the Company's transactions has been buried. And 
 yet some precious fragmehts are left, which we ought 
 infinitely to value, and which the nation will have reason to 
 value, while they lament the loss of what is gone. But, if it Discovery of 
 were not for those inestimable fragments and wrecks of the practices ' 
 
 recorded government of the country which have been saved 
 from the destruction Mr. Hastings intended for them all, all 
 the most shameful enormities that have ever disgraced a 
 government or can ever vex a people would only be known 
 in this country by secret whispers and unauthenticated 
 anecdotes ; and the most shameful actions which disgrace 
 government and which disgrace mankind, instead of being 
 brought before a public tribunal, might have been honoured 
 with the highest distinctions and rewards which this country 
 has to give ; and sordid bribery, base peculation, wretched 
 extortion and cruel tyranny, mighl; have been invested with 
 those sacred robes of justice before which they have now 
 cause to tremble. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, therefore, endeavouring to discredit and Refusal of 
 
 , G . c , , . , , . Mr. Hast- 
 
 ruin what remains or this correspondence, refuses, in his ings to be 
 Defence to the House of Commons, in letters to the court of omfnxwd 
 Directors, and in various acts and muniments, to be tried by 
 his own recorded declarations by his own opinions delivered 
 under his own hand. He knows that what reaiains of the writ- 
 ten constitution, which he has not destroyed, is enough to de- 
 stroy him. Therefore he resolves to invalidate it ; he refuses to 
 be tried by it ; rejects it totally. He desires to claim a privi- 
 lege of prevarication, a privilege of contradiction ; not only to 
 change his conduct, but the principles of his conduct, whenever 
 it suits his occasion. He knows that he and that record cannot 
 exist together. But I hope your Lordships will show the 
 destroyers of the constitution, and the destroyers of those 
 records which are to discover iniquity, that whoever destroys 
 the discoverer establishes the iniquity ; and that therefore 
 your Lordships will bind him to his own declarations given 
 under his' own hand, and that you will say to him, what was 
 said to another person upon a less occasion by greater 
 authority " Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee."
 
 32 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15 PEB.1788. Your Lordships shall have his own words from his own mouth 
 to judge him for this conduct. 
 
 Having gone through what I thought, and what I was 
 instructed, might be necessary to state to your Lordships con- 
 cerning the Company's constitution I mean, the real inside, 
 and not the husk and shell of its constitution having stated 
 the abuses that existed in it, having stated how Mr. Hastings 
 endeavoured to perpetuate and increase and make use of 
 these abuses, and how he has destroyed everything that was 
 excellent and many things were truly excellent in that 
 constitution having stated this, if I have strength, if your 
 Lordships are desirous of it, if I have not wasted your time in 
 explanation of matters that I have already acquainted you 
 with, I shall next beg leave to state to you the abuse which 
 he has made of the other part of the public authority, which 
 the Company acquired over the natives, in virtue of the 
 royal charter of the present Mogul Emperor, in the year 
 1766 [1765]. 
 
 My Lords, it is necessary for you, that you may the better 
 judge of the abuse Mr. Hastings has made of the powers 
 vested in him, to know who the people are over whom he 
 has abused those powers. This is a little out of the way, 
 but it will be necessary for me to explain it, and I shall 
 explain it with as much brevity as is consistent with the 
 distinctness with which 1 mean to bring the whole before 
 Explanatory your Lordships. And I beg to observe to you that, with 
 
 matter will * . i i . i i 
 
 be sup- respect to this previous matter, which is rather explana- 
 tory than accusatorial if I may use the expression rather 
 to explain the nature of the matter to come before you in 
 regular charges, than as proof of the charges themselves I 
 shall hold myself bound to support by evidence this matter, 
 as I know there is not a word of it which is not supported. 
 
 I know it is allowed to advocates, when opening a cause 
 in a private court, to indulge themselves in a display of 
 matter leading to the charges they intend to bring. There 
 is a great deal of latitude allowed to them to make such a 
 statement as they please, and they are not always called to 
 the strictest account for the matter ; because the court, when 
 they come to judge, sift from it such matter as is proved and 
 is relative to the cause. But I wish your Lordships to know 
 that, with the high opinion I have of your gravity and it is 
 impossible for a man to conceive a higher and sensible of 
 the weight of those I represent at this place, namely, the 
 Commons of Great Britain, I should be sorry that any one
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 33 
 
 substantial fact or colour of things was alleged by me in this is FEB. 1739 
 place which, when called upon, I should not be ready to 
 make good to you by proof adapted to its nature, exactly in 
 the same way as with regard to the other matter which 
 becomes more substantial matter in the cause. I mean to 
 prove matter to which record is applicable by record ; that to 
 which public opinion is applicable by public opinion ; that to 
 which oral testimony is applicable by oral testimony ; and, 
 last of all, that which is matter of historic proof by historic 
 evidence. I shall hold myself bound to account for this pre- 
 liminary explanation upon the same grounds as I shall 
 account for the charge itself allowing for human infirmities 
 or some slight errors or mistakes that may happen in any 
 case. Substantial parts I think myself bound to state 
 [prove ?]. 
 
 Then, my Lords, there are two distinct people in India, totally Races of 
 distinct from each other in characters, lives and manners, 
 for both of whom Mr. Hastings was bound to provide equally, 
 agreeably to the terms of the charter the Company received 
 from the lawful governing power of the country ; which it 
 had received at its own solicitation ; which was not forced 
 upon it by a superior power, but given at the immediate 
 solicitation of the principal servant belonging to the Com- 
 pany ; accepted by the Company, and by it, I am very sorry 
 to say, little regarded, or at least by its principal servants. 
 
 The first set of people who are subjected virtually to the The Gsntus 
 British empire, through those mediums which 1 have de- 
 scribed to you, are the original inhabitants of Hindustan, 
 who have inhabited in all time and beyond all the eras which 
 we use I mean always the grand era excepted have lived 
 and been proprietors and inhabitants of that country, with 
 manners, religion, customs and usages, appropriate to them- 
 selves and no ways resembling those of the rest of mankind. 
 Those persons are commonly called Gentus. The system 
 and principle of their government is local; their laws, their 
 manners, their religion, are local. Their legislator, whoever 
 he was for that is lost in the mists of a very obscure 
 antiquity had it as the great leading principle of his policy 
 to connect the people with their soil ; and accordingly, by 
 one of those anomalies which time daily discovers, and which 
 perhaps reflection would explain in the nature of man, these 
 people, who are the softest in their manners, approaching 
 almost to feminine, who are the most benevolent and of a 
 larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in, who
 
 34 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Their repug- 
 nance to the 
 sea. 
 
 Necessity of 
 governing 
 them on 
 their own 
 principles. 
 
 Of caste. 
 
 extend their benevolence to the whole animal creation 
 these people are the most unalliable to any other part of the 
 creation. They cannot, the highest orders of them, touch 
 that bond which is the bond of life, and which by supporting 
 the individual unites them, in other cases I mean con- 
 viviality. That bond of life cannot be had with these 
 people. And there are some circumstances relative to them 
 that exclude them still more than I have mentioned from all 
 immediate commerce with this nation, namely, that that very 
 element which, while appearing to disconnect, unites man- 
 kind I mean the sea is to them a forbidden element. 
 None of their high castes can without great danger to his 
 situation perhaps it is absolutely impossible to some of 
 them ever pass the sea. If it could be truly said that a 
 great gulf is fixed between you and them, it is that gulf 
 created by manners, opinions and laws, radicated in the 
 very nature of the people, and which you can never efface 
 from them. This forbids for ever all immediate communica- 
 tion between that country and this. And that, my Lords, 
 makes it ten times more necessary for us to keep a strict eye 
 upon all persons w r ho go there, and so to conduct ourselves in 
 our proceedings with regard to the knowledge of that country 
 and all its affairs as may be conformable to their necessities 
 and not to our inventions ; that we, if we must govern such 
 a country, must govern them upon their own principles and 
 maxims and not upon ours ; that we must not think to force 
 them to our narrow ideas, but extend ours to take in theirs ; 
 because to say that that people shall change their maxims, 
 lives and opinions, is what cannot be. We know that 
 empire of opinion is, I had almost said, human nature itself. 
 It is, however, the strongest part of human nature ; and more 
 of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides in 
 opinion than in all other external circumstances whatever. 
 And, if it resides in us in opinion, much more does it reside 
 in them in opinion. For sometimes our laws of religion differ 
 from our laws of the land, sometimes our laws of the land 
 differ from our laws of honour; but in that country the laws 
 of religion, the laws of the land and the laws of honour, are 
 all united and consolidated in one, and bind a man eternally 
 to the rules of what is called his caste. 
 
 I think it necessary to state to your Lordships what a caste 
 is. These people, from the oldest time, have been distributed 
 into various orders, all hereditary, which are called castes. 
 These castes are the fundamental part of the constitution
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 35 
 
 of that commonwealth, both in their church and in their 15 FEB. nss. 
 state. 
 
 Your Lordships are born to hereditary honours in the 
 chief of your houses ; the rest mix with the people. But in 
 the case of the Hindus those who were born noble can 
 never fall into any second rank. They are divided into 
 four orders the brahmans, the chhetri, the vaisyas and the 
 sudras. They are divided into four commonwealths. The 
 higher cannot pass into the lower ; the lower cannot rise 
 into the higher. They have all their appropriate rank, 
 place and situation, and their appropriate religion too, 
 which, though they all go under one definition of religion, 
 yet is different in its rites and ceremonies in each of those 
 castes; and, if a man who is in that caste which at once 
 unites what we should call the dignity of the peerage in this 
 country and the sanctity of episcopacy the brahmans 
 falls out of it, he does not fall into the next order, the 
 chhetri, the vaisyas, or the sudras, but he falls out of all 
 ranks of society is excluded an outcast the most infamous 
 of all mankind. 
 
 These people, bound by all laws, human and divine, to circum- 
 those principles of caste which inveterate usage has grafted affecting 
 in them, in a manner in which no known prejudice in the caste - 
 world has been known to exist these people are affected in 
 their caste, not only by the crimes, the voluntary crimes, 
 by which they may lose it, but likewise by certain involun- 
 tary sufferings and involuntary disgraces, utterly out of 
 their own power, which affect them in that caste which 
 is their everything. For speak to an Indian of his caste, 
 and you speak to him of his all; when they lose that 
 caste they lose everything. The loss, as I said, is not 
 only by voluntary crimes, but by the acts of other people. 
 So that these miserable castes give one pledge more 
 to fortune than any other nation was ever known to do. 
 They are bound by new ties. Tyranny oppresses upon 
 them.* And, accordingly, those who have stood imprison- 
 ment, those who have stood whips, those who have stood 
 tortures, those Avho have stood the menaces of death itself, 
 without any impression, have instantly given way when it 
 has been attempted to bring upon them any of those pollu- 
 tions by which they lose caste. 
 
 * " Tyranny is, therefore, armed against them -with a greater variety of 
 weapons than are found in its ordinary stores." Revised copy. 
 
 c 2
 
 36 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 15 FEB. 1788. 
 
 A menial 
 servant ap- 
 pointed by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings to de- 
 cide upon 
 castes. 
 
 Hindu laws 
 and institu- 
 tions. 
 
 Their stabi- 
 lity. 
 
 This shows us in what manner we ought to handle people 
 so delicate in these respects. Now we shall show you that 
 Mr. Hastings made the full use, through several of his 
 wicked and abominable instruments in that country, chosen 
 from the natives themselves, of not only all the wicked means 
 of oppressing and abusing them, but striking at that which 
 goes beyond life, which seems to affect them in other worlds. 
 This power has been used to the destruction of that people. 
 I shall prove that he has put his own menial domestic servant 
 a wretch dependent a wretch ignorant a wretch vicious 
 and corrupt the instrument of his briberies into that seat 
 of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which was to decide upon the 
 castes of all those people, which contained their rank, their 
 family and honour, their happiness here and their salvation 
 hereafter. He put his own servant to judge over them, and 
 to get a new hold by which he brought the people under his 
 tyranny ; and nobody dare complain of him. Accordingly 
 he says " Who complains of me ? Who dare complain of 
 me !" '*' No ! your menial servant has my caste in his 
 power." I shall not trouble your Lordships with mentioning 
 others. It was enough that Cantoo Baboo, and other names to 
 which your Lordships are to be familiarised hereafter, had the 
 caste and character of the people in their hands ; and by this 
 means Mr. Hastings has taken care effectually that these 
 people shall never complain. 
 
 My Lords, I am to mention to you circumstances relative 
 to these people. They were the original people of Hin- 
 dustan. They are still infinitely the most numerous ; I take 
 for granted, twenty to one. The Mussulmans are nothing 
 like them. They are the old inhabitants of the country, and 
 still more numerous. Whatever faults they may have, God 
 forbid we should go to pass judgment upon people who 
 formed their laws and institutions prior to our insect origin 
 of yesterday ! They have two great principles which ought 
 to be respected that is to say, great force and stability, and 
 great, glorious and excellent, effects. Their stability has 
 been proved by their holding on for a time and duration 
 commensurate with all the empires which history has made 
 us acquainted with ; and still they exist, in a green old age, 
 with all the reverence of antiquity and with all the affection 
 to their own institutions that other people have to novelty 
 and change. Accordingly they have stood firm in their own 
 country and cast their roots deep in their native soil, because 
 they cast them nowhere else than in their native soil, and
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 37 
 
 fixed their opinions in their native soil, and bound them 15 FEB. i:se. 
 together. Their religion has made no converts, their 
 dominion no conquests ; and, in proportion as they were con- 
 centred within and hindered from spreading abroad, they 
 have grown to double force, and have existed against bigotry, 
 against persecution, against all the fury of foreign conquest, 
 and almost against the fury and avarice of the English 
 dominion established among them. 
 
 I have spoken now, my Lords, of what their principles were, 
 and what their laws and religious institutions were, in point 
 of force and stability. I have given an instance of their 
 force, by the way, in a thing in which all the institutions of 
 mankind in other respects show their weakness ; for they 
 have shown their force in the revolutions of the state. When 
 the country has been totally subdued, the institutions have 
 existed ; which is a strong proof that there must be some 
 strong, powerful, influence resulting from them beyond all 
 our paltry means of judging of men. But the stability of 
 them is the true test of inquiry. That form of religious Hindu reii- 
 institution connected with government and policy that makes glon * 
 a people happy and a government flourishing putting 
 farther considerations out of the way, which are not now our 
 business is undoubtedly the test of any government ; and I 
 must appeal to the whole force of observation that, wherever 
 the Hindu religion has been established, that country has 
 been flourishing. We have seen some remaining to this very 
 day. This very country I am going to mention to you is an 
 instance of what an entire change of government and institu- 
 tion what the rapacity of a foreign hand, rather than the 
 paternal, lenient, protecting, arm of a native government 
 does for the people ; and I shall quote it from a book which 
 shows that the very destruction of all this government is the 
 great object of the author,* and to invade with the hand of 
 rapacity what has escaped all former ravages. 
 
 The author divides the country into different provinces. 
 He supposes what they pay to the supreme government ; he 
 supposes what the country is capable of yielding ; and his 
 project is to change entirely the application of the revenues 
 of the country, and to secure the whole into the hands 
 of government. At last he comes to the province of 
 Burdwan. 
 
 * The author quoted is Mr. Holwell. See Revised Copy.
 
 38 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 15FEB.17S8. " In truth," says this author, "it would be almost cruelty to molest 
 -7- . this happy people ; for in this district are the only vestiges of the beaut y, 
 of < ancient >n P ur ^y piety, regularity, equity and strictness, of the ancient Hindostan 
 Hindu go- government. Here the property as well as the liberty of the people are 
 yernment inviolate. Here no robberies are heard of, either public or private. The 
 ' n traveller, either with or without merchandise, becomes the immediate care 
 of the government; which allots him guards, without any expense, to 
 conduct him from stage to stage ; and these are accountable for the safety 
 ajid accommodation of his person and effects. At the end of the first 
 stage he is delivered over with certain benevolent formalities to the guards 
 of the next, who, after interrogating the traveller as to the usage he had 
 received in his journey, dismiss the first guard with a written certificate 
 of their behaviour, and a receipt for the traveller and his effects ; which 
 certificate or receipt is returnable to the commanding officer of the first 
 stage, who registers the same and regularly reports it to the Raja. In this 
 form the traveller is passed through the country. And if he only passes 
 he is not suffered to be at any expense for food, accommodation, or 
 carriage for his merchandise or baggage. But it is otherwise if he is 
 permitted to make any residence in one place above three days, unless 
 occasioned by sickness or any unavoidable accident. If anything is lost 
 in this district for instance, a bag of money or other valuable the person 
 who finds it hangs it upon the next tree, and gives notice to the nearest 
 chauki or place of guard ; the officer of which orders immediate publica- 
 tion of the same by beat of tom-tom or drum." 
 
 Now, my Lords, this is the state of things which universally 
 prevailed throughout that whole empire before it was dis- 
 Ancient go- turbed by the barbarism of foreign conquests, and of which 
 some choice reserved spots continued to the year 1756; of 
 which some remained till Mr. Hastings had the means of 
 defacing them. Such was the prospect of Benares in the 
 happy reign and government of Bulwant Sing : such was 
 the happy state of Benares in the happy days of Cheyt Sing ; 
 till Mr. Hastings introduced his reform into that country. 
 
 Having stated the general outline of the manners and 
 of the origin of the people of Hindustan, having stated the 
 general principles of the subdivision of the country, having 
 stated those laws of their religion which relate to us, and which 
 either prohibit connexion or oblige us to a connexion very 
 different from what we have hitherto used towards them, 
 I shall now pass them, and leave to your Lordships' judgment 
 seriously to consider the situation of men in such a place, 
 and the obligation which these facts impose upon you to 
 enlarge the bounds and limits of your justice, and, if not of 
 your justice, of your mercy to them, and, not to suffer such 
 fair monuments of the human mind to be defaced by the 
 rapacity of your governors. I hope I have not said a word 
 straining the subject, to bring before you any part of their 
 religion and manners, farther than as relates to our govern- 
 
 yemment 
 in certain 
 provinces 
 defaced by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 39 
 
 ment over them; for, though there never was such food for 
 the curiosity of the human mind, I pass it totally over. 
 
 Now, considering that as the first era in which we are 
 to view the history of the East, the next era is an era of 
 great misfortune to that country and to the world in general 
 I mean the era of the prophet Mohammed, who has Mohammed- 
 extended his dominion, influence and religion, over that part ant ^ rna 
 of the world. There can be no doubt that the enthusiasm 
 which animated his first followers, the despotism that was 
 connected with his religion, and the advantages that his 
 followers had over the broken, disunited, countries of the 
 world, extended its influence vastly. This I wish you to 
 consider and remark as the era of the Arabs. These people 
 made a great impression in India. They had sovereigns in 
 all parts of it. They had particularly the kingdom of 
 Bengal, which is now the object of our inquiry ; and they 
 held it for a series and a dynasty of thirty -three Kings, 
 having begun and founded their seats in it very early after 
 the time of the prophet. 
 
 These people when settled in the country tried at first, 
 with the ferocious arm of their prophetic sword, to change 
 the religion and manners of that country ; but, soon per- Moderation 
 ceiving that their cruelty wearied out itself and never could Mohammed- 
 touch the constancy of the sufferers, they permitted the ^ e nt. vern ~ 
 people of the country to remain in quiet, and suffered their 
 religion to operate upon them as it could, by appealing to 
 their ambition or avarice, or by taking the people who had 
 lost their castes into and increasing the bounds of the Mo- 
 hammedan religion. But they left the ancient people in 
 possession of the country ; they left the ancient nobility in 
 possession of their estates ; and they left the ancient sove- 
 reigns of the country possessed of an inferior sovereignty ; 
 and, where the nature of the country would permit it, they 
 suffered them to continue in a separate state of sovereignty 
 from them. The Mohammedans, during the period of the 
 Arabs, never destroyed the native nobility, gentry, or the 
 landholders of the country ; they all remained fixed in their 
 places, as they did till very near our time. 
 
 The next era is an era which it is very necessary to state, The Tartar 
 because Mr. Hastings has made many applications to it; 
 namely, the history of the Tartars, or the era of Tamerlane. 
 They came in not by destroying the Hindus ; their con- 
 quests were over the other Mohammedans. For Tamerlane, 
 coming into that country as the great reformer of the
 
 40 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 15 FEB. ITS 
 
 Conditions 
 granted by 
 Tamerlane 
 to Hindu 
 rajas. 
 
 Various 
 degrees of 
 subjection 
 to the 
 Tartars. 
 
 , Mohammedan religion, to succeed to the rights of the prophet 
 upon a divine right and divine title, struck at all the Moham- 
 medan princes who were there at that time, as persons who 
 were tyrants, abusing their power in the several countries ; 
 and he came often into a composition with the people of the 
 country upon the ruin of those tyrants. He had neither 
 time, means nor inclination, to dispossess the ancient Rajas 
 of the country. And to give your Lordships an idea of the 
 equity or policy of that time, and not a history of the ferocity 
 of the country because ancient historians generally inform 
 us of everything but what we wish to know, stating that 
 India was conquered by Tamerlane in such a year and the 
 year will be found to coincide somewhere, I believe, with the 
 end of the fourteenth century thinking the chronology 
 nothing, and thinking what was done to be everything, I may 
 mention that there is here a very remarkable circumstance in 
 the same book, written by no friend to these people : 
 
 " When the Hindu Rajas or princes of Hindostan submitted to 
 Tamerlane it was on these capital stipulations that the emperor should 
 marry a daughter of Raja Jeet Sing's house ; that the head of this 
 house should be in perpetuity governor of the citadel of Agra and anoint 
 the king at his coronation ; and that the emperors should never impose 
 the jessuah (or poll tax) upon the Hindus." 
 
 Here was a conqueror, as he is called, coming in upon the 
 terms of mixing his blood with that of the native nobility of 
 the country, putting them in consequent succession upon the 
 throne of the country, making hereditary constables of the 
 capital of his country of the native princes of the country, 
 and freeing the Hindus for ever from that tax which the 
 
 o 
 
 Mohammedans have laid upon every country over which the 
 sword of Mohammed prevailed, namely, a capitation tax upon 
 all who do not profess the religion of the Mohammedans. 
 The Hindus by profess charter were excepted from that. 
 They were no conquered people. They carried the evident 
 marks of a noble independency, of a spirit of freedom and 
 good government, as compared with other countries where 
 the prince is armed with supreme, entire, authority, and where 
 the great people have no privileges at all, or having privi- 
 leges are nothing but subjects. 
 
 But the modes, the degrees, the circumstances, of subjec- 
 tion varied infinitely : in some places there was hardly a 
 trace at all ; in some the Rajas were almost assessors of the 
 throne, as in this case of the Raja Cheyt Sing. These circum- 
 stances mark that Tamerlane, however he may be called
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 41 
 
 from his name a Tartar, was no barbarian ; that the people 
 who submitted to him did not submit with the abject sub- 
 mission of slaves to the sword of the conqueror, but admitted 
 an emperor who was just, prudent and politic, instead of the 
 ferocious, oppressive, Mohammedans who had forced their 
 sword into the country. 
 
 That country resembled more a republic of princes with Power of 
 a great chief at their head than a country in absolute, uni- i ' 
 form, systematic, subjection, from one end to the other, in 
 which way it has of late been considered. So that if a 
 prince like Cheyt Sing was not ready to pay any exorbitant 
 fine which would be inflicted upon him by the will of the 
 person who called robbery a fine, and who took from him 
 without either considering his means or his delinquency 
 why, if such persons there were, the Rajas of that country 
 were armed, they had imperial fortresses for their security, 
 they had troops and the means of a revenue to do themselves 
 justice. But the policy of the prince never was to push that 
 people to such extremity, as it is supposed that those who 
 were the subjects of their conquest were actually pushed. 
 
 " In the unfortunate wars which followed the death of Manz-o-Din 
 Sevajee, Cheyt Singh, with a select body of Rhajapoots, by a well-conducted 
 retreat, recovered Agra, and was soon after reconciled to the king and 
 admitted to his favour, conformably to the steady policy of this govern- 
 ment in keeping a good understanding with the principal Rajas, and 
 more especially with the head of this house, who is ever capable of raising 
 and fomenting a very formidable party upon any intended revolution in 
 this despotic and precarious monarchy." * 
 
 Now, my Lords, during this reign of Tamerlane's and under 
 his successors and government, which we consider a despot- 
 ism, these principal Rajas, instead of being called wretches and 
 treated as such, were, even when they were in arms against 
 their sovereign, admitted to easy reconciliations ; because in 
 reality they were not rebellious subjects, but princes, often 
 asserting their natural liberty and the just constitution of the 
 country. This idea, that Mr. Hastings has endeavoured to 
 bring into the world, of the abject situation in which the 
 people were, has nothing in it in the government of Tamer- 
 lane or his successors. 
 
 This brings me to the next era, that of Akbar Khan. He Era of 
 was the first who got Bengal into his possession. I can show Khan! 
 that his conquest over Bengal was over the last Mohammedan 
 
 * Quotation from Ilolwell.
 
 42 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. dynasty ; that lie conquered the prince, not the country ; and 
 that, till we entered into it which is a certain mark that 
 it was not a conquered country in the sense in which we call 
 conquered the natives, great men and landholders, were in 
 every part in the possession of the country. It is true, 
 severe revenges were taken by the princes in that country, 
 which bore resemblance to the wars of the roses in this 
 country, where, in the heat of blood, the cry was, 
 
 " Off with his head so much for Buckingham !" 
 Yet, where the government ever took form and settlement, 
 whatever vigour was used with regard to the adventurers and 
 slaves of the emperor from Persia, Turkey, and all other parts, 
 
 The Hindus the Hindus were a favoured, protected, gently -treated, people. 
 This is the way in which it continued in the era of Tamer- 
 lane, and these are the principles upon which that empire 
 stood and was governed. 
 
 The next era is a troubled and vexatious era indeed, and 
 approaches near to what we have considered, which is the 
 
 Era of the era of the independent subahdars of that country. There 
 
 subahdars? w ere five of them, who governed from about the year 1717 
 or thereabouts. These viceroys grew into independence 
 partly by the dreadful calamities and concussions of that 
 empire, which happened during the disputes of the successors 
 of Tamerlane, and partly by the great concussion it received 
 when Akbar Khan entered into that country, and shook the 
 throne, and massacred almost all the principal inhabitants of 
 the country. Then the princes became independent : but 
 their independence led to their ruin. Those who had usurped 
 upon their masters had servants who usurped upon them ; 
 in the same way as Aliverdy Khan, who murdered his master 
 and let in a body of foreign invaders into that country, who 
 cruelly harassed the Mahrattas in a manner not to be ex- 
 pressed. By a sum which is supposed to amount to five 
 millions sterling he secured the exhausted remains of an 
 exhausted kingdom, and left it to his grandson Suraj-ud- 
 Dowla in peace and poverty : and Suraj-ud-Dowla in 1756 
 gave way to the era of the British empire. 
 
 All that I have to do with this dynasty, which makes the 
 fifth era that I have had the honour of stating to your Lord- 
 
 The Hindus ships, is, that the Hindus were everywhere found in posses- 
 unmolested. ' 
 
 g ' Qn Q f t j ie county - that though this cruel tyrant, this aban- 
 doned usurper, this man reduced to the extreme of neces- 
 sities by foreign invasions, racked and tormented, contrary to 
 duty, but urged through an apparent necessity from an army
 
 Speech of Mr, Burke. 43 
 
 of 100,000 horse being .in his dominions, the people under is FEB. nss. 
 
 him, yet still they remained still they preserved their rank, 
 
 their dignity, their castles, their houses, their seignories. 
 
 All the insignia of their situations, and the power and means 
 
 of subordinating their people, remained till the unfortunate 
 
 era of 1756. 
 
 So here I state that, through all these revolutions and 
 changes of circumstances, a Hindu policy and a Hindu go- 
 vernment existed in that country till given up finally to be 
 destroyed by Mr. Hastings. 
 
 Having gone through the history and come to that era Era .f 
 which is the era of the British power, and in which all Mr. power. 
 Hastings' education was had for he existed before that era ; 
 he was an antediluvian with regard to Bengal ; he was a 
 servant of the Company before that great revolution hap- 
 pened ; he was co-extensive with all the acts and all the 
 abuses, nnd had a large part in all the abuses, that happened 
 in that time to the moment of his government : but as in that 
 time all those abuses had their origin, you cannot thoroughly 
 understand the nature and circumstances of them without an - 
 explanation of all the events that happened from the year 
 1756 till Mr. Hastings' government if I find it agreeable to 
 your Lordships, if I find that you wish to know the annals 
 and horrible series of all the transactions from 1756 to the 
 period of Mr. Hastings' government, that you may know 
 how far he promoted what was good, how far he rectified 
 what was evil, how far he abstained from innovating, and 
 bringing in new mischiefs upon the country your Lord- 
 ships will have the goodness to consult the strength which 
 begins almost to fail me and, if you think the explanation 
 is not time lost in this new world and in this new business, 
 I shall venture to make out to your Lordships that eventful 
 history which preceded Mr. Hastings' government ; and then 
 we shall have a clear knowledge of the cause, of the descrip- 
 tions of people in the country, and a clear knowledge of all 
 that has happened abuseful in the country since Mr. Hast- 
 ings went into it ; and then we shall be able to enter fully 
 and explicitly into the nature of the cause. 
 
 Whether this is necessary or not I submit to your Lord- 
 ships. I thought it was. I poured out before the committee 
 my poor ideas upon the subject.* They were so good as to 
 
 * Reference is here made to speeches in committee of the House of Com- 
 mons, in June 1786 and April 1787, on motions for impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings on the articles of charge drawn up by Mr. Burke.
 
 44 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 . think such an explanation necessary. Their knowledge ena- 
 bles me to do it ; and I should rather hope that it will pave 
 the way and make everything easy for your subsequent 
 justice. 
 
 I therefore wish to stop at this period, in which Mr. Hast- 
 ings was alive, was active in the service, and pretty nearly 
 the time when he began his political career. And here, my 
 Lords, I pause, wishing your indulgence to follow, at such 
 time as will suit your convenience, for pursuing the rest of 
 this eventful history.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 45 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. 
 EDMUND BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE 
 OF COMMONS, IN OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT; 
 
 16 FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, In what I had the honour of laying before Distinction 
 your Lordships yesterday, and in what I may farther trouble explanatory 
 you with to-day, I trust and hope your Lordships will observe natory state- 
 a distinction, which if I did not lay down as perfectly as I mcnts - 
 ought yesterday, I hope I shall be able to mark it out 
 peculiarly and distinctly this day. 
 
 First, that which I shall think necessary to state as matter 
 of explanation, in order to give your Lordships a true idea 
 of the scene of action, of the instruments which Mr. Hastings 
 employed, and the effects that they produced that I wish to 
 be distinguished from matter brought to criminate. The 
 matter brought by me to criminate is in a great measure only 
 illustrative ; and your Lordships are to depend for the sub- 
 stantial part of the crimination upon the moment when the 
 evidence is going to be produced to you. 
 
 My Lords, with this caution, I wish to have it understood The crimes 
 that, when 1 have stated or shall hereafter state any historical affected by 
 matter, even that preliminary matter will lead perhaps historical 
 to a larger, fuller and more judicial, investigation tHan if facts - 
 the crimes should stand distinct from the previous facts. 
 For instance, if I stated yesterday to your Lordships as I 
 did the tyranny, cruelty and iniquity, of one of the 
 usurping viceroys, whose usurpation led the way to our 
 power, it is not that I charge Mr. Hastings with any part 
 of that guilt. What I charge Mr. Hastings with is, having 
 avowedly looked to such a man as his example and followed 
 him with a servile fidelity. When I have spoken as I have 
 endeavoured to lay down to your Lordships of anything 
 abusive or leading to abuse from its defects in the constitu- 
 tion of the Company's service, I have not meant to criminate 
 Mr. Hastings with any part of that, any farther than as he 
 used the weakness of the institution to let in his abuse of 
 the power with which he was entrusted. For instance, if I
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 16 FEB. 1788, 
 
 Glory of 
 punishing 
 abuse of 
 power. 
 
 Introduc- 
 tion of 
 British 
 power into 
 India. 
 
 Opportu- 
 nity of gain- 
 ing glory by 
 the govern- 
 ment of 
 India. 
 
 have stated that the general run of the service of the India 
 Company was weak in legal emolument and powerful in the 
 means of illegal emolument, I did not state that as a defect 
 owing to Mr. Hastings ; but I stated it as a crimination, 
 or leading to that crimination which we shall more particu- 
 larly bring before you, namely, that Mr. Hastings, taking 
 advantage of that defect, did fraudulently, corruptly, and 
 for the purposes of his own ambition, take advantage of it 
 under a pretended reformation, to make an illegal, partial, 
 corrupt, advance of emoluments to certain persons, even to 
 increasing the disorder of the rest of the service as well as 
 loading the Company with many expenses. 
 
 Having therefore wished your Lordships to keep steadily 
 in your minds these circumstances which I trust and hope 
 you would do, even without my taking the liberty of sug- 
 gesting it to you I shall beg leave to proceed to that period 
 at which I closed that great and memorable period which 
 has given occasion to the trial of this day a day which I 
 hope, for the honour of the justice of Great Britain, will 
 shine in the future annals of our history. 
 
 My Lords, to obtain empire has been a common thing ; to 
 govern it well has been more rare. But to chastise the guilt 
 of those who have abused the power of the country by the 
 high justice of it is, I hope, a glory more peculiarly reserved 
 to this nation, to this time, and to this house. 
 
 The year 1756 is a memorable era in the history of the 
 world. It introduced a new power, with new manners, new 
 customs, new opinions, new laws, into India; and it would 
 have been a beautiful, a brilliant, thing for the history of 
 this country if it had shown its virtue upon that occasion to 
 be altogether equal to its fortune. 
 
 My Lords, if in Asia, in that part of the country which 
 had its native government broken up, which had fallen into 
 a scene of contusion from being the prey and sport of the 
 infernal ambition of its own grandees, if at that time a star 
 had risen from the west that would have prognosticated 
 order, peace, happiness and security, to the natives of that 
 country and indeed something might have been expected 
 of the kind, when it was to come from a learned and 
 enlightened part of Europe, in the most enlightened period 
 of its time ; when it was to come from a nation the most 
 enlightened of the enlightened part of Europe it would have 
 oeen a great deal to say, that they came from the bosom of 
 a free country, which carried with it, at least, to a country
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 47 
 
 that had not the benefit of its forms, all the advantage of IOFEB-ITSS. 
 
 the liberty and spirit of the British constitution. It would 
 
 have been glorious to this country, and would have saved 
 
 the trouble of this day, in some measure at least, it would 
 
 have been glorious to us too, that, in an enlightened state of 
 
 the world, possessing a religion an improved form of the 
 
 best religion of the world I mean the reformed religion 
 
 we had done honour to Europe, to our laws, to our religion, 
 
 done honour to all the circumstances of which we boast 
 
 and pride ourselves, at the moment of that revolution. 
 
 My Lords, it has happened otherwise : it is now for us to 
 think how we are to repair it. And, therefore, resuming 
 where t broke off, with your indulgence to my weak- 
 ness, yesterday, I shall beg leave to restate to you that Of Suraj-mi- 
 Suraj-ud-Dowla was the adopted grandson of Aliverdy Nawab of 
 Khan, a cruel and ferocious tyrant, the manner of whose Ben s al - 
 acquisition of power I have stated. He came too young 
 and inexperienced to that throne of usurpation. It was a 
 usurpation yet green in the country ; the country felt 
 uneasy under it. It had not the advantage of that prescrip- 
 tive usage, that inveterate habit and opinion, which a long 
 system of any government secures to it. The only security 
 that it had was the security of an army. The prince of the 
 country had endeavoured to supply the weakness of his 
 government by the greatness of his purse and amassed 
 treasure. But, with all the more treasures they amassed, 
 the more they felt the effects of poverty. For putting the 
 money in the place of force, the consequences were that 
 their armies were unpaid ; and, being unpaid or weakly 
 paid, were undisciplined, disorderly and unfaithful. In 
 this situation, a young prince, confiding more in the appear- 
 ances than in the reality of things, undertook from motives 
 which the House of Commons, with all their industry to 
 discover the circumstances, have found some difficulty in 
 making out to attack a little miserable trading fort that we 
 had erected at Calcutta. He succeeded in that attempt, 
 because success in that attempt was easy ; and there 
 happened, in consequence of it, an imprisonment, not owing The black 
 I believe to the direct will of the prince, but what will Calcutta. 
 always happen when the will of the prince is but too much 
 the law that there was an abuse, a gross abuse, of his 
 power by his lowest servants, by which one hundred and 
 twenty or more of your countrymen perished miserably in a
 
 48 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 IG FBB^ITSS. dungeon in that place, by a story too tragical for me to tell, 
 too well known for me to need mention it. 
 
 of C Smi Siti i n When the event happened, there happened at the same 
 
 by the ' time a concurrence of other events which, in the midst of 
 that weakness, displayed the strength of Great Britain in 
 Asia. For some years before, upon the coast of Coroman- 
 del, the French and English troops began to exhibit the 
 power, force and efficacy, of European discipline in that 
 part of the world ; and, as we daily looked for a war with 
 France, the country was to a degree armed there. Accord- 
 ingly, my Lord Pigot, the preserver and the victim of the 
 British dominion in Asia, detached a strong force such of 
 the Company's force as could be collected and such of His 
 Majesty's ships as were on that station to the assistance of 
 that place. And accordingly to make short of this history 
 the daring and commanding genius of a Clive, the patient, 
 firm ability of a "Watson, the treachery of Mir Jaffier, 
 and the battle of Plassy, gave us the patronage of a king- 
 dom an d the command of all its treasures. We negotiated 
 
 Bengal. w jth ]\|j r J a ffi erj the viceroy, for the throne of his master ; 
 upon which throne we seated him, and obtained immediately 
 immense sums of money a million sterling for the Company, 
 upwards of a million for individuals in the whole, a sum of 
 about two millions three hundred thousand, for various 
 purposes, from the prince of the country. We obtained too 
 the town of Calcutta more completely than we had it, and 
 the twenty-four districts adjoining; which was the first 
 small seminal principle of the great territorial acquisitions 
 we since made in India. 
 
 Many circumstances of this acquisition I pass by. There 
 is a secret veil to be drawn over the beginnings of all govern- 
 ments. They had their origin as the beginning of all such 
 things have had in some matters that had as good be 
 covered by obscurity. Time, in the origin of most govern- 
 ments, has drawn this mysterious veil over them. Prudence 
 and discretion make it necessary to draw something of that 
 veil over a business in which otherwise the fortune, the 
 genius, the talents and military virtue, of this nation never 
 shone more conspicuously. But a wise nation, when it has 
 made a revolution itself and upon its own principles, there 
 rests. The first step is revolution to give it power ; the 
 next is good laws, good order, to give it stability. I am 
 sorry to say that the principle upon which the gentlemen in
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 49 
 
 India acted, at that time, was such as tended to make the 
 new government as unstable as possible. For, by the vast 
 sums of money acquired by individuals upon this occasion revolution 
 the immense, sudden, prodigious, fortunes it was discovered i>y servants 
 
 > , - \y -i of the Corn- 
 
 that a revolution in .Bengal was a mine much more easily pany. 
 
 worked and infinitely more productive than the mines of 
 Potosi and Mexico. But they found that the work was, not 
 only very lucrative, but not at all difficult. While Clive 
 forded a deep water upon an unknown bottom, he left a 
 bridge for his successors over which the lame could hobble 
 and the blind might grope their way. There was not at 
 that time a knot of clerks in a counting-house, there was not 
 a captain of a band of ragged topases, that looked for any- 
 thing less than the deposition of subahdars and the sale of 
 kingdoms. Accordingly, this revolution, that ought to have 
 precluded other revolutions, unfortunately became fruitful of 
 them; and, when my Lord Clive returned to Europe, to 
 enjoy his fame and fortune in this country, there arose 
 another set of people, who thought a revolution upon that 
 revolution might be made as lucrative to them as this was 
 to the first projectors. Accordingly, scarce was this Mir 
 Jaffier seated upon his throne than they immediately, or in a 
 short time, projected another revolution a revolution which 
 was to unsettle all the former revolution, to make way for 
 new wars and disturbances, and for that train of peculation 
 which ever since has vexed and oppressed that country. 
 
 My Lords, there was in the house of Mir Jaffier. in his intrigues of 
 
 -i r ! M n i ... f, Gossim Ali 
 
 court and in his tamuy, a man ot a daring, intriguing, tero- Khan. 
 cious, subtle, bloody, character, called Cossim Ali Khan, 
 who was the son-in-law of Mir Jaffier, and who made no 
 other use of his approximation, of his nearness of affinity, to 
 his father, but to endeavour to dethrone him and to murder 
 him. He was an instrument fit for the persons who under- 
 took this second mercenary revolution ; which could not be 
 covered with the smallest plausible appearance of advantage 
 or necessity, from the discovery of any faults or infirmities 
 that might have been in the first revolution. This wicked 
 man was not long without finding persons who observed his 
 talents with admiration, and who thought fit to employ him. 
 
 To give your Lordships an idea of the persons and the Coim AH 
 state of things, I have first stated who Cossim Ali Khan ^firfHot 
 was ; I will now state the other parties. Mr. Holwell was other in a 
 by seniority, not appointment, at the head of the Presidency, { J / .^ tf \ c t V( r " 
 and waited for the coming of Mr. Vansittart. He con- Jainer."
 
 50 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 16 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Constitu- 
 tion of the 
 Council of 
 Calcutta. 
 
 Revolution 
 planned by 
 the secret 
 Council. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings the 
 Resident at 
 the Nawab's 
 court. 
 
 Parties 
 concerned 
 in the re- 
 volution. 
 
 sidered himself, and was considered by others, as only tem- 
 porarily in that place ; but he was therefore resolved to make 
 good use of his time. The terrible example of the black hole 
 at Calcutta had not cured him of ambition. He had deter- 
 mined upon another revolution. But at the same time, he 
 had in his Council Mr. Sumner and Mr. Macguire. The 
 Council was divided, for the convenience and arrangement of 
 busine&o, into two parts ; one the Council in general, the 
 other a select committee, which they had arranged for the 
 better carrying on their political affairs. But the select com- 
 mittee had no power of acting wholly without r the Council, 
 at least finally and conclusively. The committee thought 
 otherwise: but between these litigant parties for power I 
 shall not determine, thinking of nothing but troubling your 
 Lordships with the use that was made of it. This secret 
 Council then, without communicating with the rest of the 
 Council, formed the plan for a second and entirely mercenary 
 revolution. The persons that I have stated [were] of the 
 Council ; [and, besides] these, General Calliaud, that now is 
 he was then a major who commanded in the fort for the 
 British troops was a person high in situation, and by his 
 situation might claim a seat in the Council. There was a 
 young gentleman, Mr. Warren Hastings, at that time Kesi- 
 dent at the court of Ali Khan, then allied to this country 
 under the most solemn treaties that can bind men, and for 
 which he had paid and was then paying immense sums of 
 money. This Mr. Warren Hastings was the pledge in his 
 hands for the honour of the British nation and their fidelity 
 to their engagements, in the place of Resident at his court. 
 
 These are the parties which were concerned in the revolu- 
 tion. Mr. Hoi well seems to have been the first suggester,. 
 mover, and most active person in it. Mr. Sumner followed 
 him in the Council. Mr. Macguire concurred and co- 
 operated. But they could do nothing by themselves; for 
 force was necessary to effect this revolution, and Major 
 Calliaud was necessary to this force. Treachery was neces- 
 sary to effect it, and Warren Hastings was necessary to 
 accomplish that treachery. Major Calliaud was the General 
 in the field. Mr. Holwell considered himself only as in 
 possession of temporary power, as he was waiting for Mr. 
 Yansittart ; but he was urged strongly that, if Mr. Yansittart 
 should come before his plot could be finally put into execution,, 
 he would have all the prior advantages of it, and Mr. Hol- 
 well be considered only as a secondary instrument ; and
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 5 1 
 
 therefore Mr. Hoi well, who originally conceived this plan 
 as far as the House of Commons were able to discover 
 wished to carry this plan into execution before the arrival of 
 Mr. Vansittart. But Major Calliaud wished to keep it back. Efforts of 
 He concurred inwardly, as he tells ns himself, in all the cailiaud to 
 principles of this revolution, in the propriety and necessity of thf^evolu- 
 it ; but he did not choose to undertake it till Mr. Vansittart tion< 
 should arrive, who was to be the permanent Governor ; who 
 was to give weight, firmness and character, to the whole. 
 And accordingly, while Mr. Holvvell endeavoured by his 
 correspondence to stimulate him forward to this enterprise, 
 which without him could not be undertaken at all, he gave 
 him such reasons, not for postponing, but for totally abandon- 
 ing that enterprise, showing the futility, the injustice and 
 the danger, of it, and the impossibility of mending their 
 condition in any respect by it, as must have damned it in 
 the minds of all rational men whatever : at least, it ought to 
 for ever have damned it in his own. But you will see they 
 persevered in this plan, and that General Calliaud I call 
 him so now from his present situation ; but, Major or Colonel 
 Calliaud thought two things necessary ; first, not wholly 
 to destroy the scheme, which he tells us he always approved, 
 but to postpone it, and in the meantime to delude the Nawab 
 by the most strong, direct and sanguine, assurances of friend- 
 ship and protection that it was possible to give to a man. 
 
 At this time and I go into the circumstances of this Reasons for 
 revolution the more fully because they not only open a the^ircuim- 
 
 mischievous licence to the servants of the Company, in shaking stances of 
 11 11=1 i i J , tlie revolu- 
 
 all establishments the most permanent and most guaranteed tion. 
 
 by the Company's faith, but because they show at the same 
 time the perfidy, the fraud and treachery, with which they 
 are accompanied ; they show a suppression of correspondence, 
 and the bold, assuming, contradiction to the orders of their 
 superiors ; because they show the collusive practices, 
 the mock trials and the scandalous acquittals, and finally 
 the general collusive decision of the East India Company 
 upon the worst transactions, and that which they have 
 most condemned in their service ; it is for that reason 
 - whilst this event stood suspended, whilst Mr. Hoi- 
 well urged it forward, and Mr. Vansittart was expected 
 every day to give it effect if he would give it effect there 
 happened such an event, which gives such light into the 
 w r hole proceeding, that your Lordships will not blame me 
 when you have heard it for dilating it more fully and 
 
 I) 2
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 16 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Story of the 
 three seals. 
 
 TheNawab's 
 son, Mecran. 
 
 Design of 
 the Nawab 
 to murder 
 the Shah- 
 zada com- 
 municated 
 to Gen oral 
 Calliaud. 
 
 particularly, and bringing it before you from beginning to 
 end ; stopping the narrative of the revolution that you may 
 see the whole together, that by it you may judge of the 
 state and condition things were in, in the country, when 
 Mr. Hastings was sent for the express purpose of reforming 
 that state. 
 
 The business is commonly known by the story of the three 
 seals. It is in the Appendix No. 10 to the First Report of 
 the state and condition of the East India Company, made in 
 1773. But the word Report is sometimes a little equivocal, 
 and may signify sometimes what is not reported but remains 
 in obscurity. For most people and I may, among them, take 
 shame to myself have not examined to the end all the 
 Appendix ; and it is not till within this year that I have been 
 thoroughly acquainted with the story of that memorable 
 history of the three seals. 
 
 The story is this ; that, while they were in the camp, and 
 this negotiation for the destruction of the Nawab of Bengal 
 was going on, the Nawab's son, Meeran a youth in the 
 flower of his age, bold, vigorous and active, and full of the 
 politics which those who deal in usurpations never are 
 wanting in commanded the army at this time. About the 
 15th of April, 1762, the Nawab himself, exactly what time 
 before I cannot say, was at the camp in which his son acted as 
 Commander-in-chief, and in which General Calliaud, underhim, 
 acted as commander of the auxiliary forces for the Company. 
 On that day, the 15th of April for I am to tell it from the 
 parties themselves concerned the Nawab came into the tent 
 cf General Calliaud, and, with a countenance of the utmost 
 embarrassment, big with something that was too large and 
 burdensome to conceal and yet too critical to be told, appeared 
 to be in great distraction. The General, seeing him under 
 this embarrassment, kindly, gently, like a fast and sure 
 friend, employed (to use his own expression) forms of those 
 assurances that tend to make men fully open their hearts. 
 And accordingly, fortified by his assurances, and willing to 
 disburden himself of this secret that oppressed him, he opens 
 his heart to the commanding officer of his new friends, allies 
 and protectors ; and he tells him, too, I should mention to 
 your Lordships which I ought to have mentioned before 
 that the present Emperor of the Moguls, at this time then 
 the prince royal, called Shah-zada, that is, the King's son 
 escaping from the confinement of his father, had put himself 
 at the head of several chiefs, and had penetrated into tlie
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 53 
 
 province of Behar in considerable force ; and against those par- 
 ties [they] were then in war. Whether they ought to have 
 been so or no is not now the question but there they 
 were in war. The Nawab informed General Calliaud 
 that he had received a message from the Prince or Shah- 
 zada's principal minister, informing him that he had 
 an intention as indeed well he might, supposing that we 
 were as well disposed to him as we showed ourselves 
 afterwards to surrender himself into the hands of him, the 
 Nawab ; but at the same time wished for a guarantee that 
 the Commander-in-chief of the English forces should give 
 him security for his life and his honour, when he had in that 
 manner surrendered himself to the Nawab. I do not mean 
 by surrendering, surrendering himself prisoner of war, but 
 as a sovereign would to his faithful subjects and to those 
 persons who claimed to derive under his power. Accordingly, 
 he stated to the General that, without this security, the Prince 
 would not deliver himself into his hands, but that he had a 
 farther view that, when the Prince had delivered himself into 
 his hands, his intention was in plain terms to murder him ; 
 which act could not be accomplished without the General. Hisappii- 
 For, in the first place, the Prince without his security would General* 
 not deliver himself into his hands, and without his con- ^\sixacc 1 
 currence he could not be murdered. These were difficulties 
 that pressed upon the mind of the Nawab. The General 
 heard this astonishing proposition without any apparent or 
 considerable emotion, being a man habituated to great affairs, 
 versed in revolutions and with a mind fortified against grand 
 events ; and he heard it and answered it Avithout showing 
 any signs of abhorrence or detestation, but at the same time 
 with protestations that he would serve the Nawab, but it 
 should be upon such terms as honour and justice could 
 support. And he told him that an assurance for the Prince 
 could not be given by him, till he had consulted Mr. Holwell, 
 who was then Governor at Calcutta, 
 
 This conversation passed in the morning. On the day of that The propo- 
 morning General Calliaud writes to Mr. Holwell an account to'/ir^HoK 
 of this conversation and of this proposition ; and says that he wel1 - 
 made an inquiry, without stating from whom, but inquired 
 from some persons, who assured him that there was no pro- 
 bability of the Prince's intention to deliver himself to him at 
 all. However, the whole transaction of the morning of the 
 15th of April was not very discouraging to the Nawab ; not 
 such as would induce him to quit, and to consider this most
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 16 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Proposal of 
 the diwan 
 of a chief 
 in the 
 Mogul's 
 service to 
 deliver him 
 into the 
 Company's 
 hands or 
 murder him 
 
 Agreed to 
 by General 
 Calliaud. 
 
 Seals to the 
 agreement. 
 
 detestable of all propositions as a thing utterly unfeasible. 
 General Calliaud came that evening to his tent, to arrange 
 some matters relative to the subsequent campaign. There 
 the business soon ended with regard to the subsequent 
 campaign: but the business of the morning was resumed 
 in another form, and then the persons stated it as it was 
 first represented ; and your Lordships will see what alterations 
 were made in it afterwards. 
 
 In the evening scene the persons were General Calliaud, 
 Mr. Lushington, Mr. Knox and Warren Hastings. On the 
 part of the Nawab, himself, his son, a Persian munshi and his 
 head spy, an officer well known in that part of the country. 
 And these were the persons in this drama in the evening 
 scene. When the Nawab revived his proposition, the Prince 
 surrendering himself into his hand was a point he no longer 
 stated : so that one act of treachery is saved to him. But 
 another happened of a much more extraordinary kind ; 
 which is, that a person called Conery, who was diwan or 
 principal steward to [Camgar Khan, a chief in the service 
 of the]* Prince, now the great Mogul a sovereign under 
 whom the Company holds their charter of this country- 
 had made a proposition that if this territory a large and 
 considerable territory held by his master was assured to 
 him, and he assured a payment upon the perpetration of his 
 act of a lac of rupees ten or twelve thousand pounds he 
 would for that consideration deliver the Mogul alive into 
 their hands, if he could ; or, if not, that he would murder 
 him for this reward. This proposition was made to the 
 English commander : what discourse happened upon it is a 
 little uncertain. Mr. Hastings is stated here to have acted 
 as interpreter in that scene. General Calliaud agreed to it 
 without any difficulty: and, accordingly, an instrument was 
 drawn by the Persian munshi, who was in the place, 
 securing to the party the reward of this wicked, perfidious 
 and murderous, act. Accordingly, first the Nawab put his 
 own seal to it; the Nawab's son, Meeran, put his seal to it ; 
 the third seal was wanting it was not present. But 
 Mr. Lushington was sent, near half a mile, to come and put 
 it to it ; and, accordingly, the instrument was accomplished. 
 The three seals were put to it ; and it was known by the 
 business or the affair of the three seals. 
 
 This business of the three seals, by some means not quite 
 
 * Eevised copy.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 55 
 
 fully explained, but, as suspected by the parties, by means is FED. 178?. 
 of the information of Mr. Holwell, who came home, was conduct of 
 conveyed to the ears of the court of Directors ; and the j,ny ^?th 
 court of Directors declared and wrote out, under the date t^fflfr of 
 of the 7th of October, 1761 which was within a little more thethree 
 than a year of this extraordinary transaction that, in con- ^ 
 junction with the Nawab, General Calliaud had signed a 
 paper offering a reward of a lac of rupees, or some such 
 sum, to several black persons for the assassination of Shah- 
 zada, which paper was offered to the then chief of Patna 
 to sign, but which he refused as a most infamous measure : 
 and, accordingly, it appearing to be so, the India Company 
 ordered a strict inquiry to be made into this, which it con- 
 sidered as a most infamous measure. But the India Com- 
 pany, who did their duty with apparent manliness and vigour, 
 were resolved to do it in a manner that could not procure 
 any serious mischief. For the commission of inquiry they 
 directed to the very clan and set of people who were in awe 
 of one another ; namely, in effect, to the persons themselves. 
 And therefore, without a prosecutor, without a director, 
 they left it to those persons to try one another for their 
 common act. And here, coming upon the principle which 
 I wish to mark to your Lordships the manner of the col- 
 lusive trials and collusive acquittals in this business when 
 this matter came to be examined before the Council, which inquiry into 
 was on the 4th of October, 1762, the Council then consisted actionby" 
 of Peter Maguire, Warren Hastings and Hugh Watts. theCouncU - 
 Mr. Hastings had by this time accomplished the business of 
 the place, and had taken the seat to which his seniority 
 intitled him, I believe, in the Council. But here a difficulty 
 arose in limine ; that Mr. Hastings, who is represented to Difficulty 
 
 V. 1 \ -LI iT C.t. with respect 
 
 have acted as interpreter in this business, was not a nt per- toMr.Hast- 
 son to sit as a judge in the affair. It likewise appeared as^ad^e m 
 that there might be some objection to some of the witnesses. theatfair - 
 For with respect to Mr. Lushington, who might have been 
 concerned in that occasion, there were two circumstances 
 unlucky ; he had put his seal to it, and he, it seems, had 
 made an affidavit at Patna that he had put his seal and that 
 Warren Hastings was interpreter in that transaction. The 
 question was how to get the interpreter out of his interpre- 
 tation and to put him upon the seat of judgment. Why, the 
 manner in which it was effected was something curious; it 
 was this that Mr. Lushington, who by this time was got 
 completely over, was, as he himself tells you, by conferences
 
 5 6 Open ing of the Impca cli ment : 
 
 with General Calliaucl and by arguments and reasons by 
 him delivered, persuaded to unsay his swearing ; to declare 
 that he believed that that affidavit which he made before and 
 while the transaction was recent, or nearly recent, must be a 
 mistake ; that he believed that not Mr. Hastings but he him- 
 self interpreted. In a company [an interval?] no larger than 
 that, Mr. Lushington therefore completely loses his memory, 
 accepts a given, an offered, memory [offered] to him by a 
 party in the transaction ; and Mr. Hastings is at once put 
 into the capacity of a judge, and declared not to have been 
 an interpreter in the transaction. Mr. Hastings is himself 
 examined, and what your Lordships will look at at your 
 Hastiugs. ' leisure, and consider as a pattern of inquiries of this kind 
 Mr. Hastings is examined and he does not recollect he 
 thinks he was not there ; for that, if he had been there and 
 acted as interpreter, he could not have forgot it. And there- 
 fore, upon that kind of answer given by Mr. Hastings (I 
 think it is pretty nearly as I state it : if I have fallen into 
 any error or inaccuracy it is easily rectified ; for here is the 
 state of the transaction given by the parties themselves), he, 
 upon this inaccurate memory of his not venturing to say 
 positively that he was not the interpreter, that he was not 
 there, is discharged from being an accomplice. He is removed 
 from the bar and sits upon the seat of judgment. Then 
 ,, General Calliaud comes manfully forward to make his 
 
 aud - - * r -r i . -./vi-ii 
 
 defence of defence. Mr. Lushington is taken oft his back; and no 
 
 his conduct . i , /-i , TT- -\- -PI 
 
 in the affair one person remains but Captain Ivnox. JN o\v, ir he was 
 ofthe three t here and assenting, he is an accomplice too. Captain Knox 
 is made to say though General Calliaud does not quite 
 believe him Captain Knox is made to say that he said it 
 was a pity to cut off so fine a young fellow in such a man- 
 ner ; meaning that fine young fellow the Prince, the de- 
 scendant of Tamerlane, the present reigning Mogul, from 
 whom the Company derive their present charter. 
 
 The defence that was set up by General Calliaud was this 
 that he was apprehensive that the Nawab was alarmed at 
 the violent designs that were formed against him by Mr. 
 Holwell, and that therefore, to quiet his mind with an 
 opiate made up of murder and treason it's an odd kind 
 of mind he had that was to be quieted by such means but, 
 to quiet his mind and show that they were willing to go all 
 lengths with him and sell body and soul to him, he put his 
 seal to this extraordinary agreement he put his seal to this 
 wonderful paper. He likewise stated that he was of opinion
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 57 
 
 that nothing at all could happen from it ; that no such i<5 FEB.ITSS. 
 murder was likely to take place, whatever might be the 
 intention of the parties ; and that, in fact, he had very 
 luckily said in a letter of his, wrote the day after the setting 
 the seal, " I think nothing will come of this matter, but it 
 is no harm to try." This experimental treachery and these 
 essays of conditional murder appeared to him good enough to 
 make a trial of; but, at the same time, he was afraid nothing 
 would come of it. And, in general, the whole point is to 
 persist that his mind is clear " my hands are guilty, but 
 my heart is free." He conceived that it was very improper 
 undoubtedly to do such an act, if he suspected anything 
 could happen from it. But, however, he let the thing out 
 of his hands, put it into the hands of others, and he put the 
 commission into the hands of a murderer. This was brought 
 before them. But his extenuation was the purity of his heart, 
 the bad situation of the Company's affairs the perpetual 
 plea in such situations, which your Lordships are to hear 
 of and will hear of for ever : and, if it will justify evil 
 actions that prodigality will betray people into difficulties, 
 and that those difficulties will justify nefarious and wicked 
 acts if your Lordships are as indulgent (which I am sure, 
 with all your goodness, you will not be) as this inquisition, 
 trying their accomplices and friends, your Lordships will have 
 little to do in this business. But he calls upon his life, his 
 character, and all those things, to oppose to his seal ; and, 
 accordingly, upon these declarations and upon declaring that 
 ]Nlr. Holwell had intended ill to the Nawab, and, though he 
 approved of these, but only postponed them, yet he thought 
 it necessary to quiet the fears of the Nawab ; that, from this 
 motive, he did an act abhorrent to his nature, and which, he 
 gays, he expressed his abhorrence of the morning after he 
 signed it not that he did; but, if he had, I believe it 
 would only have made the thing so many degrees worse : 
 (Your Lordships will observe that, in this conference, as 
 stated by himself, those reasons and apologies for it did not 
 appear, neither in the letter nor anywhere else, till next year, 
 when he came upon his trial. Then it was immediately 
 recollected that Mr. HolwelFs designs w T ere so wicked 
 they certainly must be known to the Nawab, though he never 
 mentioned them in the conference of the morning or the 
 evening of the 15th ; yet, such was the weight and prevalence 
 of them upon his mind, that he calls upon Mr. Hast- 
 ings to know whether the Nawab was not informed of
 
 58 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 iG FEB. 1788. those designs of Mr. Hoi well against him. Mr. Hastings' 
 
 memory was not quite correct upon the occasion. He does 
 
 not recollect anything of the matter. He certainly seems not 
 
 to think that he ever mentioned it to the Nawab, or the Nawab 
 
 to him ; but he does recollect, he thinks, speaking something 
 
 to some of the Nawab's attendants upon it and further this 
 
 ofthe uti n d e P on ent sayeth not) upon this state of things, namely, 
 
 Council on the purity of intention, the necessities of the Company, the 
 
 of General propriety of keeping the Nawab in perfect good humour and 
 
 M ' removing suspicions from his mind which suspicions he had 
 
 never expressed they came to the resolution I shall have the 
 
 honour to read to you : " That the representation given in 
 
 the said defence of the state of the affairs of the country at 
 
 that time " that is, about the month of April, 1760 "is 
 
 true and just " that is, the bad state of the country ; that 
 
 we shall consider hereafter ; " that in such circumstances, 
 
 the Nabob's urgent account of his o\vn distresses, the Colonel's 
 
 desire of making him easy " for here is a recapitulation 
 
 of the whole defence 
 
 "The Colonel's desire of making him easy, as the first thing necessary 
 for the good of the service, and the suddenness of the thing proposed, 
 might deprive him for a moment of his recollection, and surprise him into 
 a measure which, as to the measure itself, he could not approve. That 
 such only were the motives which did or could influence Colonel Calliaud 
 to assent to the proposal is fully evinced by the deposition of Captain 
 Knox and Mr. Lushington. That his conscience, at the time, never 
 reproached him with a bad design." 
 
 Your Lordships have heard of the testimony of a person to 
 his own conscience ; but the testimony of another man to 
 one's conscience this is the first time, I believe, it ever 
 appeared in a judicial proceeding. It is better to say 
 "My conscience acquits me of it ;" but they declare that " his 
 conscience never reproached him with a bad design, and there- 
 fore, upon the whole, we are satisfied that his intention was 
 good, though he erred in the measure." 
 
 The Nawab I beg to state one thing that escaped me, that is, that the 
 
 nofel - 11 " l Nawab, who was one of the parties to the design, was at that 
 
 amined. |' me a gort o f prisoner or an exile at Calcutta; that his 
 
 munshi was there, or might have been had ; and that his 
 
 spy was likewise there ; and that they who were parties to 
 
 this transaction were never called to an account for it in any 
 
 sense or in any degree, or to show how far it was necessary 
 
 Observa- to reconcile it to his mind. But the good court of Directors, 
 
 conduct of 6 who were so easily satisfied, so ready to condemn at the first 
 
 toTs Direc " proposition and so ready afterwards to acquit, not only
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 59 
 
 acquitted in the manner mentioned before, disapproving 
 measure but receiving the testimony of his conscience, but 
 they take up the ground and honourably acquit him, and 
 give him a testimony that the whole arose from fidelity and 
 zeal in their service. 
 
 The great end and purpose for which I produce this to Collusion of 
 
 -T -i t . i i i f i the parties. 
 
 your Lordships, is to show you the necessity there is tor other 
 inquiries othertrials otheracquittals of parties than those 
 made by a collusive clan ; the Directors requiring the parties 
 to inquire of themselves and to take the testimony of the con- 
 sciences of the parties, at second hand, respecting acts which 
 neither they nor any man living can look upon but with horror. 
 
 These proceedings I mention as one piece of unbroken 
 continuity, in order to see in what an horrible condition our 
 government stood at the end of 1761, when Mr. Hastings 
 began his political campaign. 
 
 The story of the three seals, interrupted for a while 
 though it was a continuity of the business. For it was 
 stated to accomplish one necessary part of the plot ; which 
 wa^, to lull the Xawab into perfect security of the designs 
 that were carrying on against him. Ko\v the plan proceeds, continua- 
 They continued in the camp. But there was another remora ; tory of the 
 because business of this kind is not easily got rid of. To P lot t0 .- 
 
 >. . move the 
 
 remove a Aawab and to create a revolution is not easy. Nawab. 
 Houses are strong who have eldest sons grown up, with 
 vigour and fit for the command of armies in them. They 
 are likewise not easily overturned in the principal unless 
 the secondary person is got rid of. But this plan now 
 began that is, about the month of July to get into great 
 ripeness and forwardness ; General Calliaud urging forward ; 
 Mr. Vansittart hourly expected ; the thing going on in a 
 happy way, if this remora could be removed. Things were 
 going on in a happy way, in the business, and so they state. 
 
 I do not know whether I am going to state a thing 
 though it is upon the records which will not look to have 
 too theatrical an appearance for the grave state in which we 
 are ; but here they are, recorded by the parties themselves 
 the difficulties, the knots, and solution, [as they] occurred 
 in this affair. For the bargain was to be made with this 
 person this bold, desperate, designing, man, Cossim Ali Objects of 
 Khan, who aimed at everything and who scrupled nothing Khali? 
 in attaining what he aimed at. His point was to be ap- 
 pointed during the life of Jaffier Ali [his lieutenant], with a 
 design of murdering him, though to get possession of his
 
 60 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 C FEB. 1788. 
 
 Strange 
 death of the 
 Nawab'sson, 
 Meeran. 
 
 . Death of 
 Meeran at- 
 tributed to 
 Cossim All 
 and his 
 English con- 
 federates. 
 
 "office under the name of his lieutenant ; which lieutenancy, 
 according to many usages of that country, especially if sup- 
 ported by power, totally supersedes the authority of the first 
 magistrate, renders him a cypher in his hand, and gives the 
 administration of his affairs and his troops to the lieutenant. 
 It was a part of his plan that he was, after his present 
 lieutenancy, to be named to the succession of the Nawab, 
 [who had] several other children. But this eldest son stood 
 in the way in succession. To be successor to the Nawab 
 such was the condition of this obligation. 
 
 There happened just in this time of difficulty the most 
 extraordinary event that I believe is recorded in history. 
 This Prince, lying asleep in his tent, suddenly, without any 
 one's knowing it, without any alarm or menace in the heavens 
 that ever was heard or mentioned, without any one whatever 
 being hurt or even alarmed in the camp, is killed with a flash 
 of lightning.* My Lords, thus was the Gordian knot cut. 
 The Prince dies of this flash of lightning ; and Mr. Lushing- 
 ton, of whom you have heard, comes in the morning, with 
 his hair standing erect, comes frightened into the presence of 
 General Calliaud, and, with the utmost alarm, tells him of a 
 circumstance that was afterwards to give them so much 
 pleasure. The alarm was immediately communicated : the 
 General was seized with the same fright, and, fearing that 
 the army should mutiny upon the death of their chief, it was 
 contrived (in a manner that I believe has been the most 
 difficult to contrive) that what would have given the general 
 alarm was concealed, by the ability, the good conduct and 
 dexterity, of General Calliaud, for seven days together, till 
 he led the army out of the place of danger and got them out 
 of all the torpidity that would have followed such an act. 
 Thus a judgment fell upon one of the intentional murderers 
 in the scene. This man, who was probably guilty both in 
 his conscience and act, thus fell by that most lucky, providen- 
 tial and most useful, flash of lightning. 
 
 There were at that time, it seems, in Calcutta a wicked, 
 
 * The following note by Mr. Burke occurs in the MS. " Colonel Ironside 
 has since informed Mr. Burke that there was a violent storm of thunder, 
 lightning and rain, on that night. Mr. Stables informed him of the same ; but 
 with less certainty as to the precise day. So there seems to be an error in this 
 statement. But General Calliaud's own narrative before the select committee 
 in 1773 makes no mention of this storm, and it was on that authority that the 
 above statement was made. Many believed at that time (as appears by that re- 
 port) that the Nawab had been murdered probably by some emissaries of 
 Cossim Ali Khan."
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 61 
 
 sceptical set of people who, somehow or other, believed that i6FEu.i7ss. 
 human agency was concerned in this ; and so they dissemi- 
 nated things which I am sure I do not mean to charge or 
 prove, leaving the effect of things to you very dishonourable, 
 I believe, to Cossim Ali Khan in the business, and to some 
 Englishmen who were concerned: but they did disseminate 
 such notions of which I have no sort of proof. And there it 
 remains ; and thus the difficulty of the parties, namely, the 
 getting rid of Meeran, was removed by the interposition of 
 heaven. 
 
 Then Mr. Vansittart comes upon the stage. I verily character 
 believe he was a man of good intentions, and rather de- 1^^ an 
 bauchcd by that amazing flood of iniquity that prevailed at 
 that time hurried and carried away with it. In a few days 
 they sent for General Calliaud, all whose objections vanish 
 in an instant Like that flash of lightning, everything is 
 instant. The General agrees to take his part. They send for 
 Cossim Ali Khan and Mr. Hastings; they open a treaty 
 with him and conclude it with him, and leave the manage- 
 ment of it to two persons, Mr. Holwell and another person Manage- 
 we have heard of, an Armenian, called Coja Petruse. They revolution 6 
 are Christians, but he is, according to their way of calling, tHi^Ho!- 
 called Coja Petruse; a person who afterwards played his^'and 
 part in another illustrious scene. By this Petruse [and] truse. 
 Mr. Holwell the matter is settled. The moment Mr. Holwell 
 is raised to be a secretary of state the revolution is accom- 
 plished. By it Cossim Ali Khan is to have the succession of Object of 
 
 i i T ii i , i i ^ the rcvolu- 
 
 the present lieutenancy ; everything is put into his hands ; tion. 
 and he is to make for it large concessions, which you will 
 hear of afterwards, to the Company. Cossim Ali Khan pro- Proposal of 
 posed what would have been no bad supplement to the flash t^rn'mfcr 
 of lightning he proposed to Holwell to murder the Xawab. thu Nawa!) - 
 But Holwell was a man of too much honour and conscience 
 to suffer that. He flew out in an instant at it, and declared 
 the whole would stop unless the affair of the murder was 
 given over. But if he gave him over to an intended mur- 
 derer, and delivered his person, treasure and everything, 
 into his hands, Cossim Ali Khan might have had no great 
 reason to complain of being left to the execution of his own 
 projects in his own way. Accordingly, when it was settled, 
 the treaty was made. The treaty amounted to this ; that Conditions 
 
 * / cntorcu into 
 
 the Company was to receive three great provinces : for with Cossim 
 here, as you go, you will have an opportunity of observing, "
 
 62 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 IB FEB. ires, with the progress of these plots, one thing which has constantly 
 and uniformly pervaded the whole of the Company's projects, 
 and which [their servants?] have avowed as a principle of their 
 action that they were first to take care of the Company's 
 interest, then of their own ; that is, first to secure to the 
 Company an enormous bribe, and, under the shadow of that, 
 to take all the little emoluments they could to themselves. 
 There were three great, rich, maritime or nearly maritime, 
 southern provinces, B[urdwan], M[idnapore], and C[hitta- 
 gong], great, rich, powerful, provinces, to be dissevered from 
 the subah and to be given to the Company. There were 
 other minor stipulations, which it is not necessary at present 
 to trouble you with, signed, sealed and executed, at Calcutta 
 between these parties, with the greatest possible secrecy. 
 The lieutenancy and the succession were secured to him 
 [Cossim Ali Khan], and he was likewise to give somewhere 
 about the sum of 200,0007. to the gentlemen who were con- 
 cerned, as a reward for serving him so effectually and for 
 serving their country so well. And, accordingly, upon these 
 stipulations, actually or so understood, but which were 
 effected, Mr. Hastings being then at the durbar and having 
 npon a the S everything prepared and the ground smoothed, a commission 
 xawab ; and o f delegation, consisting chiefly of Mr. Vansittart and General 
 revolution? Calliaud, went up into the country, and there, upon the pre- 
 tence of a visit from the Governor to pay his devotions to the 
 Nawab, and at the same time to pay the respects which a 
 new Governor coming into place would do, and to get him 
 respect, in a manner, the detail of which it is not necessary 
 to trouble you with, first endeavoured to persuade the Nawab 
 to deliver himself in this way to deliver over the power so 
 negotiated for into the hands of their friend Cossim Ali 
 Khan. But when the man, frightened out of his wits at it, 
 asked, " What is it he has bid for me?" and added to it, 
 " I will give half as much again to save myself; pray let me 
 know what my price is?" he desired in vain. They were 
 true, firm and faithful, to their word and their engagement : 
 they were resolved he should be delivered into the hand of 
 Cossim Ali. He surrenders at once the whole to him. 
 They grasp at it in a moment. He throws himself into a 
 boat : will not stay at home an hour ; but hurries down 
 to Calcutta, to leave his blood at our door if we had a 
 mind to take it. But it was too good a stake partly for 
 the good behaviour of Cossim Ali Khan that the Nawab
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 63 
 
 should be destroyed, or left in the hands of a man who ie FEB. irss. 
 would murder him. Cossim Ali Khan was very angry at 
 being refused the murder of his father-in-law. 
 
 The expense of that second revolution was, according to 
 their shares of it I believe I have it here somewhere about 
 200,0007. This little effusion of private interest settled the 
 matter ; and here ended that second revolution in this 
 country. Which revolution was effected indeed with no blood 
 but with infinite treachery, with infinite expense to the 
 Company, and the dismembering of the country, which now 
 had got two sovereigns ; while before, however assignments 
 might have been granted upon different provinces, here and 
 there, yet the basis remained in the country government. 
 It now was severed. There were three of the great pro- 
 vinces to the south in the hands of the Company, whose 
 capital was Calcutta ; the rest were in the hands of Cossim 
 Ali Khan, whose capital was Allahabad. 
 
 This Prince had scarcely got upon the throne, earned by Conduct of 
 our public spirit and his iniquities, than he began directly 
 and instantly to fortify himself against those who were or 
 could be the donors of such fatal gifts. He removed from 
 Moorshedabad, which is the capital up higher in the country, 
 to Monghyr. In a short time, in order to be more out of 
 our view, he kept his word pretty well but not altogether 
 faithfully with the gentlemen ; and, though he had no 
 money, for his treasury was empty, he gave obligations 
 which are known by the name of [japs; the Indian 
 vocabulary] by degrees will become easy to your Lordships, 
 as we develope the manners and customs of the country. 
 And in this manner the whole of this business was negotiated. 
 
 As soon as he had done this,, he began to rack and tear the msextor- 
 provinces that were left to him ; to get as much from those 
 provinces as should compensate him for the revenues of those 
 great provinces he had lost. And accordingly he began a 
 scene of extortion, horrible, nefarious, without precedent or 
 example, upon almost all the landed interest of that country. 
 I mention this because he is one of the examples which Mr. 
 Hastings, in a paper called his Defence, has delivered into the 
 House of Commons as one of the precedents and examples 
 of government which he has thought fit to follow, and which 
 he thought would justify him in the conduct he has pursued. 
 This Cossim Ali Khan, after he had acted the tyrant upon the 
 landed interest, fell upon the moneyed interest in the country.
 
 64 Opening of the Impeachment; 
 
 ic FER1788. There was a person called Jnggut Seit. There were several 
 His destruc- of the family, who were bankers, to such a magnitude as was 
 family of never heard in the world receivers of the public revenue. 
 stitftho Their correspondence extended all over Asia ; and there are 
 hanker. those who are of opinion that that house, all of them, were 
 not worth less than six or seven millions of money. This 
 house became the prey of Cossim Ali Khan. But Mr. 
 Hoi well had predicted that that house should be delivered 
 over to Satan to be buffeted. It was the pious expression 
 of Mr. Hoi well that the house of the Seits should be deli- 
 vered over [to Satan] to be buffeted. He predicted the 
 misfortunes that should befall them. And they have chosen a 
 Satan to buffet [them], and who did so buffet them by the 
 murder of the principal persons of the house, and by robbing 
 them of the great sums of their wealth, that I believe such a 
 scene of nefarious tyranny, destroying and cutting up the root 
 of public credit in that country, was scarce ever known. In 
 the mean time he was extending his tyranny over every other ; 
 and the persons he first sought were those traitors who had 
 been friends to the English. Several of the principal of these 
 Torture and he murdered. There was in the province of Behar a man 
 Ramara,iii. named Ramarain. He had got the most positive assurances 
 of English faith ; but Mr. Macguire, a member of the Coun- 
 cil, delivered him up, on the receipt of 5,000 gold muhars, 
 or something more than 8,0007. sterling. He delivered him 
 up to be first imprisoned, then tortured, then robbed in 
 consequence of the torture, and finally murdered by Cossim 
 Ali Khan. In this way Cossim Ali Khan [acted], our 
 government looking on. 
 
 rate of a I hardly choose to mention to you [the fate of a native, in 
 variance consequence of a dispute with]* a Mr. Mott, a friend of 
 Mott Mr ' ^ r - Hastings, which is in this record we have records, 
 but which from the magnitude of them have almost been 
 buried from the [knowledge of the]* country in a contest 
 with him for his house and property. Some scuffle having 
 happened between the parties, he attempting to seize 
 and the other party to defend, he made a complaint to 
 the Nawab, who was in an entire subjection at that time 
 to the English ; and he ordered this unfortunate man, from 
 this very scuffle arising from defending his property, to be 
 blown off from the mouth of a cannon. In short I am not 
 
 * Revised copy.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 65 
 
 "able to tell your Lordships of all the nefarious transactions 
 of this man, whom the intrigues of Mr. Holwell and Mr. 
 Hastings had set upon the throne of Bengal. 
 
 But there is a circumstance in this business that comes across Abuse of the 
 here, and will tend to show another grievance that vexed that 
 country, Avhich vexed it long, and is one of the causes of its 
 chief disasters, and which I doubt is not so wholly extirpated d ty- 
 that some part of its roots may not remain in the ground at 
 this moment that is, commerce, which enriches every 
 country in the world, was bringing that country to total 
 ruin. The Company, in former times, when it had no sove- 
 reignty and power in the country, had large grants to have 
 under their dastack, or their permit, their goods pass without 
 duties through the country. The servants of the Company 
 made use of this dastack for their private trade, which while 
 it was used with moderation the government winked at in. 
 some degree ; but when it got more into private hands it 
 was more like robbery than trade. They appeared every- 
 where ; they sold at their own prices and forced the people 
 to sell to them at their own prices. It appeared more like 
 an army going to pillage the people under pretence of com- 
 merce than anything else. In vain the people claimed from 
 the country courts protection. The English army, marching 
 through the country, ravaged worse than a Tartarian con- 
 queror. The Prince did his best to prevent it ; but he was 
 afraid, if this trade went on longer, that there would be little 
 for him to get, either by confiscation or extortion, out of his 
 country. Therefore, think of the condition of the country 
 ravaged by such a tyrant as Cossim Ali Khan, ravaged by 
 such a set of people under the dastack. The lower provinces, 
 which were delivered over to the English, were torn to 
 pieces by their rapacity. This appeared to be too strong ; 
 and a deputation Wcis sent to his capital, to Monghyr, at a 
 distance, to form a treaty to give some relief against this 
 cruel, cursed and oppressive, trade, which was worse even 
 than the tyranny of the sovereign. This trade Mr. Vansittart 
 made and agreed by a treaty, known by the name of the Treaty 
 treaty of Monghyr, very much to suppress, and to put within '^tr.^van- 
 those bounds that trade ought to be put. There never was restriction 
 a doubt upon the face of that treaty that it was a just, proper, of th 
 fair, trading [transaction]* ; but, as it was never believed in 
 that country that rapacity in trade could be exceeded 
 [forborne]* but by bribery and corruption, the persons who 
 
 * Revised copy. 
 E
 
 66 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 16 FEB. 1788. lost every advantage by the treaty of Monghyr, and were like 
 to see their trade crippled by Cossim Ali Khan, fell into a 
 most violent fury at this treaty, made without the rest of the 
 Council. The servants grew divided, and one part were the 
 advocates of the treaty, the other of the trade. They were 
 universally of opinion that the trade [treaty]* was bought 
 for a great sum of money. Whether [it were so I am 
 uncertain] ; the evidence we have upon our records of the 
 sums of money stated to have been paid never having been 
 investigated to the bottom, as it ought. But we have upon 
 our records that a great sum 70,000/. was paid to persons 
 concerned in that negotiation. The rest were exceedingly 
 wrath to see themselves not profiting by the negotiation, and 
 losing by the trade or like to be excluded from it ; and they 
 were the more so, for we have it upon our journals that all 
 that time the trade of the negotiators was not proscribed, but 
 a parwana was issued by Cossim Ali Khan that the trade 
 Mr. Van- of his friends Mr. Vausittart and Mr. Hastings should not 
 Mr. a HasV be subject to those general regulations. This filled the 
 eTfromthe" whole settlement with ill blood ; in which undoubtedly Mr. 
 restrictions. Hastings and Mr. Vansittart were on the right side I put 
 the motive and the secret history out of the case and they 
 showed to a demonstration the mischief of this trade. But, 
 however, as the other party were strong and did not readily 
 let go their hold of this great advantage, first dissensions, 
 murmurs, various kinds of complaints and ill blood, arose, and 
 Cossim Ali Khan was driven to the wall ; and, having at 
 the same time made what he thought good preparations, a 
 war broke out at last. And how did it break out ? This 
 Cossim Ali Khan, whom Mr. Hastings put upon the throne 
 of Bengal, signalised his first acts of hostility against the 
 faith of treaties, against the rules of war, against every 
 principle of honour. This intended murderer, who was put 
 upon the throne well knowing his character and his dispo- 
 sition, though knowing very well what such a man was 
 Massacre of capable of doing, this man massacred the English wherever 
 byjcossim he met them. There were two hundred or thereabouts of 
 Ah Khan. ^ Q Q om p an y' s servants or their dependents slaughtered, 
 with every circumstance of the most abominable cruelty : 
 their limbs were cut to pieces. The tyrant Mr. Hastings 
 set up cut and hacked the limbs of British subjects in the 
 most cruel and perfidious manner ; threw them into wells ; 
 and polluted the waters of the country with British blood. 
 
 * Revised copy.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 67 
 
 Immediately war Is declared against him in form. That war 16FEB.17S8. 
 sets the whole country in a blaze, and the other parties \v ar ~a^ 
 begin to appear upon the scene, whose business you will find ^^ t him 
 yourselves deeply concerned in hereafter. 
 
 But as soon as war was declared against him, it was 
 necessary to resolve to put up another Nawab, and to have 
 another revolution. And where do they resort, but to the Restitution 
 man who, for his pretended tyranny, for his incapacity, for jfawab! 
 the numberless iniquities he was said to have committed, 
 and for his total unfitness and disinclination to all the duties 
 of government [they had dethroned] ? This very man they 
 take up again, to put him upon the throne from whence they 
 had about two years before dethroned him, and for the effect- 
 ing of which [dethronement] they had committed so many 
 iniquities. This revolution was not made without being sums of 
 bought. First according to the usual order of procession MtSPfrom 
 in which the youngest walk first comes the Company. And him - 
 the Company had secured to it in perpetuity those provinces 
 which Cossim Ali Khan had given, as it was thought, rather 
 in the way of mortgage than anything else ; and then, under 
 the name of [compensation for] suffering to the people con- 
 cerned in the trade, in the name of donation to an army and 
 a navy who had little to do in this affair, they tax him 
 what sum do you think ? they tax that empty and undone 
 treasury of the miserable and undone country 500,000?., for 
 a private emolument to themselves, for the compensation 
 for this iniquitous trade, for the compensation for all these 
 supposed abuses. They tax this miserable Prince, who had no 
 share in either forwarding or backing it, 500,000/. That sum 
 was given to individuals. Now comes the Company.* The 
 Company upon hearing this were all inflamed. The Directors 
 were on fire, and they were shocked at it ; and particularly 
 at this donation to the army and navy. They resolved they 
 would give it no countenance and support. In the meantime 
 the gentlemen did not trouble their heads upon that subject, 
 but meant to exact and get their 500,000/. as they could. 
 
 Here was a third revolution bought at this amazing sum ; The xa-ab 
 and this poor, miserable prince, dragged from Moorshedabad 
 to Calcutta, dragged back from Calcutta to Moorshedabad, rit y- 
 the sport of fortune and the plaything of avarice, this poor 
 man is again set up and is left no authority his troops 
 limited his person, everything, in a manner subdued 
 
 * Revised copy. 
 E 2
 
 68 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 iG FEB. 1788. a British Resident the master of his court. He is put up 
 then as a pageant upon this throne, and left no kind of 
 authority but what would be sufficient to give a countenance 
 to presents, gifts and donations. That authority they always 
 had when deprived of everything else. In that condition 
 he was left. 
 
 This revolution one would have thought might have 
 satisfied [these gentlemen]* that the money that was got 
 upon this would have be'en sufficient. No ! the partisans 
 of Cossim All Khan wanted another ; the partisans of the 
 other side wished to have something more done. Now they 
 began to think that to depose him instantly and to sell him 
 to another was much too much at that time ; especially as 
 Cossim All Khan was a man of vigour and resolution, 
 carrying on a fierce war against them. But what do you 
 think they did ? They began to see, from the example of 
 Saicoftiie Cossim Ali Khan, that the lieutenancy, the ministry of the 
 ancy." Ki n g> was a good thing to be sold, and the sale of that might 
 turn out as good a thing as the sale of the Prince. There 
 were two persons at that time of great consideration in 
 character of Bengal ; one a principal Mohammedan, called Mohammed 
 Reza a Khan. Reza Khan, a man of great rank, much authority, great piety 
 in his own religion, great learning in the law, of the very 
 first class of rank of the Mohammedan nobility in the country. 
 But at the same time, for all these considerations, he was 
 dreaded, abhorred and feared, by the Nawab, who necessarily 
 considered all such persons more intitled than himself and 
 fitter for his seat. There was on the other side another 
 Character of man, known by the name of the Great Raja Nundcomar. 
 aar. rpj^ g ^^ ^^ accounted the highest of his caste, and held 
 the same rank among the Gentus that Mohammed Reza 
 Khan did among the Mohammedans. The prince upon the 
 throne had no jealousy of Nundcomar, because he knew that 
 as a Gentu he could not aspire to the office of subahdar. 
 For that reason, he was attached to him firmly, he might 
 depend completely upon his services, and he was naturally 
 against Mohammed Reza Khan and the whole world. 
 Mohammed Reza Khan dreaded him ; for he found there 
 was a flaw in his own title, that if ever the question should 
 come of the revival of the constitution of that empire he was 
 a Sa'id, as they call it in that country, that is to say, a 
 descendant of Mohammed, who, though the only acknow- 
 ledged nobility among Mussulmans, is by that means ex- 
 
 * Kevised copy.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 69 
 
 eluded by the known laws of the Mogul empire from being IG FEB. 1733. 
 subahdar in any of the Mogul provinces. 
 
 Immediately an auction was opened Mohammed Reza Theoriiceof 
 Khan bid largely ; Nundcomar bid largely. But the pre- *oid to 11 * 
 ponderating merits of Reza Khan, and the subjection in which 
 he was likely to keep the Nawab and make him fitter for their 
 purpose, induced the Council to take his money, which 
 amounted to about 200,0007. ; but be it what it may it was 
 a large sum of money. In consequence of which, they 
 invested or attempted to invest Mohammed Reza Khan with 
 the office of naib subah. As to Nundcomar, they fell upon 
 him. He fought his battle as well as he could, opposing 
 bribe to bribe, eagle to eagle ; and as far as Mohammed Reza 
 Khan bid on the one hand, Nundcomar bid on the other; but 
 at length he was pushed to the wall. Some received his 
 money ; others refused, as he states, to receive it. And a 
 deputation was sent to the miscral Nawab to tear Nundcomar, 
 his only support, from his side, and to put Reza Khan in his 
 place. 
 
 Thus began a division that split the Company into 
 factions : but the smaller faction undoubtedly adhered to 
 Nundcomar. In this struggle, that miserable man Jaffier Ali Death of the 
 Khan, clinging as to the last pillar of support to Nundcomar, 
 
 trembling at Mohammed Reza Khan, died. Considering Khan - 
 himself in the jaws of death he fell at once, and perished a 
 miserable victim to all the revolutions, to all the successive 
 changes and versatile politics at Calcutta. In this manner 
 that gigantic frame of a man for he was seven feet high 
 oppressed with losses and distresses, fell at that battery. 
 
 As soon as he fell, the same system continued. The 
 succession was sold ; and the oldest of the issue of Mutiny The succcs- 
 Begum a harlot, of whom you will hear much hereafter ? h e!dest 
 was chosen. The offspring of Munny Begum, clinging, as jfunny 
 his father did, to Nundcomar, they tore Nundcomar from his Begum. 
 side, and carried him down to Calcutta ; where, having had 
 the weakness in the first instance to become the first 
 informer, he was the first to be made an example of ; for 
 he was afterwards hanged by those incorrupt judges, who Hbexee* 
 were sent to India by Parliament to protect the natives tlon> 
 from oppression. 
 
 Mohammed Reza Khan was then acknowledged Nawab, Mohammed 
 the money paid, and this revolution completed, by which 
 this new sale of the office of minister succeeded to the sale 
 
 of that of Nawab. All these things shook the country : strides of 
 
 * Cossim Ali
 
 70 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 ic FEB. 1788. and, as if that miserable, exhausted, country was to be cured 
 KhaiTaiid by phlebotomy, Cossim Ali Khan was racking it below and 
 orthe sti n tn e Company above. For Cossim Ali, after having been 
 country. defeated by the great military genius of our country for 
 the Adamses, Monroes, and others of that period, I believe 
 showed as much military skill and bravery as any men 
 fought every inch of his way, carrying out of the country 
 three millions in money, jewels or effects, the exhaustions 
 occasioned by his unheard-of exactions. He fought his way 
 like a lion, turning his face to his pursuers. He still fought 
 along his frontier, drawing along with him the subahdar of 
 Oude. The Mogul entered into these wars, penetrating the 
 lower provinces on one side, while Bulwant Sing, the Raja 
 of Benares, entered them on another : and, after various 
 changes of party and changes of fortune, that which began 
 in the treachery of the civil service was redeemed by the 
 hand of military merit. Many examples of the same sort 
 have since been seen. 
 
 Lord ciive But the Company, hearing of all these changes, hearing 
 India by the of such an incredible body of perfidy, knowing that there 
 ompany. wftg a g enera j mar k e t made of the country and of the Com- 
 pany, that the flame of war spread from province to pro- 
 vince, that in proportion as it spread the flame kindled, and 
 that the rapacity which originally gave rise to it was follow- 
 ing it in all its progress, the Company, my Lords, alarmed 
 lest their very being should be destroyed, and finding them- 
 selves sinking by every victory they obtained, thought it 
 necessary to come to some settlement. After having com- 
 posed their differences with Lord Clive, they sent him out 
 to that country about the year 1765,* in order by his name, 
 credit, authority and weight, in that country, to rectify the 
 innumerable abuses which prevailed in it, and particularly 
 presents to ^ at a ^ use which is the fundamental one of the whole, the 
 be rectified, abuse of presents. For all these bribes, all these rewards, 
 had not the name of conditions or stipulations, but of pre- 
 sents ; they were gratuities given afterwards to the parties. 
 They may give them what names they please, and your 
 Lordships will think of them what you please, but they were 
 the donations of misery to power, the gifts of wretchedness 
 to the oppressors ; and, consequently, left neither property 
 nor security in permanence to any person in the country. 
 
 * Lord Clive was sent out as Governor and Commander-in-chief, and arrived 
 at Calcutta in May, 1765.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 7 1 
 
 Lord Clive went out with new covenants. He went out 
 to put an end to the practice of receiving presents. He obje~ctspf 
 himself had been a large receiver of them ; yet, as it was 
 in the moment of a revolution, the Company would hear no 
 more of it. They sent him out to reform. Whether they 
 chose well or ill does not signify : I think, upon the whole, 
 they chose well; because his name, authority and weight, would 
 do a great deal. They sent him out to reform the grievances 
 of that country, with such amazing powers as no servant of 
 the Company ever had before. My Lords, I would not be 
 understood here, in my own character, much less in my 
 delegated character, to stand up for any man in the totality 
 of his conduct. I think that some of the measures which 
 Lord Clive took were injudicious, and that some of them 
 cannot be defended. But I do say that the plan which he 
 laid down and the course which he pursued were in general 
 great and well imagined ; that he settled great foundations, 
 if they had been adhered to- For he first took strong 
 measures below to put an end to a great many of the abuses 
 that prevailed in the country ; and then he went up and did, 
 for a military man, an act which will ever have great civil 
 and political merit he put a bound to the aspiring spirit of 
 the Company he limited its conquests, and prescribed 
 bounds to its ambition. " Quiet," says he, " the minds of 
 the country ; and what you have obtained regulate within. 
 Make it known to the country that you resolve to acquire 
 no more." Accordingly he settled every prince that was 
 concerned in a happy and easy settlement. He settled the He rein- 
 subahdar of Oude, who had been driven from his dominions sub^Mar of 
 by the military arms and the great military merit of the Otldc> 
 British commander. He, with a generosity that astonished 
 all Asia, reinstated this enemy of his country peaceably 
 upon his throne ; which did more towards quieting the 
 minds of the people of Asia than any act that had been ever 
 done by the English before. For the Mogul, the head of 
 the Mussulman religion there, and likewise of the empire, a 
 head honoured and esteemed even in its ruins, he obtained 
 recognition by all the persons that were concerned. He got Procures 
 from him the diwani ; -which is the great, grand, period of ofBeng-af 1 
 the constitutional entrance of the Company into the affairs Mo^ hr 
 of India. He quieted the minds of the people. He gave to Emperor. 
 the settlement of Bengal a constitutional form and a legal 
 right, acknowledged and recognised now for the first time
 
 72 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 16 FEB. ires, by all the princes of the country, because given by the charter 
 
 lutervcn- of the sovereign. He took care of Bulwant Sing, the liaja of 
 
 behalf of the Benares, who had taken our part in the war. The Mogul 
 
 had before granted us the superiority over Bulwant Sin<j, 
 
 Benares, &c. ... . _ ... , l , J . ^, 
 
 which the Company had ordered to be restored ; and Lord 
 Clive re-established Bulwant Sing in a secure, easy, quiet, 
 independency. The rents that ought to be paid to the 
 Wazir of the empire he gave to the wazirat. The country 
 was secured to him ; and he paid large sums for it at 
 different times, amounting to about 150,000 : for from the 
 beginning of our connection with that part of the country 
 we have been great gainers. Our allies and our enemies 
 were quieted by the restitution of the Nawab of Oude ; and 
 all Asia was conciliated by our settlement with the King. 
 That unhappy fugitive King, who was now deposed and 
 wandering about, the sport of fortune, he settled in an 
 honourable way, and with a decent share of regal dignity. 
 
 In this manner he settled all the powers of Hindustan with 
 which we were concerned, and gave the country peace and 
 The state of form. He did not take for the Company the vice-royalty, as 
 upheid7 a ' Mr. Holwell wolild have persuaded ; but, to satisfy the 
 prejudices of the Mohammedans, the country was nominally 
 left in the hands of the subahdar, or viceroy, w r ho was to 
 administer the criminal justice and the exterior forms of 
 royalty. The Company took the diwani, or stewardship, 
 which gave them the whole management of the revenue, and 
 made them appear not the oppressors but the protectors of 
 the people. ]t had all the real power, without any invidious 
 appearance of it. It gave them the revenue without the 
 appearance of sovereignty. The Nawab had indeed fallen 
 from any real and effective royalty or vice-royalty, and was 
 stripped of the power of maintaining any troops, which we 
 maintained for him by contract ; yet the dignity of the court 
 w r as maintained, and the prejudices of the Mohammedans, and 
 particularly of their great nobility, Avho suffered more by this 
 great revolution even than the old inhabitants of the country, 
 were removed. For there was a revenue of 500,000/. which 
 might provide for the great families. The Company likewise, 
 in order to enjoy more securely their revenues, put them into 
 the hands of Mohammed Keza Khan, whom Lord Clive 
 found in the management of affairs, and did not displace ; and 
 he was now made deputy steward, as he had before been 
 made lieutenant viceroy; and a British Resident was now
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 73 
 
 established in Bengal. The Company exercised their powers 
 through the natives ; but the British Resident was the real 
 controlling power. 
 
 My Lords, the fault in this settlement which makes Grievances 
 another period in our history was, that Lord Clive did not f^nm. 
 stay long enough in that country to give consistency to the ^^ 1 ( f lcnt 
 settlement that he made: and the men that followed dive's sue- 
 though I believe one of them was one of the honestest men cc 
 that ever served the Company, I mean Governor Verelst 
 had not weight enough to keep down and poise the country. 
 Consequently many grievances arose ; not such grievances as 
 the sale and extirpation of a people ; not such grievances as 
 entirely subverting great and ancient families ; not such 
 grievances as changing instantly the settlements of the 
 people ; not the setting to farm the whole landed interest of 
 a country none of these ; but certainly such grievances as 
 made it necessary for the Company to send out a commis- 
 sion in 1769, composed of Mr. Vansittart, Mr. Ford and 
 Mr. Scrafton. The unfortunate end of that commission is 
 known to all the world* : but I mention it in order to state 
 the grievances which then prevailed in India to state that Prohibition 
 the great order they gave the supervisors, with a view to give panyof 
 a force to the service, was, that they should upon no account P rescnts - 
 whatever take presents. As soon as that commission unfor- 
 tunately perished as every one knows they did, and also the 
 manner of it the Company was preparing to send out 
 another commission for the rectification of these grievances. 
 But Parliament thought it necessary to supersede that com- Commission 
 mission, to take the matter into their own hands, and to ^Paru^ 
 appoint another commission in a parliamentary way of "J^."*^ t | 1 t c 
 which Mr. Hastings was one for the better government of of India, 
 that country. Mr. Hastings, on account of his local know- Mr. Hast- 
 ledge, on account of the number of friends he had here in 
 for I am to mention to your Lordships that, soon after the 
 deposition and restoration of Jaffier Ali Khan and before 
 Lord Clive arrived in India, Mr. Hastings had returned to 
 England, and here he stayed fortifying his interest went out 
 to India with great power indeed. 
 
 When this government was settled, Moorshedabacl still 
 continued the seat of the native government an( j o f ^\\ the 
 
 * The commissioners sailed from England in the Aurora frigate, in the 
 month of September ; but the vessel, -with all she bore, was lost through an 
 unknown mischance, in her passage.
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 10 FEB. 1788, 
 
 Council of 
 revenue at 
 Moor- 
 shedabad. 
 
 Changes in 
 the supervi- 
 sion of the 
 revenue. ' 
 
 Review of 
 succession 
 of revolu- 
 tions. 
 
 Periods of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' crimi- 
 nality. 
 
 Tests to 
 judge of the 
 character of 
 a Governor. 
 
 collections. Here the Company was not satisfied with putting a 
 Resident at the durbar, which was the first step to our assuming 
 the government in that country. These steps must be traced 
 by your Lordships ; for I should never have given you this 
 trouble, if it was not necessary to possess you clearly of the 
 several progressive steps by which the Company's govern- 
 ment came to be established and to supersede the native. 
 The rext step that was made was the appointment of super- 
 visors in every province, to oversee the native collector. The 
 third was to establish a general council of revenue at Moor- 
 shedabad, to superintend the great steward, Mohammed Reza 
 Khan. In 1772, that council by Mr. Hastings was over- 
 turned, and' the whole revenue brought to Calcutta. Moham- 
 med Reza Khan, by orders of the Company, was turned out 
 of all his offices, and turned out for reasons and principles 
 which your Lordships will hereafter see. And at last the 
 diwani was entirely taken out of the native hands, and settled 
 in the supreme Council and Presidency itself in Calcutta. And 
 so it remained until the year 1781, when Mr. Hastings made 
 another revolution, took it out of the hands of the Council, 
 in which the orders of the Company, an act of Parliament 
 and their own act, had vested it, and put it into a subordinate 
 Council ; that is, it was entirely vested in himself. 
 
 Now your Lordships see the whole of the revolutions. I have 
 stated them, I trust, with perspicuity ; staged the grounds and 
 principles upon which they were made ; stated the abuses 
 that grew upon them, and that every revolution produced 
 its abuse. You saw the native government vanish away by 
 degrees, until it is reduced to a situation fit for nothing but 
 to become a private perquisite, as it has been, to Mr. Hast- 
 ings, to be granted to whom he pleased. The English go- 
 vernment succeeded. Mr. Hastings w r as appointed to it by 
 an act of Parliament, having been appointed to the Presi- 
 dency before, to reform abuses. And in those two periods of 
 his Presidency ?md his appointment by act of Parliament were 
 those crimes committed of which he now stands accused. All 
 this history is merely by way of illustration. His crimina- 
 tion begins with his nomination to the Presidency, and his 
 subsequent nomination by Parliament. 
 
 The troubled period between the year 1756 and the 
 settlement made in the year 17 74 being passed, Mr. Hastings 
 having the government in his hands, we are to consider how 
 he comported himself in it. My Lords, the first thing in 
 considering the character of any Governor is to have some
 
 . Speech of Mr. Burkr. 75 
 
 test by which it may be tried. And we conceive here that ic FEB. ms. 
 when a British Governor is sent abroad, he is sent to pursue 
 the good of the people as much as possible in the spirit of 
 the laws of this country, which intend in all respects their 
 conservation, their happiness and their prosperity. These 
 are the principles upon which Mr. Hastings was bound to 
 govern, and upon which he is to account for his conduct here. 
 
 The rule upon which you are to try him is this what 
 should a British Governor in such a situation do, or forbear 
 to do ? If he has done and if he has forborne in the manner 
 in which a British Governor ought to do and to forbear, he 
 has done his duty, and he is honourably acquitted. He 
 resorts to other principles and to other maxims; but this 
 country will force him to be tried by its laws. The law of 
 this country recognises that well-known crime called mis- 
 conduct in office. It is a head of the law of England ; and, 
 so far as inferior courts are competent to try it, it may be 
 tried there. Here your Lordships are competent to every- 
 thing ; and as you are competent in the power you are com- 
 petent in the knowledge of the offence. And here I am Principles 
 bound to state to your Lordships, by the directions of those Hastings' 
 whose directions I am bound to follow, the principles upon g verament - 
 which Mr. Hastings declares he has conducted his govern- 
 ment ; which principles he declares, first in several letters 
 written to the East India Company, next in a paper of 
 Defence delivered to the House of Commons explicitly, 
 and more explicitly in his Defence before your Lordships.* 
 
 I am directed first to clear the way of all those grounds and 
 principles upon which he frames his Defence ; for, if those 
 grounds are good and valid, they carry off a great deal at least, 
 if not entirely, the foundation of our charge. My Lords, we con- 
 tend that Mr. Hastings, as a British governor, ought to govern 
 upon British principles, not by British forms. God forbid ! 
 for if ever there was a case in which the letter kills and the 
 spirit gives life, it would be an attempt to introduce British 
 forms and the substance of despotic principles together into 
 any country. No ! We call for that spirit of equity, that 
 
 * Mr. Hastings was heard at the bar of the House of Commons in his 
 defence on the 1st and 2nd of May, 1786 ; the minutes of his Defence were 
 delivered in by permission of the House, and they are printed at length in the 
 Minutes of Evidence at the Trial, page 1". His answers to the several charges 
 of the impeachment were read in the House of Lords on the 29th of November, 
 1787, and are printed in the journals of the house. Both sets of Articles, 
 with the Defence, were published in a separate form ; the former by Debrett, 
 in 8vo. 1786 ; the latter by Murray and Stockdale, in 8vo. 1788.
 
 76 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 it] FEB. i7ss. spirit of justice, that spirit of safety, that spirit of protection, 
 that spirit of lenity, which ought to characterise every British 
 subject in power; and upon these, and these principles only, 
 he will be tried. 
 
 But he has told your Lordships in his Defence, that actions 
 
 plea of a J n Asia do not bear the same moral qualities as the same 
 
 variation of . 111 T^ - r T i , i 
 
 standard of actions would bear in Europe. My Lords, we positively 
 * 1J '' deny that principle. I am authorised and called upon to 
 deny it. And having stated at large what he means by 
 saying that the same actions have not the same qualities in 
 Asia and in Europe, we are to let your Lordships know that 
 these gentlemen have formed a plan of geographical morality, 
 by which the duties of men in public and in private situations 
 are not to be governed by their relations to the great Governor 
 of the universe, or by their relations to men, but by climates, 
 degrees of longitude and latitude, parallels not of life 
 but of latitudes ; as if, when you have crossed the equi- 
 noctial line, all the virtues die, as they say some animals die 
 when they cross the line; as if there were a kind of baptism, 
 like that practised by seamen, by which they unbaptise 
 themselves of all that they learned in Europe, and commence 
 a new order and system of things. 
 
 This geographical morality we do protest against. Mr. 
 Hastings shall not screen himself under it. And I hope and 
 trust not a great many words will be necessary to satisfy 
 your Lordships but we think it necessary, in justification of 
 ourselves, to declare that the laws of morality are the same 
 everywhere, and that there is no action which would pass 
 for an action of extortion, of peculation, of bribery and of 
 oppression, in England, that is not an act of extortion, of 
 peculation, of bribery and oppression, in Europe, Asia, Africa, 
 and all the world over. This I contend for, not in the forms 
 of it, but I contend for it in the substance. 
 
 Mr. Hast- Mr. Hastings comes before your Lordships not as a British 
 
 that h waa Governor answering to a British tribunal, but as a subahdar, 
 
 with u arbl as a Pacha of three tails. He says : " I had an arbitary 
 
 trary power, power to exercise ; I exercised it. Slaves I found the people ; 
 
 slaves they are. They are so by their constitution ; and 
 
 if they are, I did not make it for them. I was unfortunately 
 
 bound to exercise this arbitrary power, and accordingly I did 
 
 exercise it. It was disagreeable to me, but I did exercise it, 
 
 and no other power can be exercised in that country." 
 
 This, if it be true, is a plea in bar. But I trust and hope 
 
 your Lordships will not judge by laws and institutions which
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 77 
 
 you do not know, against those laws and Institutions which 16 FEB. ITSS. 
 you do know, and under whose power and authority Mr. 
 Hastings went out to India. Can your Lordships patiently 
 hear what we have heard with indignation enough, and what, 
 if there were nothing else, would call actions which are 
 justified upon such principles to your Lordships' bar, that it 
 may be known whether the Peers of England do not sympa- 
 thise with the Commons in their detestation of such doctrine ? 
 Think of an English Governor ti'ied before you as a British 
 subject, and yet declaring that he governed upon the princi- 
 ples of arbitrary power ! This plea is, that he did govern 
 there upon arbitrary and despotic, and, as he supposes, 
 Oriental principles. And as this plea is boldly avowed and 
 maintained, and as, no doubt, all his conduct was perfectly 
 correspondent to these principles, these principles and that 
 conduct must be tried together. 
 
 If your Lordships will permit me, I will state one of the instances of 
 many places in which he has avowed these principles as the O fthcprin- 
 basis and foundation of all his conduct : trary g f ( rbi '' 
 
 vernment. 
 
 " The sovereignty which they assumed, it fell to my lot, very unexpect- 
 edly, to exert ; and whether or not such power or powers of that nature 
 were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of Parliament, I con- 
 fess myself too little of a lawyer to pronounce. I only know that the 
 acceptance of the sovereignty of Benares, &c., is not acknowledged or 
 admitted by any act of Parliament ; and yet, by the particular inter- 
 ference of the majority of the council, the Company is clearly and indis- 
 putably seised of that sovereignty." 
 
 So that this gentleman, because he is not a lawyer, nor 
 clothed with those robes which distinguish and well distin- 
 guish the learning of this country, is not to know anything 
 of his duty ; and whether he was bound by any, or what 
 act of Parliament, is a thing he is not lawyer enough to 
 know. Xow, if your Lordships will suffer the laws to be 
 broken by those that are not of the long robe, I am afraid 
 those of the long robe will have none to punish but those of 
 their own profession. Mr. Hastings, therefore, goes to a 
 law which he knows better, that is, the law of arbitrary 
 power and force, if it deserves to be called by any such 
 name. " If, therefore," says he, 
 
 " the sovereignty of Benares, as ceded to us by the Vizier, have any 
 rights whatever annexed to it, and be not a mere empty word without 
 meaning, those rights must be such as are held, countenanced and estab- 
 lished, by the law, custom and usage, of the Mogul empire, and not by 
 the provisions of any British act of Parliament hitherto enacted. Those 
 rights, and none other, I have been the involuntary instrument of in-
 
 78 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 it; FEB. 1788. forcing. And if any future act of Parliament shall positively, or by 
 implication, tend to annihilate those very rights or their exertion, as I 
 have exerted them, I much fear that the boasted sovereignty of Benares, 
 which was held up as an acquisition almost obtruded upon the Company 
 against my consent and opinion for I acknowledge that even then I 
 foresaw many difficulties and inconveniences in its future exercise I fear, 
 I say, that this sovereignty will be found a burden instead of a benefit, 
 a heavy clog rather than a precious gem to its present possessors; I mean, 
 unless the whole of our territory in that quarter shall be rounded and 
 made an uniform compact body by one grand and systematic arrange- 
 ment, such an arrangement as shall do away all the mischiefs, doubts 
 and inconveniences, both to the governors and the governed, arising from 
 the variety of tenures, rights and claims, in all cases, of landed property 
 and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the informality, invalidity and 
 instability, of all engagements in so divided and unsettled a state of 
 society, and from the unavoidable anarchy and confusion of different 
 laws, religions and prejudices, moral, civil and political, all jumbled 
 together in one unnatural and discordant mass. 
 
 Every part of Hindustan has been constantly exposed to these and similar 
 disadvantages ever since the Mohammedan conquests. The Hindus, who 
 never incorporated with their conquerors, were kept in order only by the 
 strong hand of power. The constant necessity of similar exertions would 
 increase at once their energy and extent; so that rebellion itself is the parent 
 and promoter of despotism. Sovereignty in India implies nothing else ; for 
 I know not how we can form an estimate of its powers but from its visible 
 effects, and those are everywhere the same from Kabool to Assam. The 
 whole history of Asia is nothing more than precedents to prove the in- 
 variable exercise of arbitrary power. To all this I strongly alluded in the 
 minutes I delivered in council, when the treaty with the new Vizier was 
 on foot in 1/75; and I wished to make Cheit Sing independent, because 
 in India dependence included a thousand evils, many of which I enume- 
 rated at that time, and they are entered in the ninth clause of the first 
 section of this charge. I knew the powers with which an Indian sove- 
 reignty is armed, and the dangers to which tributaries are exposed. I 
 knew that, from the history of Asia, and from the very nature of mankind, 
 the subjects of a despotic empire are always vigilant for the moment to 
 rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious intentions. A zemin- 
 dar is an Indian subject, and, as such, exposed to the common lot of his 
 fellows. ' The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar ' is therefore 
 this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic government, this 
 very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure to con- 
 tinual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent on the 
 political state of Hindustanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had 
 been, and Cheit Sing, as long as he was, a zemindar, stood exactly in this 
 ' mean and depraved state ' by the constitution of his country. I did not 
 make it for him, but would have secured him from it. Those who made 
 him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences of so mean and 
 depraved a tenure. Aliverdi Khan and Cossim Ali fined all their zemin- 
 dars, on the necessities of war and on every pretence, either of court 
 necessity or court extravagance." 
 
 Deflections My Lords, you have now heard the principles upon which 
 Hastings' Mr. Hastings governs the part of Asia subjected to the 
 t! British empire. You have heard his opinion of " the mean
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 79 
 
 and depraved state " of those who are subject to it. You 
 have heard his lecture upon arbitrary power, which he states 
 to be the constitution of Asia. You hear the application 
 that he makes of it ; and you hear the practices which he 
 employs to justify it, and who the persons were the authority 
 of whose examples he professes to follow. Do your Lordships 
 really think that the nation would bear, that any human 
 creature would bear, to hear an English Governor defend 
 himself upon such principles ? For, if he can defend himself 
 upon such principles, no man has any security for anything 
 but by being totally independent of the British government. 
 Here he has declared his opinion that he is a despotic prince, 
 that he is to use arbitrary power ; and of course all his acts 
 are covered with that shield. " I know," says he, " the con- 
 stitution of Asia only from its practices." Will your Lord- 
 ships ever bear the corrupt practices of mankind made the 
 principles of government ? It will be your pride and glory 
 to teach men that they are to conform their practices to 
 principles, and not to draw their principles from the corrupt 
 practices of any man whatever. Was there ever heard, or 
 could it be conceived, that a man would dare to mention the 
 practices of all the villains, all the mad usurpers, all the 
 thieves and robbers, in Asia, that he should gather them all 
 up, a ad form the whole mass of abuses into one code, and 
 call it the duty of a British Governor ? I believe that till 
 this time so audacious a thing was never attempted by 
 mankind. 
 
 He have arbitrary power ! My Lords, the East India Com- impossi- 
 pany have not arbitrary power to give him ; the King has arbitrary 
 no arbitrary power to give him ; your Lordships have not ; P wer - 
 nor the Commons ; nor the whole legislature. We have 
 no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing 
 which neither any man can hold nor any man can give away. 
 No man can govern himself by his own will, much less can 
 he be governed by the will of others. We are all born in Law of 
 subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and su 
 governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, pre-existent, 
 law, prior to all our devices and prior to all our contrivances, 
 paramount to our very being itself, by which we are knit 
 and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of 
 which we cannot stir. 
 
 This great law does not arise from our conventions or 
 compacts ; on the contrary, it gives to our conventions and 
 compacts all the force and sanction they can have ; it does
 
 80 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 it) FEB.1788. not arise from our vain institutions. Every good gift is of 
 God, all power is of God ; and He who has given the power 
 and from whom it alone originates, will never suffer the 
 exercise of it to be practised upon any less solid foundation 
 than the power itself. Therefore, will it be imagined, if this 
 be true, that He will suffer this great gift of government, 
 the greatest, the best, that was ever given by God to man- 
 kind, to be the plaything and the sport of the feeble will of 
 a man, who, by a blasphemous, absurd and petulant, usurpa- 
 tion, would place his own feeble, contemptible, ridiculous, 
 will in the place of the Divine wisdom and justice ? No, 
 my Lords. It is not to be had by conquest ; for by conquest, 
 which is a more immediate designation of the hand of God, 
 the conqueror only succeeds to all the painful duties and 
 subordination to the power of God which belonged to the 
 sovereign that held the country before. He cannot have it 
 by succession ; for no man can succeed to fraud, rapine and 
 violence ; neither by compact, covenant or submission, nor 
 by any other means, can arbitrary power be conveyed to any 
 man - Those who give and those who receive arbitrary 
 
 nai vcr C ^ imi " P ower are a like criminal, and there is no man but is bound to 
 resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its 
 face to the world. Nothing but absolute impotence can 
 justify men in not resisting it to the best of their power. 
 
 Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity. Name 
 me a magistrate, and I will name property ; name me power, 
 and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, 
 it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say 
 that any man can have arbitrary power. Judges are guided 
 and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to >vhich we are 
 all subject. We may bite our chains if we will, but we shall 
 be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is born 
 to be governed by law ; and he that will substitute will in 
 the place of it is an enemy to God. 
 
 This idea of arbitrary power has arisen from a gross con- 
 fusion and perversion of ideas, which your Lordships well 
 know how to distinguish and to separate. It does so happen, 
 
 power from by the necessity of the case, that the supreme power in every 
 
 penal prose- J \ T n , .' ,. L . . J 
 
 country is not legally ana in any ordinary way subject to a 
 penal prosecution for any of its actions : it is unaccountable. 
 And it is not merely so in this country or that country, but 
 in all countries. The King in this country is undoubtedly 
 unaccountable for his actions. The House of Lords, if it 
 should ever exercise God forbid I should suspect it would
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 81 
 
 ever do what it has never done ! but if it should ever abuse 
 its judicial power, and give such a judgment as it ought not, 
 whether from fear of popular clamour on the one hand, or 
 predilection to the prisoner on the other, if they should 
 abuse their judgments, there is no calling them to an account 
 for it. And so, if the Commons should abuse their power, 
 nay, if they should have been so greatly delinquent as not to 
 have prosecuted this offender, they could not be accountable 
 for it. There is no punishing them for their acts, because 
 they exercise a part of the supreme power. But are they 
 less criminal, less rebellious against the Divine Majesty ? 
 Are they less hateful to mm, whose opinions they ought to 
 cultivate as far as they are just? No ! Till society fall into 
 a state of dissolution, they cannot be accountable for their 
 acts. But it is from confounding the unaccountable cha- 
 racter, inherent to the supreme power, with arbitrary 
 power, that all this confusion of ideas has arisen. 
 
 If, my Lords, you were to suppose an arbitrary power, which Further ar- 
 I deny totally and your Lordships will be the first and ^nstlrbi- 
 proudest to deny it, when absolute supreme dominion was trary P wer - 
 never given nor conferred and delegated from you but if 
 you suppose such a thing, I will venture to say that an 
 intermediate arbitrary power, where the people below are 
 subject to its possessor, but he is irresponsible to the power 
 above, is a monster that never existed except in the wild 
 imagination of some theorist. It cannot be, because it is a 
 perversion of the principle that that power which is given 
 for the protection of the people below should be responsible 
 to the power above. It is to suppose that the people shall 
 have no laws with regard to him, yet, when he comes to be 
 tried, he shall claim the security of those laws that are 
 made to secure the people from his violence ; that he shall 
 claim a fair trial, an equitable hearing, every advantage of 
 counsel God forbid he should not have them ! yet that 
 the people under him shall have none of those advantages. 
 
 My Lords, I will venture to say of the governments of Govern- 
 
 A ,1 PI ii i . T nientsof 
 
 Asia that none or them ever had an arbitrary power ; and Asia not 
 if any government had an arbitrary power they cannot delegate ar 
 it to any persons under them ; that is, they cannot so delegate 
 it as not to leave them accountable upon the principles upon 
 which it was given. As this is a contradiction in terms, 
 a gross absurdity as well as a monstrous wickedness, let 
 me say, for the honour of human nature, that although 
 undoubtedly, we may speak it with pride of England,
 
 82 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 e FEB. 1788. we have better institutions for the preservation of the rights 
 of men than any other country in the world, yet I will 
 venture to say that no country has wholly meant, or ever 
 meant, to give up this power. 
 
 I am to speak of Oriental governments, and I do insist 
 upon it that Oriental governments know nothing of this 
 arbitrary power. I have taken as much pains as I can to- 
 examine into the constitutions of them. I have been 
 endeavouring to inform myself at all times to a certain degree ; 
 of late my duty has led me to a more minute inspection of 
 them ; and I do challenge the whole race of man to show me 
 any of the Oriental governors claiming to themselves a right 
 to act by arbitrary will. 
 Mohammed- My Lords, the greatest part of Asia is under Mohammedan 
 
 an govern- J rp -. T , , 
 
 mentre- governments, lo name a Mohammedan government is to 
 
 iaw; ine y name a government bylaw. It is a law enforced by stronger 
 
 sanctions than any law that can bind an European sovereign, 
 
 exclusive of the Grand Seignior. The law is given by God, 
 
 and it has the double sanction of law and of religion, with 
 
 which the prince is no more to dispense than anyone else. 
 
 Arbitrary And, if any man will produce the Kuran to me, and will but 
 
 power not , . r . . , 
 
 authorised show me one text in it that authorises m any degree an 
 jfuran. arbitrary power in the government, I Avill declare that I have 
 read that book and been conversant in the affairs of Asia, to 
 a degree in vain. There is not such a syllable in it ; but, 
 on the contrary, against oppressors by name every letter of 
 that law is fulminated. There are interpreters to explain 
 that law ; I mean that great priesthood established through- 
 out all Asia, whom they call men of the law. These men 
 are conservators of the law ; and, to enable them to preserve 
 it to perfection, they are secured from the resentment of the 
 sovereign ; for he cannot touch them. A man of the law 
 is secured and indemnified against the sovereign, acting, 
 executive, power. 
 
 Government My Lords, to bring this point a little nearer home, since 
 peror ofTiie we are challenged thus, since we are led into Asia, since we 
 are called upon to make out our case on the principles of the 
 governments there rather than of those here which I trust 
 your Lordships will oblige Mr. Hastings finally to be 
 governed by, puffed up as he is with the insolence of Asia 
 the nearest to us of the governments he appeals to is the 
 government of the Grand Seignior, the Emperor of the Turks. 
 He an arbitrary power ! Why he has not the supreme 
 power of his country. Every one knows that the Grand
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 83 
 
 Seignior is exalted high in titles, as our prerogative lawyers i6FEB.i788. 
 exalt an abstract sovereign, and they cannot exalt him too 
 high in our books ; but I say he misses the first character of 
 sovereign power he cannot lay a tax upon his people. The 
 next part in which he misses of a sovereign power is, that he 
 cannot dispose of the life, of the property or of the liberty, of 
 any of his subjects, but by what is called the fat\va, or sentence 
 of the law. He cannot declare peace or war without the same 
 sentence of the law ; so much is he, more than European 
 sovereigns, a subject of strict law, that he cannot declare war 
 or peace without it. Then, if he can neither touch life nor 
 property, if he cannot lay a tax upon his subjects, or declare 
 peace or war, I leave it to your Lordships to say whether he 
 can be called, according to the principles of that constitution, 
 an arbitrary power. A Turkish sovereign, if he should be 
 judged by the body of that law to have acted against its 
 principles unless he happens to be secured by a faction of 
 the soldiery is liable to be deposed upon the sentence of 
 that law ; and his successor comes in under the strict limit- 
 ations of the ancient law of that country. Neither can he 
 bold his place, dispose of his succession, or take any one step 
 whatever, without being bound by law. So far, I say, when 
 gentlemen talk of the affairs of Asia, as to the nearest of 
 Asiatic sovereigns ; and he is more Asiatic than European. 
 He is a Mohammedan sovereign ; and no Mohammedan is 
 born who can exercise any arbitrary power at all agreeably 
 to their constitution : and that magistrate who is the greatest 
 executive power among them is the person who is by the 
 constitution of the country the most fettered by law. 
 
 Corruption is the true cause of the loss of all the benefits corruption 
 of the constitution of that country. The practice of Asia, me^u" 
 as the gentleman at your bar has thought fit to say, is what Asia - 
 he holds to; the constitution he flies away from. Undoubtedly 
 much blood, murder, false imprisonment, much peculation, 
 cruelty and robbery, are to be found in Asia ; and if, instead 
 of going to the sacred laws of the country, Mr. Hastings 
 chooses to go to. the iniquitous practices of it, and practices 
 authorised only by public tumult, contention, war and riot, 
 he will find as clear an. acquittal in the practices as he 
 would find condemnation in the institutions. But if keXr.HMt- 
 disputes, as he does, the authority of an act of Parliament, n^j^ttflwi 
 let him state to me that law to which he means to be subject, b >' an - v lav> '- 
 or any law which he knows that will justify his action?. 
 I am not authorised to say that I shall, even in that case, 
 
 F 2
 
 84: Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 ic FEB. 1788. give up what is not in me to give up; because I represent 
 an authority of which I must stand in awe ; but, for myself, 
 I shall confess that I am brought to public shame and am 
 not fit to manage the great interests committed to my charge 
 before your Lordships. I therefore say of that government 
 which we best know, which has been constituted more in 
 obedience to the laws of Mohammed than any other, that the 
 sovereign cannot, agreeably to that constitution, exercise 
 any arbitrary power whatever. 
 
 pica of the The next point for us to consider is, whether or no the 
 
 sanction of .. - t . T1 . . . ._, 
 
 arbitrary constitution ot India authorises that power. Ihe gentleman 
 thcconststu- at your Lordships' bar has thought proper to say that it will 
 imUa f be happy for India [the inhabitants of Asia] though soon 
 after he tells you it is a happiness they can never enjoy 
 " when the despotic institutes of Genghis Khan, or Tamer- 
 lane, shall give place to the liberal spirit of a British legisla- 
 ture ; and," says he, " I shall be amply satisfied in my present 
 prosecution, if it shall tend to hasten the approach of an 
 event so beneficial to the great interests of mankind."' 
 My Lords, you have seen what he says about an act of Par- 
 liament. Do not you now think it rather an extraordinary 
 thing that any British subject should, in vindication of the 
 authority which he has exercised, quote here the names and 
 institutes, as he calls them, of those men who were the 
 scourges of mankind whose power was a power which they 
 held by great [brute?] force? 
 institutes As to the institutes of Genghis Khan, which he calls 
 
 of Genghis . . i V>? . i , 111 'ii 
 
 Khan. institutes, I never saw them. If he has that book he will 
 oblige the public by producing it. I have seen a book exist- 
 ing called Yassaf of Genghis Khan ; the other I never saw. 
 If there be any part of it to justify arbitrary power, he will 
 produce it. But if we may judge by those ten precepts of 
 Genghis Khan that we have, there is not a shadow of arbi- 
 trary power to be found in any one of them. Institutes of 
 arbitrary power ! Why if there is arbitrary power there can 
 be no institutes. This unknown book of Genghis Khan, which 
 Mr. Hastings says contains arbitrary institutes, I have not 
 
 * " The Minutes of what "was offered by Warren Hastings, Esquire, at the 
 Ear of the House of Commons, upon the matter of the several Charges of 
 High Crimes and Misdemeanours presented against him in the year 1786." 
 Printed for Debrett, 8vo., 1788, p. 97. 
 
 f Fragments of the Code of Genghis Khan are printed, in Persian, -with a 
 French translation hy M. Langles, in the " Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits 
 de la Bibliothcque du Roi," vol. v., p. 205.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 85 
 
 yet seen; but it seems to be one of the books which lie w FEB. nss. 
 quotes and approves. 
 
 With regard to the institutes of Tamerlane, here they are Eulogy of 
 in their original, and here is a translation. I have carefully tutesof" 
 read every part of those institutes ; and if any one shows Tamcrlane - 
 me one word in them in which the prince claims in himself 
 arbitrary power, I shall for my own part confess I have 
 brought myself to great shame. There is no book in the 
 world, I believe, which contains nobler, more just, more 
 manly, more pious, principles of government than this book 
 called the Institutes of Tamerlane : nor is there one word 
 of arbitrary power in it, much less of that arbitrary power 
 which Mr. Hastings supposed himself justified by ; namely, 
 a delegated, subordinate, arbitrary power. So far are those 
 great princes from permitting this gross, violent, arbitrary, 
 power, that I will venture to say the chief thing by which 
 they have recommended themselves to posterity was a most 
 direct declaration of all the wrath, indignation and powers, 
 of the government against it. 
 
 This, my Lords, is a legacy left to posterity by the great Recital of 
 
 T7 rr, i * J J J theinsti- 
 
 Jiiinperor lamerlane*: tutesof 
 
 Tamerlane. 
 
 " Be it known to my fortunate sons, the conquerors of kingdoms, to my 
 mighty descendants, the lords of the earth, that, since I have hope in 
 Almighty God, that many of my children, descendants and posterity, 
 shall sit upon the throne of power and regal authority ; upon this account, 
 having established laws and regulations for the well-governing of my 
 dominions, I have collected together those regulations and laws as a model 
 for others ; to the end that every one of my children, descendants and 
 posterity, acting agreeably thereto, my power and empire, which I acquired 
 through hardships, and difficulties, and perils, and bloodshed, by the 
 Divine favour, and by the influence of the holy religion of Mahummud 
 (God's peace be upon him !), and with the assistance of the powerful 
 descendants and illustrious followers of that prophet, may be by them 
 preserved. And let them make these regulations ths rule of their con- 
 duct in the affairs of their empire, that the fortune and the power which 
 shall descend from me to them may be safe from discord and dissolution. 
 Now therefore be it known to my sons, the fortunate and the illustrious, 
 to my descendants, the mighty subduers of kingdoms, that in like manner 
 as I by twelve maxims, which I established as the rule of my conduct, 
 attained to regal dignity, and with the assistance of these maxims con- 
 quered and governed kingdoms, and decorated and adorned the throne of 
 my empire, let them also act according to these regulations, and preserve 
 
 * The institutes of Tamerlane had been printed, in an English version, a few 
 years before the period of the trial, under the following title : "Institutes, 
 Political and Military, written originally in the Mogul Language by the great 
 Timur ; first translated into Persian by Abou-Taulib-Al-Husseini ; and thence 
 into English by Major Davy ; with the original Persian." Oxford, Clarendon 
 Press, 1783, 4to. The quotation is from the second book, p. 157.
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 Recital of 
 the insti- 
 tutes of 
 Tamerlane 
 cont. 
 
 16 FEB. 1788. the splendour of mine and their dominions. And, among the rules 
 which I established for the support of my glory and empire, the first was 
 this that I promoted the worship of Almighty God, and propagated the 
 religion of the sacred Mahummud throughout the world ; and at all times 
 and in all places, supported the true faith. 
 
 " Secondly ; with the people of the twelve classes and tribes I conquered 
 and governed kingdoms, and with them I strengthened the pillars of my 
 fortune, and from them I formed my assembly. 
 
 " Thirdly ; by consultation, and deliberation, and provident measures, by 
 caution and by vigilance, I vanquished armies, and I reduced kingdoms 
 to my authority. And I carried on the business of my empire by com- 
 plying with times and occasions, and by generosity, and by patience, and 
 by policy ; and I acted with courteousness towards my friends and 
 towards my enemies. 
 
 " Fourthly; by order and by discipline I regulated the concerns of my 
 government ; and by discipline and by order I so firmly established my 
 authority, that the ameers and the viziers, and the soldiers, and the 
 subjects, could not aspire beyond their respective degrees, and every one 
 of them was the keeper of his own station. 
 
 " Fifthly; I gave encouragement to my ameers, and to my soldiers, and 
 with money and with jewels I made them glad of heart ; and I permitted 
 them to come into the banquet ; and in the field of blood they hazarded 
 their lives. And I withheld not from them my gold nor my silver. And 
 I educated and trained them to arms. And to alleviate their sufferings I 
 myself shared in their labours and in their hardships, until with the arm 
 of fortitude and resolution, and with the unanimity of my chiefs, and my 
 generals, and my warriors, by the edge of the sword I obtained possession 
 of the thrones of seven and twenty Kings ; and became the King and the 
 ruler of the kingdoms of Eraun, and of Tooraun ; and of Room, and of 
 Mughrib, and of Shaum; and of Missur, and of Erauk-a-Arrub, and of 
 Ajjum ; and of Mauzinduraun. and of Kylaunaut ; and of Shurvaunaut, 
 and of Azzurbauejaun ; and of Fauris, and of Khorausaun; and of the 
 Dusht of Jitteh, and the Dusht of Kipchauk; and of Khauruzm, and of 
 Khuttun, and of Kauboolistaun ; and of Hindostaun, and of Bauktur 
 Zemeen. And when I cloathed myself in the robe of empire, I shut my 
 eyes to safety, and to the repose which is found on the bed of ease. 
 And from the twelfth year of my age I travelled over countries and com- 
 bated difficulties, and formed enterprises and vanquished armies; and 
 experienced mutinies amongst my officers and my soldiers, and was 
 familiarised to the language of disobedience; and I opposed them with 
 policy and with fortitude, and I hazarded my person in the hour of danger, 
 until in the end I vanquished kingdoms and empires, and established the 
 glory of my name. 
 
 " Sixthly ; by justice and equity I gained the affections of the people 
 of God ; and I extended my clemency to the guilty as well as to the 
 innocent ; and I passed that sentence which truth required ; and by 
 benevolence I gained a place in the hearts of men ; and by rewards and 
 punishments I kept both my troops and my subjects divided between 
 hope and fear. And I compassionated the lower ranks of my people, 
 and those who were distressed. And I gave gifts to the soldiers. And 
 I delivered the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor; and after 
 proof of the oppression, whether on the property or the person, the 
 decision which I passed between them was agreeable to the sacred law. 
 And I did not cause any one person to suffer for the guilt of another. 
 Those who had done me injuries, who had attacked my person in battle,
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 87 
 
 and had counteracted my schemes and enterprises, when they threw 16 FEB. 1788. 
 themselves on my mercy, I received them with kindness ; I conferred on .T~r . 
 them additional honours, and I drew the pen of oblivion over their evil the insti- 
 actions ; and I treated them in such sort, that, if suspicion remained in tutesof 
 their hearts, it was plucked out entirely. 
 
 " Seventhly; I selected out, and treated with esteem and veneration, the 
 posterity of the Prophet, and the theologians, and the teachers of the 
 true faith, and* the philosophers, and the historians. And I loved men 
 of courage and valour; for God Almighty loveth the brave. And I 
 associated with good and learned men ; and I gained their affections, 
 and I entreated their support, and I sought success from their holy 
 prayers. And I loved the dervishes and the poor; and I oppressed them 
 not ; neither did I exclude them from my favour. And I permitted not 
 the evil and the malevolent to enter into my council; and I acted not 
 by their advice ; and I listened not to their insinuations to the pre- 
 judice of others. 
 
 " Eighthly ; I acted with resolution ; and on whatever undertaking I 
 resolved, I made that undertaking the only object of my attention ; and 
 I withdrew not my hand from that enterprise until I had brought it to a 
 conclusion. And I acted according to that which I said. And I dealt 
 not with severity towards any one ; and I was not oppressive in any of 
 my actions ; that God Almighty might not deal severely towards me, 
 nor render my own actions oppressive unto me. And I inquired of 
 learned men into the laws and regulations of ancient princes, from the 
 days of Adam to those of the Prophet, and from the days of the Prophet 
 down to this time. And I weighed their institutions, and their actions, 
 and their opinions, one by one ; and from their approved manners, and 
 their good qualities, I selected models. And I inquired into the causes 
 of the subversion of their power ; and I shunned those actions which 
 tend to the destruction and overthrow of regal authority. And from 
 cruelty and from oppression, which are the destroyers of posterity, and 
 the bringers of famine and of plagues, I found it was good to abstain. 
 
 " Ninthly ; the situation of my people was known unto me ; and those 
 who were great among them I considered as my brethren ; and I 
 regarded the poor as my children. And I made myself acquainted with 
 the tempers and the dispositions of the people of every country, and of 
 every city. And I contracted intimacies with the citizens, and the 
 chiei's, and the nobles ; and I appointed over them governors adapted to 
 their manners, and their dispositions, and their wishes. And I knew the 
 circumstances of the inhabitants of every province. And in every 
 kingdom I appointed writers of intelligence, men of truth and integrity, 
 that they might send me information of the conduct, and the behaviour, 
 and the actions, and the manners, of the troops and of the inhabitants, and 
 of every occurrence that might come to pass amongst them. And if I 
 discovered aught contrary to their information, I inflicted punishment 
 on the intelligencer. And every circumstance of cruelty and oppression 
 in the governors, and in the troops, and in the inhabitants, which 
 reached my ears, I chastised agreeably to justice and equity. 
 
 " Tenthly ; whatever tribe, and whatever horde, whether Toork, or 
 Taucheek, or Arrub, or Ajjum, came in unto me, I received their chiefs 
 with distinction and respect, and their followers 1 honoured according to 
 their degrees and their stations ; and to the good among them I did good, 
 and the evil I delivered over to their evil actions. And whoever attached 
 himself unto me, I forgot not the merit of his attachment, and I acted 
 towards him with kindness and generosity; and whoever had rendered me
 
 88 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 Recital of 
 the insti- 
 tutes of 
 Tamerlane 
 cant. 
 
 16 FEB. 1783. services, I repaid the value of those services unto him. And whoever had 
 been m y enem y> an( l was ashamed thereof, and flying to me for protection 
 humbled himself before me, I forgot his enmity, and I purchased him 
 with liberality and kindness. In such manner Share Behraum, the chief 
 of a tribe, was along with me. And he left me in the hour of action; and 
 he united with the enemy, and he drew forth his sword against me. And 
 at length my salt, which he had eaten, seized upon him ; and he again 
 fled to me for refuge, and humbled himself before me. As he was a man 
 of illustrious descent, and of bravery, and of experience, I covered my 
 eyes from his evil actions; and I magnified him, and I exalted him to a 
 superior rank, and I pardoned his disloyalty in consideration of his 
 valour. 
 
 "Eleventhly; my children, and my relations, and my associates, and my 
 neighbours, and such as had been connected with me, all these 1 distin- 
 guished in the days of my fortune and prosperity, and I paid unto them, 
 their due. And with respect to my family, I rent not asunder the bands 
 of consanguinity and mercy; and I issued not commands to slay them 
 or to bind them with chains. And I dealt with every man, whatever the 
 judgment I had formed of him, according to my own opinion of his 
 worth. As I had seen much of prosperity and adversity, and had ac- 
 quired knowledge and experience, I conducted myself with caution and 
 with policy towards my friends, and towards my enemies. 
 
 " Twelfthly ; soldiers, whether associates or adversaries, I held in esteem ; 
 those who sell their permanent happiness to perishable honour, and throw 
 themselves into the field of slaughter and battle, and hazard their lives in 
 the hour of danger. And the man who drew his sword on the side of my 
 enemy, and committed hostilities against me, and preserved his fidelity to 
 his master, him I greatly honoured. And when such a man came unto me, 
 knowing his worth, I classed him with my faithful associates, and 1 
 respected and valued his fidelity and his attachment. And the soldier 
 who forgot his duty and his honour, and in the hour of action turned 
 his face from his master and came in unto me, I considered as the most 
 detestable of men. And, in the war between Touktummish Khaun, his 
 ameers forgot their duty to Touktummish, who was their master and 
 my foe, and sent proposals and wrote letters to me, and I uttered execra- 
 tions upon them, because, unmindful of that which they owed to their 
 lord, they had thrown aside their honour and their duty, and came in 
 unto me. I said unto myself, What fidelity have they observed to their 
 liege lord? What fidelity will they show unto me? And behold it was 
 known unto me by experience that every empire which is not established 
 in morality and religion, nor strengthened by regulations and laws, from 
 that empire all order, grandeur and power, shall pass away. And that 
 empire may be likened unto a naked man, who, when exposed to view, 
 commandeth the eye of modesty to be covered ; and it is like unto a 
 house which hath neither roof, nor gates, nor defences, into which who- 
 ever willeth may enter unmolested. Therefore I established the founda- 
 tion of my empire on the morality and the religion of Islaum ; and by 
 regulations and laws I gave it stability. And by laws and by regulations 
 I executed every business, and every transaction that came before me in 
 the course of my government." 
 
 My Lords, I need not read any further, or I might show 
 your Lordships the noble principles, the grand, bold and 
 manly, maxims, the resolution to abstain from oppression
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 89 
 
 himself and to crush it in every governor, which are to be 16FEB.1788. 
 found in this book, which Mr. Hastings has thought proper 
 to resort to as containing what he calls arbitrary prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 But it is not here only that I must do justice to the Morality of 
 East. I assert that their morality is equal to ours as regards thelast? ir 
 the morality of governors, fathers, superiors ; and I challenge 
 the world to show, in any modern European book, more true 
 morality and wisdom than is to be found in the writings of 
 Asiatic men in high trusts, and who have been counsellors to 
 princes. This is to be set against that geographical morality 
 to which I have referred. 
 
 My Lords, I have here a matter of fact, attested by a tra- Punishment 
 veller of power and consequence, which is very material at governors. 8 
 this point ; for it shows 1 that, in almost all the instances in 
 which the princes of the country have used any of those 
 cruel and barbarous executions which make us execrate 
 them, it has been upon governors who have abused their 
 trust ; and that this very Oriental authority to which Mr. 
 Hastings appeals would have condemned him to dreadful 
 punishment. I thank God, and I say it from my heart, that 
 even for his enormous offences there neither is, nor can be, 
 anything like such punishments. God forbid that we should 
 not as much detest out of the way, mad, furious and unequal, 
 punishments, as we detest enormous and abominable crimes ! 
 Because a severe punishment for a crime of a light nature is 
 as bad and iniquitous as the crime which it pretends to 
 punish. As the instances to which I refer are so curious, 
 and as they go to the principles of Mr. Hastings' Defence, I 
 shall beg to mention them. 
 
 The first is the case of a governor who did what Mr. instances 
 Hastings says he has a power delegated to him to do ; he referred to - 
 levied a tax without the consent of his master: 
 
 " Some years after my departure from Com" (says Tavernier*) "the 
 governor had, of his own accord, and without any communication with 
 the King, laid a small impost upon every pannier of fruit brought into 
 the city, for the purpose of making some necessary reparations in the 
 walls and bridges of the town. It was towards the end of the year 1632 
 that the event I am going to relate happened. The King, being informed 
 
 * " Voyages en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes," de Bernier Jean Bap- 
 tiste Tavernier: translated into English by J. P[hillips], under the title 
 " A Collection of the Travels of other great Men through Turkey into Persia 
 and the East Indies, for the space of Forty Years ; -with his relation of the 
 Kingdom of Turkey." London, 2 vols. folio, 1684. Book I., chap. 6, p. 30.
 
 90 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 ifi FEB. 1788. of the impost which the governor had laid upon the fruit, ordered him to 
 
 be brought in chains to court. The King ordered him to be exposed to 
 
 the people at one of the gates of the palace ; then he commanded the son 
 to pluck off the mustachios of his father, to cut off his nose and ears, to 
 put out his eyes, and then to cut off his head. The King then told the 
 son to go and take possession of the government of his father ; saying, 
 * See that you govern better than this deceased dog, or thy doom shall 
 be a death more exquisitely tormenting.' ' : 
 
 My Lords, you are struck with horror, I am struck with 
 horror, at this punishment. I do not relate it to approve of 
 such barbarous punishment ; but to prove to your Lordships 
 that, whatever power the princes of that country have, they 
 are jealous of it to such a degree that if any of their gover- 
 nors should levy a tax, even the most insignificant and for 
 the best purposes, he meets with a cruel punishment. I 
 do not justify the punishment ; but the greatness of it shows 
 ho\v little of their power the princes of that country mean 
 to delegate to their servants, which the gentleman at your 
 bar says is delegated to him. 
 
 There is another case, a very strong one, and that is the 
 case of presents, which I understand is a custom admitted 
 throughout Asia in all their governments. It was of a 
 person who was raised to a high office. No business was 
 suffered to come before him without a previous present : 
 
 " One morning, the King being at this time on a hunting party, the 
 Nazar came to the tent of the King, but was denied entrance by the meter 
 or master of the wardrobe. About the same time the King came forth, and 
 seeing the Nazar, commanded his officers to take off the bonnet from the 
 head of that dog that took gifts from his people ; and that he should 
 sit three days bareheaded in the heat of the sun, and as many nights 
 in the air. Afterwards he caused him to be chained about the neck 
 and arms, and condemned him to perpetual imprisonment, with a ma- 
 moudy a day for his maintenance ; but he died for grief within eight 
 days after he was put in prison." * 
 
 Punishment Do I mean, in reading this to your Lordships, to approve 
 tfce h of r^* either of the cruelty of the punishment or the coarse bar- 
 sents 1 fn prc " k ar i sm ^ tne language ? Neither one nor the other. I pro- 
 Asia, duce it to your Lordships to prove to you, even from this 
 example, the horror which that government feels when any 
 person subject to it shall assume to himself to receive 
 presents. The cruelty and severity of these cases is not 
 levelled at the poor, unfortunate, people who complain at their 
 gates, but, to use their barbarous expressions, to dogs that 
 
 * Tavernier's " Travels through Turkey into Persia, &c." Book V., 
 chap. 5, p. 210.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 91 
 
 take presents. God forbid I should use that language ! The 
 people, when they complain, are not called dogs and sent 
 away, but the governors, who take presents of the people, 
 they are called dogs, and treated in that cruel manner. 
 I quote this case to show that no governors in the East, upon 
 -any principle of their constitution, or any good practice of 
 their government, can receive presents. And when they 
 escape, it is by bribery, by corruption, by forming for 
 themselves factions in the seraglio, in the country, in the 
 army, in the divan. But how they escape such punishments 
 is not my business. It is enough for me that the constitution 
 disavows them, that the princes of the country disavow 
 them, that they treat them with the most horrible expressions 
 and dreadful punishments when they are called to answer for 
 these things. 
 
 Thus much concerning the laws of Asia. That the people 
 of Asia have no laws, rights or liberties, is a doctrine that 
 is to be disseminated wickedly through this country. But 
 every Mohammedan government, as I before stated, is, by 
 its principles, a government of law. I shall now state that 
 it does not and cannot, from what is known of the govern- 
 ment of India, delegate (as Mr. Hastings has frequently 
 declared) the whole of its powers and authority to him. If 
 the governments are absolute, as they must be, in the 
 supreme power they ought to be arbitrary in none they 
 were, however, never absolute in any of their subordinate 
 parts ; and I will prove it by the known provincial consti- Provincial 
 tutions of Hindustan, which show that their power is never tkmsof " 
 delegated ; by the proof that they are all descended of Mo- Hindustan, 
 hammedans, under a law as clear, as explicit and as learned, 
 as ours. 
 
 The first foundation of their law is the Kuran. The next 
 part is the fatwa, or adjudged cases by proper authority, 
 well known there. The next is the written interpretation 
 of the principles of jurisprudence ; and their books are 
 as numerous upon the principles of jurisprudence as in 
 any country in Europe. The next part of their law is 
 what they call the kanun, which is equivalent to acts of 
 Parliament, being the law of the several powers of the 
 country, taken from the Greek word xavwv, which was 
 brought into their country, and it is well known. The next 
 is the rawaj-ul-mulk, the common law or custom of the king- 
 dom, equivalent to our common law. Therefore they have 
 laws from more sources -than we have, exactly in the same
 
 92 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 Power dis- 
 tributed. 
 
 16 FEB^ITSS. order, grounded upon the same authority, fundamentally 
 fixed to be administered to the people upon these principle?. 
 
 The next thing to show is, that, having this law, they have 
 sub-delegated their power by parcels, and have not dele- 
 gated the whole of it to any one man, who therefore cannot 
 exercise it. In every province, the first person is the subah- 
 dar or viceroy. He has the military power, and the admi- 
 nistration of criminal justice only. Then there is the diwan 
 or high steward. He has the revenue and all exchequer 
 causes under him, to be governed according to the laws and 
 customs and institutions of the kingdom. 
 
 The law of inheritances, successions, and everything that 
 relates to them, is under the kazi, who judges in his court. 
 But there is another sub-division ; that is to say, the kazi 
 cannot judge without having two muftis along with him. 
 And though there is no appeal, properly, in the Moham- 
 medan law, yet if they do not agree with him the cause is 
 removed ; it is transferred to the general assembly, that is, 
 the whole legal body united, consisting of all the men of law 
 in the kingdom. There are also, I will venture to say, other 
 divisions and sub-divisions ; for there are the kanungoes in 
 the country, who hold their places for life, to be the conser- 
 vators of the canons, customs and good usages, in the 
 country. All these, as well as the kazi and the mufti, hold 
 their places and situations, not during the wanton pleasure 
 of the prince, but upon permanent and fixed terms for life. 
 
 These powers of magistracy, revenue and law, are all 
 different, and consequently are not delegated in the whole 
 to any one. I say therefore that Mr. Hastings has no refuge 
 there. Let him run from law to law; let him fly from 
 the common law, and the sacred institutions of the country 
 in which he was born ; let him fly from acts of Parliament, 
 from which his power originated ; let him plead his igno- 
 rance of them or fly in the face of them. Will he fly to the 
 Mohammedan law ? That condemns him. Will he fly to the 
 high magistracy of Asia to defend the taking of presents ? 
 The Padshah* and the Sultan would condemn him to a cruel 
 death. Will he fly to the Sophis, to the laws of Persia, or 
 to the practice of those monarchs ? Oh ! I cannot say the 
 unutterable things that would happen to him if he was to 
 govern there. Let him fly where he will, from law to law ; 
 law, thank God, meets him everywhere ; and the practice of 
 
 Xo prece- 
 dent for 
 arbitrary 
 power in 
 any govern 
 ments. 
 
 * The king.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 93 
 
 the most impious tyrants which he quotes cannot justify his IGFEB.ITSS. 
 conduct. I would as willingly have him tried upon the law 
 of the Kuran, or the institutes of Tamerlane, as upon the 
 common law or the statute law of this kingdom. 
 
 My Lords, the next question is, whether the Gentu laws Arbitrary 
 justify arbitrary power ; and if Mr. Hastings finds any sane- ^ctioned 
 tuary there, he shall take sanctuary with the cow in the j^* 11 * 
 pagoda. The Gentus have a law, accurately written, 
 positively proscribing in magistrates any idea of will ; a law 
 with which, or rather with extracts of which, that gentleman 
 has himself furnished us. These people are governed, not 
 by the arbitrary power of any one, but by laws and insti- 
 tutions in which there is the substance of a whole body of 
 equity, diversified by the manners and customs of the people, 
 but having in it that which makes law good for anything, a 
 substantial body of equity and great principles of jurispru- 
 dence, both civil and criminal. I am ready to say that there 
 are very few books, if we were to take them by a small 
 body of extracts, that would exceed that book. I have given 
 your Lordships some instances of Tamerlane's mode of pro- 
 ceeding; but everything that Mr. Hastings has done, I 
 believe, would be as severely punished as it is directly pro- 
 scribed by the law of Tamerlane. In short, follow him 
 where you will ; Jet him have eastern or western law ; you 
 find everywhere arbitrary power and peculation of governors 
 proscribed and horribly punished more so than I should 
 ever wish to punish any human creature. If this then is the 
 case, as I hops and trust it will be proved to your Lordships 
 that there is law in these countries, that there is no dele- 
 gation of power which exempts a governor from the law 
 then, I say, at any rate a British governor is to answer for his 
 conduct, and cannot be justified by wicked examples and 
 bad practices. 
 
 Another thing that Mr. Hastings says is, that he was left ? Ir - , H ^ 
 to himself to govern himself by his own practice ; that is to that hV 
 say, when he had taken one bribe he might take another; gwern 
 when he had robbed one man of his property, he might rob p 
 another ; when he had imprisoned one man arbitrarily and 
 extorted money from him, he might do so by another. He 
 resorts at first to the practice of barbarians and usurpers, at 
 last he comes to his own. Now if your Lordships will try 
 him upon those maxims and principles, he is clear ; for there 
 is no manner of doubt that there is nothing he has practised
 
 94 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 iG FEB. 1788. ones which lie has not practised again; and then the repe- 
 tition of crimes becomes the means of his indemnity. 
 
 His plea of But, my Lords, he has given another softening to this 
 lce ' business. He says, and with a kind of triumph, that the 
 ministry of this country have great legal assistance ; the 
 lights of the commerce of the greatest commercial city in 
 the world ; the greatest generals and officers to guide and 
 direct them in military affairs ; " whereas I, poor man, was 
 sent almost a schoolboy from England, or at least little 
 better, to find my way in that new world as well as I could." 
 Such a declaration would in some measure suit persons 
 who had acted much otherwise than Mr. Hastings. When 
 a, man pleads ignorance in justification of his conduct, it 
 ought to be an humble, modest, unpresuming, ignorance ; an 
 ignorance which may have made him lax and timid in the 
 exercise of his duty ; but a bold, presuming, dogmatic, fero- 
 cious, active, ignorance is itself a crime ; and the ignorance 
 upon which it is founded aggravates the crime. Mr. Has- 
 tings, if by ignorance he left some of the Directors' orders 
 unexecuted because he did not understand them, might well 
 say, I was an ignorant man, and these things were above my 
 capacity. But when he understands them, and when he 
 declares he will not obey them, positively and dogmatically ; 
 when he says, as he has said, and we shall prove it, that he 
 never succeeds better than when he acts in an utter defiance 
 of those orders ; I believe this will not be thought the lan- 
 guage of an ignorant man. But I beg your Lordships' 
 pardon ; it is the language of an ignorant man ; for no man 
 who was not full of a bold, determined, wicked, ignorance, 
 3ould ever think of such a system of defence. He quitted 
 Westminster school almost a boy. We have reason to 
 regret that he did not finish his education in that seminary 
 which has given so many lights to the church and ornaments 
 to the state. Greatly have we to lament that he did not go 
 to one of the universities where arbitrary power will I hope 
 never be heard of; but the trus principles of religion, of 
 liberty and law, will ever be inculcated instead of studying 
 in the school of Cossim AH Khan. 
 
 If he had lived with us, he would have quoted the ex- 
 ample of Cicero in his government ; he would have quoted 
 several of the sacred and holy prophets, and made them 
 his example. But he quotes every name of barbarism, 
 tyranny and usurpation, that is to be found ; and "from these,"
 
 . Speech of Mr. Burke. 95 
 
 he says, " from the practice of one part of Asia or other, have 
 I taken my rule/' But your Lordships will show him that, in 
 Asia as well as in Europe, the same law of nations prevails, 
 the same principles are continually resorted to, and the same 
 maxims sacredly held and strenuously maintained ; and 
 however disobeyed, no man suffers from the breach of them 
 that does not know how to complain of that breach; that 
 Asia is enlightened in that respect as well as Europe ; but, 
 if it was totally blinded, that England would send out 
 governors to teach them better ; and that he must justify 
 himself to the piety, the truth, the faith, of England, and 
 not justify himself by having recourse to the barbarous 
 tyranny of Asia, or any other part of the world. 
 
 I will go further with Mr. Hastings, and admit that, if 
 there is a boy in the fourth form of Westminster school, or 
 any school in England, who does not know, when these 
 Articles are read to him, that Mr. Hastings has been guilty 
 of gross and enormous crimes, he may have the shelter of 
 his present plea, so far as it will serve him. There are 
 none of us, thank God ! so uninstructed, who have learned 
 our catechisms or the first elements of Christianity, who do 
 not know that such conduct is not to be justified. 
 
 There is another topic which Mr. Hastings takes uppieaof 
 more seriously, and as a general rebutter to the charge. 
 Says he : 
 
 " After a great many of these practices with which I am charged, 
 Parliament appointed me to my trust, and consequently has acquit- 
 ted me." 
 
 Has it, my Lords ? I am bold to say that the Commons are 
 wholly guiltless of this charge. If they had re-appointed 
 him to a great public trust, after they had known of his 
 enormities, after they had had them before them, they would 
 have participated in the guilt with him, and the public would 
 have great reason to reprobate their conduct ; and I admit 
 that, if that were the case, there would be an indecorum in 
 prosecuting him. But the House of Commons stand before 
 your Lordships without shame ; because they know that these 
 crimes never were brought and proved before them. No ; 
 they lay buried in the records of the Company. Perhaps if 
 we had examined them strictly, as we ought, Mr. Hastings 
 would not have been re-appointed to that trust ; but if any 
 one will show any part of the charge proved before the 
 House of Commons we will take that part of the shame. 
 My Lords, at the time Mr. Hastings was re-appointed we
 
 96 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 ie FED. 1788. had not any knowledge of these transactions. Since they 
 came to our knowledge we never ceased to attack, to con- 
 demn and prosecute, them, and, as far as legal power was in 
 us, to call him home to answer for them. Therefore we are 
 as free from indecorum as from breach of duty in appointing 
 such a person. But, even if that which he states were true, 
 it does not rebut the greatest part of this charge; for a great 
 number of these enormities and wickednesses were committed 
 since his last appointment. But, supposing it were true, 
 think of the audacity of a man Avho will fly in the face of 
 his country and say " You trusted me when you ought not, 
 therefore you are obliged to carry me through this matter, 
 it being your own act." No ; we return it upon him and 
 say " It is not our own act ; the wickedness was yours, 
 the trust was yours. And if we, in a moment of inad- 
 vertence, or even from a breach of our duty, by neglect, 
 appointed you, that ought to have been a lesson to you to 
 forbear from those crimes on account of our lenity." .But 
 no ; he has made use of that trust to redouble all those 
 crimes and offences from the moment of his appointment to 
 the moment of quitting that country, as I hope we shall be 
 able to prove fully before your Lordships. 
 
 approval by My Lords, we have now gone through most of the general 
 pany m " topics. But Mr. Hastings says he has had the thanks and 
 approbation of the India Company for his services. We 
 know too well here, I trust the world knows, and you will 
 always assert, that a pardon from the Crown cannot bar the 
 impeachment of the Commons, much less a pardon of the 
 East India Company ; though it may involve them in guilt, 
 which might induce us to punish them for such a pardon. 
 
 The East India Company, it is true, have thanked him. 
 They ought not to have done it, and it is a reflection upon their 
 character that they did it. But if you come to this gentle- 
 man's actions, they are all, every one, censured one by one as 
 they arise. I do not recollect any one transaction, few there 
 are I am sure, in the whole body of that train of crimes 
 which is now brought before you for your judgment, in 
 which the India Company have not censured him. Then if 
 for any fresh reasons they come and say, " We thank you, 
 sir, for all your services," to that I answer, " Yes, and I 
 would thank him for his services too if I knew them ; but 
 I do not : perhaps they do. Let them thank him for those 
 services. I am ordered to prosecute him for these crimes." 
 Here, therefore, we are upon a balance with the India Com-
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 97 
 
 pany, and your Lordships may perhaps think it some addition 
 to his crimes that he has found means to obtain the thanks 
 of the India Company for the whole of his conduct, at the 
 same time that their records are full of constant, uniform, 
 censure and reprobation of every one of those acts for which 
 he now stands accused. 
 
 He says also that there is the testimony of Indian Testimony 
 princes in his favour. But do we not know ho\v seals are pri^cestn 
 obtained in that country? Do we not know how those " is favour - 
 princes are imposed upon ? Do we not know the subjection 
 and thraldom in which they are held ; and that they are 
 obliged to return thanks for the sufferings which they have 
 felt i* I believe your Lordships will think that there is not, 
 with regard to some of these princes, a more dreadful thing 
 that can be said of them than that he has obtained their 
 thanks. I understand he has obtained the thanks of the 
 miserable Princesses of Oude, whom he has cruelly impri- 
 soned, whose treasure he has seized, and whose eunuchs he 
 has tortured. 
 
 These native princes thank him for going away. They 
 thank him for leaving them the smallest trifle of their 
 subsistence ; and I venture to say, if he wanted a hundred 
 more panegyrics upon him, provided he never came again 
 among them, he might have them. I understand that 
 Madajee Scindia has made his panegyric too.* Madajee 
 Scindia has not made his panegyric for nothing ; for, if your 
 Lordships will suffer Mr. Hastings to enter into such a justifi- 
 cation, we will prove that he has sacrificed the dignity of 
 this country and all its allies to that prince. We attack him 
 neither with panegyrics nor with satire. It is for substantial 
 crimes that we bring him before you. We bring him before 
 you for having cruelly injured persons in India ; and, when 
 we prove that he has cruelly injured them, you will think 
 the panegyrics either gross forgeries or most miserable 
 aggravations of his offences, since they show the dreadful 
 state into which he has driven those people. For, let it be 
 proved that I have cruelly robbed and treated any persons, 
 and then I produce a certificate from them of my good 
 behaviour ; would not that be a corroborative proof of the 
 terror that those persons are thrown into by my behaviour? 
 
 My Lords, these are, I believe, the general grounds of our 
 
 * Hastings refers in his Defence before the Commons to letters expressing 
 regret at his departure from India, addressed by Madajee Scindia to the King 
 and to the Company. See p. 5 of Debrett's edition. 
 
 G
 
 98 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 16 FBB. 1788. 
 
 Review of 
 
 topics of this 
 address. 
 
 Apology for 
 length of 
 address. 
 
 Method of 
 future pro- 
 ceedings in 
 the charge. 
 
 charge. I have now closed completely, and I hope to your 
 Lordships' satisfaction, the whole body of history of which 
 I wished to put your Lordships in possession. I do not mean 
 that you will not know it more perfectly by your own 
 inquiries that many of your Lordships may not have known 
 it more perfectly by your own previous inquiries ; but, 
 bringing to your remembrance the state of the circumstances 
 of the persons with whom he acted, the persons and power 
 he has abused, I have gone to the principles he maintains, 
 the precedents he quotes, the laws and authorities which he 
 refuses to abide by, and those on which he relies ; and at last 
 I have refuted all those pleas in bar upon which he depends, 
 and for the effect of which he presumes on the indulgence 
 and patience of this country, or the corruption of some persons 
 in it. 
 
 And here I close what I have to say upon this subject ; 
 wishing and hoping that, when I open the case before your 
 Lordships more particularly, so as to state rather a plan of the 
 proceeding than the direct proof of the crimes, your Lordships 
 will hear me with the same goodness and indulgence that I 
 have hitherto experienced ; that you will consider, if I have 
 detained you long, it was not with a view of exhausting my 
 own strength, or putting your patience to too severe a trial, 
 but from the sense I feel that it is the most difficult and the 
 most complicated cause that was ever brought before any 
 human tribunal ; therefore I was resolved to bring the 
 whole substantially before you. And now, if your Lordship* 
 will permit me, 1 will state the method of my future pro- 
 ceeding and the future proceeding of the gentlemen assisting 
 me. 
 
 I mean first to bring before you the crimes as they are 
 classed, and which are of the same species and genus, and 
 show how they mutually arose from one another. I shall 
 first show that Mr. Hastings' crimes had root in that which 
 is the root of all evil, T mean avarice ; that avarice and 
 rapacity were the groundwork and foundation of all his other 
 vicious system; that he showed it in setting to sale the 
 native government of the country; in setting to sale the 
 whole landed interest of the country ; in setting to sale the 
 British government and his own fellow-servants, to the 
 basest and wickedest of mankind. I shall then show your 
 Lordships that when, in consequence of such a body of 
 corruption and peculation, he justly dreaded the vengeance 
 and indignation of the laws of his country, in order to raise
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 99 
 
 himself a faction embodied by the same guilt and rewarded 10 FEB. i?88. 
 in the same manner, he has, with a most abandoned profusion, 
 thrown away the revenues of the country to form such a 
 faction here. 
 
 I shall next show your Lordships that, having exhausted 
 the country and brought it to extreme difficulties within, he 
 has looked to his external resources, as he calls them ; he 
 has gone up into the country. I will show that he has 
 plundered, or attempted to plunder, every person dependent 
 upon, connected or allied with, this country. I shall show 
 what infinite mischief has followed from it in the case of 
 Benares, upon which he first laid his hands ; next in the case 
 of the Begums of Oude. 
 
 I shall then lay before you the wicked system by which 
 he endeavoured to oppress that country, first by Residents, 
 next by spies under the name of British Residents. And, 
 lastly, that, pursuing his way up to the mountains, he has 
 founctout one miserable chief, whose crimes were the pros- 
 perity of his country, and him he endeavoured to torture and 
 destroy I do not mean in his body, but by exhausting the 
 treasures which he kept for the benefit of his people. 
 
 My Lords, this is the plan on which I mean to go. If I 
 should not be able to execute the whole of it (as I fear I 
 shall not), I shall go at least to the root of it, and so prepare 
 it that the other gentlemen, with ten thousand times more 
 ability than I, will be able to take up the part where I leave 
 off, just when you find it proper. I shall show your Lord- 
 ships that Mr. Hastings' principle is, that no man who is 
 under his power is safe from his arbitrary will ; that no man, 
 within or without, friend, ally, rival, anything, has been 
 safe from him. Therefore I mean to bring the case to that 
 point, to show your Lordships the system of corruption which 
 Mr. Hastings adopted, and the wicked, villanous, perfidious, 
 means, which he calls external resources, of which he made 
 use. And then, if I am not able in my own person imme- 
 diately to go up into the country, and show the ramifications 
 of the system though I hope and trust I shall be spared to 
 take a part in that myself some other gentleman will take 
 up each part in its proper order. And then, I believe, it is 
 proposed by the Managers that one of them shall, as soon as 
 possible afterwards, bring forward the affair of Benares. 
 
 The point I mean to bring before your Lordships first, is 
 the corruption of Mr. Hastings, the system of peculation and 
 bribery upon which he went ; and to show your Lordships 
 
 G 2
 
 100 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 ic FED^i788. the horrid consequences which resulted from it. For though 
 at the first view bribery and peculation do not seem to be so 
 horrid a matter, but may seem to be only transferring a little 
 money out of one pocket into another, I shall show that by 
 such a system of bribery the country is undone. 
 
 I shall inform your Lordships in the best manner I can, and 
 afterwards submit the whole, as I do with a cheerful heart 
 and with an easy and assured security, to that justice which 
 is the security for all the other justice in the kingdom.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 101 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. 
 EDMUND BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE 
 OF COMMONS, IN OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT; 
 
 18 FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, The gentlemen who are appointed by the 
 Commons to manage this prosecution have directed me to 
 inform your Lordships that they have very carefully and abridge pre- 
 
 i i i .1 , T i /,! 1 1 i i ii limmaryex- 
 
 attentively weighed the magnitude of the subject which they pianatkm of 
 bring before you, with the time which the nature and th 
 circumstances of affairs allow for their conducting it. My 
 Lords, on that comparison, they are very apprehensive that, 
 if I should go very largely into a preliminary explanation of 
 the several matters in charge, it might be to the prejudice of 
 an early trial of the substantial merits of each Article. We 
 have weighed and considered the subject maturely. "We 
 have compared exactly the time with the matter, and we 
 have found that we are obliged to do, as all men must do 
 who would manage their affairs practicably to conform our 
 opinion of what might be most advantageous to the business 
 with the time that is left to perform it in. AVe must, as all 
 men must, submit affairs to times, and not think of making 
 time conform to our wishes. And therefore, my Lords, 
 I very willingly fall into what is the wish and what, I 
 believe, the nature of affairs will require and the inclina- 
 tions of the gentlemen Avith whom I have the honour to act ; 
 to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple 
 immediately and directly with the corruptions of India ; to 
 bring before your Lordships the direct Articles ; to apply the 
 evidence to the Articles ; and to bring the matter forward to 
 your Lordships' decision in that manner which the confidence 
 we have in the justice of our cause absolutely demands from 
 the Commons of Great Britain. 
 
 My Lords, these are the opinions of those with whom I 
 have the honour to act: at the same time they perfectly 
 concur with my own. For I should be far from wishing to 
 waste any of your Lordships' time upon any matter, merely
 
 102 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEB. 178S. upon the opinion that I have of the nature of the business, 
 when at the same time that opinion might, in the opinion of 
 others, militate against the full, proper, and, if I may so say, 
 the immediate, effect of that matter. 
 
 Curtailment It was my design to class the crimes of the late Governor 
 pism ofws of Bengal, to show their bearings upon each other, how they 
 ddress. wer e mutually aided and grew and were formed out of each 
 other. I think I shall in some measure be obliged to 
 abridge that plan ; for I proposed, first of all, to show your 
 Lordships that those crimes had their root in that which is 
 the origin of all evil, avarice and rapacity ; to show how 
 that led to prodigality of the public money ; and how 
 prodigality of the public money wasted the treasures of the 
 East India Company, furnished an excuse to the Governor 
 General to break the Company's faith, to violate all its most 
 solemn engagements, and to fall with a hand of stern, 
 ferocious and unrelenting, rapacity upon all the allies and 
 dependencies of the Company. But as your Lordships 
 already possess, from what I had the honour to state on 
 Saturday, a general view of the subject, when the several 
 Articles are presented you may be in a condition to pursue 
 it everywhere according to your own ideas. 
 
 Object of the My Lords, I have to state to-day the root of all these 
 
 provcfpecu- misdemeanours, namely, the pecuniary corruption and avarice 
 
 ruptLiT" which is a material head which gave rise and primary 
 
 motion to all the rest of the delinquencies which we charge 
 
 to have been committed by the Governor General. 
 
 My Lords, pecuniary corruption forms not only a head, as 
 your Lordships will observe, in the charges before you, an 
 Article of charge by itself, but likewise so intermixes with 
 the whole, that it is necessary to give, in the best manner I 
 am able, a history of that corrupt system which brought on all 
 the subsequent acts of corruption, which are so intermixed 
 with the charges that I will venture to say there is no one 
 in which tyranny, malice, cruelty and oppression, can l>c 
 charged that docs not at the same time carry evident marks 
 of pecuniary corruption. 
 Mr. Hast- I had the honour of stating to your Lordships on Saturday 
 
 ings con- , ,, i ? r ii r TT s i i 
 
 scfousof the last the principles upon which Mr. Hastings governed his 
 
 quencesof conduct in India, and upon which he grounds his defence, 
 
 power ary which may be all reduced to one short word arbitrary power. 
 
 My Lords, if Mr. Hastings had contended, as all the rest of 
 
 men in the world contend, that the system of government 
 
 which he patronises, and on which he pretended to act, was
 
 Speech of Mr. BurJte. 103 
 
 a good svstem, tending on the whole to the blessing and is FEB. ms. 
 
 G * ' O _ 
 
 benefit of mankind, possibly something might be said for 
 him for setting up so wild, absurd, irrational and wicked, a 
 system ; something might be said from the intention to 
 qualify the act. But it is singular in this man that, at the 
 time that he tells you he acted on the principles of arbitrary 
 power, he takes care to inform you that he was not blind 
 to the consequences ; and, if you look at his Defence before 
 the House of Commons, you will see that that very system 
 upon which he first governed, and under which he now 
 justifies his actions, did appear to himself a system pregnant 
 with a thousand evils and a thousand mischiefs. 
 
 The next thing that is remarkable and singular in the He follows 
 principles upon which the Governor General acted is, that, temtoits 
 when he is engaged in a vicious system, which clearly leads 
 to evil consequences, he thinks himself bound to realise all 
 the evil consequences involved in that system. All other 
 men have taken a directly contrary course. They have said : 
 " I have been engaged in an evil system, that led indeed 
 to abusive consequences; but I have taken care by my own 
 virtues to prevent the evils of the system under which I 
 acted." Mr. Hastings foresees the abusive and corrupt conse- 
 quences, and then he justifies his conduct upon the neces- 
 sities of that system. These are things which are new in the 
 world. For there never was a man, I believe, who contended 
 for arbitrary power and there have been persons wicked and 
 foolish enough to contend for it that did not pretend either 
 that the system was good in itself or that by his conduct he 
 had mitigated or had purified it, and that the poison by 
 passing through his constitution had acquired salutary 
 properties. Mr. Hastings foresaw that the consequence of 
 this system was corruption ; for an arbitrary system must 
 always be a corrupt one. 
 
 My Lords, there never was a man who thought he had no Heprac- 
 law but his own will, who did not soon find that he had no 
 end but his own profit. Corruption and arbitrary power 
 are of natural, unequivocal, generation, necessarily producing 
 one another. We not only say that he governed arbitrarily, 
 but corruptly ; that is to say, that he was a giver and 
 receiver of bribes, and formed a system for the purpose of 
 giving and receiving them. We wish your Lordships dis- 
 tinctly to consider that he did not only give and receive 
 bribes accidentally, as it happened, without any system and
 
 104 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. design, merely as the opportunity or momentary temptation 
 of profit urged him to it, but that he has formed plans and 
 systems of government for the very purpose of accumulating 
 bribes and presents to himself. This system of Mr. Hastings' 
 government is such an one, I believe, as the British nation 
 in particular will disown. For I will venture to say that, if 
 there is any one thing which distinguishes this nation 
 eminently above another, it is that its offices at home, both 
 judicial and in the state, are so managed that there is less 
 suspicion of pecuniary corruption attached to them than to 
 any similar offices on any part of the globe, or that have 
 existed in any time. So that he who would set up upon 
 these principles a system of corruption and attempt to 
 justify it upon utility, that man is staining, not only the 
 nature and character of office, but that which is the peculiar 
 glory of the official and judicial character of this country ; 
 and therefore in this house, which is eminently the guardian 
 of the purity of all the offices of this kingdom, he ought to 
 be called eminently and peculiarly to account There are 
 many things undoubtedly in crimes which make them fright- 
 ful and odious ; but bribery, peculation, filthy hands, a chief 
 governor of a great empire receiving bribes from poor, mise- 
 rable, indigent, people that is a thing that makes government 
 base, contemptible and odious, in the eyes of mankind. 
 
 Principle of My Lords, it is certain that even tyranny itself may find 
 
 lUflKlllg 1 l ~\ 
 
 money the some specious colour, and may appear as a more severe and 
 government, rigid execution of justice. Religious persecution may shield 
 itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety. 
 Conquest may cover its baldness with its own laurels, and 
 may in the secrets of a man's heart cover his ambition under 
 a veil of benevolence, and make him imagine he is bringing 
 temporary desolation upon a country only to promote its 
 ultimate advantage and his own glory. But money cannot 
 do it. There is a pollution in the touch, in the principle of 
 that governor who makes nothing but money his object. 
 It has not one of those specious delusions that look like 
 virtues, to veil either the governed or the governor. If 
 Mr. Hast- you look at Mr. Hastings' merits, as he calls them, what 
 si'wis u> c ei " are they ? Did he improve the internal state of the govern- 
 ment by great reforms ? No such thing. Or by a wise and 
 incorrupt administration of justice ? No. Has he enlarged 
 the boundaries of our government ? No ; there are but too 
 strong proofs of his lessening it. But his pretensions to
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 105 
 
 merit are that he squeezed more money out of the 
 tants of the country than other persons could have done 
 money got by oppression, violence, extortion of the poor, 
 or the heavy hand of power upon the rich and great. 
 
 These are his merits. His demerits are all of the same Avarice his 
 nature ; for though there is undoubtedly oppression, breach cipief 1 ?" 1 " 
 of faith, cruelty, perfidy, charged upon him, yet the great 
 ruling principle of the whole, and that from which you can 
 never have an act free, is money ; it is the vice of base 
 avarice, which never is, nor ever looks to the prejudices of 
 mankind to be anything like, a virtue. The government of 
 India undoubtedly originated first in ideas of safety and 
 necessity. Its next step was a step of ambition. That 
 ambition, as generally happens in conquest, was followed by 
 gains of money. But afterwards there was no mixture at 
 all ; it was, during Mr. Hastings' time, altogether a business 
 of money. If he has extirpated a nation, I will not say 
 whether properly or improperly, it is because, says he, " You 
 have all the benefit of conquest without trouble ; you 
 have got a large sum of money from the people, and you 
 may leave them to be governed by whom and as they will." 
 This is directly contrary to the principles of conquerors. 
 If Mr. Hastings has at any time taken any money from the 
 dependencies of the Company, he does not pretend that he 
 has increased their zeal and affection to our cause, or made 
 their submission more complete ; very far from it. He says 
 they ought to be independent, and all that you have to do is 
 to squeeze money from them. In short, money is the 
 beginning, the middle and the end, of every kind of act 
 done by Mr. Hastings, pretendedly for the Company, but 
 really for himself. 
 
 Having said so much about the origin, the first principle, 
 both of that which he makes his merit and which we charge 
 as liis demerit, the next step is, that I should lay open to 
 your Lordships, as clearly as I can, what the sense of his 
 employers, the East India Company, and what the sense of 
 the legislature itself, has been upon those merits and demerits 
 of money. 
 
 My Lords, the* Company, knowing that these money Covenants 
 transactions were like to subvert that empire which was first 
 established upon them, did, in the year 1765, send out a 
 body of the strongest and most solemn covenants to their 
 servants, that they should take no presents from the country vants.
 
 106 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. powers, under any name or description, except those things 
 which were publicly and openly taken for the use of the 
 Company, namely, territories, or sums of money, which 
 might be obtained by treaty. They distinguished those 
 things which were taken from persons privately and unknown 
 to them, and without their authority, from subsidies ; and 
 that is the true nature and construction of these covenants, 
 as I shall contend and explain afterwards to your Lordships. 
 They have said that nothing shall be taken for their private 
 use ; for in that and in every state there may be subsidiary 
 treaties sums of money to be received ; but they forbid 
 their servants, their governors, whatever future application 
 they might pretend to make of them, to receive under any 
 name or pretence above a certain, marked, simple, sum of 
 money, and even this without the consent and permission 
 of the Presidency to which they belong. This is the 
 substance, the principle and the spirit, of the covenants : 
 which shows your Lordships how radicated an evil this of 
 bribery and presents is. 
 
 When these covenants went out to India the servants 
 refused to execute them, and suspended the execution of 
 them till they had enriched themselves with presents. Eleven 
 months elapsed before Lord Clive reached the place of his 
 destination, and till then the covenants were not executed, 
 and they were not executed then without some degree of 
 force. When, soon afterwards, the treaty was made with 
 the country powers, by which Suja-ud-Dowla was re- 
 established in the province of Oude, and paid a sum of 
 500,000/. to the Company for it, it was a public payment, and 
 there was not a suspicion that a single shilling of private 
 Mr. Hast- emolument attended it. But whether Mr. Hastings had the 
 example of others or not does not justify his bribery. He 
 was sent there to destroy the effect of all those examples, 
 present^ ^ ne Company did not expressly vest him with that power. 
 They declared at that time that the whole of their service 
 was totally corrupted by bribes and presents, and by ex- 
 travagance and luxury, which partly gave rise to them ; 
 and these enabled them to pursue those excesses. The 
 Mr. Hast- Company not only reposed trust in the integrity of 
 tcmie^un- Mr. Hastings^ but reposed trust in his remarkable frugality 
 thefcare'of an d order in his affairs, which they considered as a thing 
 money. ^^ distinguished his character. But now we have him 
 quite in another character ; no longer the frugal, attentive,
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 107 
 
 servant, bred to business, bred to book-keeping, as all the is FEB. ITSS. 
 Company's servants are ; he now knows nothing of his 
 affairs, knows not whether he is rich or poor, knows not 
 what he has in the world. Nay, there are people who say 
 that they know better than he does what his affairs are. He 
 is not like a careful man bred in a counting-house, and by 
 the Directors put into an office of the highest trust on 
 account of the regularity of his affairs ; he is like one buried 
 in the contemplation of the stars, and knowing nothing of the 
 things of this world. It was on account of this idea of great 
 integrity that the Company put him. into this situation. 
 Since that he has thought proper to justify himself, not by 
 clearing himself from receiving bribes, but by saying that no 
 bad consequences result from them, and that any evil that 
 may have arisen from them arose rather from his inattention 
 to the care of money than from his acquiring it. 
 
 I had the honour of stating before your Lordships that the Repeated 
 East India Company not only sent out those covenants, but of J the C Com 3 - 
 afterwards, when they found their servants had refused ^g^ inst 
 to execute them, very severely reprehended them for a presents, 
 moment's delay in executing them, and threatened the 
 exacting the most strict and rigorous performance of them ; 
 but they sent a commission to inforce the observance of them 
 more strongly, and that commission had it specially in charge 
 never to receive presents. The Company never sent out 
 a person to India without recognising the grievance, and 
 without ordering that presents should not be received, as 
 the main, fundamental, part of their duty, and upon which 
 all the rest depended, as it certainly must. For persons at 
 the head of government should not encourage that by 
 example, which they ought by precept, authority and force, 
 to restrain in all below them. That commission failing, 
 another commission was preparing to be sent out with the 
 same instructions, when an act of Parliament took the matter ActofPar- 
 up ; and that act, which gave Mr. Hastings power, did against re- 
 mould in the very first stamina of his power this principle, seuYs! g pre 
 in words the most clear and forcible that an act of Parlia- 
 ment could possibly devise upon the subject. And that act 
 was made not only upon a general knowledge of the 
 grievance ; but your Lordships will see, in the reports of that 
 time, that Parliament had directly in view before them all 
 that monstrous head of corruption that lay under the name 
 of presents, and all the monstrous consequences that 
 followed it
 
 108 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 isFEB.1788. Now, my Lords, every office of trust, in its very nature, 
 forbids the receipt of bribes. Mr. Hastings was forbid it, 
 first, by his official situation, next by covenant, and lastly by 
 act of Parliament ; that is to say, by all the things that 
 bind mankind, or that can bind them first, moral obligation, 
 inherent in the duty of their office; next, the positive 
 injunction of the legislature of the country ; and lastly, a 
 man's own private and particular voluntary act and covenant. 
 These three, being the great and only obligations that bind 
 mankind, all united in the focus of this single point that 
 they take no presents. This formed, as it were, a summary 
 of the duty of a governor, at least of his positive duty in his 
 office. 
 
 wa^sTr* "" arn * mar k to your Lordships that this law and this 
 
 ceiviug pro- covenant did consider indirect ways of taking presents, taking 
 them by others and such like, directly in the very same 
 way as they considered taking them by themselves. It is 
 perhaps a much more dangerous w r ay, because it adds to the 
 crime a false, prevaricating, mode of concealing it, and makes 
 it much more mischievous by admitting others into the 
 
 Mr. Hast- participation of it. Mr. Hastings has said here, and it is 
 
 ings answer- * . ^--TT i i 
 
 able for the one ot the general complaints 01 Mr. Hastings, that he is 
 employed 086 made answerable for the acts of other men. It is a thing 
 under him. j n i ieren ^ m the nature of his situation. All those who enjoy 
 a great superintending trust, which is to regulate the whole 
 affairs of an empire, aye responsible for the acts and conduct 
 of other men, so far as they had anything to do with 
 appointing them and holding them in their places, or having 
 any sort of inspection into their conduct. My Lords, 
 Mr. Hastings not only by that general duty was bound to 
 inspect the conduct of others, and to take care that they 
 did no mischief in their situations, but there is a special 
 order given to him respecting certain great officers of the 
 state, to keep a watchful eye upon them, and observe that 
 they did not transgress the line of their duty. For the acts 
 of every one of them Mr. Hastings is responsible, though he 
 did not appoint these persons to their offices. But when a 
 Governor presumes to remove from their situations those 
 persons whom the public authority and sanction of the Com- 
 pany have appointed, and obtrudes upon them by violence 
 other persons, superseding the orders of his masters, he 
 becomes doubly responsible for their conduct, Then, if the 
 persons he names should be of notorious evil character and 
 evil principles, and that should be perfectly known to him-
 
 Speech of Mr. Burlie. 109 
 
 self and of public notoriety to the rest of the world, then 
 another strong responsibility attaches on him for the acts of 
 other persons. 
 
 Governors, we know very well, cannot with their own 
 hands be continually receiving bribes ; for then they must bribes 
 
 1 1 Cj.\ -J I TV 1 i through the 
 
 have as many hands as one or the idols m an Indian temple, hands of 
 in order to receive all the bribes that a governor generally othcrs - 
 does ; but they have them vicariously. As there are many 
 offices, so he has had various officers for receiving and dis- 
 tributing his bribes ; he has a great many, some white and 
 some black agents. AYhite men are loose and licentious ; 
 they are apt to have resentments, and to be bold in revenging 
 them. Black men are very secret and mysterious ; they are 
 not apt to have very quick resentments ; they have not the 
 same liberty and boldness of language which characterise 
 Europeans ; and they have fears too themselves, which make 
 it more likely that they will conceal anything committed to 
 them by Europeans. Therefore Mr. Hastings had his black 
 agents not one, two, three, but many disseminated through 
 the country ; no two of them hardly appear to be in the 
 secret of any one of his bribes. He has had likewise his 
 white agents they were necessary a Mr. Larkins and a 
 Mr. Crofts. Mr. Crofts was sub-treasurer, and Mr. Larkins 
 accomptant general. These Avere the last persons of all 
 others that should have had anything to do with bribes, yet 
 these were some of his agents in bribery. There are few 
 instances in comparison, but there are some, where two men 
 are in the secret of the same bribe. Nay, it appears that 
 there was one bribe divided into different payments at 
 different times ; that one part was committed to one black 
 secretary, another part to another black secretary ; so far as 
 to make it almost impossible to make up a complete body of 
 all his bribery. You may find the scattered limbs, some here 
 and others there ; and, while you are employed in picking 
 them up, he may escape entirely in a prosecution for the 
 whole. 
 
 My Lords, when Mr. Hastings first went into Bengal, the Confiscation 
 first of his acts was the most bold and extraordinary that I fandek pro- 
 believe ever entered into the head of any man I will say, of jj^laiV 
 any tyrant. It was no more or less than a general, almost M^Hast- 
 exceptionless, confiscation, in time of profound peace, of all 
 the landed property in Bengal, upon strange pretences. Odd 
 as that may appear he did so confiscate it ; he put it up to a 
 pretended public, in reality to a private, corrupt, auction ;
 
 110 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEB. 1788. and such favoured landholders as came were obliged to con- 
 sider themselves as not any longer proprietors of the estates, 
 but to recognise themselves as farmers under government : 
 and even those few that were permitted to stay had their 
 payments raised at his arbitrary discretion ; and the rest of 
 the price given for the lands Avas given upon the same arbi- 
 trary discretion to the farmers general appointed by him and 
 his committee. 
 
 It is necessary to inform your Lordships, that the revenues 
 of Bengal are for the most part territorial revenues, great 
 quit-rents issuing out of lands. I shall say nothing either of 
 the rights of the people to their property, or the nature or 
 mode of exaction, till that great question, the greatest of all 
 that we have to bring before your Lordships, shall be brought 
 before you particularly and specially as an article of charge. 
 I only bring it in now as an exemplification of the great 
 principle of corruption which guided Mr. Hastings' conduct. 
 
 The lands My Lords, when the ancient nobility, the <n*eat princes 
 
 oftheno- PUT n ^ \ MV v. 
 
 biiity taken for such 1 may call them a nobility perhaps as ancient as 
 an'dtet'to 1 that of your Lordships and a more truly noble body never 
 farm. existed in that character when all the nobility, some of 
 whom have borne the rank and port of princes, all the gentry, 
 all the freeholders, of the country, had their estates in that 
 manner confiscated, and either given to themselves to hold 
 on the footing of farmers or totally confiscated ; when such 
 an act of tyranny was done, no doubt some good was pre- 
 tended. The lands were taken away for five years, and let 
 to those farmers upon an idea which always accompanies 
 those acts, the idea of moneyed merit. He adopted this 
 mode, therefore, of confiscating the estates and letting them 
 to farmers, for the avowed purpose of seeing how much it 
 was possible to take out of them. And accordingly he set 
 them up to this wild and wicked auction, as it would have 
 been if it had been a real one corrupt and treacherous as it 
 was. He set those lands up for that discovery, and pretended 
 that that discovery would yield a most amazing increase of 
 Defalcations rent. And for some time it appeared so to do, till it came 
 so raised* 3 * * ne touchstone of experience ; and then it was found that 
 there was a defalcation from these monstrous-raised revenues, 
 which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the 
 wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious and horrid, an act of 
 treachery. At the end of five years what do you think was 
 the failure? No less than 2,050,OOOZ. Then a new source 
 of corruption was opened, that is, how to deal with the
 
 Speech of M r. Burke. Ill 
 
 balances : for every man who had engaged in those transac- 
 tions was a debtor to government, and the remission of that 
 debt depended upon the discretion of the Governor General. 
 Then the persons who had to compound that immense debt, Corrupt 
 who .were to see how much was recoverable, and how much delmjjfwith 
 not, were able to favour, or to exact the last shilling ; and them - 
 there never was a doubt raised in the minds of mankind that, 
 not only upon the original cruel exaction, but upon the 
 remission afterwards, immense gains were made. This will 
 account for the manner in which those stupendous fortunes, 
 which astonish the world, have been made. They have been 
 made, first, by a tyrannous exaction, by suffering the people 
 to remain in possession of their land as farmers ; then, selling 
 to farmers under hopes which would never be realised ; and 
 then, getting money for the relaxation of their debts. And 
 this business of balances is that nidus in which have been 
 nestled, and bred and born, all the corruptions of India ; 
 first, by making extravagant demands, and afterwards by 
 making corrupt relaxations of them. However, there might 
 have been some sort of wicked excuse for this wicked act ; 
 namely, that it had carried upon the face of it some sort of 
 appearance of public good, that is to say, that sort of public 
 good which !Mr. Hastings so often professed of ruining the 
 country for the benefit of the Company. 
 
 Besides this monstrous failure that your Lordships find, The fanners 
 after a miserable exaction that was attempted, to force from 
 the country more than it was capable of yielding, and that by j^ 
 the way of experiment, when you come to inquire who the 
 farmers general of the revenue were, you would naturally 
 expect to find them to be the men in the several countries 
 who had the most interest, the greatest wealth, the best 
 knowledge of the revenue and the resources of the country in 
 which they were. These would be thought the natural, 
 proper, farmers general of the place. No such thing, my 
 Lords. They are found in the body of people whom I have 
 mentioned to your Lordships. They are almost all let to 
 Calcutta banyas. Calcutta banyas were the farmers of 
 almost the whole. They sub-delegated to others, who had 
 sub-delegates under them ad infinitum. The whole formed a 
 system together through the succession of black tyrants 
 scattered through the country, in which you at last find the who sub-let 
 European at the end, sometimes not hid very deep, not favou"of m 
 above one between them, his banya directly or some^ other Eur P eans - 
 black person to represent him. But some have managed the
 
 112 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 18 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' banya, 
 Cantoo 
 Baboo. 
 
 Ostensible 
 order 
 against 
 collectors of 
 revenue 
 having con- 
 nection with 
 the farms. 
 
 Regulation 
 against 
 holding 
 farms ex- 
 ceeding 
 10,000?. 
 
 affair so that after you have inquired who the farmer was, 
 " Was such an one farmer ? " " No." " Cantoo Baboo ? "- 
 "No." "Another?" li No." at last you find three deep 
 of fictitious farmers, and you find the European gentlemen, 
 high in place and authority, the real farmers of the settlement. 
 So that the zamindars were dispossessed, and the country 
 racked and ruined, for the benefit of an European under the 
 name of a farmer. For you will easily judge whether these 
 gentlemen had fallen so deeply in love with the natives, and 
 thought so highly of their merits and services, that they 
 chose to reward them with all the possessions of the great 
 landed interest of the country for their own sakes. Your 
 Lordships are too grave, wise and discerning, to make it 
 necessary for me to say more upon that subject. Tell me 
 that the banyas of English gentlemen, dependents on [them 
 at]* Calcutta, were the farmers throughout, and I believe 
 I need not tell your Lordships for whose benefit they were 
 farmers. 
 
 But there is one of these farmers who comes so near and 
 precise upon this occasion that it is impossible for me to 
 pass him by. Whoever has heard of Mr. Hastings' name, 
 with any knowledge of Indian connection, has heard of his 
 banya, Cantoo Baboo. This man is well known in the re- 
 cords of the Company for being his agent for receiving 
 secret gifts, confiscations and presents. You would have 
 imagined that Mr. Hastings would at least have kept him 
 out of these farms, in order to give the proceeding a colour 
 of disinterestedness, and to make it appear that this whole 
 system of corruption and pecuniary oppression was carried 
 on for the benefit of the Company. An ostensible order 
 was made, by which no collector or person concerned in the 
 revenue should have any connection with these farms. This 
 did not include the Governor General in the words of it, but 
 more than included him in the spirit of it : because his 
 power to protect a farmer general in the person of his own 
 servant was infinitely greater than that of any subordinate 
 person. Mr. Hastings, in breach of this order, gave farms to 
 his own banya. You find him the farmer of great, of vast 
 and extensive, farms. 
 
 Another regulation that was made on the same occasion 
 was, that no farmer should have, except in particular cases, 
 which were marked, described, and accurately distinguished, 
 
 * Revised copy.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 113 
 
 a greater farm than what paid 10,0007. a year to govern- is FEE. 173*. 
 ment. Mr. Hastings, who had broken the first regulation infringed 
 by giving any farm at all to his banya, finding himself H^ffngs 
 bolder, broke the second too, and instead of 10,0007. gave apparent [>- 
 him farms paying a revenue of 130,0007. a year to govern- benefit of 
 ment. Men undoubtedly have been known to be under the B^boo? 
 dominion of their domestics ; such things have happened to J^ 1 *' for hl8 
 great men : they never have happened justifiably in my 
 opinion ; they have never happened excusably : but we are 
 acquainted sufficiently with the weakness of human nature 
 to know that a domestic who has served you in a near office 
 long and, in your opinion, faithfully, does become a kind of 
 relation ; it brings on a great affection and regard for his 
 interest. Xow was this the case with Mr. Hastings and 
 Cantoo Baboo? Mr. Hastings was just arrived in his 
 government, and Cantoo Baboo had been but a year in his 
 service ; so that he could not in that time have contracted 
 any great degree of friendship for him. These people do not 
 live in your house. The Hindu servants never sleep in it ; 
 they cannot eat with your servants. They have no second 
 table in which they can be continually about you, to be 
 domesticated with yourself, a part of your being, as people's 
 servants are to a certain degree. These persons live all 
 abroad. They come at stated hours, upon matters of busi- 
 ness, and nothing more. But if it had been otherwise, 
 Mr. Hastings' connections with Cantoo Baboo had been but 
 of a year's standing. He had served in that capacity to 
 Mr. Sykes, who recommended him to Mr. Hastings. Then 
 your Lordships are to judge whether such outrageous viola- 
 tions of all the principles pretended by Mr. Hastings in the 
 settlement of these farms were for the benefit of this old, 
 decayed, affectionate, servant of one year's standing with 
 Mr. Hastings. Your Lordships will judge of that. 
 
 My Lords, I speak here only of the beginning of a great, Growth of 
 notorious, system of corruption ; which system of corruption O f c 
 had so many abuses, branched out into such a variety of ways, tion - 
 and has afflicted that kingdom with such horrible evils, from 
 that day to this, that I will venture to say it will make 
 one of the greatest, weightiest and most material, parts of the 
 charge that is now before you ; as I believe I need not tell 
 your Lordships that an attempt to set up the whole landed 
 interest of a kingdom to auction must be attended, not only 
 in that act but every consequential act, with most grievous 
 and terrible consequences. 
 
 H
 
 Opening of the Impeacliment : 
 
 Sale of 
 offices of 
 justice, 
 guardian- 
 ships and 
 trusts. 
 
 isFEB.1788. My Lards, I will now come to a scene of peculation of 
 another kind; namely, a peculation by the direct sale of 
 offices of justice; by the direct sale of all the successions of 
 families ; by the sale of guardianships, and whatever trusts 
 are held most sacred among the people of India; by the 
 sale of them, not as before to farmers, not as you might 
 imagine to near relations of their families, but a sale of 
 them to the unfaithful servants of those families, their own 
 perfidious servants, who had ruined their estates, who had 
 been the means of all their debts, if any balances had accrued 
 to the government. Those very servants were put in power 
 over their estates, their persons and their families, by 
 Mr. Hastings for a shameful price. It will be proved to your 
 Lordships in the course of this business that Mr. Hastings 
 has done this in another sacred trus't, the most sacred trust 
 that a man can have, that is, in the case of those vakils, as 
 they call them agents or attornies who had been sent to 
 assert and support the rights of their miserable masters 
 before the Council General. It will be proved that those 
 vakils were by Mr. Hastings, for a price to be paid for it, put 
 in possession of the very power, situation and estates, of those 
 masters who sent them to Calcutta to defend them from 
 wrong and violence. The selling offices of justice, the selling 
 masters to their servants, and to the attornies whom they 
 employed to defend themselves, were all parts of the same 
 system ; and these were the horrid ways in which he received 
 bribes much out of the common rate. 
 
 Order of the The Company knowing the former corrupt state of their 
 Mrfliast-* service, when Mr. Hastings was appointed in the year 1773* 
 to be Governor General of Bengal, together with Mr. Barwell, 
 General Clavering, Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, it was 
 an express order to them the whole corrupt system of 
 Mr. Hastings at that time not being known or even suspected 
 at home it was given to them in sacred charge, without the 
 exception of any persons whatever, in discharge of the spirit 
 of the act of Parliament, to make an inquiry into all manner 
 of corruptions and malversations in office by any persons 
 whatever. Your Lordships are to know that the act did 
 give an express order to the court of Directors to form a body 
 of instructions, and to give orders to the new servants ap- 
 pointed under the act of Parliament, lest it should be sup- 
 
 to inquire 
 into corrup 
 tions in 
 office. 
 
 * Mr. Hastings, the first Governor General, was nominated by the Act of 
 Parliament of 1773, reforming the constitution of the Company.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. Ho 
 
 posed that they, by the appointment under the act, could is FEB. 1788. 
 supersede the authority of the Directors. The Directors, 
 sensible of that power left in them over their servants by the 
 act of Parliament, after their nomination was taken from 
 them, did, agreeably to the spirit and power of that act, give 
 this order. 
 
 The Council consisted of two parts, Mr. Hastings and Me ts of 
 Mr. Barwell, who were chosen and kept there upon the the Council, 
 idea of their local knowledge, and the other three on account 
 of their great parts and known integrity. And I will 
 venture to say that those three gentlemen did so execute 
 their duty, in all the substantial parts of it, that they will 
 serve as a shield to cover the honour of England when this 
 country is upbraided there. Those gentlemen found a Discovery of 
 rumour running through the place of great peculations and ruptiouin*" 
 oppressions. Soon after, when their instructions were made the semce - 
 public, and it was known that the Council were ready to 
 receive which is the first duty of all governors if there is 
 no express order complaints against its own oppression and 
 corruption in any part of it, they found such a body and 
 that body shall be produced to your Lordships of corruption 
 and peculation, in every walk, in every department, in every 
 situation of life, in the sale of the most sacred trusts, in 
 the destruction of the most ancient families of the country, 
 as I believe in so short a time never was unveiled since the 
 world began. 
 
 Your Lordships would imagine that Mr. Hastings would Mr. Hast- 
 at least ostensibly have taken some part in endeavouring to panV^impii- 
 bring these corruptions before the public, or that he would cated- 
 at least have acted with some little management in it. But 
 alas ! it was not in his power ; there was not one, I think, 
 but I am sure very few, of those general articles of corrup- 
 tion in which the most eminent figure in the crowd, as if 
 it was the principal figure in the piece, was not Mr. Hastings 
 himself. There were a great many others involved; for 
 all departments were corrupted and vitiated. But you could 
 not open a page in which you did not see Mr. Hastings, or 
 in which you did not see Cantoo Baboo : either the black or 
 white side of Mr. Hastings constantly was visible to the 
 world in every part of those transactions. 
 
 There were other gentlemen visible too, with whom I Them- 
 have at present no dealing. Mr. Hastings, instead of using sto'ppek by 
 any management on that occasion, instantly set up his power fngs. *" 
 and authority directly against the majority of the Council, 
 
 H 2
 
 116 Opening of the Impeachment . 
 
 18FEB.17S8. directly against his colleagues, directly against the authority 
 of the East India Company and the authority of the act of 
 Parliament, to put a dead stop to all those inquiries. He 
 broke up the Council the moment they attempted to do their 
 duty. As the evidence multiplied upon him, his daring 
 power in stopping all inquiries increased continually ; but 
 he gave a credit and authority to the evidence by that way 
 of suppressing it. 
 
 Reasons Your Lordships have heard that, among- the body of the 
 
 justifying c .,. L ,. ,1 . . \ 
 
 the Council accusers or this corruption, there was a principal man in 
 cbargesad- g the country, the first man of rank and authority in it, called 
 Nundcomar Nundcomar, who had the management of revenues amounting 
 apinstkr. to 150,0007. a year, and who had, if inclined to small c;ains, 
 
 Hastings. , ' J . ^ -, T TT to . 
 
 abundant means to gratity great ones. 13ut Air. Hastings 
 has given him, himself, upon the records of the Company, 
 a character which would at least justify the Council in making 
 some inquiry into charges made by him. First, he \vas 
 perfectly competent to make them, because he was in the 
 management of those affairs from which Mr. Hastings is 
 supposed to have received corrupt emolument. He and his 
 son were the chief managers in that business. He was 
 therefore perfectly competent to it. Mr. Hastings has 
 cleared his character. For though it is true, in the contradic- 
 tions in which Mr. Hastings has entangled himself, he has 
 abused and insulted him, and particularly after his appearance 
 as an accuser, yet, before that, he has given this testimony 
 of him that the hatred that had been drawn upon him, and 
 the general obloquy of the English nation, was for his attach- 
 ment to his own prince and the liberties of his country. 
 Be he what he might, I am not disposed, nor have I the least 
 occasion, to defend either his conduct or his memory. 
 Facilities for My Lords, when this man appeared as an accuser of Mr. 
 Hastings, if he was a fraudulent accuser and a man of bad 
 character, it w T as a great advantage to Mr. Hastings to be 
 accused by a man of known bad character: there was no 
 likelihood of any great credit being given to him. In the 
 history that I gave before, I stated that this man had been 
 cheated of some money, or thought he had been cheated in 
 the sale. He had made some discoveries, and had been 
 guilty of that sin against the Holy Ghost, that great irre- 
 missible sin in India, the discovery of peculation. He came 
 with a second discovery, and was likely to have odium 
 enough upon that occasion ; but he mentioned several facts 
 the sum of money, by whom and through whom it was
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 117 
 
 paid the specie in which it was paid all these facts Avere ISFEB.ITSS. 
 mentioned and therefore detection was easy, and Mr. 
 Hastings would have flown to detection, and would have 
 been glad that the head of his accusers was a man of in- 
 famous character. If the accusation was false, Ntindcomar 
 was guilty of great indiscretion in coming specifically to 
 work, to bring forward time, place and circumstances, which 
 Mr. Hastings had all the means of refuting. Instead of 
 that, Mr. Hastings kept his own banya from attending the 
 Council. The Council called for his appearance, but he 
 would not suffer him to appear. He broke up the Council 
 I will not say whether legally or illegally ; the Company's 
 counsel thought he might legally do it but he corruptly did 
 it, and left mankind no room to judge but that it was done 
 for the screening of his own guilt. For a man may use a 
 legal power corruptly, and for the most shameful and de- 
 testable purposes. And thus matters continued till Mr. 
 Hastings commenced a criminal prosecution against this man 
 this man whom he dare not meet as a defendant. 
 
 And here, my Lords, it becomes necessary to mention Court of 
 another circumstance of history. The legislature, not jus 
 trusting entirely to the Governor General and Council, had 
 sent out a court of justice, to be a counter-security against 
 these corruptions, and to detect and punish any such mis- 
 demeanours as might appear. And that court I take for 
 granted did great services. Mr. Hastings, instead of meeting Refusal of 
 Nundcomar in front, endeavoured to go round, to come upon ings tomeet 
 his flanks and rear, but never to meet him in front upon the ^^ 8 
 ground of his accusation, Avhich he was bound by the express accusations, 
 authority of law and the express injunctions of the Directors 
 to do. He disobeyed those instructions ; and were it for no 
 more than disobeying, than rebelling against them putting 
 the corrupt motive out of it I charge him for his disobe- 
 dience, especially upon such principles as he went. 
 
 Then he took another step. He attempted to accuse charges him 
 Nundcomar of a conspiracy, which was a way he then and has ^pi 
 ever since used, whenever means were taken to detect any 
 of his iniquities. He flew to this court, which was meant 
 rather to protect informers in their situation than to protect 
 the accused against any of the preliminary methods which 
 must indispensably be used for the purpose of detecting 
 them he flew to this court, charging Nundcomar and others 
 with being conspirators. 
 
 A man might be convicted as a conspirator and vet live. Means em- 
 
 ployed by
 
 118 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. He might put the matter into other hands, and go on with 
 Mr.Halt- his information. Nothing less than stone dead would do the 
 himseifof business. And here happened an odd concurrence of cir- 
 Nundcomar. cumstances. Long before Nundcomar preferred his charge, 
 he knew that Mr. Hastings was plotting his ruin, and that he 
 had used a man whom he had turned out of doors, called 
 Mohun Persaud, to be the instrument of his destruction. 
 Mr. Hastings saw papers put upon the board, charging him 
 with this previous plot for the destruction of Nundcomar 
 through this identical person, Mohun Persaud. I will not 
 enter God forbid 1 should ! into the particulars of the 
 suit ; but you find the marks and characters of it to be those 
 you find a close connection between Mr. Hastings and the 
 Chief J ustice, which we shall prove. We shall prove that 
 one of the witnesses who appeared there has, before or since, 
 appeared to be the person concerned with Mr. Hastings in 
 his most iniquitous transactions. You find, what is very 
 odd, that in the trial for the crime of forgery, for which this 
 man stood charged, private forgery, all the persons who were 
 witnesses or parties to it had been, before or since, the parti- 
 cular friends of Mr. Hastings. In short, Mr. Hastings was 
 concerned with the whole rabble, both before and since, in 
 various transactions and negotiations of the most criminal 
 kind. But the law took its course. I have nothing more 
 to say than that the man is gone justly if you please. It 
 did so happen, luckily for Mr. Hastings, it so happened 
 that Mr. Hastings' dispositions, and the justice of that 
 court, and the resolution never to relax, did all concur just 
 at the happy nick and moment ; and Mr. Hastings accord- 
 ingly had the full benefit. 
 
 His accuser was supposed to be, what may be and yet be 
 very competent for accusers, namely, an accomplice in guilty 
 actions a person having a great deal to say of bribes. All 
 that I contend for is, that he was in the closest intimacy 
 with Mr. Hastings ; was in a situation for giving bribes ; n:id 
 that Mr. Hastings was proved afterwards to have received 
 a sum of money from him, which may be well referred to 
 those bribes. But the great end and object that I have in 
 view is to show the criminal tendency, the mischievous nature, 
 of these crimes, and the means taken to elude their discovery. 
 I am now giving your Lordships that general view which may 
 serve to characterise Mr. Hastings' administration in all the 
 other parts of it. 
 bribery f When this charge was thus got rid of, the other charge
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 119 
 
 remained. There was a charge from Munny Begum, a is FEB. 1788. 
 woman of the first and highest rank there, and upon whom apinstltr. 
 Mr. Hastings has not been able to fix any stain at all. It Munny* 8 by 
 was proved upon oath to his face that a bribe of 40,0007.* 
 was paid him. That proof was entered in the records, and 
 transmitted to Europe. So that it did not stand, as Mr. 
 Hastings gives out, that there was nothing against him, and 
 that when he had got rid of Nundcomar and his charge he 
 had got rid of the whole. No such thing. An immense 
 load of bribery remained. Charges were coining afterwards 
 from every part of the province and there was no office in 
 the execution of justice which it was not proved that he had 
 sold in the most flagitious manner. 
 
 After all this thundering the sky grew calni and clear, and 
 Mr. Hastings sat, with recorded peculation, with peculation 
 proved upon oath on the minutes of that very Council, at the 
 head of that Council and that board where his peculations 
 were proved against him. These were afterwards transmitted 
 and recorded in the registers of his masters as an eternal 
 monument of his corruption, and his high disobedience, and 
 flagitious attempts to prevent a discovery of the various 
 peculations of which he had been guilty, to the disgrace and 
 ruin of the country committed to his care. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, after the execution of Nundcomar, if he had 
 intended to make even a decent and commonly sensible use quiry into 
 of it, would naturally have said, " This man is justly taken 
 away, who has accused me of those crimes ; but as there are 
 other witnesses, as there are other means of a further inquiry, 
 as the man is gone of whose perjuries I might have reason 
 to be afraid, let us now go into the inquiry." I think he did 
 very ill not to go into the inquiry when the man was alive : 
 but be it so, that he was afraid of him and waited till he was 
 dead why not afterwards go into such an inquiry? Why 
 not go into an inquiry of all the other peculations and charges 
 upon him, which were innumerable ; one of which I have just 
 mentioned in particular, the charge of Rani Munny Beguni 
 of having received from her, or her adopted son, a bribe of 
 40,0007. ? Is it fit for a governor to say will Mr. Hastings 
 say before this august assembly " I may be accused in a 
 court of justice ; I am upon my defence ; let all charges 
 remain against me ; I will not give you an account " ? Is it 
 fit that a governor should sit with recorded bribery upon 
 
 * 15.000/. in revised copy.
 
 120 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB.J788. m * m a t the head of a public board, and the government of a 
 great kingdom, when it is in his power by inquiry to do it 
 away? No ; the chastity of character of a man in that situation 
 ought to be as dear to him as his innocence. Nay, more 
 depended upon it. His innocence regarded himself; his 
 character regarded the public justice, regarded his authority, 
 and the respect due to the English in that country. I charge 
 it upon him that, not only did he suppress the inquiry to the 
 best of his power (and it shall be proved), but he did not in 
 any one instance endeavour to clear off that imputation and 
 reproach from the English government. He went further ; 
 he never denied hardly any of those charges at the time. 
 They are so numerous that I cannot be positive ; some of 
 them he might meet with some sort of denial ; but the most 
 part he did not. 
 
 The first thing a man under such an accusation owes to 
 the world is to deny the charge ; next to put it to the proof; 
 and, lastly, to let inquiry freely go on. Mr. Hastings did 
 not permit this, but stopped it all in his power. I am to 
 mention some exceptions perhaps hereafter, which will tend 
 to fortify the principle tenfold. 
 
 Mr. Hastings promised the court of Directors to whom 
 ^ ie never denied the facts a full and liberal explanation of 
 not fulfilled, these transactions ; which full and liberal explanation he 
 never gave. Many years passed ; even Parliament took 
 notice of it ; and he never gave them a liberal explanation, 
 or any explanation at all of them. A man may say " I am 
 threatened with a suit in court, and it may be very disadvan- 
 tageous to me if I disclose my defence." That is a proper 
 answer for a man in common life, who has no particular 
 character to sustain ; but is that a proper answer for a 
 governor accused of bribery, that accusation being transmitted 
 to his masters, and his masters giving credit to it ? Good God ! 
 is that a state in which a man is to say " I am here upon 
 the defensive. I am on my guard. 1 will give you no satis- 
 faction. I have promised it, but I have deferred it for seven 
 or eight years." Is not that tantamount to a denial ? 
 
 Mr. Hastings having had that great body of bribery before 
 him, providentially was freed from Nundcomar, one of his 
 accusers ; and, as good events do not come alone I think 
 there is some such proverb it did so happen that all the rest, 
 or a great many of them, ran away : but, however, their 
 recorded evidence continued. No new ones came in ; and 
 Mr. Hastings enjoyed that happy repose which branded
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. ] 21 
 
 peculation, fixed and eternised upon the records of the Com- 
 pany, must leave upon a mind conscious of its own integrity. 
 
 My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes p ers0 nsm 
 something; to his character. It is the grace, undoubtedly, of |" gh 9 ces 
 
 o . . _ . J ' bound to 
 
 a virtuous firm mind otten to* despise common vulgar defend their 
 calumny ; but if ever there is an occasion in which it does 
 become such a mind to disprove it, it is the case of being 
 charged in high office with pecuniary malversation, pecuniary 
 corruption. There is no case in which it becomes an honest 
 man, much less a great man, to leave upon record specific 
 charges against him of corruption in his government, without 
 taking any one step whatever to refute them. 
 
 Though Mr. Hastings took no step to refute the charges, Mr. Host- 
 ile took many steps to punish the authors of them ; and those mfnt P oThis " 
 miserable people who had the folly to make complaints accusers> 
 against Mr. Hastings, to make them under the authority of 
 an act of Parliament, under every sanction of public faith in 
 giving those charges, every person concerned in them has 
 been, as your Lordships will see, since his restoration to power, 
 absolutely undone ; brought from the highest situation to the 
 lowest misery ; so that they may have good reason to repent 
 they ever trusted an English Council, that they ever trusted 
 a court of Directors, that they ever dared to make their 
 complaints. 
 
 And here I charge Mr. Hastings that never to take a 
 single step to defeat or detect any of those charges against 
 him as false, and yet to punish the authors of them, is such a 
 subversion of all principles of British government as will 
 deserve, and will I dare say meet, your Lordships' most severe 
 animadversion. 
 
 There seems, with regard to detection, to be a sort of pause Mr. Hast- 
 here in his peculations, a sort of gap, as if pages were torn Stfon8 ecu " 
 out. No lonsrer do you meet with the same activity in stopped by 
 
 i i IP /--I -NT r- a majority 
 
 taking money that you before find. JNot even a trace of against him 
 complimentary presents is to be found in the records during m 
 the time of the existence of the majority in the Council of 
 General Clavering, Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis. There 
 seems to have been a kind of truce with that sort of conduct 
 for a while, and Mr. Hastings rested upon his arms. How- 
 ever, the very moment of the return of Mr. Hastings to 
 power, peculation began again just at the same instant. The 
 moment we find him free from the compulsion and terror of 
 a majority of persons otherwise disposed than himself, we 
 find him at his peculation again.
 
 122 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 17S8. 
 
 Inquiries in 
 the House 
 of Commons 
 concerning 
 peculation. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' me- 
 thods to 
 conceal his 
 briberies. 
 
 His pretence 
 of receiving 
 bribes for 
 the benefit 
 of the Com- 
 pany. 
 
 My Lords, at this time very serious inquiries had begun in 
 the House of Commons concerning peculation. They did 
 not go directly to Bengal ; but they began upon the coast of 
 Coromandel, and with the principal governors there. There 
 was, however, an universal opinion and justly founded that 
 that inquiry would go to far greater lengths. Mr. Hastings 
 was resolved then to change the whole course and order of 
 his proceeding. Nothing could persuade him upon any 
 account to lay aside his system of bribery ; that he was re- 
 solved to persevere in. The point was, how to reconcile it 
 with his safety. The first thing he did was to attempt to 
 conceal it; and accordingly we find him depositing very great 
 sums of money in the public treasury through the means of 
 the two persons I have named, namely, the deputy treasurer 
 and the accountant, paying them in and taking bonds for them 
 as money of his own, intitling him to interest. 
 
 This was his first method of endeavouring to conceal some 
 of his bribes. Not that I would in the least suggest, or have 
 your Lordships to believe, that I acquiesce in my mind that 
 these were his only bribes ; for there is reason to think 
 there were an infinite number besides : but it did so happen 
 that these were bribes which he thought might be discovered, 
 some of which he knew were discovered, and all of which he 
 knew might become the subject of a parliamentary ^inquiry. 
 
 I may state here that Mr. Hastings wrote over to the court 
 of Directors that there were certain sums of money that he 
 had received which were not his own ; but that he had re- 
 ceived them for their use. By this time his intercourse 
 with gentlemen of the law became more considerable than 
 at first. When first attacked for presents he never denied 
 the receipt of them, or pretended to say they were for public 
 purposes ; but upon looking more into the covenants, and 
 probably with better legal advice, he found it must not be 
 money received for his own use ; and though he did receive 
 these bribes for his own use, " yet," says he, " there was 
 an inward destination of them in my own mind to your 
 benefit, and to your benefit have I applied them." Now, 
 here is a new system of bribery, contrary to law ; 
 very ingenious, but I believe with as little effect upon the 
 mind of man as any pretence that was ever used. Here 
 Mr. Hastings changes his ground. Before, he was in some 
 measure upon the defensive ; he was considered as a pecula- 
 tor : he did not deny the fact ; he did not refund the money. 
 He fought it off ; he stood upon the defensive, and used all
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 123 
 
 the means in his power to prevent the inquiry. That was is FEB. ires, 
 the first era of his corruption a bold, ferocious, plain, 
 downright, use of power. In the second he is grown a little 
 more careful and guarded, the effect of subtlety ; and there- 
 fore he appears no longer as a defendant, he holds himself 
 up with a firm, dignified and erect, countenance, and says : 
 " I am not here any more as a delinquent, a receiver of ' 
 bribes, to be punished for what I have done wrong, or at 
 least to suffer in my character for it. No ! I am a great 
 inventive genius- who have gone out of all the ordinary roads 
 of finance, have made great discoveries in the unknown regions 
 of that science, and have for the first time established the 
 corruption of the supreme magistrate as a principle of re- 
 source for government." His is public-spirited peculation, 
 patriotic bribery. Other people have turned private vices 
 into public benefits. He goes the full length of that, and turns 
 his private peculation into a public benefit. This is what you 
 are to thank him for. You are to consider him as a great in- 
 ventor upon this occasion. It is said that ambassadors are 
 sent abroad to tell lies for the benefit of their country.* Mr. 
 Hastings has extended that principle, and states himself to be 
 the person who receives bribes for the benefit of his country. 
 
 My Lords, if you go upon that principle, if, after all you Reasons 
 have exacted from the people by taxes and public imposts, fering go- 
 you are to let loose your servants upon them, by bribery 
 aud peculation to extort what they can from them to apply 
 to the public service whenever they please, this shocking 
 consequence will follow from it : when one of the Governor's 
 bribes is discovered, he will say, " What is that to you ? 
 Mind your business. I intend it for the public service." 
 Suppose a man attacks him, that man loses the favour of the 
 Governor General and the India Company. They say, the 
 Governor has been doing a meritorious action, extorting 
 bribes for our benefit, and you have the impudence to think 
 of prosecuting him. So that the moment the bribe is detected 
 it is instantly turned into a merit. And that is the case with 
 Mr. Hastings, as we shall prove whenever a bribe has been 
 discovered. 
 
 Mr. Hastings' conduct may be thought irrational. But, Effect of 
 thank God ! guilt was never a rational thing : it distorts all ^rpYng the 
 
 . . mind. 
 
 * This famous saying originated with Sir Henry Wotton, who incurred the 
 displeasure of his master, King James the First, by writing in an album, in 
 Italy, this sentiment, " An ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for 
 the good of his country." See Wordsworth's " Ecclesiastical Biography," 
 ed. 1853, vol. iv., p. 90.
 
 124< Opening of the Impeachment.' 
 
 is FEB.1789. the faculties of the mind ; it perverts it, and leaves a man 
 no longer in the free use of his reason ; it puts him into 
 such a confusion that he has recourse to such miserable expe- 
 dients as all those who are used to sit in the seat of judg- 
 ment know have been the cause of detection of half the 
 villanies in the world. God forbid that prudence, the 
 supreme guide as well as first director of all the virtues, 
 should ever be employed in the use of all the vices ! No, it 
 takes the lead of all, and never will be but where justice 
 accompanies it ; and if ever it is attempted to be brought 
 into the service of the vices it immediately subverts their 
 cause. It tends to the discovery of vice, and I hope and 
 trust finally to its utter ruin and destruction. 
 
 Mr. Hast- I am to inform your Lordships that, when Mr. Hastings 
 sionsoFex- made these great discoveries to the court of Directors, he 
 refativcfto never told them who gave him the money upon what occa- 
 of S preents s ^ on ne received it by what hands or to what purposes he 
 employed it. In the first place the accounts he has given 
 of this money are totally false and contradictory. Now one 
 does not want more reason to judge of a transaction being 
 fraudulent than that the accounts given of it are false. There 
 is a presumption that the transaction is bad when the accounts 
 are false; and Mr. Hastings has given three accounts, utterly 
 irreconcileablewith each other. He is asked, " How came you 
 to take bonds for this money, if it was not your o\v*n ? How 
 eame you to vitiate and corrupt the state of the Company's 
 records, and to suppose you were a lender to the Company, 
 when in reality you were their debtor ? " His answer is, " I 
 really cannot tell, I have forgotten my reasons ; the distance 
 of time is so great namely, a time of about two years or not 
 so long I cannot give an account of the matter. Perhaps 
 I had this motive ; perhaps I had another ; but what is the 
 most curious perhaps I had none at all which I can now 
 recollect/' This is the account which Mr. Hastings gives 
 his own fraudulent representation of a corrupt transaction : 
 
 " For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the know- 
 ledge 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 honourable 
 court of Directors of the 22nd of May, 1/82, 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 parti-
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 125 
 
 culars had escaped my remembrance ; neither shall I attempt to add more is FEB. 1788. 
 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."* 
 
 My Lords, you see that he fairly gives up the eiplana- 
 tion. He has used an artifice, a stratagem, which he knows 
 will not do : he cannot account for it, and covers the treach- 
 ery of his conduct by the treachery of his memory. Frequent 
 applications were made to Mr. Hastings upon this article 
 from the Company gentle hints yemitus colvmbce ; rather, 
 little amorous complaints that he was not more open and 
 communicative. But all those gentle insinuations were never 
 able to bring any further account of this matter till he came 
 to England. When he came here, he left, not only his 
 memory, but all his notes and references behind in India. 
 When he was in India, the Company could get no account 
 because he was not in England ; and, when he was in Eng- 
 land, they could get no account because his papers were in 
 India. So he sends over to Mr. Larkins to give that account 
 of his affairs which he was not able to give himself. Observe, 
 here is a man taking money, privately, corruptly, on the 
 faith of its being sanctified by the future application, taking 
 false securities to cover it, and who, when called upon to tell 
 whom he got the money from, for what ends and on what 
 occasion, neither will tell in India nor can tell in England, 
 but sends for such an account as it has been thought proper 
 to furnish. 
 
 And here, my Lords, begins an account of what I think 
 much the most serious part of this transaction, which is, the 
 effect of bribery, corruption and peculation. My Lords, I am 
 first to state to you the astonishing and almost incredible 
 means which Mr. Hastings made use of to lay all the country 
 under contribution, to bring the whole of it into such dejection 
 as should put his bribes out of the way of discovery. Such 
 another example of boldness and contrivance I believe the 
 world cannot furnish. I have already shown that he let 
 the whole of the lands to farm to the banyas. Next, that, 
 among the mass of his corruptions, he sold the whole 
 Mohammedan government of that country to a woman. 
 This was bold enough, one should think. But I am to tell Provincial 
 your Lordships, without entering into the circumstances of pSd by" 
 the revenue charge in 1772, that he had appointed six J!^?^. 
 provincial Councils, each consisting; of manv members, who ^ the re - 
 
 * venue. 
 
 * Letter from Mr. Hastings to the chairman of the court of Directors, datel 
 llth July, 1783. Printed for the committee of the House of Commons, in 
 1787.
 
 126 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. had the ordinary administration of civ' 1 jastice in that country, 
 and the whole business of the collection of the revenues. 
 Those provincial Councils accounted to the Governor General 
 and Council, who, in the revenue department, had the whole 
 management, control and regulation, of the revenue. 
 Mr. Hastings did in several papers to the court of Directors 
 declare that, which at first he stated only as experimental, 
 to have proved useful in the experiment. And, on that 
 use and upon that experiment, he had sent even the plan 
 of an act of Parliament, to have it confirmed with the last 
 and most sacred authority of this country. The court of 
 Directors desired that, if he thought any other method more 
 proper, he would send it to them for their approbation and 
 for his instruction in his conduct. 
 
 Thus the whole Tace of the British government, the whole 
 f i* 8 or( ^ er an d constitution, remained from 1772 to 1781. 
 ponderance He had got rid some time before by death of General 
 cii of Bengal. Clavering, by death of Colonel Monson, and by vexation, 
 persecution and dereliction of authority, he had shaken off 
 Mr. Francis. The whole Council therefore consisting only 
 of himself and Mr. Wheeler, he, having the casting vote, 
 was the whole Council; and, if ever there was a time when 
 principle, decency and decoium, rendered it improper for 
 him to take any extraordinary acts without the sanction of 
 the court of Directors, that was the time. Mr. Wheeler 
 was taken off. Despair perhaps ?*endered the man who had 
 been in opposition fertilely before compliable. The man is 
 dead. He certainly did rot oppose Mr. Hastings: if he 
 had it would have been in vain. But those very circum- 
 stances which rendered it atrocious in Mr. Hastings to make 
 any change, induced him to make this. He thought that a 
 moment's time was not to be lost; that other colleagues 
 might come where he might be overpowered by majority 
 again, and not be able to pursue his corrupt plans. 
 Therefore he resolved your Lordships will remark the 
 whole of the systematic plan ; it is ihe most daring bribery 
 and peculation that ever was he resolved to put it out of 
 Son of'the s ^6 P ower or> his Council in future to check or control him in 
 provincial any of his evil practices. The first thing he did was to 
 and dek-sa- form an apparent Council for the management of the revenues, 
 power f toa i* 1 which they were not bound, except they thought fit, to 
 appointed ma ke any effectual reference to the supreme Council. He 
 by himself, delegated to them, that is, to four covenanted servants of 
 the Company, those functions which, by act of Parliament 
 and by the Company's orders, were to be exercised by the
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 127 
 
 Council. He delegated to four gentlemen, creatures of his own, is FEB.ITSS 
 his own powers ; but he laid them out to good interest. It 
 appears odd that one of the first acts of a Governor General, 
 so jealous of his power as he is known to be, when he had 
 all the power in his own hands, should be to put all the 
 revenues out of his own power. That upon the first view 
 is an extraordinary proceeding. Then his next step was, 
 without apprising the court of Directors of his intention, 
 or giving an idea of any such intention to his colleagues 
 while they were alive, or before they returned to Europe, 
 in a moment, in one day, to suppress and annihilate the 
 whole authority of the provincial Councils, and to delegate 
 the whole power to those four gentlemen. Those four He appoints 
 gentlemen had for their secretary an agent, given to them Govmd sing 
 by Mr. Hastings a name that you will often hear of {^ r secre * 
 a name at the sound of which all India turns pale the 
 most wicked, the most atrocious, the boldest, the most 
 dexterous, villain that ever the rank servitude of that 
 country has produced. My Lords, I am speaking with the 
 utmost freedom, because there never was _a friend of 
 Mr. Hastings, there never was a foe of Mr. Hastings, there 
 never was any human person, that ever differed on this 
 occasion or expressed any other idea of Gunga Govind Sing, 
 the friend of Mr. Hastings, whom he intrusted with this 
 important post. But you shall hear, from the account given 
 by themselves, what the Council thought of their functions, 
 of their efficiency for the charge, and in whose hands it ^^j? 118 
 really was. I beg, hope and trust, that your Lordships will ciitotheh-" 
 hear from the persons themselves, who were appointed to ^ 
 execute the office, their opinion of the real execution of it, 
 that you may judge of the plan for which Mr. Hastings 
 destroyed the whole English administration in India : 
 
 " The committee must have a dewan, or executive officer call him by 
 what name you please. This man, in fact, has all the revenue paid at 
 the Presidency at his disposal ; and can, if he has any abilities, bring all 
 the renters under contribution. It is little advantage to restrain the 
 committee themselves from bribery or corruption, when their executive 
 officer has the power of practising both undetected. To display the arts 
 employed by a native on such occasions would fill a volume. He 
 discovers the secret resources of the zemindars and renters, their enemies 
 and competitors ; arid by the engines of hope and fear, raised upon these 
 foundations, he can work them to his purpose. The committee, with the 
 best intentions, best abilities, and steadiest application, must after all be 
 a tool in the hands of their dewan." * 
 
 * Quoted from Shore's " Remarks on the Mode of administering Justice to 
 the Natives in Bengal, and on the Collection of the Revenues ; " accompanying 
 a Minute of the Governor General, dated 18th May, 1785. Ordered to be 
 printed for the House of Commons on the 13th of April, 1 786.
 
 128 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 i FEB.HSS. Your Lordships see what the opinion of the Council was of 
 The Council their own constitution ; you see what they are made for ; 
 Gunga* 1 c You see for what purposes the great revenue trust is taken 
 GovindSing. f rom the Council general, from the supreme government; 
 you see for what purposes the executive power is des- 
 troyed; you have it from one of the gentlemen of this 
 commission, at first four in number and afterwards five, who 
 was the most active, efficient, member of it ; you see that it 
 is made for the purpose of being a tool in the hands of 
 Gunga Govind Sing ; that integrity, ability and vigilance, is 
 nothing ; and the whole country may be laid under contri- 
 bution by that person who can thus practise bribery with 
 impunity. Therefore your Lordships see that the delegation 
 is given by Mr. Hastings of all the authority of the country, 
 above and below, to this Gunga Govind Sing. The screen, 
 the veil, spread before this transaction is torn open by the very 
 people themselves who are the tools. They know they can do 
 nothing. They know they are tools in the hands of Gunga 
 Govind Sing ; and Mr. Hastings uses his name and authority 
 to make them tools in the hands of the basest, the wickedest, 
 the corruptest, the most audacious and atrocious villain ever 
 heard of. It is to him all the English authority is sacrificed: 
 and four gentlemen are appointed to be his tools and instru- 
 ments. Tools and instruments for what ? They themselves 
 state that, if he has the intention, he has the power and 
 ability to lay the whole country under contribution ; that 
 he enters into their most minute secrets, gets to the bottom 
 of their family affairs, and has a power totally to subvert and 
 destroy their families. And we shall show, upon that head, 
 that he well fulfilled the offices for which he was appointed. 
 Did Mr. Hastings pretend to say that he destroyed the 
 provincial Councils for their corruptness or inefficiency when 
 he dissolved them ? No ; he says he has no objection to 
 their competency, no charge to make against their conduct, 
 but that he has destroyed them for his new arrangement. 
 And what is his new arrangement ? Gunga Govind Sing ! 
 Forty English gentlemen were removed from their offices by 
 that change. Mr. Hastings did it, however, very economically ; 
 for all those gentlemen were instantly put upon pensions, and 
 consequently burdened the establishment with a new charge. 
 Cost of the Well! but the new Council was formed and constituted 
 Council. upon a very economical principle. These five gentlemen 
 you will have it in proof with the necessary expenses of 
 their office, were a charge of 62,0007. a year upon the 
 establishment. But for great, eminent, capital, services,
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 129 
 
 62,000?., though a much larger sum than what was thought is FEB. nss. 
 fit to be allowed for the members of the Supreme Council 
 itself, I will admit I will pass it. It shall be granted to 
 Mr. Hastings that the pensions of all the Council, which 
 created a new burden on the establishment, were all well 
 disposed, provided the Council did their duty. But hear 
 what they say themselves. They are not there put to do any 
 duty ; they can do no duty ; their integrity avails them 
 nothing ; they are tools in the hand of Gunga Govind Sing. 
 Then Mr. Hastings has loaded the revenue with 62,000/. a 
 year to make Gunga Govind Sing master of the kingdoms of 
 Bengal, Behar and Orissa. What must the machinery be, 
 what must be the thing to be moved, when it has cost in 
 tools for Gnnga Govind Sing 62,000/. a year to the Company ? 
 There is the thing. It is not my representation, not the 
 representation of observant strangers, of good and decent 
 people that understand the nature of that service, but it is 
 the opinion of the tools themselves, that they could be 
 nothing else than tools in that situation. Tools to whom ? 
 T6 the worst, to the most dangerous, of men ; for, if he 
 has abilities, those abilities he can pervert to the worst of 
 purposes. 
 
 Now, did Mr. Hastings employ this man without a know- Mr. East- 
 ledge of his character? His character was known to Mr. awareof 
 Hastings ; it was recorded long before : he was turned out of Govimi 
 another office. Mr. Hastings says : " It is true the man is s i n ^ s *> ad 
 
 n MI f -I i i character. 
 
 generally ill spoken or ; but, says he, " nothing particular 
 that I know of is laid to his charge ; nobody denies his abili- 
 ties/' Xow, if anything in the world should induce you to put 
 the whole trust of the revenues of Bengal, both above and 
 below, into a man's hands, and to delegate to him all the 
 jurisdiction, it must be that he was at least a man of integrity, 
 or reputed to be a man of integrity. Mr. Hastings does 
 not pretend that he is reputed to be a man of integrity. 
 He knew that he was turned out of office by others, and 
 that he was not able to contradict the charge brought against 
 him. He knew that he was turned out of office by his 
 colleagues, and for reasons assigned upon record and ap- 
 proved by the Directors, for malversation in office before 
 He had crept again into the Calcutta committee ; and they 
 were upon the point of turning him out for malversation, 
 when Mr. Hastings saved them the trouble by turning them 
 out. So that, in all times, in all characters, in all places,
 
 130 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB^ITSS. ne stood as a man of a bad character and evil repute, 
 without going a bit further, though supposed to be a mail of 
 great abilities. 
 
 Bad men My Lords, permit me for one moment to drop my repre- 
 abiVforVood sentative character here, and to speak to your Lordships only 
 service. as a man o f mucn experience in the world, and conversant 
 with the affairs and with the characters of men. I do then 
 declare, and wish it may stand recorded to posterity, that 
 there never was a bad man that had ability for good 
 service. It is not the nature of such men. Their minds 
 are so distorted to selfish purposes, to knavish, artificial and 
 crafty, means of accomplishing those selfish ends, that if put 
 to any good service they are poor, dull, helpless. Their 
 natural faculties never have that direction ; they are paralytic 
 on that side; the muscles, if I may use the expression, that 
 ought to move it are all gone. They know nothing but how 
 to pursue selfish ends by wicked and indirect means. No 
 man ever knowingly employed a bad man on account of 
 his abilities but for evil ends. Mr. Hastings knew this man 
 to be bad ; all the world knew him to be bad ; and how did 
 Mr. Hastings employ him ? In a manner that he might be 
 controlled by others ? A great deal might be said for that. 
 There might be circumstances in which such a man might 
 be used in a subordinate capacity. But who ever thought 
 of putting such a man at the head of the whole, and the 
 Council general under him ? 
 
 Gunga My Lords, as soon as we find Gunga Govind Sing here, 
 
 empioyed'in we fi n( l him employed in the way in which he was meant 
 bribes for * ^ e employed ; that is to say, we find him employed in 
 Mr. Hast- taking corrupt bribes and corrupt presents for Mr. Hastings. 
 Though the committee were tools in his hands, he was a 
 tool in the hands of Mr. Hastings ; for he had, as we shall 
 prove, constant, uniform and close, communications with 
 Mr. Hastings. And, indeed, we may be saved a good deal 
 of the trouble of proof; for Mr. Hastings himself, by ac- 
 knowledging him to be his broker, has pretty well authen- 
 ticated a secret correspondence between them. Mr. Lai-kins 
 was written to by Mr. Hastings, in consequence of the 
 frequent, pressing, tender, solicitations of the court of 
 Directors, which they always insinuated to him in a very 
 delicate manner. He writes to Mr. Larkins to find out, if 
 Account by he can, some of his bribes. And accordingly Mr. Larkins 
 of TOM of has sent over an account of various bribes, an account which, 
 
 the bribes.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 131 
 
 even before it comes directly in evidence before you, it will 
 be pleasant for your Lordships to read. In this account, 
 under the head t( Dinagepore, No. 1," 1 find : 
 
 " Duplicate copy of the particulars of debts, in which the component A sum of 
 parts of sundiy sums received in the account of the Honourable Cora- 30,<XXM. re- 
 pany of Merchants trading to the East Indies, were received by Mr. Dinagepore 
 Hastings, and paid to the sub-treasurer."* 
 
 Here are a number of payments. We find ,here, " Dinage- 
 pore, peshcush,f four laes of rupees cabuleat ;" that is, an 
 agreement to pay him four lacs of rupees, of which three 
 were received, and one remained in balance at the time this 
 account was made out. All that we know from this account, 
 after all these researches, after all the court of Directors 
 could do to squeeze it out of him, is, that he received from 
 Dinagepore, at twelve monthly payments, a sum of about 
 three lacs of rupees, upon an engagement to pay him four ; 
 that is, an engagement to pay him 40,0007,, of which he 
 received about 30,000/. And we are told that he received 
 this sum through the hands of Gunga Govind Sing ; and 
 that, besides receiving this through his hands, he was ex- 
 ceedingly angry with Gunga Govind Sing for having kept 
 back or defrauded him of the sum of 10,0007. out of the 
 40,0007. This was very reprehensible behaviour in Gunga 
 Govind Sing, certainly very unworthy of the great and high 
 trust which Mr. Hastings reposed in his integrity, to keep 
 back from him the fourth part of his whole bribe. My 
 Lords, this letter tells us that Mr. Hastings was much irritated 
 at Gunga Govind Sing. You will hereafter see how Mr. 
 Hastings behaves to persons against whom he is irritated, 
 for their frauds upon him in their joint concerns. In the 
 meantime Gunga Govind Sing rests with you as a person with 
 whom Mr. Hastings is displeased on account of infidelity in 
 the honourable trust of bribe undertaker and manager. 
 
 My Lords, you are not very much enlightened, I believe, Obscurity 
 
 i A u i TV . i? L >> TIT a j of the state- 
 
 by seeing these words, " Dinagepore, pesncush. We end a mentrcia- 
 
 province ; we find a sum of money ; we find an agent ; and we bribe. 1! 
 find a receiver. The province is Dinagepore ; the agent is 
 Gunga Govind Sing ; the sum agreed on is 40,0007. ; and the 
 receiver of a part of that is Mr. Hastings. That is all that we 
 have seen. It is murder by persons unknown. Who it was 
 
 * Transmitted in a letter from Mr. Larkins to the Chairman of the Com- 
 pany, dated 5th August, 1786, and printed for the House of Commons in 
 1787. 
 
 f The fine paid by a zamindar on his investiture. 
 
 J 2
 
 132 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. that gave this sum of money to Mr. Hastings in this manner 
 does in no way appear. And this is the way in which Mr. 
 Hastings, after all the reiterated solicitations of Parliament, of 
 the Company and the public, has lost this bribe. And so it is 
 with respect to most of the bribes. But yet we have discovered 
 most of them, though there is some complexity in them. 
 
 Then, my Lords, the best way is to see what the state 
 of transactions at Dinagepore was at that period. For if 
 Mr. Hastings, in the transactions at that period, did anything 
 for that district, it must be presumed that this money was 
 given for those acts ; for Mr. Hastings confesses it was a 
 sum of money corruptly received, but honestly applied. 
 It does not signify much at first view from whom he received 
 it ; it is enough to fix it that he did receive it. But, because 
 the consequences of his bribes make the main part of what 
 I intend to bring before your Lordships, I shall beg to state 
 to you, with your indulgence, what I have been able to 
 discover, by a very close investigation of the records, re- 
 specting this business of Dinagepore. 
 
 onftecfr- " Dinagepore, Rungpore and Edrackpore (?), make a country, 
 
 cumstances J believe, pretty nearly as large as all the northern counties 
 
 Dinagepore of England, Yorkshire included. It is no mean country ; and 
 
 it has a prince of great, ancient, illustrious, descent at the 
 
 head of it, called the Raja of Dinagepore. 
 
 I find that, about the month of July, 1780, the Raja of 
 Dinagepore, after a long and lingering illness, died, leaving 
 sicccSn^ a half-brother and an adopted son. A litigation as to the 
 to the Raja succession instantly arose in the family ; and this litigation 
 Mr'ilast^ was naturally referred to, and was finally decided by, the 
 Governor General in Council, he being the ultimate au- 
 thority for all these questions there. This cause came before 
 Mr. Hastings ; and I find that he decided the question in 
 favour of the adopted son of the Raja against his half-brother. 
 I find that, upon that decision, a rent w r as settled and a 
 Anne paid peshcush or fine paid. So that all that is in this transaction 
 sion. e is fair and above board. There is a dispute settled ; there is 
 a fine paid ; there is a rent reserved to the Company ; and 
 the whole is a fair settlement. But I find along with it 
 very extraordinary acts ; for I find Mr. Hastings taking a 
 part in favour of the minor, agreeably to the principles of 
 others and contrary to his own. I find that he gave the 
 guardianship of this adopted son to the brother of the Rani, 
 sMpofTho as she is called, or the wife of the late Raja deceased. He 
 ami's bro? was not her adopted son ; but Mr. Hastings gave the 
 
 then
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 133 
 
 guardianship to her brother. And I find that, when the 
 steward of the province of Dinagepore was coming down to 
 represent this case to Mr. Hastings, Mr. Hastings, so far 
 from hearing fully all the parties in this business, not only 
 sent him back, but ordered him to be actually turned out of 
 his office, because it tended only to increase the family dis- 
 sensions, though the settling that matter was actually a part 
 of the duty of his office. So I find that, if the sum of Bribe taken 
 40,0007. which Mr. Hastings took at that time, in 1780, to Ktfngs. 
 which this account seems to refer for it begins in July, 1780, 
 and ends at the same period in 1781, there being regular 
 payments be the sum of money received by him from the 
 Raja, this account refers to a sum of money corruptly taken 
 by him as a judge in a litigation respecting an inheritance 
 between two great parties. So that he received the sum of 
 40,000/. for a judgment, which, whether ^that judgment was 
 right or wrong, true or false, he corruptly received. He 
 received it, as your Lordships will observe, through Gunga Received 
 Govind Sing. He was the broker of the agreement he was Gungf h 
 the person who was to receive it by monthly instalments ; Govind sing, 
 and he was to pay it to Mr. Hastings. Now Gunga Govind 
 Sing's son was in the office of registrar general of the whole 
 country ; who had in his custody all the papers, documents, 
 and everything which could tend to settle the litigation 
 among the parties. So that, if Mr. Hastings took this bribe 
 from the Raja of Dinagepore, he took a bribe from an infant 
 of five years old through the hands of the registrar who had 
 the keeping of the genealogies of the family, whose opinion, 
 record and documents, must have a great, if not the whole, 
 share, in settling the question. The judge therefore receives 
 a bribe through the hands of the keeper of the register of 
 the cause in suit. This is the history of this Dinagepore 
 peshcush : not the public one received from the country for 
 that is entered upon the records but the private one. 
 
 My Lords, very soon after this decision, very soon after the Officers 
 peshcush was given, we find all the officers under the Raja Ea^ 
 were turned out of their employment by Gunga Govind Go^n 
 Sing, by the very man who received the peshcush for Mr. 
 Hastings if he did receive it. We find them all turned out 
 of their employments; we find them all accused, without 
 any appearance or trace in the records of any proof of em- 
 bezzlement, of neglect in the education of the minor Raja, of 
 the mismanagement of his affairs, or the allotment of an un- 
 suitable allowance. And accordingly, to prevent the rela-
 
 13i Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEB. 1783. tions of his adopted mother to prevent those who might be 
 supposed to have an immediate interest in the family from 
 abusing the trust of his education and the trust of the 
 management of his fortune, Gunga Govind Sing for I trust 
 your Lordships would not suffer me, if I had a mind, to quote 
 that tool of a thing, the committee of revenue, bought at 
 62,0007. a year, you would not suffer me to name it, espe- 
 cially when you know all the secret agency of bribes in the 
 hands of Gunga Govind Sing this Gunga Govind Sing pro- 
 duces soon after another character. 
 
 I will do Mr. Hastings the justice to say that, if he had 
 known there was another man more accomplished in all 
 iniquity than Gunga Govind Sing, he would not have given 
 him the first place in his confidence. But there is another 
 next to him. in the country, whom you are to hear of by-and- 
 
 character of \)y } called Deby Sing. This person, in the universal opinion 
 of mankind, is ranked next to Gunga Govind Sing ; and, what 
 is very curious, they had been as rivals in virtue 
 
 " Arcades ambo, 
 Et cantare pares et respondere parati." 
 
 But Mr. Hastings has the happiest modes in the world. These 
 rivals were reconciled on this occasion ; and Gunga Govind 
 Sing appoints Deby Sing, superseding all the other officers 
 DebySing for no reason whatever upon record. He puts the guar- 
 GcxxUaci ap- dianship into the hands of Deby Sing ; but because, like 
 guardians champions, they ought to go in pairs, there is an English 
 of the Raja, gentleman, one Mr. Goodlad whom you will hear of pre- 
 sently appointed along with him. They were absolute 
 They reduce strangers to the Raja's family ; and the first act they do is to 
 cut off 1,0007. out of 1,6007. a month from his allowance. 
 They state, though there were a great number of dependents 
 to maintain, that 6007. would be enough to maintain them. 
 There is such a flutter about the care of the Raja and the 
 management of his household there never was, in short, 
 such a tender guardianship as is exercised, always with the 
 knowledge of Mr. Hastings, over this poor Raja, who had just 
 given 40,0007. if he did give 40,0007. for his own inheri- 
 tance, if it was his due for the inheritance of others if it 
 was not his due. One would think he was intitled to some 
 mercy ; but, probably because that money could not come 
 out of the surplus of his affairs, his establishment was cut 
 down by Deby Sing and Mr. Goodlad a thousand a month, 
 which is just twelve thousand a year.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 135 
 
 "\Vhen Mr. Hastings had appointed those persons to the 
 guardianship, who had an interest in the management of the 
 Raja's education and fortune, one should have thought, before 
 they were turned out, he would at least have examined 
 whether it was proper or not that they should be turned out. 
 Xo; they were turned out; and when I come to inquire 
 into the proceedings of Gunga Govind Sing's committee, I do NO account 
 not find that the new guardians have brought to account bj^Ww 84 
 one single shilling that they received, appointed as they were swardians. 
 by that Council newly made to superintend all the affairs of 
 the Raja. There is not one word to be found of an account. 
 Deby Sing's honour, fidelity and disinterestedness, and that 
 of Mr. Goodlad, is sufficient. And that is the way in which 
 the management and superintendence of one of the greatest 
 houses in that country is given to the guardianship of stran- 
 gers. And how is it managed ? We find Deby Sing in 
 possession of the Raja's family, in possession of his affairs, in 
 the management of his whole zamindary ; and, in the course 
 of the next year, he is to give him in farm the whole of the 
 revenues of these three provinces. Now it is possible that The fine 
 the peshcush was not received as a bribe for the nomination EribVby 
 of the Raja not as a bribe in judgment, but as a bribe in Deby Sing - 
 office which is best or worst I shall not pretend to deter- 
 mine that Mr. Hastings got it from Deby Sing for appoint- 
 ing him to the guardianship of a family that did not belong 
 to him, and for the . dominion of three great, vast and 
 flourishing, provinces. You find the Raja in his possession ; 
 you find his education, his household, in his possession. 
 Xow the public revenues are in his possession ; they are 
 given over to him. This makes it necessary for me to inform 
 your Lordships who Deby Sing is. 
 
 \_Mr. Burke read the committee's recommendation of Deby 
 Sing to the Governor General and Council^ 
 
 Here is a choice ; here is Deby Sing presented for his 
 knowledge in business, his trust and fidelity, and his being 
 a person against whom no objection can be made. This is 
 presented to Mr. Hastings ; by him recorded in the Council 
 books, and by him transmitted to the court of Directors. 
 Mr. Hastings has since recorded that he knew this Deby ?ir- Hast- 
 Sing though he here publicly authorises the nomination of ortheTo 
 him to all that great body of trusts to be a man completely r P of C Deb!J- C " 
 capable of the most atrocious iniquities that were ever Sin?< 
 charged upon man. Deby Sing is appointed to all those 
 great trusts through the means of Gunga Govind Sing, from
 
 136 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB. 1788. whom Mr. Hastings had received 30,000/. as a part of a 
 bribe. 
 
 Now, my Lords, though it is a large field, though it is a 
 thing that, I must confess, I feel a reluctance almost in 
 venturing to undertake, exhausted as I am, yet, such is the 
 magnitude of the affair, such the evil consequences that 
 happened from a system of bribery, such the horrible con- 
 sequences of superseding all the persons in office in the 
 country to give it into the hands of Deby Sing, that, though 
 it is the public opinion, and though there is no man that has 
 ever heard the name of Deby Sing that does not know that 
 he was only second to Gunga Govind Sing, yet it is not to 
 my purpose, unless I prove that Mr. Hastings knew his 
 character at the very time he accepted him, as a person 
 against whom no exception could be made. It is therefore 
 necessary to inform your Lordships who this Deby Sing was, 
 to whom these great trusts were committed and those great 
 provinces given. 
 
 History of Deby Sing was a person of the tribe of banyas originally, 
 1 that is to say, of the trading and merchant caste in India ; 
 and he employed his first novitiate, his apprenticeship, in all 
 the arts of getting money ; and he allied himself to the 
 patronage and protection of a great native, a man of a very 
 different character, Mohammed Reza Khan. Whilst that 
 great man had the management of the affairs of state and of 
 revenue in his hands under the Company, Deby Sing paid 
 his court to him, with all that assiduity and suppleness which 
 those who have no useful talent or honourable disposition 
 are seldom deficient in : and accordingly he made his way 
 and got great interest with this powerful person. There is 
 one circumstance that may be told to his advantage. When 
 Mohammed Reza Khan was brought down by Mr. Hastings, 
 under the orders of the court of Directors, upon a cruel 
 charge, to Calcutta, Deby Sing lent him considerable sums of 
 money ; for this great man was accused of many crimes, and 
 was acquitted 220,000. in debt. That is to say, as soon as 
 he became a great debtor he ceased to be a great criminal. 
 Deby Sing, who had been useful to him upon that occasion, 
 obtained his interest ; and one of the first great concerns 
 intrusted to him was the province of Purnea. 
 
 HIS govern- It is necessary to state how he showed himself worthy of 
 that province and deserving of greater trusts. My Lords, he 
 so we jj acquitted himself in that office that that province 
 was totally ruined and left desolated. To give your Lord-
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 137 
 
 ships an idea of it in a few words, the revenue which he took 
 at 160,0007. fell the next year to 90,0007. He could be got 
 to remit but 90,0007. : it in reality produced but 60,0007. 
 He had so completely dried up the source of all future 
 revenue and almost all future production in that province 
 that it produced but 60,0007. not equal to half of what it 
 had been originally let at. Now, when the farmers who 
 came to this province afterwards for a company of Calcutta 
 banyas attempted to take it and saw the squalid scenes of 
 desolation that glared upon them in every part, they fled 
 suddenly in a fright out of the province, and gave 12,0007. 
 to be released from any share in it : so completely had Deby 
 Sing done the business of this province. 
 
 My Lords, the grievance was too manifest, the corruptions Discharged 
 
 j i, ui A- A i from the 
 
 and oppression too abominable, to escape notice. And government 
 accordingly Mr. Hastings, in the year 1773,* discharges Deby aastings. 
 Sing from the government and management of the province 
 of Purnea, with a stigma upon him for his misconduct. 
 This man is removed from his employment, but not from 
 his profits. Stigmatised, but still in power, he obtains the Appointed 
 office of diwan, or deputy steward, of the great province of MDorehcda- 
 Moorshedabad, the capital of the country, the seat of the old bad - 
 government, and the first province of the kingdom ; in short, 
 the whole power of diwan fell into his hands. His Council His council 
 consisted of young men, rather like other young men, of young men? f 
 pleasurable dispositions; but, like young men in India, 
 willing to reconcile, if they could, the means of making a 
 very considerable fortune with the ordinary means which are 
 employed in ruining it, they wished to have a good deal of 
 pleasure and a good fortune. But they were utterly inex- 
 perienced. Deby Sing took compassion upon their youth 
 and inexperience, and endeavoured to lead them in the ways 
 of profit and pleasure. 
 
 There is a tax in that country which is much more pro- He farms 
 ductive than honourable, namely, a tax upon public prosti- prostitutes, 
 tutes. Deby Sing farmed this tax, for two reasons ; first, 
 that no profit ever escaped him in any way ; and next, 
 because he thought it no insignificant means of power. Out 
 of those ladies which he farmed he selected with care and 
 industry, and with that ability for which he has been so 
 much commended, those who had the greatest share of 
 personal merit. To this personal merit he added, according 
 
 * In the month of September, 1772. Revised copy.
 
 138 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEB. 1788. to the Eastern manner, a number of sweet and endearing 
 names. The ladies were called, Mine of Gold, Pearl of 
 Price, Ruby of Pure Blood, and all those pleasant Oriental 
 names that, by the dissonance even and the discords of 
 various contending passions, heightened the general harmony, 
 and increased the vivid satisfactions of love with all the 
 
 Hecorrupts allurements of avarice. Deby Sing gave frequent entertain- 
 
 his Council TT j ,, ^ v -i. r," 
 
 bydebau- ments. He carried this moving seraglio about with him 
 orler'tc/ob- wherever he went ; and, whilst he supplied his customers 
 connivance liberally with the best wines of France, with an exquisite 
 in his acts, entertainment, with the perfumed India smoke, so that in 
 the convivial enjoyments of Europe they had the blandish- 
 ments of Asia, this great magician, chaste in the midst of 
 dissoluteness, sober in the centre of debauch, and active in 
 the lap of drowsiness, in such scenes brought forward 
 business, to oblige those young men, who were not inten- 
 tionally corrupt but rather to be blamed for the debaucheries 
 of their youth : he brought them papers to sign, in a con- 
 vivial hour, which they would never have been brought to 
 sign in their sober senses. My Lords, this pander, this keeper 
 of a legal brothel, becomes the master of the council of 
 Allahabad : this man is chosen to superintend the education 
 of the young Raja, and to lead him in the way of all piety, 
 virtue and regularity. 
 
 With these gentlemen, pleasures and agreeable entertain- 
 ments, which this man knew very well how to manage, would 
 not have done, if he had not found something for their 
 necessities. Therefore, with small donations aptly applied, 
 he obtained the total and entire government And, accord- 
 ingly, in various provinces some considerable but, on 
 account of their uncouth names, I do not mean to trouble 
 your Lordships with naming them, nor is it necessary he 
 got the farms under several names ; sometimes appearing in 
 in his own name; sometimes disappearing and shrouding 
 himself under other names, as successful or defeated villany 
 gave him confidence or made him timid. In this situation, 
 every new trust was a new fraud, every farm that he took 
 he ran in balances for, and oppressed the people ; and, in one 
 of them, for his peculations he was publicly whipped by 
 proxy. These are the practices of the person that Mr. 
 Hastings thought fit to choose for the farm of Rungpore. 
 The farm of This farm of Rungpore was given to him with great 
 conferred apparent caution at an advanced rent. But this advanced 
 hun ' rent he was to take great care should not be levied by any
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 139 
 
 new contributions on the husbandmen, but by improvements is TEH. ITS?. 
 of the country. And then this keeper of a brothel, this 
 cheat in all former employments, this destroyer of Purnea, 
 was sent to govern the three great countries of Dinagepore, 
 liungpore and Edrackpore (?) As soon as he went there he 
 did not lose a moment in doing his duty. As to his cove- 
 nant, if Mr. Hastings can forget his covenant, you may 
 easily believe that Deby Sing had not a more correct 
 memory ; and accordingly, as soon as he came into the His tyranni- 
 province, the first thing he did was to seize upon all the 
 landed gentlemen and nobility of that country, to throw 
 them all into prison, and there, in prison and in irons, oblige 
 them to sign a paper for the increase of those rents which 
 he had stipulated not to increase ; and they were obliged to 
 enter into those stipulations, under actual imprisonment and 
 torture upon them and their principal servants. 
 
 The next step that he took was to lay upon them an He increases 
 incredible number of new taxes, which he was by his cove- the taxes ' 
 nant forbid to lay. Those taxes amounted to as much as the 
 increased rent, and were in their nature the most vexatious 
 and oppressive. I am afraid I trouble your Lordships, but it 
 is a material part that I am now going to lay before you. 
 The landed gentry and freeholders of that country, being 
 obliged to sign these bonds, and being loaded with these 
 taxes, became totally unable to pay. The next step was, sequesters 
 upon their inability to pay, to sequester their lands. The the lands - 
 lands of that province are of many sorts, but two principally 
 lands that pay rent, and lands that do not. Those that 
 pay no rent are their demesne lands ; the rest, from which 
 they derive their consequence, pay rent and maintain their 
 dependents. The first of these lands were sold. Sold for 
 what ? One year's purchase. The price of land in that 
 country is ten years' purchase. Who were they sold to? 
 Your Lordships are ready to anticipate me. They were sold Takes the 
 to Deby Sing himself, through one of his under agents, for i^" O wn t0 
 one year's purchase. They were collected together, and hands - 
 amounted in all to 7,OOOZ. a year ; but, according to the 
 value of land in that country, I should not rate it at less 
 than 30,0007. They were seized in this manner ; seques- 
 tered into the hands of Deby Sing; taken at a year's purchase, 
 and as much under value as the fee simple of an acre of land 
 in England would be at seven or eight shillings. He was 
 the fixer of it ; and what the poor wretches received for the 
 fee simple of their lands, out of the money extorted from
 
 140 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 18FEB.1788. them, they put into a separate collection. The rents were 
 raised, the value rose, and Deby Sing put it by to be a 
 separate estate, either for himself or such person as Mr. 
 Hastings might put upon it. The landholders were still in 
 balances. The more they sold, the poorer they found them- 
 selves, because their resources were gone. Then he fell 
 upon their goods. They were obliged to carry almost all 
 their goods to market. 
 
 There is a circumstance I may mention here that will call 
 
 The greater for your Lordships' pity. Most of the landholders or zamin- 
 
 theamin- dars in that country happened at that time to be women. 
 
 dars women. 3^ gex there is in a state certainly of imprisonment, but 
 guarded as a sacred treasure under all possible attention and 
 respect. None of the coarse male hands of the law can reach 
 them : but they have a custom, very cautiously and soberly 
 used in all good governments there, of sending female bailiffs 
 or Serjeants into their houses. But, in this case, persons of 
 either sex of that occupation went into their houses and 
 became masters of them, and the men and women zamin- 
 dars were obliged to fly the country. 
 
 Sale of lands Before they ran away they had a miserable spectacle 
 
 set apart for. _ '_ , J > , .. . . 1 ,. , 
 
 mainte- before them; lor there were sold at the same sale all the 
 nance oi lie ^^table lands which were set apart for the maintenance of 
 the poor and helpless for which they had often defrauded 
 their own necessities : they saw all those lands sold before 
 their faces at that same market of iniquity. There was 
 and for more there were things yet dearer to them the poor con- 
 moSc& cere " solations of imagination at death for all the substantial 
 miseries of life there were lands set apart for their funeral 
 ceremonies : how dear they are to all the people of India I 
 hope in further inquiries your Lordships will know. But 
 this tyranny of Deby Sing, the agent of Mr. Hastings this 
 tyranny, more consuming than the funeral pile, more greedy 
 than the grave, more harsh and inexorable than death itself, 
 tore from them the last poor remains of consolation after 
 they had lost their all ; and they saw no prospect of ending 
 life in a manner suitable to their several customs and reli- 
 gious opinions. These lands were confiscated ; their houses 
 deserted ; their streets overgrown with weeds. I am speak- 
 ing, not fiction, but things which are to come in proof 
 before your Lordships. This was the manner in which all 
 the principal gentry, all the second-rate gentry, all the 
 women, and all the minors of that country, were cruelly 
 destroyed.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 141 
 
 But when we come to the poorer sort of people, the 18 FEB- 
 yeomen, the husbandmen, what was their situation? I dare His cruelty 
 say that their situation was ten thousand times worse, if ^ 
 possible. If there are degrees and gradations in utter ruin, 
 their state was the worst ; and you will hear in what parti- 
 culars their state was worse even than that of the others. 
 They were driven like a herd of cattle into the common 
 prisons, and there they were obliged, as the principal zamin- 
 dnrs had done, to sign recognizances to their ruin : they 
 were let out only for their destruction. First, the exor- 
 bitant rent, and then such an intolerable variety of new 
 taxes, coming every day in new shapes upon them, they were 
 obliged to sell almost all the corn of the country to get rid 
 of these demands at once ; and, it happening to be a year of 
 cheapness and the market being overloaded, their crops did 
 not sell for more than one-fourth of their value. So that, 
 with debts growing upon them which they were to pay in 
 money, they came at last to their next resource, their cattle. 
 They were obliged to hurry to market all their cattle ; and 
 of the cattle which were worth from 20s. to 25s., five of 
 them were known to sell for 20s.,* the market being so 
 overloaded. 
 
 My Lords, the last thing that the people in that country 
 will part with is the ornaments which the women wear upon 
 their persons, and which they procure at the expense of 
 pinching their bodies. Those who are so very poor that 
 they cannot get a bit of gold, get something in imitation of 
 it. They do not dress themselves with taste according to 
 our mode, but their decoration is a resource to them upon 
 an emergency ; for, when they have got a bit of gold, it is 
 not only a decoration, but may afford food for their families. 
 Those ornaments were forced to market, and gold and silver 
 sold at market twenty per cent, under their value ; for gold 
 and silver, forced to market, where there are none but 
 fraudulent and wicked persons to buy, will not fetch their 
 value. 
 
 Deby Sing himself, on being charged with this compulsory 
 sale of all the effects, denies that such effects could have 
 existed, on account of the wretchedness and poverty of the 
 people. I will read to your Lordships his answer: 
 
 " It is notorious," says he, " that poverty generally prevails amongst 
 the husbandmen of Rungpore, more perhaps than in any other parts of 
 
 * " For not more than seven or eight shillings." Revised copy.
 
 142 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 The people 
 ruined by 
 usurers, in 
 attempting 
 to meet de- 
 mands of 
 Deby Sing. 
 
 18 FEB. 1788. the country. They are seldom possessed of any property except at the 
 time they reap their harvest, and at others barely procure their subsis- 
 tence. And this is the cause that such numbers of them were swept 
 away by the famine. Their effects are only a little earthenware, and 
 their houses only a handful of straw ; the sale of a thousand of which 
 would not perhaps produce twenty shillings." 
 
 My Lords, I produce this strong testimony, of the person 
 who was himself concerned in racking these people, to the 
 misery of their original situation. I know it does not 
 answer his : purpose ; but I produce it to show what country it 
 is, and from what people it is, that Mr. Hastings exacts bribes 
 to the amount of 40,000/., and to show that those who give 
 bribes of 40,0007. must sink four times that sum to pay them. 
 
 The people, while harassed in this manner, called upon 
 daily and hourly for sums they could not pay, fell into that 
 dreadful resource of misery, the hands of usurers. Usurers 
 are a bad resource at any time and in any circumstances ; 
 but these usurers, to the natural hardness of that kind and 
 description of men, added that which makes "people ten times 
 more hard, that is, their own necessities. They had very 
 little security to hold for what they lent against the oppres- 
 sions of power, and they made their terms accordingly. And 
 what were these poor people obliged to pay to answer the 
 bribes and peshcush paid to Mr. Hastings ? Five, ten, 
 twenty, fifty per cent ? No, six hundred per cent, by the year, 
 to be made in daily payments taken from the people whom 
 you have heard described plucked as it were out of their 
 mouths the hard hand of usury being the only resource 
 against the cruel scourge of oppression. The poor, unfor- 
 tunatej people, in this way stripped of everything, their corn, 
 their cattle, their instruments of husbandry, from which 
 any future hope was to arise, were then dragged to their own 
 miserable hovels or houses, and there they saw the last hope 
 burnt to the ground before them. It was not a severe, a 
 rigorous, collection of the revenue ; it was cruel and savage 
 war made upon the country. This is all in proof.* 
 
 * The evidence on -which these statements are made will be found in the 
 Reports of Mr. Paterson, commissioned to inquire into the causes of the dis- 
 turbances in the province of Rungpore. These were offered in evidence by 
 the Managers of the prosecution, but it -was ruled by the court, " That it is 
 not competent for the Managers for the Commons to give evidence of the 
 enormities actually committed by Deby Sing, the same not being charged in 
 the impeachment" (Minutes of Evidence, p. 1251.) They are entered, how- 
 ever, in a MS. volume (which will hereafter be deposited in the British 
 Museum), containing the proceedings of the committee of revenue on the 
 inquiry into the causes of the late disturbances in Rungpore, pages 131 et seqq.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 143 
 
 Then there remained to the unhappy people of that is FEB. 1788. 
 country but two things their families and their bodies. It AnddiTven 
 is well known that men generally cling to domestic satis- wive^anT* 
 factions in proportion as they are deprived of other advan- children, 
 tages. My Lords, the most tender parents sold their children ; 
 the most jealously affectionate husbands sold their wives ; 
 and they thought that it was a tolerable escape from famine 
 into servitude. This was the case of the people with regard 
 to their families. There then remained their persons. 
 
 My Lords, I am obliged to make use of some apology for Apology for 
 the horrid scenes that I am now going to open to you. You horrors?' 
 have had enough, you have had perhaps more than enough, 
 of oppressions upon property and oppressions upon liberty 
 but here the skin was touched. And, my Lords, permit me 
 to make as my apology to you, that which Commissioner 
 Paterson made a man with respect to whom I wish that, 
 if ever my name should be mentioned hereafter, it may go 
 down along with his in the same apology, and if possible in 
 second-rate merit as to the same acts. His apology is this, 
 and it is my apology and the apology of us all : 
 
 "That the punishments inflicted upon the ryots of both Rungpore and 
 Dinagepore for non-payment were in many instances of such a nature 
 that I would rather wish to draw a veil over them than shock your 
 feelings by the detail. But, however disagreeable the task may be to 
 myself, it is absolutely necessary, for the sake of justice, humanity and 
 the honour of government, that they should be exposed, to be prevented 
 in future."* 
 
 Let this be my anticipated apology. It is indeed a most 
 disgraceful scene to human nature that I am going to 
 display to you. 
 
 My Lords, when the people were stripped of everything, 
 of all that they publicly possessed, it was suspected, and in 
 some cases suspected justly, that the poor, unfortunate, hus- 
 bandmen had hid in the deserts, disseminated through that 
 country, some share of grain, for subsistence in unproductive 
 months and for seed for future grain. Their bodies were 
 then applied to. The first mode of torture was this: 
 They began by winding cords about their fingers until they The people 
 had become incorporated together, and then they hammered to bodily 
 
 tortures. 
 
 * Mr. Paterson's Report, from -which this passage is extracted, and -which, 
 with the papers accompanying it, furnishes Mr. Burke with the facts on which 
 his subsequent description of the cruelties practised on the inhabitants of 
 Rungpore and Dinagepore is founded, is dated on the 22nd of September, 1783, 
 and -will be found in the MS. volume referred to above, p. 292.
 
 144 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEai7ss. wedges of wood and iron between those fingers, until they 
 crushed and maimed those poor, honest, laborious, hands, 
 which never had been lifted to their own mouths but with 
 the scanty supply of the product of their own labour. These 
 are the hands which are so treated, which have for fifteen 
 years furnished the investment for China from which your 
 Lordships, and all this auditory, and all this country, have 
 every day for these fifteen years made that luxurious meal 
 with which we all commence the day. And what was the 
 return of Britain? Cords, hammers, wedges, tortures and 
 mannings, were the return that the British government made 
 to those laborious hands. However, these crippled, undone, 
 hands are in a situation in which they will act with resistless 
 power when they are lifted up to heaven against the authors 
 of their oppression. Then what can withstand such hands ? 
 Can the power that crushed and destroyed them ? Powerful 
 in prayer, let us at least deprecate and secure ourselves from 
 the vengeance which will follow those who mashed, crippled 
 and disabled, these hands. My Lords, it is a serious thought ; 
 for God's sake let us think of it. 
 
 They began there, but there they did not stop. The heads 
 of villages, the parochial magistrates, the leading yeomen of 
 the country, respectable for their situation and their age, 
 were taken and tied together by the feet, two and two, 
 thrown over a bar, and there beaten with bamboo canes 
 upon the soles of their feet until their nails started from 
 their toes. And then, falling upon them, while their heads 
 hung down as their feet were above, with sticks and cudgels, 
 their tormentors attacked them with such blind fury that the 
 blood ran out of their mouths, eyes and noses. This was 
 the second step that they took with these unfortunate people. 
 
 Refinements My Lords, they did not stop there. Bamboos, ratans, 
 
 of torture. ' 1-1 cc. 
 
 canes, common whips and scourges, were not sufficient. 
 I find that there is a tree in that country which bears strong 
 and sharp thorns, which cruelly lacerate the flesh. They 
 were not satisfied with ordinary Avhips, scourges and tor- 
 ments ; but they got branches of this bale tree, as it is called, 
 and scourged these poor people with the thorns, so that mere 
 simple beating and whipping might appear to be mercy in 
 comparison with it. But, refining in their cruelty, searching 
 everything through the devious paths of nature, where she 
 seems to have forgotten her usual plan, and produces things 
 unfavourable to the life of man, they found a poisonous 
 plant called the bechettea plant a plant which is a deadly
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 145 
 
 caustic, which inflames the parts that are cut, and leaves the ISFEB.ITSS. 
 body a crust of leprous sores, and often causes death itself. 
 With rods made of this plant they scourged the people whom 
 they had scourged before. 
 
 This, one would think, would have satisfied any ordinary Cruelties to 
 cruelty. But we are so made that even the pains of the ci 
 body fortify it for other pains. The mind strengthens as the 
 body suffers, and rises as it were with an elastic force 
 against those that inflict torments upon it. The mind gets 
 the better of the body. Its pains give it spirit, and it defies 
 the oppressor. These people were dealt with in another 
 manner. There are people who can bear their own torture 
 who cannot bear the sufferings of their families. The inno- 
 cent children were brought out and scourged before the faces 
 of their parents ; young persons were cruelly scourged, both 
 male and female, in the presence of their parents. This was 
 not all. They bound the father and son faca to face, arm to 
 arm, body to body ; and in that situation they scourged and 
 whipped them, in order, "with a refinement of cruelty, that 
 every blow that escaped the father should fall upon the son, 
 that every stroke that escaped the son should strike upon 
 the parent ; so that, where they did not lacerate and tear 
 the sense, they should wound the sensibilities and sympathies 
 of nature. This was the common and every-day practice in 
 this country for a long time. But, my Lords, there was more. 
 Virgins, whose fathers kept them from the sight of the sun, 
 were dragged into the public court, that court which was 
 the natural refuge against all wrong, against all oppression, 
 and all iniquity. There, in the presence of day, in the public 
 court, vainly invoking its justice, while their shrieks were 
 mingled with the cries and groans of an indignant people, 
 those virgins were cruelly violated by the basest and wick- 
 edest of mankind. It did not end there. The wives of the 
 people of the country only differed in this, that they lost 
 their honour in the bottom of the most cruel dungeons, where 
 all their torments were a little buried from the view of 
 mankind. They were not always left there, though there 
 they suffered those cruel and outrageous wrongs wrongs to 
 the people, to their manners, to the bodies and feelings of 
 mankind : but they were dragged out, naked and exposed to 
 the public view, and scourged before all the people. Here 
 in rny hand is my authority; for otherwise one would think 
 it almost incredible. But it did not end there. In order 
 that nature might be violated in all those circumstances
 
 146 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEB. 1788. where the sympathies of nature are awakened, where the 
 remembrances of our infancy and all our tender remembrances 
 are combined, they put the nipples of the women into the 
 sharp edges of split bamboos and tore them from their bodies. 
 Grown from ferocity to ferocity, from cruelty to cruelty, they 
 applied burning torches and cruel slow fires my Lords, I am 
 ashamed to go further those infernal fiends, in defiance of 
 everything divine and human, planted death in the source of 
 life ; and where that modesty, which more distinguishes man 
 even than his rational nature from the base creation, turns 
 from the view and dare not meet the expression, dared those 
 infernal fiends execute their cruel and nefarious tortures 
 where the modesty of nature and the sanctity of justice dare 
 not follow them or even describe their practices. 
 
 These, my Lords, were the horrors that arose from bribery 
 the cruelties that arose from giving power into the hand& 
 of such persons as Deby Sing and such infernal villains a& 
 Gunga Govind Sing. 
 
 Further par- My Lords, I forgot to mention to you one circumstance 
 the torture though I rather think you must be tired of those scenes of 
 mts epea horror and cruelty but, that you may know the length, 
 breadth and depth, of this iniquity, and all this horrid 
 system of nefarious peculation, I will mention a thing still 
 more shocking. They took those unfortunate husbandmen, 
 whom they imprisoned, they whipped them before they went 
 into prison my Lords, I assure you that these details are not 
 pleasant to myself, but they are necessary these men were 
 very often brought by night into prison and whipped on 
 going into prison : and, at those moments when nature takes 
 refuge from all the miseries of life, while in a state of insen- 
 sibility, they were awoke to be whipped again, and the 
 watches of the night were established by a new succession of 
 torments. The next morning, in winter time, when the 
 country was quite destroyed, as if it were desolated by the 
 frosts, which to us would not be so terrible but which to 
 them are terrible, they were plunged into cold water, whipped 
 upon their bodies, made tenfold more sensible by the cold,, 
 and then led out to wander in their villages to see if they 
 could raise anything by the charity of the few remaining 
 inhabitants, who had escaped the same torments but expected 
 them every day. Days of such exposure and nights of such 
 torture made the whole vicissitudes of day and night to these 
 people for many months together. 
 tte^rt My Lords, the people of India are patience itself; their 
 
 ofRungpore.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 147 
 
 patience is too criminal. But here they burst at once into a 18FEB.1788. 
 wild, universal, uproar and unarmed rebellion. The whole 
 province of Rungpore and a great part of Dinagepore broke 
 out into one general rebellion and revolt. The people fell 
 as commonly happens upon those who were least guilty. 
 They destroyed the subordinate instruments of tyranny. 
 My Lords, Mr. Goodlad, who had been a patient witness of 
 all these cruelties, to say no more, was not a patient witness 
 of the rebellion. He immediately sent for a British officer 
 and some troops. You may easily conceive how soon the 
 regular troops got the better of all the resources of unarmed 
 despair. The people were conquered and vanquished in the 
 field ; slaughtered wherever they were met : and Mr. Goodlad 
 ordered that those miserable people two or three, I think, he 
 mentions should be taken, without process of law, without 
 form, without proof of guilt, to be publicly hanged up ; and 
 hanged up they were. 
 
 The country rose in this rebellion. It was feared that it 
 would extend into every part of the country ; and Mr. Good- 
 lad was obliged to write down to Calcutta, that there never 
 was so serious a rebellion in Bengal.* This was in 1773 
 [1783]. This made a great noise in Calcutta. But such a 
 gulf for intelligence is there between us and Calcutta, that 
 I dare say of all my noble and intelligent auditors very few 
 of them have ever heard of this business. On the contrary, 
 it is a constant rule that, when everything is quiet in Bengal 
 all sullen despair and bought acquiescence there is 
 supposed to be perfect content and satisfaction. But here 
 the veil was torn ; the inside of the Bengal government was 
 exposed to view ; and though not in the same degree, 
 because the same rebellion and revolt did not break out, 
 I have reason to suppose that, more or less, this has been 
 the" situation of all the parts of the country which were 
 subject to the government of Gunga Govind Sing. 
 
 The Council, who were the tools of Gunga Govind Sing, TheCouncii 
 when they heard of the state of affairs, thought it was not determine 
 proper to pass by such a revolt as was represented by this m*mS* 
 Mr. Goodlad. -Not knowing from whence it arose, they |nto'?hc re 
 thought it arose from a disposition in the zamindars and the state of the 
 husbandmen not to pay any more rent, But, however, that 
 did not appear quite satisfactory even to this Council. They 
 
 * See Goodlad's letter to the Committee of Revenue, dated Rungpore, 27th 
 January, 1783, in the MS. volume, p. 1. 
 
 K 2
 
 148 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 is FEB.17S8. thought it was necessary to send up, for mere decorum, a 
 They seek commissioner, to examine into the matter ; and they cast 
 vm s n tifle ho about them to find a man who was fit to be a good, quiet, 
 the inquiry. re p resen ter of affairs ; so that at least, passing through his 
 channel, all the atrocity, the wickedness, should be done 
 away ; that it should come to a few, naked, speculative facts, 
 if possible. Accordingly they found out in the settlement 
 a servant of the Company, of tolerable standing, of very fair 
 character, reputed to be a man of moderation almost 
 to excess a man, mild, quiet, gentle, unconnected w,ith 
 parties, of a moderate, peaceable, character. They thought 
 that just such a man was exactly the man for their purpose ; 
 and they took it for granted that from him they might 
 expect a neutralised, balanced, colourless, account, in which 
 faults should be laid on both sides, in which oblivion should 
 be recommended as the best remedy for suffering, retrospec- 
 tion only tending to raise difficulties ; and that, at last, the 
 criminal should be left in possession of the plunder of the 
 country, and the people in possession of their patience. 
 
 That plan was very well conceived in every respect ; 
 but never were men so wofully mistaken in the world. 
 of M? c pater- ^ n Peterson, under this tame and placid outside, concealed 
 son, the a vigorous mind, an enlightened and deciding understanding, 
 s?oner. s " and a feeling heart. My Lords, he is the son of a gentleman 
 of venerable age and excellent character in this country, 
 who long filled the seat of chairman of the committee of 
 supply in the House of Commons, and who is now enjoying 
 repose from his long labours in an honourable age. The son, 
 as soon as he was appointed to this commission, was awed 
 by and dreaded the consequences. He knew to what 
 temptation he would be exposed, from the known character 
 of Deby Sing, to suppress or to misrepresent facts. He 
 therefore took out a letter that he had from his father; which 
 letter was the preservation of his character and the destruc- 
 tion of his fortune. This letter he always resorted to in all 
 trying emergencies of his life. He laid this letter before 
 him, and there was enjoined such a line of integrity, of 
 incorruption, of bearing every degree of persecution rather 
 than disguising truth, that he w r ent up into the country in a 
 proper frame of mind for doing his duty. 
 Mr. Pater- J shn\\ beg leave to state to your Lordships his ideas of 
 
 son s report , i // TT 
 
 of the state the country at the nrst view or it. He says : 
 
 of the * J 
 
 country. J n mv fovo reports I have set forth in a general manner the oppressions 
 
 which provoked the ryots to rise : I shall therefore not enumerate them
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 149 
 
 now. Every day of my inquiry served but to confirm the facts. The 18 FEB. 1788. 
 
 wonder woul'd have been if they had not risen. It was not collection, 
 
 but real robbery, aggravated by corporal punishment and every insult of 
 disgrace ; and this, not confined to a few, but extended over every 
 individual. Let the mind of man be ever so much inured to servitude, 
 still there is a point where oppressions will rouse it to resistance. Con- 
 ceive to yourselves what must be the situation of a ryot when he sees 
 everything he has in the world seized to answer an exaggerated demand, 
 and sold at so low a price as not to answer one-half of that demand ; 
 when he finds himself so far from being released, that he remains still 
 subject to corporal punishment. But what must be his feelings when 
 his tyrant, seeing that kind of severity of no avail, adds family disgrace 
 and loss of caste ? You, gentlemen, who know the reserve of the natives 
 in whatever concerns their women and their attachment to their 
 castes, must allow the full effect of these prejudices under such circum- 
 stances." * 
 
 These horrid and nefarious cruelties, which it has fallen Effects of 
 unfortunately to my lot to state to your Lordships, implied 
 loss of caste to those persons. Your Lordships remember 
 that I stated that loss of caste there amounts to much more 
 than a complete excommunication, a complete outlawry 
 and a complete attainder, would do in this country. The 
 men and the women who have lost their caste are no longer 
 the children of their parents ; their children are no longer 
 their children ; all their community of life is lost ; and if 
 they can survive, it can be only amid the occupations of 
 the lowest and basest of mankind. Such is loss of caste. 
 My Lords, there was an instrument of torture still worse to 
 their minds than any that I have yet stated. There is a 
 kind of pillory in use in that country, which consists in the 
 person being put upon a bullock, and, with drums beating, 
 this bullock is driven through the country. And, when 
 brahmans have been seized to be exposed to that indignity, 
 they have supplicated rather that a cruel whipping should be 
 substituted in the place of that ruinous disgrace. However, 
 such disgrace was actually inflicted, and loss of caste happened 
 in consequence of it. 
 
 My Lords, having stated the causes of the rebellion, and 
 having stated the opinion of Mr. Paterson when he saw the 
 country, I \vill now state an expression of one of the natives 
 of the country, who was forced to become an instrument in 
 the course of these torments. He says that he went twelve 
 miles without seeing a light not a lamp was lighted 
 without finding means to make a fire to dress the food 
 
 Letter of Mr. Paterson to the Committee of Revenue, dated Rungpore, 22nd 
 June, 1783 ; entered in the MS. volume, p. 241.
 
 150 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 is FEB.178S. necessary for his subsistence such desolation was there in 
 the country. 
 
 ^7 Lords, all these horrible calamities attended the govern- 
 ment of Deby Sing. You would imag-ine that the knowledge 
 
 report by * 
 
 the Council, or them instantly drew upon him the indignation of the 
 government; that, if ever there was a time in which a 
 government claiming arbitrary powers was to use them in 
 the most ferocious manner, it would be then. Quite other- 
 wise. The government, so arbitrary to the subject, is the 
 mildest and most placid to the governor. They must not 
 be too hasty in judging of Deby Sing ; opinions are not to be 
 hastily taken up. Nay, the report of the commissioner must 
 be subject to great exception. These were the tools of 
 power that Mr. Hastings put between him and the people of 
 the country. A precious and good choice he made upon 
 such an occasion, when the greatest mischiefs had arisen to 
 the country from his approving, if not choosing, the worst 
 men of the country to exercise authority under him proving 
 how well they acted their part, and rendering it unnecessary 
 for him to take any part in it. 
 
 Upon the first reports of the business the Council were a 
 little stunned. They did not know what to do. At last 
 came down a full report, with an immense body of evidence, 
 from the commissioner* ; for though he might have deter- 
 mined upon the view of the whole business, yet, as a serious, 
 thinking, able, man, a man of business, he made such a report, 
 followed with such a body of evidence, that probably no 
 records of any country can furnish a greater body collected 
 with greater diligence. 
 
 All persons who act under government, by authority, in a 
 public function, exercising a public trust, are intitled to a 
 presumptive credit for the truth of all that they assert ; 
 and the responsibility and burden of proof is thrown upon 
 those who would attack the report. And until corruption, 
 malice, or some evil disposition, is found in the person making 
 this report, it ought to pass with his superiors and those 
 whom he represents for truth. Very different opinions pre- 
 vailed in Mr. Hastings' Council ; this executive body having 
 only in name any authority. They first turn themselves into 
 They call] judges. They turn [Mr. Paterson into an accuser, and call 
 
 upon Mr. " ' , . , . i -r^ -\ c\- i 
 
 Paterson upon him to prove his report: and Deby binor this man 
 
 to prove his * 
 
 report. 
 
 * The report of Mr. Paterson, here referred to, is dated from Calcutta, the 
 22nd of September, 1783, and is entered in the MS. volume, p. 292.
 
 Speech of Mr, Burke. 151 
 
 worth 700,000/., and using it in this way is put up as is FEB. 1788. 
 defendant They call before them Mr. Paterson ; and they 
 make out and state heads of accusation taken from his report. 
 They desire him to prove these against Deby Sing. They take 
 exception that the depositions are not all upon oath ; Mr. 
 Paterson never having been ordered to inquire upon oath 
 not one word. Those depositions that are upon oath they 
 throw a shade upon, saying that they are depositions of persons 
 in rebellion, who want to make an excuse for their own 
 rebellion. In short, they throw every difficulty in the way. 
 And, while they are not throwing the smallest imputation 
 upon Mr. Paterson's integrity or honour, they suppose that 
 a man of such diligence, who made up three such volumes as 
 these, is carried away with the warmth of imagination, though 
 he can be proved to be the coldest and most phlegmatic 
 of men ; though at the same time they allow there is pre- 
 sumptive proof pretty strong ? gainst Deby Sing, and though 
 Mr. Hastings is of opinion that there is nothing here charged 
 against him of which he is not capable. 
 
 [Here Mr. Burke was taken ill, and obliged to sit down. 
 After some time Mr. Burke again addressed the House.] 
 
 My Lords, I am sorry to break the attention of your Lord- 
 ships in such a way. It is a subject that agitates me. It is 
 long, difficult and arduous ; but, with the blessing of God, 
 if I can, to save you any further trouble, I will go through 
 it this day. 
 
 I am to tell your Lordships that, after putting Mr. Pater- 
 son as an accuser to make good a charge, which he made out 
 too much to their satisfaction, the next step they took was 
 to change their battery. 
 
 [Mr. Burke' s illness increased ; upon which the House, on the 
 motion of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, adjourned.]
 
 152 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. 
 EDMUND BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF 
 COMMONS, IN OPENING THE IMPEACHMENT; 
 19 FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 Conse- 
 quences of 
 me delega- 
 tion of his 
 power by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings to Deby 
 Sing. 
 
 Treatment 
 of Mr. Pater- 
 son by the 
 Council. 
 
 MY LORDS, In any great undertaking, a failure in the 
 midst of it, even from some infirmity, though to be regarded 
 principally as a misfortune, is attended with some slight 
 shadow of disgrace ; but your Lordships' humanity and your 
 love of justice have remedied everything, and I therefore 
 proceed with confidence this day. 
 
 My Lords, I think, to the best of my remembrance, the 
 House adjourned at the period of time in which I was 
 endeavouring to illustrate the mischiefs that happened from 
 Mr. Hastings throwing off his responsibility by delegating 
 his power to a nominal Council, but in reality to a black bad 
 man, a native of the country, of the worst character that 
 could be found in it ; and the consequence of his so doing, 
 in preventing the detection and the punishment of the 
 grossest abuses that ever were known to be committed in 
 India or in any other part of the world. 
 
 My Lords, I stated to you that Mr. Commissioner Pater- 
 son was sent into that country with all the authority of 
 government, with power to hear, and not only to hear and 
 to report, but to redress the grievances which he should find 
 in the country. In short, there was nothing wanting to his 
 power but an honest support. Some of the things contained 
 in his reports I have taken the liberty of laying before your 
 Lordships ; but very faintly, very imperfectly, and far short 
 of my materials. I have stated to you that the criminal 
 against whom the commissioner made his report, instead of 
 being punished by that strong hand of power which Mr. 
 Hastings has thought proper to use upon other occasions, 
 when he has endeavoured to make princes, or persons in the 
 rank and with the attributes of sovereign princes, feel, 
 whenever they have incurred his private resentments that 
 this man was put into every situation of offence or defence 
 which the most litigious and prevaricating laws that ever
 
 Mr. Patcr- 
 sotu 
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 153 
 
 were invented In the very bosom of arbitrary power could 19 FEB. irss. 
 afford him, or by which peculation and power were to be 
 screened from the cries of an oppressed people. Mr. Pater- 
 son, I stated, from being a commissioner directed to report 
 under the authority of the government to that government, 
 was considered as a voluntary accuser, obliged to make good 
 the articles of his charge. But I believe I stated that he 
 did not long remain in that condition. For Deby Sing, who P^by sing 
 
 ,.,, ,, ,. ,./ ,, becomes the 
 
 at first began in the humble, sneaking, suppliant, tone ot a accuser of 
 
 J I, 1 IV J 1 1, ~ "~*~ 
 
 man under charges, a man holding a secondary and sub- 
 ordinate situation answering those charges, by degrees, as 
 his protection increased, his boldness growing along with it, 
 no longer takes the tone of an accused person. He boldly 
 stands forward ; he reverses the situation which was imposed 
 before upon Mr. Paterson; he becomes Mr. Paterson's 
 accuser. At first, he began by saying that he believed 
 Mr. Paterson was mistaken ; that he had taken up things a 
 little too warmly ; that he had listened to perverse repre- 
 sentations. He now steps forward; charges him with 
 forgery in order to destroy him ; takes the upper hand in 
 the business ; impeaches Mr. Paterson, and desires to be 
 heard before this nominal committee, in reality before 
 Gunga Govind Sing. 
 
 This business now has taken a third step. First Mr. 
 Paterson is a commissioner to report ; then an accuser to 
 make good his charge ; then a party accused, who is to 
 stand and answer the charges made against him by Deby 
 Sing. This is the third metamorphosis of Mr. Paterson's 
 situation. In this situation, which instead of defence may 
 well be called persecution, he is charged with some of the 
 most malignant crimes that probably, I will venture to say, 
 ever put to trial the patience of mankind. He was ordered 
 by this very board which I hope your Lordships will recol- 
 lect I proved yesterday were only tools in the hands of 
 Gunga Govind Sing, and therefore I charge them only with 
 instrumentality he was ordered to bring down a man of 
 infamous character, abandoned morals, not upon charges of 
 his, but charges of other persons. This man soon got out of 
 the hands of his guard, sat as an assessor by the side of the 
 Council, and there interrogated Mr. Paterson. I believe all 
 human constancy would be shaken when this took place a 
 man who had gone into the country to report the condition 
 of a wretched, unhappy, people, undone by a miserable 
 oppressor. Your Lordships will be convinced that the road
 
 154 Opening of the Impeachment 
 
 10 FEB.J1788. of fortune was easy to Mr. Paterson ; for Deby Sing would 
 
 Upright for a favourable report have given a large sum of money. 
 
 Mr. d pate- f Your Lordships will be convinced that the committee would 
 
 son> not have received such a report as a proof of bribery ; but 
 
 they would rather have considered the author of it as a man 
 
 who tended to conciliate and to soften troublesome and 
 
 difficult matters, and to settle the order of government as 
 
 soon as possible. But this man, who had bestowed all this 
 
 patience, whose honour and veracity constantly received just 
 
 attestations during the whole of this affair, whose morality 
 
 and virtue received repeated testimonials, this very man was 
 
 turned into an accused person, and that accusation submitted 
 
 to the Council. 
 
 In that situation, I must do him the justice to say that he 
 behaved like a hero. He never tottered for one moment on 
 the firm ground of principle on which he stood. He was 
 altered in his situation, and he was now to go back into that 
 country and that on permission, a grace, a favour, granted to 
 him where he had but lately appeared as a protecting angel, 
 where the people had looked upon him as carrying with him 
 the whole power of a beneficent government ; he was to go 
 back, in his altered situation, to try whether any of the 
 ruined, dejected, unhappy, hunted, people are to be found 
 with constancy enough, against the known power of their 
 former oppressor, to stand to their former accusations, 
 vants of the ^T Lords, the next step was to appoint another commission 
 Company to try the question between Mr. Paterson and Deby Sing-. 
 
 appointed * j i i o A f -L 
 
 toadjudi- And who are those commissioners : A set of the junior 
 
 tweenlyir. servants of the Company ; and before them their superior 
 
 and e Dcby was seu t- They were to examine and to inquire into the 
 
 Sin s- proceedings ; and he was, like an accused person, but without 
 
 the authority, without the favour, which ought to go with an 
 
 accused person, to make out such a state of his defence for 
 
 he is now upon his defence as could be made out. 
 
 In that situation, he wrote one of the most pathetic memo- 
 rials that ever was penned to the Council, submitting to his 
 hard fate, but standing inflexibly to his virtue that brought 
 it upon him. And, when your Lordships come to see his 
 memorials, you will see that he is a man of lofty principle, 
 and well deserving of the honour of all the sufferings that he 
 sustained in the cause of virtue. 
 
 This commission of junior servants, who were sent to 
 inquire into the inquiry, to examine into the examination, to 
 control the report, to be commissioners upon the commission
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 155 
 
 of Mr. Paterson, these persons went down into that country, 
 and for a long period spent their time in mere matters of 
 form : but they soon found that they could not do without a 
 representative of Deby Sing, and accordingly they ordered 
 Deby Sing to send up his vakil. 
 
 I forgot to state to your Lordships what the condition of Treatment 
 Deby Sing was during this proceeding. He had been ordered during y the ns 
 to Calcutta on two grounds ; one, on the matter of his miscon- pro ' 
 duct at Rungpore ; the other for a great failure in the pay- 
 ment of his revenue. Under this double accusation he was 
 considered as a prisoner. According to the mild ways of that 
 country especially where they choose to be mild, and the 
 persons are protected by power he was kept, not in the 
 common gaol of Calcutta, not in the prison of the fort, not in 
 the gaol in which Nundcomar was confined, but under a free 
 custody ; that is, attended with a guard at Calcutta, where 
 he was daily in conference with those who were to judge 
 him. He was put under a guard of sepoys, not confined to 
 his house, but permitted to go abroad ; and, having an 
 address which seldom fails, a dexterity never wanting to a 
 man possessed of 700,000?., he converted this guard into 
 a retinue of honour : their bayonets were lowered, their 
 muskets laid aside, and they attended him with side arms, 
 and many with silver verges in their hands, to mark him out 
 rather as a great magistrate attended by a retinue than a 
 prisoner under guard. 
 
 When he was ordered to send a vakil to Rungpore to 
 defend his conduct, he refused to send him. Upon which, 
 the commissioners, instead of saying, " If you will not send 
 your agent, we will proceed in our inquiry without you " 
 and indeed it was not made necessary by the commission that 
 he should be there either by vakil or otherwise admitted his 
 refusal and ordered him to come up. He accordingly 
 entered that province with this guard, in the manner I have 
 before mentioned, more as a person returning in triumph 
 from a great victory than as a man under the load of all 
 those enormous charges which I have stated. He entered 
 that province in this manner ; and Mr. Paterson saw himself, 
 though lately the representative of the India Company, at 
 least a servant high in authority and an Englishman, an 
 old servant of the Company, is a great man in that country 
 left naked and destitute, without any mark of official 
 situation or dignity. He was present while all the marks of Marks of 
 imprisonment were turned into marks of respect and dignity
 
 156 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 19 FEBL1788. 
 the Com- 
 
 Sing. 
 
 The people 
 
 without 
 redress. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 
 merits, 
 and with 
 
 controi ed to 
 
 . to this consummate villain, whom I have the misfortune of 
 introducing to your Lordships' notice. Mr. Paterson, seeing 
 the effect of that proceeding everywhere, seeing the minds of 
 the people broken, subdued and prostrate, under it, and seeing 
 that, so far from having the means of detecting the villanies 
 of this insolent criminal appearing as a magistrate, he had 
 not the means of defending even his own innocence, because 
 everything fled and was annihilated before him, seeing all 
 this, he represented to these young commissioners, the junior 
 servants, that this appearance of authority, this immense fol- 
 lowing, tended to strike terror into the hearts of the natives, 
 and to prevent his receiving justice. The Council sat on it very 
 deliberately ; and they found that it was true that, if he had 
 such an attendance any longer in such a situation and a 
 large attendance it was, such as the Chancellor of this kingdom 
 or the Speaker of the House of Commons does not appear 
 with it would have an evil appearance. On the other hand, 
 they said, if he should appear under a guard the people 
 would consider him as under disgrace. They therefore took 
 a middle way, and ordered the guard not to appear with fixed 
 bayonets, which had the appearance of the custody of 
 a prisoner, but to lower their muskets and unfix their 
 bayonets. 
 
 The next step which these commissioners took was to 
 exclude Mr. Paterson from all their deliberations; and, 
 in order that both parties should appear on an equality, you 
 would naturally conclude that Deby Sing was likewise ex- 
 cluded. Far from it : he sat upon the bench. Need I say 
 any more upon this subject ? The protection followed. 
 Four years passed. Mr. Paterson remained in a state of 
 persecution and continual conflict ; Deby Sing remained in 
 this mode of imprisonment ; and the wrongs of the people 
 f Rungpore, which were much more considerable than 
 
 even those of that virtuous man Mr. Paterson himself, re- 
 
 ... . , , . 
 
 mamed totally without redress : they remain so to this day, 
 
 and they will remain so for ever if your Lordships do not 
 redress them. 
 
 I stated before that I considered Mr. Hastings responsible 
 for the characters of the people whom he employed ; doubly 
 responsible if he knew them to be bad. I charge him with 
 putting persons of known evil character in situations in 
 which evil might be committed. My Lords, I charge him as 
 chief Governor with destroying the institutions of the 
 coun t r 7 which were, and ought to be, controls upon such a
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 157 
 
 person as Deby Sing. An officer called diwan, or steward w FEB. nss. 
 of the country, had always been placed as a control upon O fficew~of 
 the farmer. But that no such control should in fact exist trust> 
 that he, Deby Sing, should be let loose to rapine, slaughter 
 and plunder, in the country, both offices were conferred on 
 him. Did Mr. Hastings vest those offices in him ? No ; but, 
 if Mr. Hastings had kept firm to the duties which the act 
 of Parliament appointed him to execute, all the revenue 
 appointments must have been made by him. But, instead of 
 making them himself, he directed them to be made by Gunga 
 Govind Sing ; and for that appointment, and for the whole 
 train of subordinate villany which must follow when you 
 place iniquity in the chief seat of government, Mr. Hastings 
 is answerable. He is answerable, first, for destroying his 
 own legal capacity ; and, next, for destroying the legal 
 capacity of the Council, not one of whom ever had, or can 
 have, any true knowledge of the state of that country from 
 the moment that Mr. Hastings buried it in the gulf of 
 mystery and of darkness under that collected heap of villany, 
 Gunga Govind Sing. From that moment Mr. Hastings 
 destroyed the power of government, and put everything into 
 the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; for which I say Mr. 
 Hastings is answerable. 
 
 Every provincial Council contained many members, who, The action 
 though they misht unite in some special iniquities, could not Counciis. cial 
 possibly have concealed from the public such acts as these. 
 Their very numbers, their very natural competitions, the 
 contentions that must have arisen among them, must have 
 put a check, at least, to such a business. And, therefore, 
 Mr. Hastings having destroyed every check and control 
 above and below, and having delivered the whole government 
 into the hands of Gunga Govind Sing, for all the iniquities of 
 Gunga Govind Sing he is responsible. 
 
 But he did not know Deby Sing, whom he employed. I 
 read yesterday, and I trust it is fresh in your Lordships' 
 remembrance, that Deby Sing was presented to Mr. Hast- 
 ings by Gunga Govind Sing ; for he was presented by that 
 set of tools, as they call themselves, who acted, as they 
 themselves tell us they must act, entirely and implicitly 
 under Gunga Govind Sing. 
 
 Mr. Hastings is further responsible, because he took a f^^f^. 
 bribe of 40,0007. from some person in power in Dinagepore sibie for 
 
 i -r> ,1 1-1 jj-^1 bribes re- 
 
 ana Kungpore, the countries which were ravaged in the ewed 
 manner I have described; and he took it through the medium jJeby
 
 158 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 Bribery 
 reduced to 
 a system. 
 
 19 FEB. 1788. of that very person whom he had appointed to exercise all 
 the authority of the Supreme Council above, and of all 
 subordinate Councils below. So that your Lordships see he 
 had appointed a Council of tools, at the expense of 62,OOOZ. 
 a year, to supersede all the English officers, for the purpose 
 of establishing a bribe factor-general, a general receiver and 
 agent of bribes through all that country. And for this 
 Mr. Hastings is responsible, and for all the consequences 
 of it. 
 
 My Lords, I have stated these things to you but shortly, 
 partly because of my infirmity, and partly because of the 
 odiousness of the task of going through all these things that 
 disgrace human nature. But, when I charge Mr. Hastings 
 with all this, what do I charge him with? I bring it for- 
 ward to your Lordships as an example to you of what the 
 thing bribery reduced to a system of government is. 
 Mr. Hastings has not only done it practically, but theore- 
 tically. For when he despaired any longer of concealing his 
 bribes from the penetrating eye of Parliament, then he took 
 another mode, and declared as I believe we can find in the 
 course of these proceedings, and your Lordships shall see it 
 that it was the best way of supplying the necessities of the 
 East India Company in the pressing exigencies of their 
 affairs ; that it was a way by which relief to the Company's 
 affairs could be yielded, which, in the common, ostensible, 
 mode, and under the ordinary forms of government and 
 publicly, never would be yielded to them. So that bribery 
 with him became a supplement to exaction. 
 
 My Lords, I have thought it necessary, and absolutely 
 necessary it is, to state what the consequence of this clandes- 
 tine mode of supplying the Company's exigencies was. Your 
 Lordships will see that their exigencies are to be supplied by 
 the ruin of the landed interest of a province, the destruction 
 of the husbandmen and the ruin of all the people in it. This 
 is the consequence of a general bribe broker, an agent like 
 Gunga Govind Sing, superseding all the powers and con- 
 trols of government. This consequence follows from that 
 system. 
 
 The best practical way of showing the evil of any system 
 is to show the mischiefs that it produces ; because a thing 
 may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; 
 and a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in its 
 practice excellent. Here a thing, in theory stated by Mr. 
 
 Conse- 
 quences of 
 the system. 
 
 Hastings 
 
 to be productive of much good, is in reality
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 159 
 
 productive of all those horrible mischiefs that I have stated. WFEB. ivss. 
 That Mr. Hastings well knew this appears from an extract 
 of the Bengal Revenue Consultations, 2 1st January, 1785, 
 a little before he came away. We shall there see what 
 things he did, what course he was in, a little before his 
 departure ; and we shall find with what propriety and con- 
 sistency of character he has behaved, from the year of the 
 commencement of his corrupt proceeding, in 1773, to the 
 end of it, when he closed it, in 1785 ; Avhen the bribes not 
 only mounted the chariot, but boarded the barge, and, as I 
 shall show, followed him down the Ganges and even to the 
 sea : for he never quitted his system of iniquity it survived 
 his political life itself. 
 
 One of his last political acts was this. Your Lordships Mr. Hast- 
 will recollect that there was a Mr. Goodlad in the country, ufof M?. ult ' 
 whose conduct was terrible indeed : for he could not be in Goodlad - 
 that country in place and authority and be innocent, while 
 such things were doing, as we shall prove; but that is not 
 now my consideration. The Governor General's minute was 
 this* " I entirely acquit Mr. Goodlad of all the charges: he 
 has disproved them. It was the duty of the accuser to prove 
 them" the accuser, namely, the commissioner. " Whatever 
 crimes may be established against Raja Deby Sing, it does 
 not follow that Mr. Goodlad was responsible for them ; and 
 I so well know the character," &c. Now your Lordships 
 perceive he has acquitted Mr. Goodlad. He is clear. Be it, 
 that he is fairly and honestly acquitted. But here is Mr. 
 Hastings' account of Raja Deby Sing. He is presented to 
 him in 1781 by Gunga Govind Sing as a person against 
 whose character there could be no exception, and by him 
 accepted in that light. His opinion of him is this : 
 
 " I so well know the character and abilities of Ra ; a Deby Sing, that I 
 can easily conceive that it was in his power both to commit the enormities 
 which are laid to his charge and to conceal the grounds of them from Mr. 
 Goodlad, who had no authority but that of receiving the accounts and 
 rents of the district from Raja Deby Sing, and occasionally to be the 
 channel of communication between him and the committee."f 
 
 Now your Lordships see what Mr. Hastings' opinion of 
 Deby Sing was. We shall prove at another time, by abun- 
 dance of clear and demonstrative evidence, that, whether he 
 was bad or no but we shall prove that bad he was indeed 
 
 * Printed in the Minutes of Evidence, p. 1251. 
 f Part of the Minute referred to above.
 
 160 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 19 FEB. 1768. even he could hardly be so bad as the opinion which Mr. 
 Hastings entertained of him ; who, notwithstanding, now 
 turns off this mock committee, instituted by himself, but in 
 reality wholly managed by Gunga Govind Sing. This Deby 
 Sing is accepted as an unexceptionable man ; and yet Mr. 
 Hastings knows both his power of doing mischief and his 
 
 Deceptive artifice in concealing it. If then Mr. Goodlad is to be 
 
 character of . . . . . , _ _ _ 
 
 Mr. Good- Acquitted, does it not show the evil of Mr. Hastings con- 
 pointme'nt. duct in destroying those provincial Councils, which, as I 
 stated in the beginning of this case, were obliged to book 
 everything, to minute all the circumstances that came before 
 them, together with all their consultations ? Mr. Hastings 
 strikes at them all at once ; but still he leaves an English- 
 man in the country to be a control upon this wicked agent, 
 appointed under Gunga Govind Sing for the purpose of giving 
 bribes, in the midst of that very province where Mr. Hastings 
 said he had the power of doing such things, and which 
 nobody doubts his disposition to do, for his power plainly 
 means his disposition. Yet this Englishman was left in such 
 a state of inefficiency that those iniquities could be concealed, 
 though every one true, from the person appointed there as 
 if it were to inspect them. What was his business there ? 
 His business was nothing but to receive such sums of money 
 as Deby Sing might put into his hands, and which might 
 easily have been sent to Calcutta. He was therefore of no 
 use but to be a communication from Deby Sing to the com- 
 mittee. There is then the English authority which Mr. 
 Hastings left in the country ; there is the native authority 
 which he settled ; there is the destruction of the English in- 
 spection ; and there is the establishment of native iniquity in 
 of supping a regular system under Gunga Govind Sing. I hope I need 
 bribes! 6 sa y no more to prove to your Lordships that this system, 
 taken nakedly as it thus stands, founded in mystery and 
 obscurity, founded for the very express purpose of conveying 
 bribes, as the best mode of collecting the revenue, and 
 supplying the Company's exigencies through Gunga Govind 
 Sing, would be iniquitous upon the face and the statement of 
 it. But, when your Lordships have seen what horrid effects 
 it produced, you Avili easily see what the mischief and abomi- 
 nation of Mr. Hastings' destruction of these Councils and the 
 protecting of these persons must necessarily be. If you had 
 not known it in theory, you must have seen it in practice. 
 But, when both practice and theory concur, there can be no 
 doubt that a system of private bribery for a revenue, and a
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 161 
 
 system of private agency for a constitutional government, 19 FEB. ITSS. 
 
 must ruin the country where it prevails, must disgrace the 
 
 country that uses it, and finally end in the destruction of 
 
 the revenue. For what says Mr. Hastings ? " I got 40,0007. 
 
 in bribes, and applied it to the use of the Company." Now 
 
 I hope I shall demonstrate if not, it will be, by some one 
 
 abler than I, demonstrated in the course of this business 
 
 that there never was a bribe received by Mr. Hastings that 
 
 was not instantly followed by a deficiency in the revenue. 
 
 Deby Sing was, at the time that Mr. Hastings came away, 
 
 between 20,OOOZ. and 3.0,000/. debtor to the Company. So 
 
 that in truth you always find a deficiency of revenue equal 
 
 to, and in some instances I shall show double, all the bribes 
 
 Mr. Hastings received ; which makes it evident that he 
 
 never could and never did receive them under that absurd 
 
 and strange idea of a resource to government. For it is 
 
 clear and demonstrable and it is a thing which I wish your 
 
 Lordships to understand you are to call upon us to prove 
 
 that the revenue has always failed in pretty nearly the same 
 
 ratio, sometimes far above it, as the bribes received by Mr. 
 
 Hastings as you might well expect. 
 
 My Lords, I must restate to you, because I wish you never The con> 
 to forget it, that this Council was in their own opinion and the Council 
 from their own certain knowledge and mere motion, if motion ^Sge1*e 
 can be attributed originally to instruments, a mere tool in revenue* 
 
 . . _. & . J _. , tool in the 
 
 the hands of Gunga Govind oing. There were two persons hands or 
 principal in it ; Mr. Shore, who was the acting president, 
 and Mr. Anderson, who was president in rank and president 
 in emolument, but who was absent for a great part of the 
 time upon a foreign embassy. It is the recorded opinion of 
 the former for I must beg leave to read again a part of the 
 paper which has already been read to your Lordships that 
 " the committee, with the best intentions, best abilities and 
 steadiest application, must, after all, be a tool in the hands of 
 their diwan." Do you believe, in the first place, that men 
 will long have abilities, will long have good intentions, and 
 will long, above all, have steady application, when they 
 know they are but tools in the hands of another, when they 
 know they are but tools for his own corrupt purposes ? 
 
 Now I must beg leave to state to you that, on the con- The com- 
 stitution of this committee, Mr. Hastings made them all bound by 
 take a solemn oath that they would never receive any pre- 0t * 
 sent whatever. It was not enough to trust to a general 
 covenant ; it was not enough to trust to the penal act of 
 1773; he bound the committee by a new oath, and forced 
 
 L
 
 162 Opening of th e Impeachment : 
 
 s. them to declare, that they would not receive any bribes. 
 As soon as he had so secured them against receiving bribes, 
 he was resolved to make them inefficient, a good way to 
 secure them against bribes, by taking from them the power 
 of bribe-worthy service. This was a good counter-security 
 * their oath. But Mr. Hastings put a diwan there against 
 appoints a whom there was no security. While he bound the hands of 
 notraitnin- the masters both by the strongest restriction and by impo- 
 taidnT tence, he let loose their diwan, to frustrate their intentions, 
 presents, their application, their abilities and their oath ; that is, 
 there was a person at the board who was more than the 
 board itself, who might riot in peculation and plunder from 
 one end of the country to the other. He was there to 
 receive bribes for Mr. Hastings. The sub-committee re- 
 fused them ; they were to be pare with impotent hands : 
 and then came a person with ample power for himself; and, 
 lest he should not have power enough, he was made general 
 bribe-broker to Mr. Hastings. Through him Mr. Hastings 
 brfbcs for received the bribe from Dinagepore. This secret under- 
 current, as your Lordships will see, totally counteracted 
 everything : for as fast as one part was rendered pure all 
 the rest was totally corrupted. 
 ^n'A^f^ But your Lordships must not think that this was the 
 
 son s opinion % J ^ JT ^ ^ 
 
 iho 'low* f P riva te opinion of Mr. Shore only a man of great abilities, 
 and intimately acquainted with the revenue, Avho must know 
 when he was in a situation to do good and when he was not. 
 There was another person, Mr. Anderson, who was Mr. 
 Hastings' confidant in everything but his bribes, and sup- 
 posed to be in his closest secrets. I should remark that 
 Mr. Anderson is a man apparently of weak nerves, of 
 modest and very guarded demeanour, as we have seen him 
 in the House of Commons ; it is in that way only that I 
 have the honour of knowing him. On being asked whether 
 he agreed in the opinion and admitted the truth of his friend 
 Mr. Shore's statement relative to the diwan of the com- 
 mittee, his answer was this : 
 
 " I do not think that I should have written it quite so strong, but I 
 do in a great measure agree to it ; that is, I think there is a great deal 
 of truth in the observation. I think in particular that it would require 
 great exertion in the committee, and great abilities on the part of the 
 president, to restrain effectually the conduct of the diwan. I think it 
 would be difficult for the committee to interpose a sufficient control to 
 guard against all the abuses of the diwan." * 
 
 * See " Minutes of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the whole 
 House of Commons on the Articles of Charge, &c., against Warren Hastings," 
 &c. ; 30th March, 1787, p. 142.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 163 
 
 ^ 
 
 Here are the real president of the committee and the 19 FEB. 1733. 
 most active efficient member of it: they are both of one 
 opinion concerning their situation. And I think this opinion 
 of Mr. Anderson's is still more strong ; for as he thinks he 
 should have written it with a little more guard, but should 
 have agreed in substance, you must naturally think the 
 strongest expression the truest representation of the cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 There is another circumstance that must strike your Lord- Duty of the 
 
 ,. , .. ,1 .-, , mi -i j. J.T- .president to 
 
 ships relative to this institution. The president says that restrain the 
 the use of the president would be to exert his best abilities, taking r 
 his greatest application, his constant guard for what ? To bnbcs - 
 prevent his diwan from being guilty of bribery and oppres- 
 sions. So here is an executive constitution, in which the 
 chief executive minister is to be in such a situation and of 
 such a disposition that the chief employment of the presiding 
 person in the committee is to guard against him and to pre- 
 vent his doing mischief. Such a constitution, allowed and 
 alleged by the persons themselves who composed it, was, I 
 believe, never heard of in the world. Here is a man ap- 
 pointed, of the greatest possible power, of the greatest 
 possible wickedness, in a situation to exert that power and 
 wickedness for the destruction of the country; and I do 
 think that it would require the greatest ability and diligence 
 in the person at the head of that Council to prevent his doing 
 mischief. So that the great object here is that one part of 
 the committee should be employed to prevent the other part 
 doing mischief. 
 
 Now that I have done with this part of the system of Mr.Hast- 
 bribery, your Lordships will permit me to follow Mr. Hast- s "<?lratton 
 ings to his last parting scene. He parted with his power ; G ?ind g ling 
 he parted with his situation ; he parted with everything, but at thc . 
 
 ' *\~ .-.re TT moment of 
 
 he never could part with Gunga Govmd oing. He was on leaving 
 his voyage he had embarked he was upon the Ganges 
 he had quitted his government ; and his last dying sigh, his 
 last parting voice, was Gunga Govind Sing ! It ran upon 
 the banks of the Ganges, as another plaintive voice ran upon 
 the banks of another river I forget whose : his last accents 
 were Gunga, Gunga Govind Sing ! 
 
 It demonstrates the power of friendship. It is said by 
 some idle, absurd, moralists, that friendship is a thing that 
 cannot subsist between bad men; but I will show your 
 Lordships the direct contrary. I have not quite shown 
 you yet, but pretty well I think, what Gunga Govind 
 
 L 2
 
 164 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 19 FEB. 1783. Sing was. There is a great deal concerning his character 
 and conduct that is laid by ; and I do believe that, whatever 
 time I might take in expatiating upon these things, in the 
 lowest deep there would be still a lower deep; -for there is 
 not a day of the inquiry that does not bring more and more 
 matter out against Mr. Hastings relative to this evil. 
 
 But, before I open these papers, I must restate some cir- 
 cumstances, in order that your Lordships may thoroughly 
 understand the nature of them. Your Lordships will recollect 
 that, about the time of the succession of the minor Raja of 
 Dinagepore, who was then but an infant five or six years 
 old, and, when Mr. Hastings left Bengal, about eight or 
 nine, Mr. Hastings had received, either by Deby Sing or by 
 some other person, a bribe of about 40,0007. There is a 
 fidelity even in bribery ; there is a truth and observance 
 even in corruption ; there is a justice that, when money is 
 paid for protection, protection should be given. My Lords, 
 Mr. Hastings received this bribe through Gunga Govind 
 Sing : then, through Gunga Govind Sing, at least he ought 
 to take care that that Raja should not be robbed ; that he 
 should not be robbed if Gunga Govind Sing could help it ; 
 that, above all, he should not be robbed by Gunga Govind 
 Sing himself. But your Lordships will find that the last act 
 of Mr. Hastings' life was to be an accomplice in the most 
 cruel and perfidious breach of faith, in the most iniquitous 
 transaction, that I do believe ever was held out to the indig- 
 nation of the world with regard to private persons. When 
 he parted with Gunga Govind Sing, on the 16th of 
 February, 1785, when he was on board ship in the mouth 
 of the Ganges and preparing to visit his native country, let 
 us see what the last acts of his life were. Hear the last 
 
 He rccom- tender accents of the dying swan of the Ganges : 
 
 petitions for " The regret which I cannot but feel in relinquishing the service 
 Brants of o f my honourable employers would be much embittered were it accom- 
 Coundl. ( panied by the reflection that I had neglected the merits of a man 
 who deserves no less of them than of myself, Gunga Govind Sing, 
 who from his earliest youth had been employed in the collection of 
 the revenues, and was, about eleven years ago, selected for his 
 superior talents to fill the office of dewan to the Calcutta committee. 
 He has from that time, with a short intermission, been the principal 
 native agent in the collection of the Company's revenues ; and I can 
 take upon myself to say that he has performed the duties of his 
 office with fidelity, diligence and ability. To myself he has given 
 proofs of a constancy and attachment which neither the fears nor 
 expectations excited by the prevalence of a different influence could 
 shake; and at a time too when these qualities were so dangerous 
 that, far from finding them amongst the generality of his countrymen,
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 1 65 
 
 I did not invariably meet with them amongst my own. With such a 19 FEB. 1788. 
 
 sense of his merits, it is natural that I should feel a desire of reward- 
 
 ing them; for justice, gratitude, generosity, and even policy, demand it; 
 
 and I resort to the hoard for the means of performing so necessary 
 
 a duty, in full confidence that, as those .which I shall point out are 
 
 neither incompatible with the Company's interests nor prejudicial to 
 
 the rights of others, they will not be withheld from me. At the 
 
 request therefore of Gunga Govind Sing, I deliver the accompanying 
 
 durkhausts, or petitions, for grants of lands lying in different districts ; 
 
 the total jumma or rents of which amount to rupees 238,061 : 12 : 1."* 
 
 My Lords, you recollect that Mr. Larkius was one of the Reflections 
 bribe agents of Mr. Hastings one, I mean, of a corporation, Savings' 
 but not corporate in their acts. My Lords, Mr. Larkins has with'SuVa 
 told you he has told us, and he has told the court of Govind sing. 
 Directors that Mr. Hastings parted in a quarrel with Gunga 
 Govind Sing because he had not faithfully kept his engagement 
 with regard to his bribe, and that instead of 40,0007. from 
 Dinagepore he had only paid him 30,0007. My Lords, that 
 iniquitous men will defraud one another I can conceive; but 
 you will perceive by Mr. Hastings' behaviour at parting that 
 he either had in fact received this money from Gunga Govind 
 Sing, or had some other abundant reason to be satisfied ; that 
 he totally forgot his anger upon this occasion; and that, at part- 
 ing, his last act was to ratify grants of lands so described by 
 Mr. Hastings to Gunga Govind Sing. Your Lordships will 
 recollect the tender and forgiving temper of Mr. Hastings. 
 Whatever little bickerings there might have been about their 
 small money concerns between Mr. Hastings and Gunga 
 Govind Sing, the purifying waters of the Ganges washed away 
 all sins, enmities and discontent. By some of those arts 
 which Gunga Govind Sing knows how to practise I mean 
 conciliatory, honest, arts he had fairly wiped away all resent- 
 ment out of Mr. Hastings' mind; and he who so long 
 remembered the affront offered him by Cheyt Sing totally 
 forgot the fraud of Gunga Govind Sing of 10,0007., and, in 
 favour of that fraudulent man, at his parting, granted him that 
 tender last adieu, and attempted to make others the instru- 
 ments of giving him what he calls his reward. 
 
 Mr. Hastings states, among Gunga Govind Sing's merits, 
 that he had long served the office of diwan to the Calcutta 
 committee. He says that he has done so from the time o 
 its institution, with a very short intermission. That short 
 intermission was when he was turned out of office upon proof officc ? , 
 
 account of 
 peculation. 
 
 * 1'rintcd in the Minutes of Evidence in the Impeachment, p. 1192.
 
 166 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 19 FBB. 1788. of peculation : therefore that is a sort of parenthesis inter- 
 posed in the political life and the political merits of Gunga 
 Govind Sing. But this parenthesis, of which Mr. Hastings 
 does not tell you, turns out to have been upon proof of pecu- 
 lation and embezzlement of public money. 
 
 Evidence Now your Lordships shall hear what opinion a member of 
 character of the provincial Council, whom he had served, had of him* : 
 
 Gunga Go- 
 
 viudSuiff. Who is Gunga Govind Sing?" The answer is, " He was, when I 
 left Bengal, dewan to the committee of revenue." " What was his office 
 and power during Mr. Hastings' administration, since 1/80?" " He 
 was formerly dewan to the provincial council stationed at Calcutta, of 
 which I was a member. His conduct then was licentious and unwar- 
 rantable, oppressive and extortionary. He was stationed under us to be 
 an humble and submissive servant, and to be of use to us in the discharge 
 of our duty. His conduct was everything the reverse. We endeavoured 
 to correct the mischiefs he was guilty of as much as possible. In one 
 attempt to release fifteen persons illegally confined by him, we were dis- 
 missed our offices ; a different pretence was held out for our dismission, 
 but it was only a pretence. Since his appointment as dewan to the 
 present committee of revenue, his line of conduct has only been a continu- 
 ance of what I have described, but upon a larger scale." " What was 
 the general opinion of the natives of the use he made of his power ?"- 
 " He was looked up to by the natives as the second person in the govern- 
 ment, if not the first. He was considered as the only channel for 
 obtaining favour and employment from the Governor. There is hardly a 
 native family of rank or credit, within the three provinces, whom he has 
 not some time or other distressed and afflicted ; scarce a zamindary that 
 he has not dismembered and plundered." " Were you in a situation to 
 know this to be true ?" " I certainly was." " What was the general 
 opinion and your own concerning his wealth ?" " It is almost impossible 
 to form a competent judgment. I had an account, shown to me about 
 July, 1785, stating his acquisitions at three hundred and twenty lacs of 
 rupees, that is, 3,200,000/." 
 
 His wealth. My Lords, I have only to say that, from the best inquiries 
 I have been able to make, those who speak highest of his 
 wealth are those who obtain the greatest credit. The esti- 
 mate of any man's wealth is uncertain, but the enormity of 
 this man's wealth is universally believed : yet Mr. Hastings 
 why ho was seemed to act as if he needed a reward. It is necessary 
 rec< T 'A ^ therefore to see what recommended him particularly to Mr. 
 
 mended by . . . f J 
 
 Mr. Hast- Hastings. Your Lordships have seen that he was on the point 
 
 reward! of being dismissed for misbehaviour and oppression by that 
 
 Calcutta committee, his services to which Mr. Hastings 
 
 * The evidence here quoted was delivered by Mr. Peter Moore, of the Pro- 
 vincial Council of Calcutta, before the Committee of the House of Commons on 
 the 23d of March 1787. See " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., printed for Jolm 
 Stockdalc, 8vo, 1788, part VI. p. 127.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 167 
 
 gives as one proof of his constant and uniform good behaviour. 10 FEB. ITSS 
 Mr. Hastings says : 
 
 " He had executed the duties of his office with fidelity, diligence and 
 ability." 
 
 These, are his public merits : but he has private merits : 
 
 " To myself," says he, " he has given proofs of a constancy and 
 attachment which neither the fears nor expectations excited by the 
 prevalence of different influence could shake ; and at a time too 
 when these qualities were so dangerous that, far from finding them 
 amongst the generalityof his countrymen, I did not invariably meet 
 with them amongst my own." 
 
 Now we, who have been used to look very diligently over 
 the Company's records and to compare one part with 
 another, ask what those services of Gunga Govind Sing to 
 Mr. Hastings were, that so strongly recommended him to 
 Mr. Hastings, and induced him to speak so favourably of his 
 public services. What those services were does not appear. 
 We have searched the records for them and those records 
 are very busy and loquacious about that period of time. 
 But there is nothing publicly done, there is nothing publicly 
 said, by Gunga Govind Sing during that time, in which 
 Mr. Hastings was labouring under an eclipse and near the 
 dragon's mouth, and all the drums of Bengal were beating 
 to free him from this dangerous eclipse. There were then 
 some services of Gunga Govind Sing to Mr. Hastings which 
 lie undiscovered, and which he took as proofs of attachment. 
 What could they be ? They were not public ; nobody knows His services 
 anything of them. As far as we can judge of them, they in^wre^of" 
 must have been services of concealment of what Gunga 
 Govind Sing must have known concerning him : otherwise, 
 in the course of this business it will be necessary, and 
 Mr. Hastings will find occasion, to show what those personal 
 services of Gunga Govind Sing to him were. His services to 
 Gunga Govind Sing were pretty conspicuous ; for, after 
 he Avas turned out for peculation, Mr. Hastings restored him 
 to his office ; and when he had imprisoned fifteen persons 
 illegally and oppressively, and when the Council were about 
 to set them at liberty, they were set at liberty themselves 
 they were dismissed their offices. Therefore your Lordships 
 see what his public services were. His private services are 
 unknown ; they must be, as we conceive, from their being 
 unknown, of a suspicious nature ; and I do not go further 
 than suspicion, because I never heard and I have not been 
 without attempts to make the discovery what those service. 1 ? 
 were that recommended him to Mr, Hastings,
 
 168 Opening of the Impeachment ; 
 
 19 FEB. 1788. Having looked at his public services, which are well- 
 known scenes of wickedness, barbarity and corruption, we 
 The lauds next come to see what his reward is. Your Lordships hear 
 for belonged what reward he thought proper to secure for himself ; and I 
 of Dina^T believe a man who has power like Gunga Govind Sing and 
 porc< a disposition like Gunga Govind Sing, can hardly want the 
 
 means of rewarding himself; and if every virtue rewards 
 itself and virtue is said to be its own reward the virtue of 
 Gunga Govind Sing was in a good way of securing its own 
 reward. Mr. Hastings, however, thought it was not right 
 that such a man should reward himself, but that it was 
 necessary for the honour and justice of the government to find 
 him a reward. Then the next thing is to say what that 
 reward shall be. It is a grant of lands. Your Lordships will 
 observe that Mr. Hastings declares some of these lands to be 
 unoccupied, others occupied, but not by the just owners. Now 
 these were the very lands of the Raja of Dinagepore, from 
 whom or from whose country he had taken a bribe of 
 40,000?. My Lords, this appears to be a monstrous thing ; 
 but Mr. Hastings had the audacity, as his parting act, when 
 he was coming to England and ought to have expected 
 whatever he did expect the responsibility of this day, he 
 had the audacity and was shameless enough not only to give 
 this recommendation, but to perpetuate the mischiefs of his 
 reign, as he has done, to his successors : for he has really 
 done so by making it impossible almost to know anything of 
 the true state of that country ; and therefore he has made 
 them much less responsible and criminal in any ill acts that 
 Mr. Hast- they have done since his time than before. But Mr. Hast- 
 ratfon t?iat ings not only recommends and backs the petition of Gunga 
 werlfvacant Govind Sing with his parting authority which authority he 
 made the people there believe would be greater in England 
 when he arrived there than it was even in India in that 
 situation he is not only a backer of the petition, but he is an 
 evidence ; he declares that " to his own knowledge these 
 lands are vacant, and confessedly, therefore, by the laws of 
 this as well as of most other countries, in the absolute gift of 
 government," My Lords, Mr. Hastings is not only the 
 recommender of Gunga Govind Sing, but he steps forward 
 and becomes a witness, and, I believe in the course of 
 the proceedings your Lordships will find, a false witness 
 for Gunga Govind Sing. " To my own knowledge," he says, 
 "these lands are vacant." Why, I cannot find that Mr. 
 Hastings had ever been in Dinagepore; or, if he had, it
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. - 169 
 
 must have been only as a passenger. He had not the i9F EB .i788. 
 management of the district in any other sense than that kind 
 of eagle eye which he must have had over all Bengal, and 
 which he had for no other purposes than those for which 
 eagles' eyes are commonly used. He becomes, you see, a 
 witness for Gunga Govind Sing, and orders to be given 
 him, as a recompence for all the evils which he had com- 
 mitted, the lands of that very Raja who through the hands of 
 Gunga Govind Sing had given an enormous bribe to Mr. 
 Hastings. These lands were severed from the zamindary 
 and made a gift to Gunga Govind Sing. They were not 
 lands without an ownership, but lands in the hands of the 
 Raja. And the manner in which they were obtained by 
 Gunga Govind Sing is something so shocking, and contains 
 such a number of enormities complicated in one act, that 
 one can scarcely imagine how such a compound could 
 exist. 
 
 This man, besides his office of diwan to the Calcutta Means 
 committee, which gave him the whole management and f, $[1^ 
 power of the revenue, was, as I have stated, at the head of ^j,"!, 1 ;^ ng 
 all the registrars in the kingdom ; the office of which regis- grants of 
 trars was to be a control upon him. But, as Mr. Hastings 
 destroyed every other constitutional settlement of the coun- 
 try, so the office which was to be a check upon Gunga Govind 
 Sing, namely, the registrar of the country, whose office had 
 been superseded and revived in another shape, was given to 
 the own son of this very man. God forbid that a son should 
 not be under a certain and reasonable subordination ! But 
 though, in this country, we know that a son may possibly be 
 free from the control of his father, yet the meanest slave is 
 not in a more abject condition of slavery than is a son in 
 that country to his father. The power of a parent in Chris- 
 tendom does not extend to the power of a parent in India ; 
 for it extends there to the power of a Roman parent. The The office 
 office of registrar, or diwan to the registrar, is to take care f 
 that the government is not defrauded ; to take care that a 
 full and fair rent is secured to the government ; that a full 
 and fair statement of the matter should be rendered to the 
 government. Above all, it is his business to take care of the 
 body of the laws, the rawaj-ul-mulk, or custom of the country, 
 of which he is the guardian, as the head of the law and the 
 common lawyers of the country. In that situation, it was 
 his business to secure that fundamental law of the govern- 
 ment and fundamental law of the country, that a zamindary
 
 170 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment ; 
 
 
 ID FEB. 1788. or any portion of it cannot be split or separated without the 
 consent of the government. This man, however, betrayed 
 his trust, and did privately, contrary to the duty of his office, 
 get this minor Raja, who was but an infant, who was but 
 nine years old at the time, to make over to him a part of his 
 zamindary to a large amount, under a fraudulent and ficti- 
 
 Thc grant tious sale. The act of the minor was void in itself by the 
 
 of the infant , T i i p i -11 
 
 void by laws or that country. By the laws of that country, and by 
 the common laws of nature, the act of this child was void. 
 The act was void as against the government by giving a 
 zamindary, without the consent of the government, to the 
 very man who ought to have guarded against such an act ; it 
 being given in this manner contrary to all the principles of 
 law, justice, reason and natural equity. This man's office 
 consisted, as much as the sacred office of Chancellor here con- 
 sists, in the guardianship of minors and of their property in the 
 country. Yet this man got these lands to himself by a fraudu- 
 lent and probably a forged deed for that is charged too : 
 but, whether it was forged or not, this .miserable minor was 
 obliged to give the lauds to him ; he did not dare to quarrel 
 with him upon such a matter; because he who Avould 
 purchase could take. 
 
 ^" ne next s * e P was t g 6 ^ one f I" 8 nearest relations to 
 seem t &- VG a consent ; because taking it of the minor was 
 too gross. The relation, who could no more consent by the 
 law of that country than by the law of this, gave apparently 
 his specious consent. And these were the very lands which 
 Mr. Hastings, under other and false names, speaks of as 
 lands entirely at the disposal of the government. All this 
 came before the Council. The moment Mr. Hastings was 
 gone, India seemed a little to respire. There was a vast 
 oppressive weight taken off it; there was a mountain removed 
 from its breast ; and persons did dare then for the first time 
 to breathe their complaints. And accordingly this minor 
 Raja got some person kind enough to tell him that he w r as a 
 minor, that he could not part with his estate ; and this, and 
 the other shocking and illegal parts of the process he stated to 
 the Council, who had Mr. Hastings' recommendation of Gunga 
 Govind Sing before them. The Council, shocked to see a 
 
 . -. . , ,. , . . . 
 
 minor attempted to be dispossessed in such a manner by him 
 who was the natural guardian of all minors, shocked at such 
 au enormous daring piece of iniquity, began to inquire 
 farther, and to ask how came his near relation to consent ? 
 He was apparently partner in the fraud. Partner iu the 
 
 
 the Council.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 171 
 
 fraud he was, but not partner in the profit ; for he was to do 
 it without getting anything for it. It is therefore the heavy 
 iniquity of a relation betraying his nearest kinsman, who 
 was his ward by nature ; and that for no consideration at 
 all: the wickedness was in him, and the profit in Gunga 
 Govind Sing. As soon as this inquiry commenced the man Declaration 
 comes down to account for his conduct, and declares another tfou^r'the 
 atrocious iniquity, which shows you the means that Gunga ^tSf-J?*' 
 Govind Sing possessed. " Gunga Govind Sing," says he, " is umicr cou- 
 inaster of the country ; he had made a great festival for the 
 burial of his mother; all those of that caste ought to be 
 invited to the funeral festival ; he would have disgraced me 
 for ever, if 1 had not been invited to that funeral festival." 
 These funeral festivals are great things in that country, and 
 are celebrated in that manner, and you may depend upon it 
 in a royal manner by Gunga Govind Sing upon burying, his 
 mother ; and any person left out was marked, despised and 
 disgraced. " But he had it in his power, and I was 
 threatened to be deprived of my caste by his registrar, who 
 had the caste in his absolute disposition." Says he, " I was 
 under power, I was under duress, and I did it." 
 
 Guuga Govind Sing was fortified by the opinion that the Guupa Go- 
 Governor, though departed, virtually resided in that country- viud ^"^ 
 
 i . , ^ . -, ,, . ' , supported 
 
 God grant that his power may be extirpated out of it now ! by the 
 I doubt it ; but most assuredly it was residing there in its expectation 
 plenitude when he departed from thence ; and there was fng^returu" 
 not a man in India who was not of opinion either that he was to Iudia - 
 actually to return to govern India again, or that his power 
 was such in England as that he might govern it here. And 
 such were the hopes of those who had intentions against the 
 estates of others. Gunga Govind Sing, therefore, being His appeal 
 pressed to the wall by this declaration of the Raja's relation, 
 when he could say nothing against it, when it was clear and 
 manifest, and there were only impudent, barefaced, denials 
 and asseverations against facts which carried truth with 
 themselves, did not in his answer pretend to say that a 
 zarnindary might be parted without the consent of the govern- 
 ment ; that a minor might be deprived of it ; that the next 
 relation had a power of disposing of it. He did indeed say, 
 but nobody believed him, that he had used no force upon 
 this relation ; but, as everyone knew the act would be void, 
 he was driven to Mr. Hastings' great refuge ; he was driven 
 to say, "The government in this country has arbitrary power ; 
 the power of government is everything, the right of the
 
 172 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 
 him of 
 arbitrary 
 
 alienations 
 of pa 
 16am i 
 
 mentioning 
 
 all 
 were all given 
 
 19 FEB. ires, subject nothing. The government have at all times sepa- 
 rated zamindaries from their lawful proprietors. Give me 
 what Mr. Hastings has constantly given to other people 
 without any right, or shadow or semblance of right at all/' 
 God knows it is well that I walk with my authority in my 
 hand ; for there are such crimes, such portentous, incredible, 
 crimes, to be brought before your Lordships, that they would 
 hardly be believed, in my humble opinion, were it not that I 
 walk constantly guarded as I hope I shall constantly be 
 with evidence ; and that the strongest that can be, even the 
 evidence of the parties themselves. 
 
 " ^ rom your inquiry," Gunga Govind Sing says to the 
 Council, " every circumstance will appear in its true colours. 
 With respect to the alienation of parts of zemindaries, the 
 extent and consequence of the great zemindars depend in a 
 great measure on the favour and countenance of the ruling 
 powers." Then he says that, under the former government, 
 zamindaries were taken from the rightful proprietors to be 
 iven to the favourites of the government. Then he goes on 
 that were given ; and he says that they 
 without right, title or pecuniary consider- 
 ation ; and that that has been the case with many parganas 
 in his zamindary, that is, the zamindary of this minor Raja, 
 and indeed in many other zamindaries besides, since the 
 Company's succession. Then he says, " Ramkissen in 
 1172" that is the next period "got possession of Nur- 
 rulloor, the zemindary of Mohammed Ali: the purgunnah 
 of Ichanguipore, &c., was in three divisions in 1173 :" 
 that is, since the Company's succession. " The petition 
 of Govind Deo Sheopersaud was made over to the son of 
 Bousser Chowdry, possessor of the third share/' Now this is 
 the most remarkable instance that he chooses to give of all. 
 " Purgunnah Baharbund belonged to the zemindary of Ranee 
 Bhowanny" that is, to the Rani of the Raja, rani being 
 the female of raja. She was a woman of great considera- 
 tion, tottering on the very verge of the grave, and she has 
 been robbed in this manner and robbed in every manner. 
 " Purgunnah Baharbund belonged to the zemindary of Ranee 
 Bhowanny, and in 1180 was made over to Lucknaut Nundy. 
 All these changes took place in the lifetime of the rightful 
 possessors, without right, title or purchase. From the 
 earliest times, transfers of zemindary lands have always 
 depended on the will and pleasure of the ruling powers or 
 masters. My answer is given : order as you please."- My
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 173 
 
 Lords, your pleasure, and your honour and justice, are the 19FEB.178S. 
 same thing. Here is this man, instead now of covering himself His avowal 
 under the idea of vacant lands, instead of covering himself traiy 
 under a purchase, instead of covering himself under the G 
 grant of the next relation, boldy coming forward and saying, 
 " These things have been granted without right, title or 
 purchase ; but the government has done it." Here is the 
 true principle at once. My Lords, I have denied to you 
 before that the government in the good times in that country 
 ever did commit such enormities and iniquities. But this 
 man at last takes off the mask, and completely disavows 
 himself and disavows Mr. Hastings, and appears before the 
 Council and says, " Do it by an act of power; give that to Case of 
 me which you have given to others." And who is the last \umij!)"* ,, 
 person whose case he quotes ? " Purgunnah Baharbund be- i/ 
 longed to the zemindary of Ranee Bhowanny, and in 1180 
 was made over to Lucknaut Nundy. All these changes took 
 place in the lifetime of the rightful possessors, without right, 
 title or purchase." 
 
 Your Lordships have not heard before of Lucknaut Nundy. 
 He was the son of a person of whom you have heard before, 
 called Cantoo Baboo, the banya of Mr. Hastings. Mr. 
 Hastings has proved in abundance of other cases that a 
 grant to father and son is the same thing. The fathers 
 generally take out grants in the names of their sons ; and 
 this old lady, of the first rank and family in India, was 
 stripped of part of her zamindary, and it was given to 
 Lucknaut Nundy, the son of Mr. Hasting's banya. And 
 then (you see the consequence of good examples) comes 
 Gunga Govind Sing, and says, " I am as good a man as he ; 
 there is a zamindary given ; since you have begun this, do 
 as much for Gunga Govind Sing as you have done for Cantoo 
 Baboo." Here is an argument drawn from the practice of 
 Mr. Hastings in one iniquity, which shows how necessary it 
 is to suppress and punish iniquities ; for otherwise might 
 not the Council have said, " Mr. Hastings has given away 
 these things and recommended us to follow the same practice, 
 let us then act upon his recommendation "? No, my Lords, 
 you will punish Mr. Hastings ; and no man will hereafter 
 dare to rob minors or to desolate widows, in order to give 
 to the vilest of mankind, his own base instruments for his 
 own nefarious purposes, the lands of others without right, 
 title or purchase. 
 
 My Lords, I will not after this state to you the false repre-
 
 174 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 19 FEB^i788. scntation which this man gave to the government respecting 
 
 respecting this property that he represented it to be much less in 
 
 pertyf " value than it really was, when he desired a grant of it. 
 
 When the matter comes before you at the proper time it 
 
 shall be stated ; but at present I am only touching upon 
 
 principles, and bringing examples so far as they illustrate 
 
 principles and show how precedents spread. 
 
 I believe your Lordships will conceive better of the spirit 
 of these transactions by my intermixing with them, as I 
 shall endeavour to do, as much as possible of the grounds of 
 them. For I will venture to say that no narrative that I 
 can give, no painting, if I was either able or willing to paint, 
 could describe to you these transactions in the strength in 
 which they appear themselves : and, that your Lordships may 
 see that it is so, you find a man saying, what nobody could 
 hardly believe a man could say, " It was given to others 
 without right, title or purchase ; give it to me without right, 
 title or purchase. Give me the estates of minors without 
 right, title or purchase, because Mr. Hastings gave the 
 estates of widows without right, title or purchase." 
 History of Of this exemplary grant, of this pattern for future proceed- 
 
 the illegal . T -11 i T T i i ^i T *n j 
 
 grant of the ings, 1 will show your Lordships the consequence. I will read 
 to your Lordships part of the examination of a witness, taken 
 ^ rom a report of a committee of the House of Commons*: 
 
 boo's son. 
 
 " Are you acquainted with the situation of the zemindary of Bahar- 
 
 bund ?" " It lies to the eastward of Dinagepore and Rungpore. I was 
 stationed in that neighbourhood." " To whom did it originally belong ? " 
 " I believe to the zemindary of Radshi, belonging to Ranee Bhowanny." 
 " For what reason was it taken from the Ranee of Radshi and given to 
 Cantoo Baboo ?" 1 do not exactly recollect. I believe on some plea of 
 incapacity or insufficiency in her to manage it, or some pretended decline 
 in the revenue owing to mismanagement." " On what terms was it 
 granted to Cantoo Baboo or his son ?" " I believe it was a grant in per- 
 petuity, at the revenue of rupees 82,0(30 or 83,000 per annum." " What 
 amount did he collect from the country ?" " I cannot tell. The year 
 I was in that neighbourhood, the settlement with his under tenants 
 was something above rupees 353,000. The inhabitants of the country 
 objected to it. They assembled in a body of about five thousand, and were 
 proceeding to Calcutta to make known their grievances to the committee 
 of revenue. They were stopped at Cossimbazar by Noor Sing Baboo, the 
 brother of Cantoo Baboo, and there the matter was compromised, in 
 what manner I cannot say." 
 
 Your Lordships see that Mr Hastings' banya got this 
 zamindary belonging to this venerable lady, who was unable 
 
 * Evidence of Mr. Peter Moore, 23rd March, 1787, printed as above, p. 123.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 175 
 
 to protect herself; that it was granted to him without right, 
 title or purchase. And, to show you that Mr. Hastings had 
 been in a constant course of such proceeding, here is a quency'of 
 petition from one of the natives for some favour from the ille ^ 1 
 
 , . , . . -r prants of 
 
 government, which it is not necessary now to state. Jout, in land by Mr. 
 order to make good his claim, he states what nobody denied, 
 but which is universally known in fact, namely, that it was 
 the constant practice, by which the country had been robbed 
 under Mr. Hastings, known and acknowledged to be so, to 
 seize upon the inheritance of the widow and the fatherless. In 
 this manner did Gunga Govind Sing govern himself upon the 
 direct precedent of Cantoo Baboo, the banya of Mr. Hastings; 
 and this other instrument of his, in like manner, calls upon 
 the government for favour of some kind or other upon the 
 same principle and the same precedent. 
 
 Your Lordships now see how necessary it was to say some- 
 thing about arbitrary power : for, first, the wicked people of 
 that country Mr. Hastings' instruments I mean pretend 
 right, title, purchase, grant; and when their frauds in all 
 these legal means are discovered, then they fly off, and have 
 recourse to arbitrary power, and say, " It is true I can make 
 out no right, title, grant or purchase; the parties are minors; 
 I am bound to take care of their right. But you have 
 arbitrary power : you have exercised it upon other occasions ; 
 exercise it upon this ; give me the rights of other people." 
 This was the last act, and I hope will be the last act, of Mr. 
 Hastings' wicked power, done by the wickedest man in favour 
 of the wickedest man, and by the wickedest means, which 
 failed upon his own testimony. 
 
 To bring your Lordships to the end of this business, which 
 I hope will lead me very nearly to the end of what I have to 
 trouble your Lordships with, I will now state the conduct of h"c<mncn 
 the Council, and the resolution about Gunga Govind Sing, in reference 
 I am to inform your Lordships that there was a reference to Gm^ nt 
 made by the Council to the committee of revenue, namely, GovindSin e- 
 to Gunga Govind Sing himself a reference with regard to 
 the right, title and mode of proceeding, and many other 
 circumstances, upon which the committee, being such as I 
 have described, very naturally were silent. Gunga Govind 
 Sing loquitur solus, in the manner you have just heard. The 
 committee were the chorus ; they sometimes talked 
 filled up a vacant part but Gunga Govind Sing was the 
 great actor, the sole one. The report of this committee
 
 176 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 19 FERji788. being laid before the Council, Mr. Stables, one of the board, 
 entered the following minute on the 15th of May, 1785 : 
 
 Minute of a " I have perused the several papers upon this subject, and am sorry to 
 
 iiKMiiberof r .1 i -i -.j. /> A n_ i j.i_ 
 
 the board, observe that the committee of revenue are totally silent on the most 
 
 exposing the material points therein, and sending the petition to them has only been 
 o7tlK> U tranI- so mucn time thrown away; I mean on the actual value of the lands 
 action. ' in question ; what the amount derived from them has been in the last 
 year ; and what advantages or disadvantages to government by the sale ; 
 and whether in their opinion the supposed sale was compulsive or not. 
 But it is not necessary for the discussion of the question respecting 
 the regularity or irregularity of the pretended sale of Salbarry to Gunga 
 Govind Sing, the dewan, to enter into the particular assertions of each 
 party. The representations of the Rajah's agent, confirmed by the peti- 
 tions of his principal, positively assert the sale to have been compulsive 
 and violent ; and the dewan as positively denies it, though the fears he 
 expresses ' that their common enemies would set aside the act before it 
 was complete ' show clearly that they were sensible the act was unjusti- 
 fiable, if they do not tend to falsify his denial. But it is clearly esta- 
 blished and admitted by the language and writings of both parties that 
 there has been a most unwarrantable collusion in endeavouring to 
 alienate the rights of government, contrary to the most positive original 
 laws of the constitution of these provinces, ' that no zemindar and other 
 landholder paying revenue to government shall be permitted to alienate 
 his lands without the express authority of that government.' 
 
 " The defence set up by Gunga Govind Sing does not go to disavow the 
 transaction ; for if it did, the deed of sale, &c. produced by himself, and 
 the petition to the board for its confirmation, would detect him. On the 
 contrary, he openly admits its existence, and only strives to show that it 
 was a voluntary one on the part of the Ranee and the servants of the Rajah. 
 Whether voluntary or not, it was equally criminal in Gunga Govind 
 Sing as a public officer of government, because diametrically opposite to 
 the positive and repeated standing orders of that government for the rule 
 of his conduct as dewan and native guardian of the public rights, 
 entrusted especially to his care ; because it was his duty, not only not to 
 be guilty of a breach of those rules himself, but as dewan, and exercising 
 the efficient office of kanungo, to prevent, detect, expose, and apprise his 
 employers of every instance attempted to the contrary ; because it was 
 his duty to prevent the government being defrauded, and the Rajah, a 
 child of nine years old, robbed of his hereditary possessions, as he 
 would have been if this transaction had not been detected ; whereas, 
 on the contrary, the dewan is the principal mover and sole instrument 
 in that fraud and robbery, if I am rightly informed, to the amount 
 of 42,474 rupees in perpetuity, by which he alone was to benefit; 
 and because he has even dared to stand forward in an attempt to obtain 
 our sanction, and thereby make us parties to, in my opinion, a false deed 
 and fraudulent transaction, as his own defence now shows the bill of sale 
 and all its collateral papers to be. 
 
 " If offences of this dark tendency and magnitude were not to be 
 punished in a public manner, the high example here set the natives, 
 employed under the government, by their first native officer, would 
 very soon render our authority contemptible, and operate to the 
 destruction of the public revenues. I will not dwell further on the
 
 Speech of Mr. Bnrlce. 177 
 
 contradictions in these papers before us on this subject. But I beg 19 FEB. 1788. 
 
 leave to point out how tenacious the government have been of in- 
 
 suring implicit obedience to their rules on this subject in particular, and 
 in prohibiting conduct like that here exhibited against their public 
 officer ; and how sacredly they have viewed the public institutes on this 
 subject which have been violated and trampled on ; and it will suffice to 
 show their public orders on a similar instance which happened some time 
 ago, and which the dewan, from his official situation, must have been a 
 party in detecting. 
 
 " I desire the board's letter to the committee on this subject, dated 
 the 31st May. 17^-, may be read, and a copy be annexed to this 
 minute. I therefore move the board that Gunga Govind Sing may be 
 forthwith required to surrender the original deeds produced by him 
 as a title to the grant of Salbarry, in order that they may be returned to 
 the Rajah's agents to be made null and void. I further move the board 
 that the dewan Gunga Govind Sing, together with his naib, Prawn Kishin 
 Sing, his son and all his dependents, be removed from their offices, and 
 that the Roy royan, Rajah Rajebullub, whose duty only Gunga Govind 
 Sing virtually is to perform, be reinstated in the exercise of the duties of 
 his department ; and that Gxinga Govind Sing be ordered to deliver up 
 all official papers of the sircar to the committee of revenue and the Roy 
 royan ; and that they be ordered accordingly to take charge of them, and 
 finally settle all accounts." 
 
 This motion was overruled, and no final proceeding Motion 
 annear* thereupon 
 
 ajjp<_< overruled 
 
 Mv Lords, YOU have heard the proceedings of the court ythe ., 
 
 llir" /^I'lO' 1 l ^ ount '"' 
 
 before which (jrunga (jrovind bmg thought proper to appeal, 
 in consequence of the power and protection of Mr. Hastings 
 being understood to exist after he left India and authenti- 
 cated by his last parting deed. You will judge by that last 
 act of Mr. Hastings what the rest of his whole life was. My Mr. Hast- 
 Lords, I do not mean now to go further than just to remind mmt g f V und- 
 your Lordships of this, that Mr. Hastings' government was Bribery and 
 one whole system of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of oppression, 
 destruction of the public, and of supersession of the whole 
 system of the English government, in order to vest in the 
 worst of the natives all the powers that could possibly exist 
 in any government, in order to defeat the ends which all 
 governments ought in common to have in view. Thus, my 
 Lords, I show you at one point of view what you are to 
 expect from him in all the rest. 1 think I have made out as 
 clear as can be to your Lordships, so far as it is necessary 
 to go, that his bribery and peculation was not occasional, 
 but habitual ; that it was not urged upon him at the 
 moment, but was regular and systematic. I have shown to 
 your Lordships the consequence of such a system acting upon 
 the revenues. Your Lordships will see the result of 
 
 M
 
 178 
 
 Opening of the Impeachment : 
 
 19 FED. 1788. 
 
 His flea, of 
 increasing 
 the revenue. 
 
 Sale of the 
 province of 
 Behar to 
 Rajas Kel- 
 leram and 
 Cullian Sing 
 
 Bribe re- 
 ceived, and 
 increase of 
 revenue 
 pretended. 
 
 Mr. Plastings thus peculating and publicly destroying for 
 it was much more than waste and prodigality all the 
 revenues of the country, in order to acquire for himself that 
 protection which such acts would necessarily require 
 
 I beg now to state to your Lordships that Mr. Hastings 
 pleads one constant merit to justify those acts, namely, that 
 they produce an increase of the public revenue ; and accord- 
 ingly he never sells to any of those wicked agents any trusts 
 whatever in the country, that you do not hear that the sale 
 will considerably tend to the increase of the revenue. Your 
 Lordships will see that when he sold to wicked men the pro- 
 vince of Behar in the same way in which Deby Sing had this 
 province of Dinagepore, consequences of a horrid and atro- 
 cious nature, though not to so great an extent, followed from 
 it. I will just beg leave to state to your Lordships that the 
 kingdom of Behar is annexed to the kingdom of Bengal ; 
 that this kingdom was governed by another provincial 
 Council ; that he turned out that provincial Council, and sold 
 that government to two wicked men, one of no fortune at all, 
 and the other of a very suspicious fortune; one a total 
 bankrupt, the other justly excommunicated for his wicked- 
 ness in his country, and then imprisoned for misdemeanours 
 in a subordinate situation of government. Mr. Hastings 
 destroyed the Council that imprisoned him ; and, instead of 
 putting one of the best and most reputable of the natives to 
 govern it, he takes out of prison this excommunicated wretch, 
 hated by God and man this bankrupt this man of evil and 
 desperate character this mismanager of the public revenue 
 in an inferior station : and, as he had given Bengal to Gunga 
 Govind Sing, he gave this province to Rajas Kelleram and 
 Cullian Sing. 
 
 My Lords, it was done upon this principle that they 
 would increase, and very much better the revenue. These 
 men seemed to be as strange instruments for improving a 
 revenue as ever were chosen, I suppose, since the world 
 began. Perhaps their merit was that they had given a 
 bribe of 40,0007. to Mr. Hastings. How he attempted to 
 dispose of it I do not know; but he says, " I disposed of it 
 to the public, and it was in a case of emergency." You will 
 see in the course of this business the falsehood of that pre- 
 tence ; for you will see that though the obligation is given 
 for it as a round sum of money, the payment was not accom- 
 plished till a year after ; therefore it could not answer any 
 immediate exigence of the Company. Did it answer in an
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 179 
 
 increase of the revenue ? The very reverse. Those persons 19 FEB. 1788. 
 
 who had given this bribe of 40,000/. at the end of that year 
 
 were found to be 80,0007,. in debt to the Company. The 
 
 Company always loses when Mr. Hastings takes a bribe ; 
 
 and when he proposes an increase of the revenue the Com- 
 
 pany loses often double. But I hope and trust your Lord- 
 
 ships will consider this idea of a monstrous rise of rent 
 
 given by men of desperate fortunes, situations and charac- 
 
 ters, to be one of the grievances instead of one of the advan- 
 
 tages of this system. For, when a just, natural, easy, 
 
 revenue is quitted in a country; when the limits which 
 
 nature, justice and reason, prescribe to all governments with 
 
 respect to revenue are shamefully transgressed ; the con- 
 
 sequence will be that the worst men in the country will be 
 
 chosen as Mr. Hastings has actually chosen the worst men 
 
 in the country to effectuate this work. Because it is 
 
 impossible for any good man by any honest means to provide 
 
 at once for the exigencies of a strong, severe, public exaction, 
 
 and for the private bribes of a rapacious chief magistrate. 
 
 The consequence of such a system must be oppression, rack 
 
 and ruin, cruel exactions and horrible tortures ; so that none 
 
 but wicked, bloody and rapacious, persons can be employed 
 
 to execute such a task. 
 
 Therefore I charge Mr. Hastings and we shall charge charges 
 him afterwards, when we come to bring the evidence more filings! 1 '" 
 directly and fully home with having destroyed, for private Suppression 
 purposes, the whole system of government by the six pro- provincial 
 vincial Councils, which he had no right to destroy. 
 
 I charge him with having delegated away from himself Iu epi dele- 
 that power which the act of Parliament had directed him to power. 
 preserve inalienably in himself. 
 
 I charge him with having formed a committee to be mere Establish- 
 instruments and tools, at the enormous expense of 62,0007. 
 
 per annum. of revenue. 
 
 I charge him with having appointed a person their diwan, Appoint- 
 to whom these Englishmen were to be subservient tools ; notoriously 
 whose name was to his own knowledge, by the general character 
 voice of the Company, by the recorded official transactions, ai ? thcir 
 by everything that can make a man known abhorred and 
 detested, stamped with infamy; and I charge him with 
 giving him the whole power which he had thus separated 
 from the Council General and from the provincial Councils. 
 
 I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing. Taking 
 
 M 2 bribes -
 
 180 Opening of the Impeachment: 
 
 ij FEB. 1788. I charge him with not having done that bribe-service 
 Treachery, which fidelity, even in iniquity, requires at the hands of the 
 
 worst of men. 
 Robbery \ charge him with having robbed those people of whom he 
 
 after receipt . ' .. 
 
 of bribes, took the bribes. 
 
 Defraudin" I charge him with having fraudulently alienated the 
 
 widows, fortunes of widows. 
 
 andorphans. I charge him with having, without right, title or pur- 
 
 chase, taken the lands of orphans and given them to wicked 
 
 persons under him. 
 
 Appoint- I charge him with having removed the natural guardians 
 
 Deby sing of a minor Raja, and given his zamindary to that wicked 
 
 as Kuardiau , . Tl^U-.,. CH,- 
 
 to the minor person, Deby king. 
 
 I chare him his wickedness bein known to himself 
 
 and all the world with having committed to Deby Sing the 
 mann gcment of three great provinces ; and with having 
 thereby wasted the country, destroyed the landed inter- 
 est, cruelly harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, 
 seized their crops, tortured and degraded their persons, 
 and destroyed the honour of the whole female race of that 
 country. 
 
 In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all 
 this villany upon Warren Hastings in this last moment of 
 my application to you. 
 
 Greatness of My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of 
 rause^ri- 1 * national justice ? Do we want a cause, my Lords ? You 
 minaiand have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of 
 
 prosecutors. _ . _ ** , , 
 
 the first rank, of desolated provinces and of wasted 
 kingdoms. 
 
 Do you want a criminal, my Lords ? When was there so 
 much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one ? No, my 
 Lords, you must not look to punish any delinquent in India 
 more. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in 
 India to nourish such another delinquent. 
 
 My Lords, is it a prosecutor that you want ? You have 
 before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors ; 
 and I believe, my Lords, that the sun, in his beneficent 
 progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious 
 sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by 
 the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the 
 bond of a social and moral community ; all the Commons 
 of England resenting as their own the indignities and 
 cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 181 
 
 Do we want a tribunal ? My Lords, no example of anti- 19 P EB . irs 
 quity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of Q^^J^. 
 human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this, tionofthe 
 
 , 11 ,1 i> i tribunal. 
 
 My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind s eye, that 
 sacred majesty of the Crown, under whose authority you 
 sit and whose power you exercise. We see in that invi- 
 sible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the 
 beneficent powers and protecting justice of His Majesty. 
 We have here the heir apparent to the Crown, such as the 
 fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir apparent 
 of the Crown to be. We have here all the branches of the 
 Royal Family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, 
 between the Crown and the subject, offering a pledge in that 
 situation for the support of the rights of the Crown and the 
 liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch. 
 My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here ; those 
 who have their own honour, the honour of their ancestors and 
 of their posterity, to guard ; and who will justify, as they 
 have always justified, that provision in the constitution by 
 which justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we 
 have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted them- 
 selves by various merits, by great military services, which 
 have extended the fame of this country from the rising to 
 the setting sun We have those who, by various civil 
 merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a 
 situation which they well deserve, and in which they will 
 justify the favour of their sovereign and the good opinion of 
 their fellow-subjects, and make them rejoice to see those 
 virtuous characters, that were the other day upon a level 
 with them, now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with 
 them in sympathy what they felt in common before. We 
 have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the 
 place in which they administered high though subordinate 
 justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge 
 and to strengthen with their votes those principles which 
 have distinguished the courts in which they have presided. 
 
 My Lords, you have before you the lights of our religion 
 you have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that 
 true image of the primitive church in its ancient form, in its 
 ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the 
 vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the 
 best institutions. You have the representatives of that 
 religion which says that ' God is love,' that the very vital 
 spirit of its institution is charity ; a religion which so much
 
 182 Opening of the Impeachment. 
 
 19 FEB^i78s. hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore 
 appeared in human form, he did not appear in a form of 
 greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of 
 the people ; and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle 
 that their welfare was the object of all government, since 
 the person who was the Master of nature chose to appear 
 himself in a subordinate situation. These are the consider- 
 ations which influence them, which animate them and will 
 animate them against all oppression ; knowing that He who 
 is called first among them, and first among us all, both of 
 the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made himself 
 " the servant of all." 
 
 My Lords, these are the securities that we have in all the 
 constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, 
 we reckon, we rest, upon them ; and commit safely the inte- 
 rests of India and of humanity into their hands. Therefore 
 it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons, 
 
 I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and 
 misdemeanours. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great 
 Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust 
 he has betrayed. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great 
 Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose 
 laws, rights and liberties, he has subverted, whose properties 
 he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and 
 desolate. 
 
 I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal 
 laws of justice which he has violated. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which 
 he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed, in both 
 sexes, in every age, rank, situation and condition of life.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 183 
 
 SPEECH OF THE ET. HON. CHARLES JAMES FOX, 
 MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN 
 OPENING THE FIRST ARTICLE OF CHARGE, 
 RELATING TO BENARES ; 22 FEBRUARY, 1788. 
 
 MY LOKDS, Before I begin to open to your Lordships 
 that important Article of this charge which I am directed to 
 explain to your Lordships, I trust I shall not be considered 
 as trespassing improperly upon your time and your patience 
 if I venture to say a few preliminary words upon the situa- 
 tion of the Commons of England, and upon the situation of 
 your Lordships, in the great and important business now 
 under your consideration if I venture to express in some 
 degree the honest pride which I feel at the situation in which 
 I stand before your Lordships. When I speak of the pride 
 that I feel when I say that I glory in the situation in which 
 I stand before your Lordships I trust that no man will sup- 
 pose that I mean any individual or personal pride ; though, 
 all things considered, perhaps even something of that sort 
 might be indulged to human frailty ; and the honourable 
 testimony which I have received upon this occasion from the 
 unsuspected authority of the House of Commons might per- 
 haps, in a weak mind like mine, give and impress some senti- 
 ments of personal pride and of individual satisfaction. But 
 that is not the sort of pride I mean to state to- your Lordships. 
 They are not sentiments concerning so inconsiderable an in- 
 dividual as myself that I should venture to state to a tribunal 
 so grave and so full of dignity as that which I am now 
 addressing. The pride which J feel, and the situation in 
 which I glory, is the pride that belongs to me as one of the 
 representatives of the people of England as one of the 
 Commons of Great Britain. 
 
 My Lords, that the House of Commons is one of the dis- importance 
 tinguishing features of this constitution ; that upon the exist- tioi^of the 
 ence of that body depends the liberty, the law, the every CMumons 
 advantage which distinguishes the people of this country ^J 
 from those of the neighbouring states in Europe, is a propo- 
 sition too plain, too simple, too elementary, for me to venture
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 :>2 FED. i7S8. to state to your Lordships. If, among the various functions 
 of the House of Commons, there be one in which they appear 
 with more peculiar dignity with more peculiar utility 
 (for utility and dignity are inseparable in great political con- 
 stitutions) I say, if there is one circumstance in which they 
 appear with more utility and consequently with more dignity, 
 it is in the sort of business in which they are now engaged ; 
 when they are acting in their inquisitorial capacity and 
 appearing before your Lordships in your judicial capacity. 
 
 My Lords, the laws of this country are often praised ; they 
 are often commended. But what security is there for the 
 laws of this country ? Laws may be good ; judges may be 
 corrupt. What is to secure the duty of judges what is to 
 secure their just execution of the laws of this country but 
 judges over them, namely, your Lordships ? For I know no 
 other tribunal before Avhom such judges should be arraigned. 
 Your Lordships can arraign them upon the impeachment of 
 the House of Commons : and, therefore, I will venture to 
 state to your Lordships an opinion not new, and which cer- 
 tainly in the enlightened age in which we live will not be 
 controverted, that upon the doctrine of impeachment upon 
 the right of the Commons of Great Britain to come to the 
 bar of your Lordships depends the whole common law of 
 this country ; depends the whole spirit of the law of this 
 country ; depends the personal privilege of every individual 
 of this country ; depends everything that we hold most 
 sacred and hold most dear. 
 
 Eight of My Lords, to an assembly like this, from whom I should 
 
 tary h crimi-" expect to learn and whom I certainly do not pretend to 
 cecdins teach to an assembly like this it is not necessary for me to 
 state the nature of this great security of the constitution 
 to state the right of parliamentary criminal proceedings. 
 My Lords, they proceed upon the principles of the law of 
 England upon the principles of the law of Parliament the 
 lex et consuetude Parliaments the most valuable branch of 
 all the law of England; because it is that branch which 
 secures the just execution of every inferior part of that law. 
 To an assembly like this it is not necessary for me to state 
 that every elementary writer upon the law of England 
 that every authority that has ever written upon that subject, 
 from Lord Coke, who has been emphatically styled the oracle 
 of the law of England, down to Mr. Justice Blackstone, an 
 eminent modern writer upon that subject it has been uni- 
 versally recognised that the law of Parliament the lex et
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 185 
 
 consuetude Parliamenti is a part of the law of England ; that 22 F _ EB - 1788 - 
 it is to be collected out of the journals and proceedings of 
 Parliament ; and it is as much a part of that law as any 
 inferior and municipal branch of it. 
 
 ]\Iy Lords, if it be a part of it. I say it is a part more 
 valuable than the whole ; because it is a part without which 
 the whole would be totally ineffectual and totally useless. 
 To have laws is one thing ; to have judges is another. The 
 judges in modern times have thank God they have ! pre- 
 served a character of purity unequalled perhaps in the ex- 
 ample of any modern countries, and greatly superior to those 
 in more ancient times. I mean not to detract from the cha- 
 racter of those great and reverend persons ; but I will ven- 
 ture to state that we are not in public to argue upon the 
 particular characters of individuals. The constitution rests 
 not upon such securities. The purity of the judges I will 
 state to be owing to that to which the purity of all men, 
 politically speaking, must be stated to be owing, namely, to 
 the putting them out of the temptation of interest, on the one 
 hand, and putting them under the dominion of just and legal 
 fear, on the other. 
 
 If the judges of England have been more incorrupt and 
 pure than the judges of other countries if they have been 
 more so in modern times than they have been in earlier 
 periods to what is it owing ? It is owing to the acknow- 
 ledged law of England namely, that the Commons in Par- 
 liament may impeach a judge before the tribunal of the 
 House of Lords, and that there is a law over him the lex et 
 consuetudo Parliamenti to which he is obliged to pay 
 obedience ; which he is obliged to bow to ; by which his 
 actions must be judged ; and which gives the only security for 
 the due execution of his trust in the distribution of justice in 
 the inferior tribunals in which he presides. I hope and trust, 
 to such an assembly to which I am speaking, I am rather 
 guilty of trespassing upon their patience or misspending their 
 time than saying anything which can be doubted or contro- 
 verted. For, if ever a period should arrive at which any magis- 
 trate of this country should dare to treat the lex et consuetudo 
 Parliamenti with ridicule, contempt or indifference, I say this 
 fair inference must be immediately drawn from the conduct 
 of that magistrate that he is a person who fears [derides ?] 
 the law to which all the subjects of Great Britain ought to be 
 amenable, and so dares to bring into disrepute that upon which 
 the whole constitution of this country supports and rests.
 
 186 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. My Lords, I therefore say that I feel a proper glory, a 
 Pride~inre- proper pride, in my situation ; that 1 stand in this place by 
 thTnouse *he orc ' ers f tne House of Commons and representing them ; 
 of Commons that I stand representing the Commons in their most re- 
 Bentim- spectable function, I mean the function of impeachment in 
 achment. t k a t function upon the existence of which, and upon a manly 
 exercise of which upon the part of the Commons, depends 
 every particle of the law of England depends every per- 
 sonal security ; depends the conduct of judges in all depart- 
 ments ; and depends everything that we hold dear in this 
 country. If that be the case with respect to impeachments 
 in general, I will venture to state to your Lordships that, 
 with respect to this particular impeachment, exclusive of the 
 merits of it, which we shall consider by-and-by but with 
 respect to this particular impeachment I feel a peculiar 
 glory in being the instrument of the House of Commons 
 upon such an occasion. 
 
 Former im- Former impeachments have been, many of them, in my 
 inOTedJbya 8 opinion highly laudable. There have been some in which 
 H a r useof the one m ight wish that some things had been different ; but I 
 Commons, believe they have all this in common, that they have gene- 
 rally been the prosecution of a powerful and triumphant 
 party in the House of Commons, acting often and generally 
 upon right principles, sometimes possibly upon mistaken 
 ones ; and that they have come, with the force and effect of 
 a triumphant and ruling party in the House of Commons 
 and the state, to the bar of your Lordships, to impeach per- 
 sons who have [had] the misfortune to fall under their dis- 
 union of ail pleasure. I need not state to your Lordships that far different 
 the present is the character of the present prosecution ; different it is, 
 tions. cu " an d different to the eternal honour of all parties in the 
 House of Commons who concurred in that impeachment. 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to suggest to your Lordships, nor 
 would it be becoming the occasion of it were it not a truth 
 not peculiar to the present period but belonging almost to 
 every part of the history of this country, that undoubtedly 
 there are subsisting in this country great political differences ; 
 that they are carried on with warmth, sometimes with eager- 
 ness, sometimes with animosity: but that such differences 
 exist and operate more or less upon all the proceedings in 
 both Houses of Parliament is a truth which, whether, as some 
 speculatists affirm, be for the advantage or disadvantage of 
 the general good, I will not inquire ; but it is a truth, in 
 point of practice, which all men must admit to exist.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 187 
 
 I say then, if anything can give a noble picture of the 22 FEB. 1 788. 
 present House of Commons it is this, that, in the midst of 
 contests in the midst of debates when two parties are 
 using against each other every means and resource of ability 
 that belongs to them ; nay, while the very subject now 
 before you I mean the subject of India and India govern- 
 ment is no inconsiderable part and no inconsiderable sub- 
 ject of these disputes I say it exhibits a glorious spectacle 
 to the world, in such a contest, to see the two opposite 
 parties lay aside the weapons with which they were attacking 
 each other ; to see them join in the defence of those who are 
 helpless; to see them turn from their disputes at home 
 not to acquire power not to acquire fame (in the common 
 sense of the word) not to acquire interest by obliging this 
 or that part of the British dominion who might favour their 
 objects, whatever they were but, both laying aside for the 
 time all animosities and disputes in order to join in the 
 defence of those who can only thank them with prayers and 
 supplications to heaven ; who can give them no interest in 
 this country, can in no way assist their power, and can only 
 reward them by the way in Avhich the best actions are best 
 rewarded in this country, by the reflection of having done 
 them. This is honourable to the House of Commons, that, 
 in the midst of their disputes, they have owned that, great 
 as the subjects in which their disputes are which disputes 
 some ignorant persons state to be disputes about power and 
 pre-eminence; those they ought to have sacrificed to the 
 lightest occasion but, as they themselves contend on both 
 sides, disputes about great lines of the constitution of Great 
 Britain, no less lines than the mark of the King's prerogative 
 and the boundaries of the privileges of the House of Com- 
 mons these great and important objects in dispute and 
 litigation they all yielded to what? to the only thing to 
 which they could justly yield, to the claims of humanity 
 and justice. For, as humanity and justice are the principal 
 objects and ends of every government, the means, however 
 important, must always be considered as subordinate to the 
 ends. And it showed that those who so acted, acted upon the 
 best, the most rational, principles ; and showed that, however 
 they might differ about the means of government however 
 they might differ in the most important points, such as I have 
 alluded to they left all their disputes, upon the superior 
 and permanent claims of humanity and justice ; they forgot 
 every personal animosity, and joined to bring to your Lord-
 
 188 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. ships' bar a person whom they consider to have violated 
 those laws of justice and humanity which I state to have 
 united them upon circumstances the least promising for such 
 a union. 
 
 Merit of the I trust your Lordships will entirely exculpate me from an 
 sharedby 311 idea, not only of any personal triumph over this subject, but 
 and support- anything like what could be supposed a triumph to those 
 ersofit. with whom I am connected. The merits which I state are 
 different in their nature, but perhaps equal in order. Whether 
 the merits of those who, under every discouragement, brought 
 this business to the consideration of the House of Commons, 
 or the merits of those whose candour would hear fairly and 
 equitably truths, though coming from those to whom they 
 were not used to listen with favour whether of these two 
 merits is the greater I don't mean to inquire. But I mean 
 to state, that the merits of both appear considerable, and that 
 the House of Commons comes to the bar of your Lordships 
 on this occasion, and the bar of the public, with a glory in 
 that respect unequalled by any of their ancestors ; for that 
 they come to you, not, as their ancestors have done upon 
 various occasions, with indignation kindled in the moment 
 they come to you, not with anger arising from recent oppres- 
 sion but they come with rational anger, kindled by exami- 
 nation and inquiry ; they come to you w r ith the indignation 
 that is the result of cool and deliberate inquiry and not of 
 momentary impressions. 
 
 The prose- What I have hitherto stated in the peculiar circumstances 
 fntrusted to of the House of Commons coming to your bar is, I trust, 
 the^overn- f m tne opinion of all who hear me, a most honourable circum- 
 ment - stance to them. Let me at the same time make another 
 observation, something pertinent to the present state of the 
 business that they come to the bar of your Lordships in a 
 different view from that in which every other House of Com- 
 mons have come. They come undoubtedly with a consider- 
 able difference in the persons whom they have employed to 
 manage this impeachment. Look into the history of former 
 impeachments ; look into the history of former prosecutions ; 
 and it is not often I believe it is never that you will find 
 that the House of Commons have liberally, generously and 
 handsomely, intrusted the preservation of their interests to 
 those whose authority is not supposed to be prevalent in 
 that House ; and that persons, of the description of those with 
 whom I have the honour to act myself, have not often had 
 the distinguished honour, which we have this day, of appear-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 189 
 
 ing before your Lordships in the characters in which we 22 FEB. 1788. 
 appear. Why, my Lords, will not this circumstance, to every 
 generous, to every candid, understanding, to every liberal and 
 enlightened mind, give considerable additional authority to 
 the impeachment which we have brought before your Lord- 
 ships ? Undoubtedly it will. 
 
 But I much fear that that which prevails with every candid 
 and liberal mind may have a different operation with minds 
 of a different description. I cannot but be apprehensive 
 that, somewhere or other, there may be men who know not 
 what liberality and candour is ; whose only motives and 
 principles of action are mere interest and fear ; and that such 
 men, seeing that the prosecution comes to the bar of your 
 House not managed by those who are invested with the 
 public authority of the country not managed by those Avho 
 have the power of punishment in some degree on the one 
 hand, and who have the power of reward abundantly on the 
 other that there may be such men, whom I have described, 
 who will venture to treat this impeachment, in every part 
 of it, I mean the speeches we shall presume to make to your 
 Lordships, the very articles of impeachment, and sometimes 
 the very law of impeachment in general, with a degree of 
 contempt, which they would not dare to do if it was brought 
 to the bar of this House by those who possess the power of 
 the country. Therefore, as I have stated, as we come to Protection 
 your Lordships' bar with every recommendation to every thatac- ' 
 candid and liberal mind, we have a right to ask for some- count - 
 thing more we have a right to ask for some degree of pro- 
 tection, at the same time that we come with authority. Be- 
 cause, as we are sensible that, on the one hand, our situation is a 
 recommendation to every candid and liberal mind, so, on the 
 other, to those whose minds are of the description and form 
 I state, we come in a very different character: and if they 
 hate the privileges of the Commons ; if they are notorious in 
 every instance for endeavouring to violate and turn them 
 into ridicule ; if there be such men, they may seize with joy 
 the glorious opportunity and say, " Here is an impeachment 
 brought to the bar of the House of Lords, not by the pre- 
 valent power of the country, not by those who have the 
 means of punishing me if I deserve punishment, not by 
 those who have the means of rewarding me if I support their 
 interest ; therefore I will intrench upon the liberties of the 
 Commons by uttering opinions upon that impeachment which, 
 I am confident, fear and interest would prevent me from
 
 190 
 
 Opening of the 1'irst Charge Benares : 
 
 Simplicity 
 of the sub- 
 ject of the 
 present 
 charge. 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. uttering if it were brought by other persons, or by those 
 identical persons in different situations and in different 
 places in this country." 
 
 Having, therefore, stated to your Lordships, on the one 
 hand, the grounds upon which I think we are intitled to 
 some peculiar authority upon this occasion peculiar and 
 different from that authority which upon any other the Com- 
 mons would have a right to demand at the bar of your 
 Lordships and, on the other hand, that we have a right to 
 expect that protection which candid and liberal minds will 
 always afford to those whose situations do not give them 
 everything that power and pre-eminence in a country can 
 give ; I shall now proceed, with no further delay, to open the 
 business which I have in command to open ; trusting to the 
 justice of the cause ; trusting to the impossibility there is for 
 any tribunal upon earth much less for this tribunal, whom T 
 honour and respect in the face of the public, in the face of their 
 country, to pronounce a man, against whom we shall bring what 
 your Lordships shall see to pronounce him to be not guilty. 
 
 My Lords, the subject which I am about to open to your 
 Lordships, fortunately for me, is proportioned to my abilities ; 
 because, though it be a subject of importance, and therefore 
 in that way not proportioned to them, yet it is a subject 
 which, in the nature of it, admits of but little perplexity and 
 still less doubt. It is a subject in which, though it involves 
 many facts, your Lordships will perceive clearly and distinctly 
 the particular facts upon which criminality is meant to be 
 attached and to be imputed. And therefore I am certainly 
 very fortunate that, in being the first to state to your Lord- 
 ships the business which I am about to state, that is 
 committed to my charge, it is neither involved nor does it 
 go into many doubtful disquisitions ; that it depends not 
 upon many very difficult researches, but depends in general 
 upon plain facts, which we shall prove to your Lordships 
 beyond contradiction, where proof is necessary, but which 
 for the most part are admitted by the prisoner at the bar ; 
 and that the reasonings on those facts will not be drawn from 
 abstruse and difficult researches into the laws of Hindustan. 
 They will not be drawn from researches into the laws of the 
 Gentus ; they will not be drawn from researches into the 
 laws of the Mohammedans ; they will not be drawn from 
 researches into the laws of Great Britain ; but they will be 
 drawn from the general principles of law that pervade the 
 world in every part of the globe, which all men recognise,
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 191 
 
 and which no man can shake from himself. My Lords, this 22 FEB. ms. 
 
 subject has been so treated by one honourable Manager who 
 
 went before me that I will not take off the force of what fell 
 
 from him by endeavouring to repeat it ; but I am sure that 
 
 it required not his commanding eloquence to impress upon 
 
 your Lordships that which nature had impressed upon the 
 
 mind of every man before him that there are general laws 
 
 of morality and justice, which pervade every constitution in 
 
 the world, and which are impressed upon the mind of every 
 
 individual man. 
 
 My Lords, it is necessary to observe that the matters which The matter 
 I am about to explain to your Lordships are, literally speaking, explained e 
 new to your Lordships ; that the honourable Manager, who up 
 made the general opening, did not even touch upon the part 
 which I am now about to explain to your Lordships. His 
 principle and his system in opening, which I thought had 
 met with the approbation of your Lordships, and I am still 
 willing to think so, was not to go into the matter of par- 
 ticular charges, but to state a general introductory matter 
 necessary for the explanation and the elucidation of the 
 cause. He stated a variety of matters in that business 
 which he expressly told your Lordships he had no intention 
 of proving at your bar, unless called upon so to do ; because 
 he perfectly knew as indeed any man acquainted with the 
 common forms of criminal proceedings must know that, in 
 stating a crime against any man, there is much introductory 
 and prefatory matter necessary to be stated which is not 
 necessary to be proved ; which, if called upon to be proved, 
 is proved by different laws of evidence from those different 
 points which attach upon the person accused and impute 
 criminality to him. He knew that it was the general practice 
 of the courts of justice that it was peculiarly so of this. 
 Therefore he stated, clearly and distinctly, at the bar of 
 your Lordships, that it was no intention of his to bring proofs 
 to all the prefatory matter which he stated at your bar. 
 On the other hand, he said, with a magnanimity which 
 became him because magnanimity becomes those who are 
 founded in truth that he was willing, if called upon and 
 required, to prove everything he had stated ; because he 
 knew himself capable of so doing. 
 
 It would be very unfortunate if any of your Lordships, or 
 any of the public, should have so little attended to what fell 
 from the honourable person alluded to, as not to attend to 
 the different parts of that opening, which are distinct in
 
 192 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. this point of view. All that was prefatory, introductory and 
 historical, was stated as not intended to be proved unless 
 called for. Everything that attached criminality upon 
 Mr. Hastings he stated would be proved in the course of 
 evidence before your Lordships. And persons who did not 
 attend to that distinction, if any such inattentive hearer 
 there can be I am sure the patience with which your Lord- 
 ships attended will not permit me to suspect any such 
 inattentive hearer could be among you in my opinion con- 
 founded two things which no person used to judge which 
 no person used to criminal inquiries can possibly confound. 
 With respect to one, he stated distinctly that he meant not 
 to prove the matters unless called for. With respect to the 
 other, he stated that they would be proved, not by any 
 evidence intended to be produced in support of his introduc- 
 tory speech, but they would be proved when we came to 
 those particular Articles of which those particular accusations 
 made a part. Therefore, it has so happened, that what I am 
 now about to state to your Lordships has not been in any 
 degree anticipated or first told by the honourable Manager 
 who opened this business ; and I come with matter new to 
 your Lordships, important and, as I think, clear. 
 
 TheMana- My Lords, I will make one single observation before I 
 
 to respect, proceed to the matter which perhaps I ought to have made 
 
 before I mean, with respect to the particular situations in 
 
 which the Managers of the Commons stand as^distinct from 
 
 common prosecutors. I am sure that, if they claim any 
 
 privileges, they must not be privileges inconsistent with 
 
 justice. I am sure that it is not inconsistent with justice for 
 
 the Managers of the House of Commons to insist that their 
 
 representative characters must be treated with respect ; much 
 
 more is it necessary that they should insist that the House 
 
 of Commons itself, and their charges and allegations, should 
 
 be treated with every degree of respect. And I trust, my 
 
 Lords, that if, in the execution of that duty which we owe to 
 
 the House of Commons, and which we cannot depart from, we 
 
 object to anything [in a manner?] that in the opinion of any 
 
 person may seem captious, they will do us the justice to suppose 
 
 we do it, not on our own individual personal account, but in 
 
 support of the great fiducial trust reposed in us. On the 
 
 Duty of the other hand, to show I shield myself under nothing, I will 
 
 act in the mention another duty equally incumbent upon ue. In coni- 
 
 jn<lesnot mon cases many advocates do state and they do right, 
 
 advocates. g p ea ki n g as advocates they state things which do not meet
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. . 193 
 
 their own opinions. I conceive it is not just in us that we 22FEB.178S. 
 betray the trust committed to us by the House of Commons 
 that we act ill as men, ill as members of Parliament that 
 we act contrary to our duty in every respect if we venture 
 to advance an opinion to your Lordships as an advocate dis- 
 tinct from a judge. If we offer or recommend anything to 
 your Lordships, which we do not feel that in your Lordships' 
 situations we should in ourselves adopt, we are guilty to a 
 great degree. If we offer any argument that we do not 
 think grounded in truth that we do not think just that 
 we do not think reasonable in my opinion we are equally 
 answerable as if we sat in the seat of judgment, and gave a 
 wrong, an improper and corrupt, judgment. 
 
 Why does this duty attach upon us so much more than 
 other prosecutors ? Because we are conscious we have, or 
 ought to have, an authority that does not belong to other 
 prosecutors ; because we are conscious that we come armed 
 with the power of the House of Commons that what we 
 speak is not for ourselves, but the Commons of England. 
 Let an advocate in a cause state an argument or propose 
 a mode of proceeding. If that argument is fallacious, and 
 that mode of proceeding is thought unjust, there is no 
 blame to him. But let a Manager of the House of Commons 
 recommend an unjust mode to your Lordships let a Manager 
 of the House of Commons suggest a fallacious argument to 
 your Lordships what does he do ? He not only involves his 
 own reputation, but he stands as a representative of the 
 Commons of England, and conveys an idea that the Com- 
 mons of England have demanded an injustice, or inforced a 
 fallacious argument to your Lordships. 
 
 Therefore I shall consider in this business not what I 
 ought to do if I were a mere advocate for a prosecution ; 
 I shall consider not merely what will be most likely to have 
 any effect with your Lordships or the public, not merely 
 what will be most likely to produce a verdict of the nature I 
 require ; but I shall do nothing which, as an honest man 
 conceiving the case as I do conceive it, I do not think right 
 and fit ; and I w r ould not be guilty, nor load my conscience 
 with the reflection, of having suggested anything to your 
 Lordships which, in your situation, I should not feel myself 
 bound to adopt. 
 
 My Lords, in the Article now before you there is, as there Every part 
 is in every Article as there must be in every Article as I sen^Articie 
 believe, has been in every Article ever produced by the 
 
 N
 
 194 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB.1788. House of Commons at the bar of your Lordships many facts 
 which in themselves are not criminal, which are only 
 criminal inasmuch as they are connected with others. 
 There is much prefatory, much introductory, matter. I am 
 instructed by the Managers to say that there is nothing 
 inserted in this Article, whether prefatory, whether intro- 
 ductory, whether to the direct point of guilty or not guilty, 
 which is not correctly and literally true as they have stated. 
 But, at the same time, they know too well your Lordships' 
 learning, they know too well your Lordships' judgment and 
 discerning, to be under the least apprehension that, failing 
 in the proof of this or that point, if there is enough remain- 
 ing to attach criminality upon the person accused, but that 
 upon that Article he must be found guilty. 
 
 Denial by Mv Lords, of this nature is the very first proposition in 
 
 the prisoner . . ' , -, i i T f i -riii 
 
 of statement this Article, and upon which 1 confess that 1 should not have 
 Ra]a e Bui- g troubled your Lordships at all, at the outset of this business, 
 want Sing, jf ^ j^ not a pp earec ] proper to the person at your bar to 
 
 deny the fact. The first thing that we set out with in this 
 
 Article is a declaration that, 
 
 " Rajah Bulwant Sing, a great chief or zemindar of certain provinces or 
 districts in India called Benares and Gazepoor, dependant upon the 
 Mogul empire through Sujah-ul-Dowlah, Nabob of Oude, and Vizier of 
 the said empire, did, in the commencement of the English power in 
 India, in or about the year 1764, attach himself to the British nation, and 
 was, in the opinion of the Directors of the East India Company, of 
 signal service to the affairs and interests of Great Britain." 
 
 Now, my Lords, as the first fact here stated is almost the 
 single fact which the prisoner has ventured specifically to 
 deny, I shall misspend a very short part of your Lordships* 
 time upon that subject. The fact which he denies is (he 
 denies it to be sure in a cautious manner), that Bulwant 
 Sing was a chief in the sense in which we have stated him to 
 be a prince or chief. I will waste no more of your Lordships' 
 time than to assure you that we shall prove that this person, 
 whom he contends not to have been a chief, was a person 
 who was solicited by the East India Company as an ally ; 
 was a person whose country was stated to be a barrier ; and 
 was in every other respect what your Lordships or any other 
 persons of common sense would consider a chief, not only in 
 the sense in which we have stated, but in a sense much more 
 enlarged and much more exalted. 
 
 services The history of this business is short, and therefore I shall 
 
 the Com- venture to detail it to your Lordships. Bulwant Sing was a
 
 Speech of Mr, Fox. 195 
 
 chief. I know some persons say he was not a zamindar, but 22FEB.1788. 
 I do promise your Lordships that I shall not embarrass you panylby 
 with that question, and that the prisoner shall have it all his f^ ant 
 own way that a person shall be called zamindar, land- 
 holder, or any other name that he pleases to give him. I 
 mean to prove the prisoner guilty upon substance and not 
 upon form or words ; and therefore I do not mean to state 
 or insist that Bulwant Sing was zamindar, or [landholder ?], 
 or anything else ; be he what he will, he was the chief of a 
 considerable district in India, and he did use the power 
 which he had for the service of the East India Company. 
 Those services are recognised by the East India Company ; 
 they are recognised in some instances by Mr. Hastings 
 himself; and so completely recognised by those who were in 
 the government of the East India Company's affairs abroad 
 at that time, that, in the peace with Suja-ud-Dowla, it was 
 considered a point of honour and interest to the East India 
 Company to secure the interests of Bulwant Sing. This 
 fact is undoubtedly no way material in this cause, excepting 
 in the view of aggravation ; because when we shall prove 
 Mr. Hastings to have acted in the manner which we shall 
 prove with respect to Cheyt Sing, it may be an aggravation 
 of his crimes that Cheyt Sing was the son of a parent to 
 whom the East India Company was indebted, and whose 
 services they had recognised ; because to have acted in the 
 manner he did to Cheyt Sing, or to any man descended 
 from any parents whatever, we shall contend to be cri- 
 minal. 
 
 Bulwant Sing I beg your Lordships to understand to have 
 been the chief of a province, and to have been possessed of 
 a power in that country which he used for the advantage of 
 the East India Company the advantage of which the Com- 
 pany recognised and secured his possession in the treaty they 
 afterwards made with Suja-ud-Dowla. 
 
 Upon the death of Bulwant Sing, a new grant was made At the death 
 
 /> T-> -1/^1 i /-n , o- Tin of Bulwant 
 
 or Benares and (jrhazeepoor to his son, Cheyt oing. 1 shall Sing, Be- 
 make few observations upon that grant ; but it will be granted to 
 necessary for your Lordships to observe, as the course of the heyt Smg> 
 evidence will give you opportunity, that, in the opinion of 
 Mr. Hastings, Suja-ud-Dowla did no more, in that grant 
 to Cheyt Sing, than he was obliged to by the spirit, if not 
 by the letter, of his engagement with Bulwant Sing. 
 When that grant had been made three years, the grant was 
 confirmed again to Cheyt Sing. What the reason what 
 
 N 2
 
 196 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. 
 
 The grant 
 confirmed 
 by Mr. 
 Hastings. 
 
 Cheyt Sing 
 pressed by 
 Suja-ud- 
 Dowla to 
 make ad- 
 vances of 
 tribute. 
 
 But pro- 
 tected by 
 the Com- 
 pany. 
 
 The Com- 
 pany after- 
 wards bound 
 by the same 
 restrictions 
 as Suja-ud- 
 Dowla. 
 
 the motive, of that confirmation was, I never yet have been 
 able to learn. However, this circumstance attended it, that 
 to that confirmation Mr. Hastings was a party ; and Mr. 
 Hastings was bound to understand the nature of that con- 
 firmation ; and it appears, from all Mr. Hastings' subse- 
 quent transactions, that he understood the confirmation of 
 that grant in the way in which I shall hereafter state to 
 your Lordships. 
 
 It is a material circumstance for your Lordships to keep in 
 your mind, that at the time of this confirmation, in the year 
 1773, Suja-ud-Dowla, if he was actually at peace, was 
 upon the eve of a war ; that he was in that situation upon 
 which hereafter we shall have occasion to observe a situa- 
 tion in which he was obliged to look for all the resources of 
 his kingdom. My Lords, some time after this grant, which 
 was in the year 1773 I believe in the year 1775 that 
 happened I am now alluding to Snja-ud-Dowla, pressed 
 by the Company to make them certain payments, endea- 
 voured to do it by forcing Cheyt Sing, who had succeeded 
 to his father, to advance sums before they were due upon 
 his tribute. What was the conduct of the East India Com- 
 pany's servants upon that occasion ? What was the conduct 
 of Mr. Hastings ? Did they or did he represent to Suja- 
 ud-Dowla that the treaty forbad him to ask for more? 
 Did they represent that his engagements were positive to 
 twenty-two lacs of rupees, which was to be his tribute, and 
 that the East India Company would not allow him to ask 
 more, being guarantee to those treaties ? I will admit 
 these were not Mr. Hastings' own words or minutes ; but 
 you will find, in the correspondence of Mr. Bristow, that 
 Mr. Bristow, acting under commands of the Governor 
 General and Council, stated to Suja-ud-Dowla that it was 
 a demand he was not intitled to make, not only from the 
 spirit of the treaty, not only from the protection the East 
 India Company afforded Cheyt Sing, but from the very 
 letter of the treaty. 
 
 Soon after this, Benares came to stand in a different 
 situation and different relation to the Company. And here, 
 my Lords, let me pause for a moment in the history of the 
 facts, and state to your Lordships a principle which I think is 
 evident and requires little enlargement which I think has the 
 recognition of Mr. Hastings himself; but, whether it has or no, 
 it will I am sure have the recognition and applause of your 
 Lordships. If it be true that Suja-ud-Dowla had an agree-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 197 
 
 ment with his dependent, Cheyt Sing, by which he was 22 FEB. ms. 
 limited not to exact of Cheyt Sing beyond a certain stipulated 
 revenue if it be true that the Company were guarantees to 
 that stipulation, and had a right to interfere to prevent 
 Suja-ud-Dowla from exacting more than by the stipulated 
 treaty he was authorised to exact if that be true, is not 
 this a necessary and self-evident consequence that, if that do- 
 minion was afterwards yielded to the East India Company by 
 Suja-ud-Dowla or Asoff-ud-Dowla, it must be yielded upon 
 the terms upon which he had it, and that they were bound, 
 upon every term of justice, to exact nothing of Cheyt Sing 
 but what they had permitted Suja-ud-Dowla and Asoff- 
 ud-Dowla in similar circumstances to exact ? If a subject 
 stood in one relation to his sovereign ; if that relation to his 
 sovereign was acknowledged, recognised, enforced and pro- 
 tected, by the East India Company ; when the Company 
 should afterwards become sovereign of that country by 
 cession, not by conquest Cwhich I think would make but 
 little difference), when they should become possessed from 
 Suja-ud-Dowla and his successors of that country, they would 
 be bound to support Cheyt Sing at least in as good a rela- 
 tion with respect to themselves as he stood in with respect 
 to Suja-ud-Dowla or to Asoff-ud-Dowla. This proposition 
 appears to me self-evident in point of justice ; and therefore 
 it would ill become me, when a point appears self-evident in 
 point of justice, to draw any arguments in point of ex- 
 pediency and policy. 
 
 It would be an ill lesson indeed to the people of India if 
 it were to be understood, that, while you are subjects to the 
 Wazir, while you are subjects to Asoff-ud-Dowla, we will 
 protect you in your rights ; while you hold your sovereignty 
 of him we will stand forth in favour of you ; if they attempt 
 to oppress you we will rescue you from the hands of your 
 lawful master ; but if, by conquest or by any other means, 
 we become your sovereigns, remember there is none can 
 guarantee the treaty between you and us ; the power of the 
 sovereign is all, the right of the vassal is nothing ; and you 
 are a person without right, engagement, or any political 
 existence, but my will and arbitrary pleasure. That that 
 doctrine is unjust, that it is inequitable, that it is monstrous, 
 that it is detestable, is so clear that I am almost ashamed 
 for having misspent your Lordships' time so much, in having 
 given the additional argument to show how impolitic it is. 
 But it is as impolitic as unjust holding out a lesson to
 
 198 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22 FEB. 1783. 
 
 cheyt sing 
 to pay a/ 1 y 
 
 ?^ r - Hast- 
 red opinion 
 
 donee? 11 " 
 
 India that the dominion of the India Company is more 
 severe than the native power, and so much more to be 
 dreaded. If a prince oppresses his vassal the Company can 
 succour him ; but if the Company oppress him it is not easy 
 to find a prince in India that can interpose in his behalf. 
 
 I take it as an admitted principle that, with respect to 
 Suja-ud-Dowla and Asoff-ud-Dowla, Cheyt Sing stood 
 i n tm ' 8 situation he was bound to pay an express tribute, 
 and nothing more was to be exacted from him but that 
 tribute. I need not go into any arguments to prove that he 
 stood in the same situation to the Company ; only that ten 
 thousand times more the Company were bound, having 
 shown their opinion when they acted as arbitrators in it, and 
 that they had no right to exact one farthing which they had 
 not permitted Suja-ud-DoAvla and AsofF-ud-Dowla to exact. 
 
 My Lords, though I have stated this principle as a prin- 
 ciple upon which I should conceive there could be no dis- 
 pute, we shall bring matter before your Lordships that will 
 naake it even unnecessary to have recourse to this principle 
 itself. For, in the year 1775, when Mr. Hastings was, 
 generally speaking, in the minority of the Council, he stated 
 it as his opinion, before the cession was made to the Com- 
 pany, that Cheyt Sing should be made more independent 
 than he was. That opinion of Mr. Hastings prevailed not 
 unanimously we admit. There was one of the members of 
 the Council, Colonel Monson, of a different opinion. I 
 mention this, not to show the influence that it had upon 
 Cheyt Sing's situation, but to show Mr. Hastings' opinion 
 upon the subject ; because when I shall have proved to you, 
 as I shall have done, the illegal manner in which this prince 
 was oppressed, I shall, by way of aggravation, and a just 
 aggravation, of the charge against the prisoner, prove to 
 your Lordships that, though it would have been criminal in 
 me, or any of your Lordships, to have acted towards Cheyt 
 Sing as Mr. Hastings has done that, though it would have 
 been so criminal as to call justly for the exemplary ven- 
 geance of this country that it is more criminal in Mr. 
 Hastings personally to do what he did than it could have 
 been in any other man existing upon the face of the earth. 
 Therefore I beg your Lordships to keep in your minds that 
 Mr. Hastings' opinion was that Cheyt Sing should be ren- 
 dered more independent. 
 
 When Benares was ceded by the Wazir to the Company 
 there waa a new arrangement made. But that new arrange-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 199 
 
 ment was made upon the principle I have stated, that Cheyt 22FEB.1788. 
 Sing had a right to be at least in as good a state as he was with 
 respect to his former masters ; which is an opinion also, that, 
 as he had a right to be in as good a state, it might be 
 policy and might be wisdom to put him in a better. Upon 
 this occasion Mr. Hastings was forward in the business ; he 
 was inclined to push his ideas of Cheyt Sing's independency 
 as far at least as many other members of the Council. And, 
 as I stated in my opening upon the subject, undoubtedly, 
 if any proceeding could carry more weight than another 
 of a public body, that carries most weight in which those 
 agree who are not used to agree. It is in favour of the pro- 
 ceeding upon the arrangement of Cheyt Sing that, in every 
 instance almost, the motions appear to have come from 
 Mr. Hastings, and those motions to have been approved by 
 a majority of the Council. 
 
 It was proposed and adopted, not only that Cheyt Sing Position 
 might be really independent and uncontrolled in his zamin- ch^t Stag 
 dary or province, whatever it be called not only that he ^sres was 
 might be uncontrolled, but that all the world might see he ceded to the 
 was uncontrolled and free. That he might have the ensigns ^he power 
 of a sovereignty and every mark of power, it was thought j^t^and 
 to be proper that the criminal justice and the mint should be the mint 
 
 i TTT u Tii- i xi -L allowed him. 
 
 given to him. Would your .Lordships expect to hear that 
 that man who suggested and moved that Cheyt Sing, in the 
 province of Benares, should have the criminal justice and 
 the mint that that very man who moved the proposition, 
 who moved it for the purpose of putting him in a high and 
 illustrious situation with respect to other persons of his own 
 rank that that very person who moved it, who persuaded 
 the Council to adopt it unanimously as unanimously they 
 did adopt it should afterwards dipute the effect of his own 
 motion, and say, " This is a mere vassal"? In the sense in which 
 he uses vassal this is a person no way distinguished from all the 
 common subjects of the country. Who is this person undis- 
 tinguished? who is this person this common vassal this 
 common tributary this common landholder as he calls him, 
 a common depraved zamindar ? A person to whom he thought 
 fit to give the powers of the mint and the powers of criminal 
 justice powers not commonly used in the country. Need I go 
 further upon this subject ? Need I suppose that Mr. Hast- 
 ings, General Clavering and the whole Council, were persons 
 so ignorant of every principle of government, of every idea 
 of political prudence, that they would give the power of the
 
 200 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. U88. mint and criminal justice to a person whom they considered 
 to rank entirely upon a footing with all the common zamindars, 
 all the common landholders and freeholders, of the country ? 
 I need not state to your Lordships the absurdity of such a 
 proposition. 
 
 1 wish to state to your Lordships my idea of the situation 
 of Cheyt Sing, in order that your Lordships may afterwards 
 reason upon it. If there should be anything erroneous in 
 my idea upon the subject, I shall be very glad to be con- 
 vinced and to retract that opinion ; but I beg, when I state 
 this, that it may not be considered that any contradiction to 
 my opinion is an affirmation of Mr. Hastings' upon that 
 subject : because it may be very difficult, there may be some 
 delicacy, some doubt, in proving the exact situation in which 
 Cheyt Sing stood with respect to the Company ; but there 
 can be no difficulty, delicacy or doubt, in proving that, in 
 whatever situation he stood with respect to the Company, 
 whatever interpretation might be given of his situation, it was 
 not such as to justify the subsequent proceedings towards him. 
 Cheyt Sing is sometimes called zamindar, sometimes chief, 
 and by other titles. But he is put in possession of the country ; 
 he has the whole administration of the revenue, and has a 
 grant a gift I admit it to be of the administration of 
 Cheyt sing's criminal justice, and he has the direction of the mint ; and it 
 the'corn- * s a g rg ed that he should pay a stipulated tribute of twenty- 
 ^".y J two lacs of rupees to the Company. It is further said that, 
 
 limited. , , * r J 1 i -i -i ' 
 
 as long as he pays those twenty-two lacs and yields due 
 obedience to the Company, no pecuniary or other demand 
 should be made of him. If I should state anything not cor- 
 rectly with regard to words, as you will have the words 
 before you afterwards, you will judge from the evidence and 
 not from my speech. It is agreed by the Governor General 
 and Council that, while he pays his tribute regularly and 
 yields due obedience to the Company, no further demands 
 shall be made of him of any kind, nor any interference with 
 Conditions his free and uncontrolled authority. There is upon the face 
 his^ndepon- f these proceedings an apparent contradiction, upon the first 
 dent autho- view of this free and uncontrolled authority. We do not 
 contend that this free and uncontrolled authority means 
 independence of the sovereignty of the Company. No ! he 
 is to be left in the exercise of free and uncontrolled authority 
 upon certain conditions. What are those conditions? I 
 mean to state them to your Lordships. 
 
 I conceive that it is perfectly competent to any sovereign
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 201 
 
 whether that sovereign he a prince of absolute power whether 22 FEB. ms. 
 
 it be a republic whether it be a mixed monarchy or whether 
 
 it be an East India Company whoever is the sovereign, has 
 
 this power to grant away by agreement a part of his sovereignty 
 
 in particular instances. What is the grant to Cheyt Sing 
 
 of this? They say : " We retain our sovereignty over you; 
 
 but agree with you that we will exercise it only in such a 
 
 manner and in such a degree, with respect to the stipulated 
 
 points." 
 
 It may be said, upon European ideas, that one duty of 
 every subject is to assist his sovereign in his exigencies with 
 money and with contribution : that duty of Cheyt Sing was 
 compounded. They say : " In lieu of the general duty 
 which you owe to me to assist me as a sovereign, I will 
 take twenty-two lacs and a half, and never ask more of any 
 kind." 
 
 For fear that should be misunderstood, they superadd : 
 " And if you pay that, and pay due obedience to the Com- 
 pany, no further demands shall be made, nor will I interfere 
 with your government ; that is to say, you shall have a free 
 and uncontrolled authority in your government as long as 
 you comply with the conditions of these stipulations." 
 
 It is said, you do not lay the proper stress upon those words, 
 Cheyt Sing is to be free and uncontrolled. How long ? As 
 long as he pays his tribute. Well and good ! that he did pay. 
 But there is another condition attached to his freedom and 
 independency, namely, that he yields due obedience to the 
 Company. Am I asked how I construe due obedience to interpreta- 
 
 o T ., ,. , , . . tionof'due 
 
 the Company ? 1 construe it, first, negatively, in not join- obedience." 
 ing and adhering to the Company's enemies ; in not plotting 
 against the Company, nor favouring those who were acting 
 against its interests. If you ask me the positive terms of 
 obedience, I state it to be this his adherence to his engage- 
 ments, and his obedience to the Company. 
 
 Now it is material to see how they state it, because it is 
 a statement which will show your Lordships the nature of the 
 argument upon which this and every other injustice of 
 Mr. Hastings is founded. They say, and yield due obedience 
 to the Company means paying the Company what money 
 they shall ask for; in short, it means, what he afterwards 
 states more emphatically, that their power is all and his 
 rights nothing. Now consider what an argument is which 
 has that condition in it so explained. Mr. Hastings first 
 states " Pay me twenty-two lacs, and I will ask you for
 
 202 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' defini- 
 tion of " so^ 
 vereignty"is 
 " absolute 
 power." 
 
 The Com- 
 pany's en- 
 gagements 
 to Cheyt 
 Sing ex- 
 plained 
 away by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings. 
 
 no more." That seems an agreement in the common nature 
 of agreements. But he superadds another condition " Pay 
 me twenty-two lacs and yield me due obedience, and I will 
 ask for no more. I construe due obedience thus give me 
 as much more as I ask : then the sum of it is this Pay me 
 twenty-two lacs per annum tribute. As long as you pay 
 that regularly, and give me as much more upon any occasion 
 as it shall please me to ask, I will ask you for nothing further." 
 But I am afraid even that would not support Mr. Hastings 
 in the business, because he has hereafter declared that by due 
 obedience he meant due obedience to sovereignty. What 
 is the meaning of the word sovereignty ? for Mr. Hastings 
 has a dictionary of his own different, thank God ! from 
 any law dictionary of this country which it is necessary 
 for us to consult upon this occasion. He will tell you, 
 the word obedience is as I have explained it. Then 
 what is sovereignty ? " Sovereignty in India," says Mr. 
 Hastings, " is a very different thing from European ideas of 
 sovereignty. Sovereignty in India means arbitrary power, 
 and nothing else." And, lest he should be thought to have 
 made a slip, and by arbitrary power [to have] meant nothing 
 more than absolute power which I take to be a very 
 different thing he explains it. He says, " Though we made 
 this agreement with Cheyt Sing, we reserved the rights of 
 sovereignty/' What are the rights of sovereignty ? " Why, 
 in India," says he, " the rights of sovereignty are arbitrary 
 power." He explains what he means by arbitrary power. 
 " The powers of the sovereign are everything ; the rights of 
 the subject are nothing." That is a complete definition ; and 
 so far, though I am in the general no admirer of Mr. Hast- 
 ings' abilities or talents for writing, I must declare that he 
 is the first person who has given a logical, pure, clear, defini- 
 tion of arbitrary power, namely, that it is where the powers 
 of the sovereign are everything, and where the rights of the 
 subjects are nothing. 
 
 Then construe his engagements upon his construction of 
 the rights of sovereign power. " We will put Cheyt Sing in 
 as good a condition as he was under Suja-ud-Dowla" he 
 might easily have put him upon as good a footing, if the 
 powers of the sovereign were everything and the rights of 
 the subject nothing. " Nay," says he, "we will do more for 
 him, we will give him ensigns of royalty ; but we will 
 reserve to ourselves, and be cautious of reserving to ourselves, 
 the power of the sovereignty " by which he means the
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 203 
 
 power to do everything, and to leave the poor man no rights 22 FEB. ms. 
 
 at all : he has so stated. Construe this agreement upon that ~~" 
 
 construction, it stands thus " As long as you behave well in 
 
 your zamindary ; as long as you do justice ; as long as you 
 
 protect the English ; as long as you do what it is your duty 
 
 to do as a vassal ; as long as you pay twenty-two lacs of 
 
 rupees annually and yield due obedience that is, give me 
 
 everything more I ask what then? then you shall have 
 
 free and uncontrolled exercise of authority in your country, 
 
 under the sovereignty of the Eat India Company ; by which 
 
 word sovereignty I mean that my power is everything and 
 
 your rights nothing." So that the reward, the return, the 
 
 quid pro quo, for his fidelity upon that subject consists in 
 
 this " Pay me your money regularly ; give me everything 
 
 else I ask ; obey me ; adhere not to my enemies ; assist me 
 
 in difficulties ; do all the duty of a subject and a vassal ; and 
 
 what then ? then you shall have the free and uncontrolled 
 
 exercise of your power under my sovereignty. When you 
 
 have done all that, I tell you your power is not anything, 
 
 and I have everything. I have the most complete arbitrary 
 
 power over your life, over your fortune, over your liberty, 
 
 and over everything; and that is to be the consequence 
 
 of your fidelity to your engagement to me in every part 
 
 of it." 
 
 There is another part of this engagement which it is mate- Arguments 
 
 ., T j i i j JTI.T agamstnght 
 
 rial for your Lordships to keep in your minds ; and I believe, of fining 
 when I state it, your Lordships will hardly suspect that what cla 
 I conceive to be a conclusive, nay, I will venture to say, \~ 
 from the boldness that belongs to me from my cause, a trium- 
 phant and irrefragable argument upon that subject, has, as 
 your Lordships will see, been used by the defendant on his 
 side of the question. 
 
 Much of the business upon this subject, in Mr. Hastings' 
 view of it, turns upon the supposed right of fining, which the 
 Company had upon the subject. Here happens to be a clause 
 in this agreement which completely proves they had no such 
 right whatever, and that if they had it they have completely, 
 virtually, given it up with respect to Cheyt Sing. For, when 
 they gave that great authority of the mint an authority 
 rarely fit to be delegated they gave it to Cheyt Sing under 
 particular terms, and stipulated with him that, if he did not 
 coin according to a certain standard or fineness which is there 
 stated, then what then? it should be competent for them 
 to fine him as they shall think fit for such an offence. 
 
 Is not this a declaration that, without such an agreement, 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings.
 
 204 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1783. they had no right to fine him for any misbehaviour what- 
 ever? Is not this a declaration that they had no such right, 
 or that they yielded it in every case except the instance 
 excepted ? 
 
 State the proposition on the other side. Here is a power 
 that has a right to fine for misdeeds, at pleasure almost ; that 
 may fine for any crime which it alleges to be committed by 
 a man ; and which declares also that the symbols of autho- 
 rity will be little against the brigades and the power of the 
 Company. That such a power should think it necessary, 
 with these full powers reserved over the whole fortune and 
 state of Cheyt Sing, to insert a little petty condition, " that 
 I may have a power to fine you in case you break this arti- 
 cle in any little thing " where was the use of putting in 
 that ? If the power was in them, they could not put it in 
 without weakening instead of strengthening that power. If 
 they were conscious that, by the uncontrolled power they 
 gave Cheyt Sing if they were conscious that, by the 
 twenty-two lacs they annually received from Cheyt Sing 
 if they were conscious that, by the whole of the proceedings 
 with Cheyt Sing, they had put him in a situation with respect 
 to them which left them no longer a power to exercise that 
 right of sovereignty called punishment by a fine then they 
 did wisely, then they did consistently, and acted like men ; 
 because they say that, " Though I give up this in this parti- 
 cular case, yet I think it important to reserve the power of 
 exercising the sovereignty in this particular instance." 
 Happy am I that there is that article in it ; because I am 
 sure that, if your Lordships could have supposed that under 
 those vague words, obedience and sovereignty, there was 
 reserved a power of fining, your Lordships would be convinced 
 by the use of those words that they knew no such power 
 existed in them, that they reserved it as a particular case, 
 to the exclusion of all others, and thereby recognised the 
 right Cheyt Sing had to the exemption from fines upon all 
 other occasions. 
 
 How has this argument been used on the other side ? It 
 has been said (in what perhaps will be brought in evidence 
 before your Lordships) that there were various rights of 
 fining. They are defended by various means, which perhaps 
 I shall have some other opportunity of stating to your 
 Lordships. They are defended, however, among others, by 
 this : says this perverse reasoner, 
 
 " The Company showed their right of fining, because they reserved it 
 in a particular instance upon a particular contingency. What they re-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 205 
 
 served upon a particular contingency they must have had a right to do 22 FEB. 1788. 
 in every contingency whatever." 
 
 And therefore he argues, that, as they agreed to keep the 
 right of fining in this instance, it perfectly proves they kept 
 it in every case whatever. It has been a common maxim 
 with us, that an exception proves a rule exceptio probat 
 regulam. But the exception proves the rule to be the other 
 way. But this is a new reserved sense of that ; it proves 
 that the rule is the same in all instances : as, where that 
 exception is mentioned, your Lordships are to observe upon 
 what a general footing this argument puts all agreements 
 whatever. For it says that, if they could agree to do it, 
 much more could I do it without agreement. Which seems 
 to imply a reasoning that, I allow, has pervaded the conduct 
 of Mr. Hastings, but which I believe was never yet con- 
 sidered as an argument by any man's understanding but his. 
 " If they could do that which they reserved a power to do 
 by treaty, much more can I do it by my power without 
 treaty : as, if a treaty was a bar to an action, if they could 
 do it consonant to a treaty, much more can I do it in direct 
 contradiction and in defiance of a treaty." He considers it 
 rather as an inducement and rather as an argument in his 
 favour to say that (: if other persons could do it, having 
 expressly reserved a power to do it, much more can I do it 
 in direct contradiction and defiance to it." 
 
 My idea, therefore, of the relation in which Cheyt Sing Relation of 
 stood to the Company is clearly that of a great vassal with ^the Sl ' 
 respect to his sovereign ; that he stood as independent as a Com P an y- 
 vassal can be that he owed allegiance to his sovereign I 
 conceive to be true, but that he stood independent in. this 
 light ; that he Avas to have a free and uncontrolled authority 
 in his own province ; and that that free and uncontrolled 
 authority was accompanied with every ensign of royalty, 
 such as the administration of criminal justice and the mint ; 
 and that there was a particular agreement that that authority 
 should remain free and uncontrolled, as long as he paid an 
 express stipulated sum, namely, twenty-two lacs of rupees, 
 and something more, per annum. 
 
 I have stated to your Lordships truly that, in almost every Mr. Hast- 
 proposition that Mr. Hastings made w r ith respect to the that &.eyt 
 arrangement with Cheyt Sing, he was seconded and sup- penficuce 6 " 
 ported by a majority in the Council, and that everything } v . as los * b ^ 
 
 IT -i i T T i i Ins paying 
 
 that he proposed was adopted. 1 am aware that that is not ins tribute 
 
 ,i rr<i r>nt Benares. 
 
 true with respect to every proposition. There is one or
 
 206 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. mighty importance ; and your Lordships will hear more of it. 
 You will see, and tremble to think upon, what threads the 
 lives, the liberties and the happiness, of the people of that 
 country depend, according to the opinion of this miserable 
 sophist as well as intolerable tyrant. He will state " The 
 Council did not adopt all I proposed." He will state many 
 instances ; none of which he can prove, except one, and that 
 he does not prove fully. He says, " I would have received 
 the tribute at Patna : they said it should be received at 
 Benares." And hear and tremble upon this, when the 
 question comes upon the liberty, upon the authority and 
 upon the situation, of a great and important prince in that 
 country " If," says he. " according to my proposition, his 
 tribute had been received at Patna, Cheyt Sing would have 
 been an independent prince of uncontrolled authority, and 
 I must have left him in the situation in which I found him. 
 But, the Company having sent to receive his tribute at 
 Benares instead of Patna, he is changed from what ? from 
 a sovereign into a subject; from a vassal into a mean and de- 
 praved zamindar; from a mean and depraved zamindar to one 
 over whom I have a complete right, an unlimited power and 
 jurisdiction; and his power and his rights are nothing at all." 
 When your Lordships consider upon what a thread that 
 depends ; when you consider that, in every other instance, 
 every proposal that he stated is adopted, and that the 
 instance whether the tribute was received at Patna or 
 whether it was received at Benares made such a difference in 
 the situation, in the life and in the fortune, of that unfor- 
 tunate man, you will be brought to doubt whether the 
 tyranny of this man, whether his insolence, his rapacity or 
 his cruelty, is more to be dreaded than the miserable sophis- 
 try he has used as an excuse for his conduct is to be despised, 
 condemned and execrated. 
 
 Sum of the This agreement was made in the way in which I have 
 
 agreement , T11 . .., T-II- MI 
 
 with Cheyt stated to your Lordships ; and, though your Lordships will see 
 many proposals upon the subject, you will find the sum of 
 them all to be this that, while the Raja shall continue faith- 
 ful to his engagements, punctual in his payments, and shall 
 pay due obedience to the authority of the Company, no more 
 demands shall be made upon him by the honourable Com- 
 pany of any kind nor upon any pretence whatever, nor shall 
 any person be allowed to disturb the peace of this country. 
 Your Lordships have heard of the construction which some 
 persons have put upon the word obedience. What an agree-
 
 Spetch of Mr. Fox. 207 
 
 ment this was, if the construction be true that I have put 22 FEB. ms. 
 upon it ! Your Lordships must consider it as completely 
 binding ; and the only conditions necessary for the perform- 
 ance were the payment of the tribute, and general fidelity 
 and obedience to the government not consisting in com- 
 pliance with particular demands, but consisting in a general 
 behaviour favourable to the government under which he held. 
 
 However, there was another transaction at this time which The advan- 
 
 , i j_i i T tages of 
 
 perhaps it may be necessary to state in this place ; i mean cheyt sing's 
 this, that it was foreseen that Cheyt Sing might not only be ^l^ff 
 an useful member of the government by the tribute he was 
 to pay, and by the barrier his country made between the Council, 
 dominions of Suja-ud-Dowla and the Company ; but it 
 was thought that he might be useful in case of a war. For- 
 tunate for the cause I maintain, fortunate for Cheyt Sing, that 
 that idea was entertained ; because, happily for the cause 
 I have to support, it will prove to your Lordships' conviction, 
 beyond a doubt, the complete illegality of all the subsequent 
 demands made upon him. For it was the opinion of the 
 Council, at the very period when they made these engage- 
 ments with Cheyt Sing, that further assistance from Cheyt 
 Sing to the Company in a military view was an object 
 desirable and in their opinion reasonable. 
 
 Let me state for your Lordships' consideration what could 
 be possibly the views of the Governor and Council at that 
 period ; what could be their opinion of the relative situation 
 of Cheyt Sing to them. It was their opinion that it would 
 be very useful if Cheyt Sing were to maintain a considerable 
 body of cavalry in time of peace in his country, in order that 
 the Company might avail itself of their assistance in time 
 of war and necessity. That was the unanimous opinion of 
 all the five gentlemen who composed the Governor and 
 Council. 
 
 I beg your Lordships to put yourselves in their circum- 
 stances, and consider how it was natural for them to act 
 upon that opinion, which was their unanimous opinion, in 
 the different views which I shall state to your Lordships. If 
 their opinion was that, by the cession of Benares by the 
 T\ r azir to the Company, all the former agreements between 
 the Wazir and the Raja were at an end, and that the Com- 
 pany were competent and at liberty to make a new stipu- 
 lation and a new agreement with the Raja, their way of 
 proceeding was clear ; for they had nothing to do but, in the 
 same instrument which confirmed to him the possession of
 
 208 - Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22 FED. 1783. his province in the same instrument by which was stipu- 
 lated that twenty-two lacs of rupees was to be the annual 
 tribute he was to pay in the same instrument they might 
 have said, " Provided you pay those twenty-two lacs of 
 rupees, and" not in general words " pay due obedience," 
 but " provided you keep such a number of cavalry as we 
 think fit to be lent to the Company upon any occasion they 
 may require." 
 
 NO clause to Why did they not insert that in their agreement ? Plainly 
 
 that effect , J . , , / . , . - ,1 ,i i j 
 
 introduced and evidently, because it was their opinion that they had no 
 agreement, right to insert in the agreement any additional conditions 
 and stipulations, on their part, beyond those which Cheyt 
 Sing was bound to with respect to the Wazir who had pre- 
 ceeded them in the sovereignty. They conceived themselves 
 bound by the antecedent treaty with the Wazir ; they 
 therefore clearly thought, in the first instance, that they 
 were bound with respect to Cheyt Sing by the antecedent 
 treaties between the Wazir and that prince. 
 
 If they had thought, as Mr. Hastings has since affected to 
 think, that, under the word sovereignty, that, under the word 
 obedience, they retained a complete arbitrary power over 
 Cheyt Sing, how would they have acted upon such an occa- 
 sion ? They would have exercised that arbitrary power in a 
 point in which it was as reasonable to exercise arbitrary 
 power as any other. They would have sent to Cheyt Sing 
 and said " We interfere not with your government so long 
 as you pay tribute and render due obedience, but we retain 
 the sovereignty. But to show you what we mean by obe- 
 dience, to show you what we mean by the sovereignty we 
 retain, we make not a request but a demand, and we order 
 you, as the first proof of your obedience, we order you, as 
 the first act of our sovereignty, to maintain two thousand 
 cavalry, of which the Company will avail themselves in time 
 of distress in the manner they see fit," Is this what they 
 do? No! They are all agreed (and that is material for your 
 Lordships to keep in mind) upon the propriety of the measure 
 that it was a desirable thing that two thousand cavalry 
 should be kept up: how do they act upon that opinion? 
 The Council They sent to Cheyt Sing, and told him their opinion upon 
 \vithre- that subject. They recommended him to keep up that 
 in^huiuo cavalry ; but so anxious and so conscious were they of their 
 force of pa relative situation to Cheyt Sing, so convinced were they of 
 cavalry. Cheyt Sing's relative situation to the Company, that he was 
 uncontrolled in the exercise of his authority, and that as long
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. , 209 
 
 as he paid his tribute arid yielded obedience they could not 22FEn.i7ss. 
 interfere in the sovereignty of his country ; that, in the very N 
 message by which they recommend to Cheyt Sing to keep 
 up this cavalry, they take care to state, that it is only a 
 recommendation and advice, that it is no command or injunc- 
 tion, and that he may act upon it as to him seems meet. 
 Nay, they do more, happily for this cause for it seems as if 
 providentially everything done in that agreement was done 
 to show the perversity, absurdity and oppression, of the 
 prisoner with respect to the power he afterwards exercised. 
 Hear these sovereigns speaking to their subjects ! Hear M'^ 
 these sovereigns of arbitrary power, whose power is every- power iis- 
 thing and the rights of whose vassals is nothing hear the thisTreco'm- 
 way in which they speak ! " Keep up some cavalry ; we mendatlon 
 advise and recommend it ; it will be a salutary measure both 
 for your own safety and ours : but we tell you it is only a 
 recommendation. If we are sovereigns in that respect, we 
 have a right to take them and avail ourselves of them : no !" 
 say they, " we will take them, paying so much for every 
 man, and in proportion for every officer." You might as well 
 say the King of Great Britain is the sovereign of Hesse-Cassel : 
 you might as well say the King of Great Britain is the sove- 
 reign of the Duchy of Brunswick : you might as well say the 
 King of Great Britain, in that sense, is the sovereign of every 
 prince with whom he has negotiated subsidiary treaties. They 
 say " We hope you will keep up so many cavalry ; we 
 advise and recommend it ; it will be a salutary measure both 
 for your safety and ours ; but we will avail ourselves of it 
 upon certain conditions, for instance, for so much per man 
 and so much per officer." Is this the language of an arbi- 
 trary sovereign? It is rather the language of one independent 
 state to another ; though that is not the relation I contend 
 for between the India Company and Cheyt Sing. 
 
 Need I trouble your Lordships with one word more upon insistanoc 
 this subject, when I have stated every expression the English SUIK'S nuie- 
 language can afford to state Cheyt Sing to be independent authority, 
 and uncontrolled ? The words independent and uncontrolled 
 are frequently used ; nay, such is the monstrous nature of 
 the man at your Lordships' bar, that, when speaking to defend 
 himself with respect to Cheyt Sing, he speaks of having given 
 him an independent and uncontrolled authority. But, lest 
 language may be considered as general, lest language may be 
 considered as vague, there are innumerable expressions such 
 asjhose I have stated ; there are many and many explana-
 
 210 ^ Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. tions of what is meant by independent and uncontrolled ; all 
 of which tend to fortify the idea I mean to apply to those 
 words, namely, independent so long as he adhered to his 
 agreement, which was to pay so many lacs of rupees and 
 he was, in general words, to be a faithful subject. 
 
 I should be very much ashamed, my Lords, considering 
 the length of time I am obliged to trouble your Lordships 
 upon this subject, if I were to be guilty of anything like 
 repetition ; but I hope your Lordships will not consider it as 
 such if I only briefly, in very few words, recapitulate to 
 your Lordships the substance of what I have been stating for 
 some time, because I am come to an era of this business, 
 iiecapituia- My Lords, I have stated though I think that immaterial 
 viousst P aTfr- to the business that Buhvant Sing was the person he is 
 ments. described to be in the Article; that, upon the death of 
 Buhvant Sing, Cheyt Sing was admitted to the succession of 
 his father by Suja-ud-Dowla upon a fixed payment. Pos- 
 sibly it may help your Lordships to state dates: That, in 
 1764, Bulwant Sing assisted the Company, and that his 
 assistance was then mentioned. That, in 1765, in the peace 
 with Suja-ud-Dowla, the authority and condition of Bulwant 
 Sing was taken care of, and guaranteed by the Company. 
 That, in the year 1770, upon the death of Bulwant Sing, 
 Cheyt Sing was admitted to a situation similar to that of 
 his father. That, in the year 1773, that was, as I state, 
 confirmed ; as Mr. Hastings stated, confirmed with additional 
 benefits to Cheyt Sing : but, in either case, it was at least 
 confirmed. That, in the year 1775, there was an intimation 
 of Asoff-ud-Dowla's intention to take five lacs of rupees in 
 advance from Cheyt Sing ; that the Company properly and 
 Mr. Hastings, their officer, acted as one of the Company 
 objected to that, as considering themselves the guarantees 
 of Cheyt Sing, and insisting that, by the spirit and by the 
 letter of the treaty, he had no right to exact anything 
 beyond the twenty-two lacs of rupees. That, afterwards, in 
 the same year 1775, the province of Benares was assigned 
 to the East India Company ; and that it was the duty of the 
 Company to consider Cheyt Sing as standing in the precise 
 relation to them that he stood in to his foi'mer sovereign. 
 That, in June, 1775, that was expressed which I have stated, 
 upon payment of a limited sum and the reservation of 
 sovereignty to the Company. And that, in July, 1775, there 
 was the recommendation of the cavalry, under all the cir- 
 cumstances with which I have stated that recommendation.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 211 
 
 I must entreat your Lordships to keep these circumstances 22FEB.178& 
 in your minds when you attend to that evidence which shall 
 be brought ; and that, if in any of those circumstances there 
 shall be a failure in proof, undoubtedly your Lordships will 
 hereafter lay them out of your mind, inasmuch as that proof 
 has failed. I now, my Lords, come to the first distinct crime 
 which I lay to the charge of Mr. Hastings. 
 
 I have stated and explained, as well as I have been able, the Anticipation 
 relation in which Cheyt Sing stood to the Company. I have men^of 
 been obliged to do it in a manner in which I should not have ?2 un J se ] for 
 
 11 i f ' i -i i -it -r tne defence 
 
 wished to have done it, it it had so happened that your Lord- necessitated 
 ships' opinion had coincided with mine upon the manner of pro- proceeding 
 ceeding ; as I certainly should not have done if it had been the court!*' 
 your Lordships' opinion as I hoped, trusted and was con- 
 fident, it would be that the prisoner should have gone upon 
 his defence as soon as we had finished the individual charge 
 against him. I would not have anticipated any part of that 
 defence ; and I would not have gone into a refutation of all 
 those strange, absurd, contradictory, futile, contemptible 
 and disgraceful, arguments which I have stated to your 
 Lordships. I would have left them to have come, if they 
 would have come, from the mouths of the Counsel on the 
 opposite side ; and would undoubtedly, in reply to them 
 afterwards, if they had stated them, have treated them as I 
 should think such arguments would deserve. But, as your 
 Lordships have instituted a mode of proceeding which seems 
 to put a considerable distance of time between the opening 
 of this charge and the answer to it, and perhaps a more 
 considerable distance between the opportunity I shall have 
 of replying to that answer, I did not think of any way in 
 which I could explain it to your Lordships better than by 
 stating all the arguments that occurred to me, and stating 
 answers to them. At the same time that I saw the fallacy 
 of this proceeding, I should not have adopted it if I did not 
 mean to give in evidence various writings and documents, in 
 which are contained all those arguments which I mean to 
 repel and to confute ; because your Lordships must know 
 that, upon this occasion, there have been various accounts by 
 the defendant himself. 
 
 He published a narrative, printed at Calcutta, upon the Mr. Hast- 
 
 subject of the business of Benares.* That narrative we ti^orth! 
 
 1 
 __ . . ( 
 
 * " A Narrative of the Insurrection vhich happened in the Zemindary of 
 Benares in the Month of August, 17S1, and of the Transactions of 'the 
 
 O 2 
 
 transaction 
 of Benares.
 
 212 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. shall give in evidence to your Lordships. That narrative 
 states itself to be though not literally taken before a 
 magistrate to be a narrative upon oath. There is the 
 most solemn attestation to the truth of the facts contained in 
 it ; and it is stated by the writer and the signer of it AVarren 
 Hastings to be written and attested under as great an 
 obligation as any paper could be written under oath.* 
 His defence There is another paper ; I mean that which was given as 
 theiiou" the defence of Mr. Hastings at the bar of the House of 
 Commons. Q ommons a paper which has been, whether ignorantly or ma- 
 liciously I know not, but certainly untruly called the defence 
 which that person Avas called upon to make at the bar of 
 the House of Commons. f It was no such thing. Upon the 
 proceedings against Mr. Hastings not in consequence of an 
 eloquent speech, but in consequence of evidence resulting 
 from inquiry, and the conviction of the House of Commons 
 upon evidence and accusation, it was thought fit to go to a 
 certain length in that inquiry. Mr. Hastings, of his own 
 motion, at his own desire, appeared before the House of 
 Commons and made his defence. At his own desire, that 
 defence was taken down in writing and delivered at the 
 table of the House of Commons. Therefore, my Lords, when 
 I mean hereafter to bring that in evidence before you, I beg 
 to take this early opportunity of stating that it was not a 
 defence called for, but a voluntary defence offered by the 
 prisoner at the bar, [and] which he meant to impose upon 
 the House of Commons and the public as an account of his 
 actions whether a false one or a true one will hereafter be 
 examined. But I have a right to state all that is in that 
 defence in the way in which I have stated it, and in the 
 way in which I shall perhaps make a further use of it. 
 Therefore, if I have taken that which I admit to be not in 
 general the most regular mode of argument in proceedings of 
 this kind, I have stated as arguments [what] we shall bring 
 in evidence before your Lordships, and the repelling and 
 refuting of which is a good way, perhaps, of explaining 
 and illustrating what my sentiments are, and which I trust 
 will be your Lordships' upon them especially as the mode of 
 proceeding adopted by your Lordships seems to put at so 
 
 Governor General in that District; with an Appendix of Authentic Papers 
 and Affidavits. Calcutta. Printed by order of (he Governor General, 1782 ; " 
 in 4to. 
 
 * See pages 1 to 5 of the " Narrative." 
 
 f See a preceding note, page 75.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 213 
 
 great a distance the arguments from the mouth from which 22 FEB. im. 
 we shall expect to hear them from the opening ; which I 
 can't help here regretting upon this account. 
 
 I should feel more pleasantly and more happily if I stood 
 here stating what I state with an hope that it might be 
 answered ; with an hope that it might be treated in the way 
 in which it deserves to be treated, within a few days after 
 the time at which I state it and prove it here ; that if I state 
 anything fallacious it may be done away instanter, if possible, 
 and erased from the breasts of your Lordships. That hope is 
 gone from me : therefore I state what I do state with more 
 apprehension. Still the time will come ; because we are not 
 persons to be discouraged, by any difficulty or seeming 
 difficulty in the mode of proceeding, from doing justice to our 
 country. Let the statement I have made be examined ; let 
 it be criticised. Let another statement be made, if it can be 
 made, different from that which I have made : I shall be 
 glad to subscribe to it. But they cannot make any statement 
 which will justify the subsequent proceedings. I have now, 
 therefore, finished the period of agreement with Cheyt Sing. 
 
 If your Lordships were as well acquainted with the public interval 
 character of Mr. Hastings as I am I mean, if it had fallen asr^TOcnt 16 
 to your Lordships' province to read such volumes of the 
 history of his political life as it has been my duty to do I 
 am sure your Lordships would for a moment express some 
 surprise at what I am about to state. I, who know the 
 fact, should be greatly surprised if I could not immediately 
 account for it. Here is a treaty, made in the year 1775 
 and not broke till the year 1778 a singular instance in the 
 history of Mr. Hastings : and I would almost venture to 
 say, if in any other instance of his life you can show me 
 his subscription to any instrument, and that three years 
 passed before he broke it, that it was a term of prescription 
 and indemnity, and allow him to escape your Lordships' 
 justice upon that ground. 
 
 It is a degree of dilatoriness it is a degree of delay it 
 is a degree of mercy in him that I should not account 
 for upon anything I know of his character ; if there were 
 not some good reasons to account for it which I shall relate 
 to your Lordships. It so happened that this treaty, though 
 Mr. Hastings advised it though Mr. Hastings recommended 
 it though Mr. Hastings was a party to it was not, 
 strictly speaking, Mr. Hastings' treaty; and he had not the 
 same affection for the treaties of others as he had for his
 
 214 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22FEB.17SS. own. He would let them lay by unobserved and unbroken; 
 for to be observed and broken were with him the same 
 thing. He would treat the works of other men with a 
 degree of indifference with which he would not treat his 
 own. 
 
 There was also another circumstance in this treaty ; that 
 for a considerable time after the making this treaty he had 
 no power of breaking it ; that the majority of the Council 
 were against him, and, though in effect this treaty was made 
 by his own suggestion with their approbation, yet they 
 differed with him so much in other points that he, who 
 could persuade them to signing this treaty, could certainly 
 not prevail with them for the breach of it. That accounts 
 for this treaty remaining so long unbroken so different 
 from any other treaty to which Mr. Hastings was a party. 
 I am willing to admit further and I cannot account for it 
 that, even after Mr. Hastings arrived at a greater state of 
 power, that, even then, between one and two years elapsed 
 before he broke this treaty. How he came to wait for an 
 opportunity to break it, contrary to his usual custom, I 
 cannot account. But, even in the life of such a man as 
 Mr. Hastings, one can no more be expected to account for 
 this delay than if, in the life of a virtuous man and a good 
 citizen, it appeared that for some months in his life he had 
 delayed and deferred what he thought a general and indis- 
 pensable duty. 
 
 Mr. Hast- However, in the year 1778, Mr. Hastings, who had 
 
 sulonon 111 undoubtedly looked eagerly for an opportunity upon this 
 
 fo^flvfials subject, took one which he seemed to think a fit one. I 
 
 of pee<=, on gh a fl observe in some degree upon that opportunity. He 
 
 war with says that, upon the news of a war with France, he sent a 
 
 lce ' requisition for five lacs of rupees to Cheyt Sing. Upon that 
 
 period I beg to make this observation that the plea in 
 
 general for demands upon Cheyt Sing is not the probable 
 
 necessity of the Company but the actual necessity of the 
 
 Company. If probable necessity were a plea for this out- 
 
 suchade- rageous demand, why did not Suia-ud-DoAvla make that 
 
 maud not , D ,. i *-,o o TJTTI i i , -\ * TT 
 
 sanctioned demand in J77o f Why aid not Mr. Hastings countenance 
 
 suja^d? f him in such a demand ? "Was Mr. Hastings ignorant in the 
 
 Dowia. vear 1773? Was he not on the contrary too knowing? 
 
 And, to use the lawyers' phrase, was he not conscious, in 
 
 the literal sense of the word, that Suja-ud-Dowla was 
 
 upon the point of making war with the Eohillas ? When 
 
 Suja-ud-Dowla was about to make war with the Rohillas,
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 215 
 
 did Mr. Hastings suggest to Suja-ud-Dowla or permit him 22 FEB. m , 
 to make this suggestion to him " I made this agreement, it 
 is true, with Cheyt Sing of twenty-two lacs of rupees for his 
 stipulated payment ; but, in times of war, in times of 
 exigency and in times of danger, I have a right to exact 
 more. That time now exists; for I am about to make 
 war for the extirpation of a whole people " ? That undoubt- 
 edly could not be considered as a trifling and inconsiderable 
 war. He did not state it, Therefore, I state that Mr. 
 Hastings certainly knew this, that if there were which I 
 deny and shall prove that if there were a possibility of 
 grounding upon the argument of necessity the tyrant's old 
 plea a cause for breaking the engagement with Cheyt Sing, 
 it must, if any ground upon that subject, be actual danger 
 and difficulty, and not a probable foresight of contingent 
 danger and difficulty. 
 
 Now what was his ground upon which he made this Not justified 
 demand of five lacs? He had heard of a war with France 
 undoubtedly a report very much to be attended to by a 
 person in his situation. But, on the other hand, was the 
 Company in distress ? Was their treasury low ? Were they 
 in want of money ? We will produce to your Lordships a 
 statement of Mr. Hastings upon that subject, which, whether 
 true or false, makes the revenues of the Company to be in 
 the most flourishing situation ; which makes their treasury to 
 be abundant to almost an incredible degree : it makes them 
 to be in the actual possession of a surplus, as he states it, of 
 two krors of rupees that is to say, two millions sterling 
 of money. 
 
 Xow it would be hard I think, and I shall not urge it in Smaiincss of 
 that view, to state the smallness of the demand upon this 
 subject as any way making against Mr. Hastings ; but can I 
 believe that Mr. Hastings can your Lordships believe or 
 will you admit it for a moment, that, when he makes a 
 demand of 50,000, and no more than 50,000 I do not 
 mean to say that if he had made it more he would not be 
 much more guilty but, as I state to your Lordships, can 
 it be believed that Mr. Hastings should make a demand 
 of 50,OOOZ. upon Cheyt Sing, not upon the general principle 
 that he had a right to demand it annually, not that it should 
 be an increase of tribute, but upon the exigencies of the 
 Company, at a time when the treasury was so full that 
 there was a surplus of two millions sterling of money? 
 
 I have no doubt but your Lordships I mean such of you
 
 216 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22FEB.i7>.8. as have not looked deeply into this subject are ready with 
 NotTpart of an answer upon that. You may say <( Fifty thousand 
 tal e on tiie pounds was as much as this man could bear to pay ; but you 
 empire. are to consider it as part of a general tax to be laid upon 
 the empire for the general exigencies of a war : that then 
 undoubtedly 50,0007. might be a very considerable object, 
 as a precedent and a criterion by which the payment of 
 other persons in similar circumstances ought to be regulated." 
 I admit that argument and admit it in the full force of it. 
 But your Lordships will be by-and-bye astonished to hear, 
 when you have taken that argument in your breasts and 
 given it all the influence there it has a right to possess, when 
 you find this very Mr. Hastings declared, when put to him 
 if a tax, why not a general tax upon others in similar circum- 
 stances ? he declares in his Defence that is now actually a 
 matter of record before your Lordships he declares in his 
 Defence at your Lordships' bar, that there were no others in 
 similar circumstances whatever, and therefore no others to 
 whom such a tax was applicable. Therefore I beg leave here 
 to state the smallness of the sum in this view. 
 
 When your Lordships consider the action, you must con- 
 sider it in a variety of lights ; you must first consider it in 
 the strict light of justice. If your Lordships be of opinion 
 which I am sure you will not that this is a question to be 
 considered, not merely in the strict light of justice, but in 
 something of a political equity upon the subject, then it would 
 be material to state the smallness of the consideration for 
 which a treaty, in a great many views, was actually broken, 
 and for which, finally and ultimately, in its consequences, 
 one of the princes of India was expelled from his territories. 
 
 It was not with a view to a general tax and a general 
 
 supply to the treasury; for I have the authority of 
 
 Mr. Hastings to say there was no other person in Cheyt 
 
 Sing's circumstances, and no other to whom that general 
 
 NO defici- tax would be applicable. At a time too when the treasury 
 
 cncyinthc .-, p , -i ,1 , MT 
 
 treasury. was in the possession or two krors that is, two millions 
 sterling for the sake of 50,000/. more was this treaty 
 disregarded, was this treaty violated, and the British name 
 and reputation in the subsequent consequences dishonoured 
 and lost in India. 
 
 Whether that statement made of the Company's finances 
 by Mr. Hastings were just or not, is not now for me to 
 investigate : nor do I know that I have the means here 
 before your Lordships of investigating it : but I have a right
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 217 
 
 to state, not what was the state of the finances in India which 22 FEB. 17* 
 for this purpose is no object of my consideration but I have to 
 state to your Lordships' consideration what was Mr. Hastings' 
 opinion of the state of the finances at that time ; for by his 
 opinion of them was his conduct to be regulated at the time, 
 and not by any subsequent judgment that I or any other 
 man might form of the state of the finances at that moment. 
 I wish your Lordships therefore to consider what was the 
 actual state of the Company at the time he made this demand 
 of five lacs. There was the rumour of a French war on 
 one hand, admitted as a ground of apprehension. There 
 was the fulness of the Indian treasury and the abundance 
 of resources, as an argument, which I think cannot be 
 denied, on the other hand, as a security against any imme- 
 diate exigency or want. 
 
 When Mr. Hastings made this demand of five lacs, it was False plea 
 made in a manner that seemed to leave it doubtful whether sf 
 it was asked as a favour of Cheyt Sing or as a matter of 
 right. Cheyt Sing made, according to the custom of the 
 princes of that country, some objections to the payment ; 
 not so much though in some instances it will be proved that 
 he did in the nature of right, as pleading poverty. That 
 it is very much the custom of the princes of that country, 
 to conceal the degree of wealth which belongs to them ; 
 that they are very apt to underrate their resources, and to 
 state them to be smaller than they are in fact. If that is 
 considered as an hostile fact to the princes of that country, 
 I, on their part, and in some degree as their advocate, am 
 perfectly ready to admit at your Lprdships' bar that that is 
 the case, not with the princes in India only, but I believe it 
 is generally so in the case of those great subjects, whom I 
 denominate princes, who are the subjects of the Company. 
 I am also ready to admit and I leave your Lordships all the 
 reflections you will make, to the honour of the government of 
 that Company and the honour of the name of the govern- 
 ment of Great Britain, on this fact that it is a govern- 
 ment where the practice of the subjects is to conceal and 
 not to boast of their wealth. I wish I could admit of that 
 fact in favour of the Indian princes, without admitting at 
 the same time the strong fact against the British government ; 
 for there cannot be a more irrefragable mark of a tyrannical 
 government than where the subjects, instead of being osten- 
 tatious and boasting of the value of their property, think 
 it necessary to underrate and conceal it, in order to keep
 
 218 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 17$ 
 
 Payment 
 made bv 
 him. 
 
 Demand re- 
 newed by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings the 
 following 
 year. 
 
 Demand re- 
 peated in 
 1780. 
 
 The demand 
 illegal. 
 
 it, if possible, from the grasp of power and from the hand 
 of oppression. 
 
 Cheyt Sing did therefore plead falsely, I believe, in a great 
 degree his incapacity of payment. He however did complete 
 the payment by the 10th of October, 1 778. I wish these dates 
 to be kept in some degree in your Lordships' minds ; because, 
 in the way in which I shall state the argument, they are in 
 my conception of some importance. Cheyt Sing hoped that, 
 as this demand was on a peculiar exigency, it would be the 
 demand of one year only. However, Mr. Hastings con- 
 sidered it as a demand during the war : therefore he renewed 
 it upon the next year. He made the same demand the next 
 year ; the same difficulties were stated ; and the last pay- 
 ment, I think, was not made until the 21st of October. 
 
 There is a circumstance in this year which it is necessary 
 to mention, that there was so much doubt of Cheyt Sing's 
 willingness and acquiescence in the payment of this money, 
 that there were some troops ordered to be ready to compel 
 him, and he was charged some small sum about two thou- 
 sand pounds sterling for the expense of those troops. 
 
 In the year 1780, this demand was repeated upon the 
 same pretences : the same excuses, or, as they are called, 
 shuffling evasions, were made by Cheyt Sing ; and the whole 
 was paid on the 20th of October, 1780; that is, within 
 one day of the same period as it had been paid upon the 
 preceding year; one day sooner than it had been paid in 
 the year 1779. Now, before I enter upon the subsequent 
 part of this business, I wish to state to your Lordships that 
 I mean to press to your Lordships that the demand of five 
 lacs of rupees by Mr. Hastings upon Cheyt Sing was contrary 
 to law ; that it was illegal ; that it was contrary to ngree- 
 ment ; that it was contrary to treaty ; and, considering the 
 power of the person who demanded it, that it was tyrannical 
 and oppressive. 
 
 My Lords, I think it fair to state that in some degree this 
 might be considered as the act of the Council, as well as the 
 act of Mr. Hastings. And here I beg leave to state a 
 general principle that, in an executive council, every man 
 is answerable for his acts ; and that, if Mr. Hastings or any 
 man proposes to such executive council an illegal, tyrannical 
 or oppressive, act, the adoption of that act by the council 
 takes no responsibility whatever from him. Otherwise, your 
 Lordships would know that the wisdom of this legislature 
 never would have provided that India, or any government,
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 219 
 
 should be governed by an executive council; for, the 22 FEB. 
 moment an executive power is delegated to anyone, that 
 executive power must be absolute tyranny, unless there be 
 a responsibility in those who execute it. And if you take 
 away that responsibility from a person, by stating it to be 
 the act of the council, you take away the responsibility of 
 the whole. Therefore I hold it as a proposition which can- 
 not be disputed, that a person for his acts, in an executive 
 council, is responsible in exactly the same manner as if he 
 had the whole powers in himself and executed them upon 
 his own opinion. I shall not therefore trouble your Lordships 
 with my opinion upon this subject ; because I anticipated it 
 in what I have stated to your Lordships to be my conceptions 
 of the nature of the agreement between the East India 
 Company and Cheyt Sing. 
 
 If it be true that Suja-ud-Dowla, as I have stated, was 
 bound by an agreement to exact no more from Cheyt 
 Sing than twenty-two lacs of rupees if it be true that 
 Asoff-ud-Dowla was bound by the same condition if it be 
 true that Mr. Hastings knew and recognised the validity of 
 that agreement and the force of that condition, by preventing 
 Asoff-ud-Dowla from taking 6ve lacs in advance from Cheyt 
 Sing, in the year 1775 if it be true that the Governor 
 General and Council did nothing but receive the province of 
 Benares upon the same condition on which it was held of 
 Asoff-ud-Dowla if it be true that they increased his 
 independence, rather than diminished it, by the grant of the 
 criminal jurisdiction and of the mint if it be true that they 
 bound themselves not to make any further exactions of any 
 kind, or upon any pretence to interfere in the government 
 of that country if it be true that they recognised that right 
 in Cheyt Sing, in so clear a manner that when they meant to 
 reserve a right to punish him for coining false money they re- 
 served that right expressly if it be true that this providing two 
 thousand cavalry was a point they did not venture to enjoin ; 
 was a point they did not venture to command, but simply re- 
 commended, and took care that what they pointed [presented ?] 
 as a recommendation should be understood as nothing but a re- 
 commendation if it should be further true that, in the mode 
 of that recommendation, they proved their opinion that they 
 had no right to the requisition, by stating that, whenever 
 they should want to borrow, then they would pay for them 
 according to stipulated terms agreed upon if all these be true, 
 nay if any one of these things be true though all the rest be
 
 220 Openiny of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. false, it is perfectly clear that that agreement, bound Mr. 
 Hastings and the India Company, and bound Mr. Hastings 
 more particularly than any other man, to take but twenty-two 
 lacs from Cheyt Sing ; that he should exact no other payment 
 of any kind, nor interfere with the government of his 
 country upon any pretence whatever, so long as he paid 
 that tribute and yielded obedience to the Company. 
 Defence that Upon this occasion, there are two sorts of defence endea- 
 did'uot ob- voured to be set up. One is a defence which I hardly know 
 how far it is fit to mention to the gravity of this assembly 
 though it has been much relied upon because it is merely 
 levelled against one individual, who is not among the com- 
 mittee of Managers : much do I lament that he is not, both 
 for the sake of public example and for the advantage of this 
 prosecution. But that argument is levelled only at him, 
 ad hominem, and has nothing to do with the decision of your 
 Lordships upon this subject. It has been said that in that 
 Council, though General Clavering was no more, though 
 Colonel Monson was no more, there still existed a represen- 
 tative of their opinions and a representative of their character. 
 That they could not have given a better, because they could 
 not have given a more honourable, description of the character 
 of Mr. Francis I am ready to admit, but they state that he 
 was implicated in this demand with Mr. Hastings, because 
 he was present and did not object to it. We shall bring to 
 your Lordships evidence upon that subject I mean the 
 minutes of those different Councils by which it will plainly 
 appear, out of the Governor General's own mouth, that Mr. 
 Francis had stated his doubts, if not his opinion, against the 
 legality of that measure ; but, trusting to the executive 
 government of the country, thinking that it was a very 
 different thing to ask merely as a request and without any 
 force or pretence of right that which possibly he might know 
 might be cheerfully given, there might be an acquiescence 
 to that subject which implied no opinion upon the right 
 whatever. But it will appear, upon the evidence and from 
 Mr. Hastings' own minute, that Mr. Francis had specially 
 stated his opinion against the right, and that it was his opinion 
 upon the right that guided Mr. Hastings' actions afterwards. 
 Your Lordships will perceive that it is one thing to assert a 
 right in defiance of an agreement, and that it is another 
 thing to request from a subject, an ally or any person whom 
 you will, anything that is in his power to grant or withhold, 
 if done without any claim whatever to authority or power.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 221 
 
 Upon the subject of this species of defence let me say one 22FEB.178S. 
 word, though it may be out of this question. Your Lordships Effect of the 
 see what a just tribute even guilt pays to innocence see cognising" 
 what a just tribute even those who have acted contrary to onvir. tcgrity 
 law and contrary to right principles pay to the character of Francis. 
 those who have obeyed their superiors and acted upon the 
 principles of justice and of right. For it is brought here in 
 defence of Mr. Hastings, not that this was right not that 
 this was equitable not that this was just not that it had 
 the approbation of this, that or the other but that it had the 
 approbation of Mr. Francis; because he considered Mr. Merits of tho 
 Francis as the representative of that government in India, council op - 
 imder General Clavering and under Colonel Monson, which Hastings!"' 
 I have heard said in my life that it would have been fortunate 
 for that country if it had never existed, and that those 
 persons could have been spared out of the world. If the 
 same misfortune that had lost Mr. Vansittart had lost 
 General Clavering, Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, the 
 country would have been one uninterrupted scene of rapine 
 and oppression. We should have lost that short but glorious 
 interval in which the government of the East India Company 
 in India was just, upright and respectable. And, though two 
 of those honourable persons exist no more, that government 
 lives, to the honour of this country, in the memory of the 
 people of it. Jt lives in the memory of the people of 
 Great Britain ; and has been the means, by the good 
 regulations introduced, and in some instances by the good 
 principles they had laid down, of enlightening Great Britain 
 upon the subject of India more than all the documents 
 and records of the Company could enlighten them. If, at this 
 moment, principles of policy and justice are applied to the 
 government of that country, which people knew not how 
 formerly to apply to them, it is owing to those three gentle- 
 men, who made it the business and duty of their lives to 
 conform in every instance to the orders of their superiors, and 
 to act in every instance upon the principles upon which they 
 were sent to command in that country. It is therefore 
 glorious to them to hear that principle of defence set up here 
 but to your Lordships it is nothing. 
 
 If it should be proved that Mr. Francis, having success- justification 
 fully combated for years while these two men lived, but efs^n not an ~ 
 afterwards unsuccessfully, made less opposition to this opposing 
 
 ,, i . V . i , , ,. rt , . TIT the measure. 
 
 measure than perhaps might be expected from him, I believe 
 those who reason right will indulge that to human frailty.
 
 22:2 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 -2-2 FEB^i788. But those who are not willing to do that will think, at least' 
 that it is no justification of the Governor General, but, on the 
 contrary, an aggravation to the last degree, that he hath not 
 only done what we state him to have done with respect to 
 Cheyt Sing, but that he brought the government of India 
 into such a situation that an honest man hardly dare to state 
 what he thought the rights of Cheyt Sing, but, upon his 
 stating them, he should bring the vengeance of the Governor 
 General upon the unhappy prince he thought to defend. I 
 am perfectly convinced that your Lordships will regard all 
 arguments ad hominem to be upon this occasion of no effect 
 whatever. 
 
 The com- There is another argument upon the subject which has 
 
 pany'sac- , ,. ,., r , !_ i_ T 1 11 
 
 quiescence more the appearance of solidity, and upon which 1 shall 
 m the i ,- venture some W0 rds to your Lordships. Mr. Hastings has 
 stated that he communicated this intention of levying five 
 lacs to the India Company at home, and by their silence he 
 conceived them to be acquiescing in the legality and in the 
 propriety of the demand. I have had occasion formerly to 
 state, in other assemblies, though not in this, my opinion of 
 the conduct of the East India Company with respect to the 
 direction of their servants. I am afraid that one general 
 principle has pervaded the whole of it that, however, 
 abstractedly, they have recommended justice, equity and 
 moderation, they have in no instance reprobated the contrary, 
 when the contrary has been productive or apparently produc- 
 tive of pecuniary resources to the Company. That that has 
 been the character of that unfortunate Company that that 
 has been the character of the court of Directors I am ready 
 to declare, not from my own opinion but from the authorita- 
 tive opinions in my judgment of Parliament itself. It was 
 upon the ground of their inattention to those principles that 
 the Commons passed a bill, which I had the honour to bring 
 to your Lordships' bar, to suspend for a time the powers of 
 the East India Company upon any such subjects whatever. 
 That bill was rejected by your Lordships. But I will say that 
 the same principles upon which I brought that bill, however 
 it may differ in other respects and points which it is not my 
 business here now to dispute dictated to a subsequent House 
 of Commons to bring another bill to the bar of your Lordships, 
 which you have adopted, and it is become the law of this 
 country ; which has gone, not to suspend the power of the 
 Directors or the charters of the Company upon this subject, 
 but for ever totally to annihilate and extinguish it : because
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 223 
 
 you have and, as far as that goes, wisely I think put out 22FEB.17&8 
 of their power to make regulations of that sort upon which 
 Mr. Hastings justifies himself. You have put them to 
 another tribunal, who I trust composed however they may 
 be composed would never have suffered such a representation, 
 such a suggestion and such a demand, as this to have been 
 made, without a reprehension upon such a demand. 
 
 If your Lordships admit this species of defence, consider Danger of 
 the principle that you will lay down. Consider how prolific Go vwnor a of 
 it will be, if your Lordships lay it down as a principle that, justified by 
 when a Governor in India has done anything, that he has 
 stated his having done it to the Company and the Company 
 do not reprehend him for it, it is justifiable. Consider how, 
 by a collusion between the Governor and the Company, every 
 species and denomination of oppression, every kind and sort 
 of cruelty, and every degree of exaction and extortion, 
 everything that disgraces the British name and character, 
 may be perpetrated in that country ; and then, so far from 
 punishing them, that you cannot hear the accusation that 
 there is a kind of bar pleaded in your House against taking 
 into your consideration the subject. 
 
 Who were the India Company at this time ? Were they 
 part of the government of this country ? ^o ; they were a 
 separate and distinct body of men, having rights independent 
 of the sovereignty of this country ; in some instances at least 
 they were so considered. Then, if you admit their sanction to be 
 a justification, name to me the species of outrage name to 
 me the species of extortion name to me the species of 
 tyranny name to me the species of cruelty name to me the 
 species of disgrace to the British name that has been 
 committed in India, which you will be allowed to inquire into, 
 if it is competent for the prisoner at the bar to tell you upon 
 that subject, " I informed the Company of what I did upon 
 that subject; they approved of it; you must inquire no 
 further into it." By considering that argument for a moment 
 and declaring it worthy your attention, you pass a general 
 act of indemnity for every species of crime that can be com- 
 mitted in that country. Could such an argument be pleaded 
 anywhere ? I trust not. Much less can it be pleaded here. 
 
 It is the glory of the Commons ; it is one of their principal, 
 undoubted and acknowledged, privileges ; that no pardon 
 from the Crown could be pleaded in bar of an impeachment 
 here. Well, if that cannot be pleaded in bar, shall a con- 
 structive pardon of the East India Company (for what is
 
 224 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB.1788. it else ?) be pleaded at the bar of your Lordships' House ? If 
 the Sovereign cannot exercise his noblest prerogative, that 
 of pardon and mercy, if that be barred, shall the connivance, 
 the tacit implied pardon, of the India Company be pleaded 
 at the bar of your House to stop your inquiry into what the 
 Commons of Great Britain state to your Lordships to be illegal 
 and tyrannical ? 
 
 I trust therefore that these two arguments the one of 
 which is a personal recrimination and personal application 
 ad hominem, rather than any solid argument ; the other 
 one which tends to justify every, the worst, excess committed 
 in India I say, if these are the descriptions of these acts, 
 I am sure your Lordships will pay no attention to them. 
 
 Exaction I therefore charge the exaction from Cheyt Sing of five 
 
 fromChcyt , r . . , * 
 
 sing of five lacs or rupees, it an exaction ana not a mere request 1 
 ami tyranni- charge it to be illegal; I charge it to be unjustifiable ; and, 
 caj - considering the evident power of the person who made it, I 
 
 charge it to be tyrannical and oppressive. 
 
 Apobgy for My Lords, I am sensible that upon this part of the subject, 
 
 argument, which appears to me to be so clear and self-evident, I have 
 
 taken more of the time of your Lordships than the subject 
 
 Reference in itself deserved. I have done so the more because I know 
 
 opinions 1 ' that it is a subject upon which doubts have been raised by 
 
 Pitt. by r ' the greatest and most respectable abilities in this country, 
 
 and that those have been employed in various times in stating 
 
 difficulties upon this subject, and doubts upon the absolute 
 
 point of law.* My respect for the greatness of those 
 
 abilities which I should be sorry not to have had this 
 
 opportunity to acknowledge my respect for the authority 
 
 and situation of the person who so urged them, has made it 
 
 appear necessary for me to go more at large in dilating and 
 
 proving this point, which is a great point in this cause, than 
 
 possibly I should otherwise have done. When I say I have 
 
 spent too much time upon this subject, I mean it in these 
 
 two lights, which I will explain to your Lordships. First, 
 
 because, as I say, I think it so clear a proposition that it 
 
 requires little argument and little reasoning to enforce. 
 
 There is also another reason, which I suspect will much 
 
 * In this and the following passages, Fox refers to Mr. Pitt's speech on the 
 charge relative to the Kaja of Benares, delivered in the House of Commons 
 on the 13th of June, 1776, and in -which, after asserting the legality of the 
 fine exacted from Cheyt Sing, he supported the motion for the charge on the 
 ground of Mr. Hastings' conduct in the transaction having been "cruel, unjust 
 and oppressive."
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 225 
 
 surprise those of your Lordships who know only by rumour 22 FEB. 1738. 
 the general state of this question. 
 
 I have no doubt, if your Lordships have not examined the Compliance 
 particulars of this business, but only the general fate of that sL^with 
 unfortunate prince for whom I stand at the bar, if you have theexaction - 
 only a general popular knowledge of this subject, you will 
 naturally suppose that this exaction was resisted that Chey t 
 Sing refused to pay this sum and that, in consequence of 
 such refusal, compulsion was adopted ; and, in consequence 
 of that compulsion, Cheyt Sing was expelled his territory ; 
 upon which followed the rebellion and all the consequences 
 I shall by-and-by have the honour to relate to your Lord- 
 ships. But how surprised will a great part of this auditory 
 be, who have only a general and popular knowledge of this 
 subject, when I come to call to your Lordships' notice what I 
 have just stated that this exaction, unreasonable as it was, 
 contrary to treaty, illegal, tyrannical, oppressive and faithless, 
 was nevertheless punctually complied with ; that this exaction 
 was not the cause of anything that happened afterwards. 
 And if your Lordships should be of opinion that this treaty 
 should be construed in the way in which Mr. Hastings 
 construed it, that he had a right to levy these five lacs, they 
 will then have this triumph over me, that I have endeavoured 
 to prove Avhat I have been unsuccessful in demonstrating. 
 But they will have no other ; for if the exaction was just, 
 legal and proper, it will not make one atom in defence of 
 Mr. Hastings upon the subsequent part of his conduct ; it 
 will not make a shadow of justification, a shadow of pallia- 
 tion or excuse, or alter the character of the other crimes 
 which I shall lay to his charge in the subsequent part of this 
 business. 
 
 These requisitions were made in three following years, The requi- 
 1778, 1779 and 1780, and they were all paid, to the last punctually 
 farthing of what was exacted, and 2,OOOZ. more for the troops paid- 
 which were said to be necessary for the compulsion. In the 
 first year it was paid on the 10th, in the second year on the 
 21st, and in the last year on the 20th, of October. 
 
 One would have thought, my Lords, that this requisition object of 
 was at least doubtful enough in its principle ; that there was ings to^um 
 at least a shadow of right in the Raja ; that there was at Cheyt sin *' 
 least what the lawyers have called a scintilla juris in the 
 situation of the Raja, that might have made it reasonable 
 that the Governor General should be contented with the pay- 
 ments which Cheyt Sing made, though they happened to 
 
 p
 
 226 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. be by some weeks or by some months later than the period 
 at which he expected to receive them. But that, as I shall 
 show hereafter, was not the Governor's intention. It was 
 not his wish to have these five lacs for the exigencies of the 
 Company ; for, with its abundant treasury, five lacs was no 
 object with him. His object was to ruin Cheyt Sing ; to 
 expel him from his territories; to punish him for a fault 
 which I will state to your Lordships what it was ; and, when 
 you compare the offence with the punishment, you will con- 
 sider with horror and look with dread at what are the powers 
 of arbitrary government. 
 
 Offence Cheyt Sing, in common with all the other princes con- 
 
 inven by T.I i T i /-< i 
 
 Cheyt Sing nected with the India Company, knew that it was a matter 
 ings by pre^" of infinite importance to him to be upon terms of favour 
 conmtuiat- anc ^ protection with the actual government of that country, 
 f whomever it might consist. Cheyt Sing, well or ill 
 informed, had received intelligence, as he thought to be 
 relied upon, from this country that Mr. Hastings had re- 
 signed the office of Governor General, and that that office was 
 like to be executed by General Clavering. Cheyt Sing 
 did upon that what undoubtedly your Lordships would not 
 do ; because you have all great, noble, elevated and indepen- 
 dent, sentiments ; because you live in a country where you 
 have no necessity for the favour of power, where you are in 
 situations and conditions not to care for any favour which 
 power can bestow, and perfectly secure against all the mis- 
 chiefs which power can inflict. I do not say your Lordships 
 would, but let me say there is no country in Europe where 
 the nobility would not, when they foresaw or heard of a 
 change of government, take the earliest opportunity to show 
 that all the kindness, affection, submission, they expressed to 
 the preceding governors, were transferred to their successors. 
 I know these are sentiments which in this country, used to 
 high, independent, sentiments of freedom, shock the ears of 
 my auditory ; but these are sentiments of which if I were to 
 speak in France, of which if I were to speak in Germany or 
 other parts of Europe, I should be perfectly understood. 
 But if I should be perfectly understood in other parts of 
 Europe, much more should I be understood in India. Con- 
 sider what a person in that country has at stake : not a 
 paltry pretence for power, or rewards or trinkets ; No ! 
 But where it has been the opinion of some governor that 
 arbitrary power is the law of the country, that their rights 
 are nothing and the power of the sovereign is everything, if
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 227 
 
 in such countries any man should condescend to something 22 FEB. ms. 
 like mean arts to secure the favour of a governor, so endued 
 with power and so disposed to exert power as some governors 
 have been, will any man impute it to meanness or improper 
 behaviour that a great prince of that country was among the 
 for wardest to pay his court to the new governor? to show 
 that his attachment was not to the person of the governor, 
 but what all attachments should perhaps be to the govern- 
 ment itself? 
 
 It so happened that Cheyt Sing, who had mistaken infor- 
 mation of Mr. Hastings' intended resignation and the ad- 
 vancement of Sir John Clavering, thought no time should 
 be lost ; and he was sending his vakil with the greatest 
 degree of hurry to pay his respects to Sir John Clavering. 
 I believe he was undeceived before the vakil came to Cal- 
 cutta ; but, whether he was or was not, of such a strange 
 miud appears to have been the gentleman now at your bar, 
 that he considered this, which any man would consider only 
 as a proof of the arbitrary power of the English in India 
 which any person would consider only as a symptom of the 
 low, the miserable, condition of those dependent upon the 
 English power in India, or at worst something like mean- 
 ness and time-serving in the person who did it Mr. Hast- 
 ings conceived this as a mortal affront, and [as one] which I 
 believe he has candour enough, if he were to speak at your 
 Lordships' bar now, to tell you he has not yet forgiven. 
 
 My Lords, I have now done what I conceive to be a most charge of 
 dangerous thing in a prosecutor, and which I would not Motive 118 
 have ventured upon if I were not sure and confident that I jf^f * Mr - 
 can make it out by irrefragable proof I have not only now 
 charged the fact, but I have charged the motive, as if that 
 were distinct from the fact. 
 
 With respect to the charge of motive, I have always 
 understood it to be clear, indisputable and incontroverti- 
 ble, that when an accuser makes out certain facts, all the 
 malicious, all the bad and corrupt, motives which are fairly 
 to be inferred from those facts, are to be taken as granted, 
 and that it is the province of the prosecutor to prove them 
 exclusively from the facts. In this instance, however, I 
 think I can show your Lordships such a body of facts and 
 such innumerable proofs respecting the particular motive of 
 the prisoner in this particular business, that I could almost 
 venture to rest my cause upon this that I prove the malice 
 
 P 2
 
 228 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. to Cheyt Sing exclusive of the last particular fact of his 
 imprisonment and of his expulsion. 
 
 or u chevt lity should think it would be no inconsiderable argument to 
 sing in pay- prove this, to state that he himself thought five lacs of rupees 
 action! was all that it was reasonable to demand of him. "Would it 
 not be the natural consequence for a person who made such 
 a demand to say " I have demanded five lacs : he wished to 
 delay payment, but he has paid it : I will now leave him at 
 rest, or at most make another demand next year, if the exi- 
 gencies of the Company should make it necessary so to do ?" 
 No ! instead of rejoicing at what I shall state to be the Raja's 
 punctuality, considering what might be expected, in the 
 payment of this demand, and converting that to merit, the 
 prisoner states that he has been dilatory, that he has been 
 contumacious ; and therefore he makes another demand upon 
 him. He found he had made a demand as great as he could 
 do with any pretence or colour ; but yet that was not suffi- 
 cient to tire out the patience of the Raja ; it was not sufficient 
 to bring him to any act of what he called disobedience. 
 
 I beg to state what I mean by punctual payment. I do 
 not consider punctual payment to be, to pay at the very day 
 or minute at which the superior exacts payment ; but I take 
 it to be such reasonable punctual payment as, considering 
 the situation of the person, can be expected. Your Lordships, 
 who have been in anyways concerned with the revenue of 
 this country which has always been a legal, well-regulated, 
 revenue know that it is far from being the case that every 
 penny due to the Crown is paid on the day when it becomes 
 due. With the most rigorous and exact treasury, it never 
 has been the maxim that if, by any particular circumstances, 
 a payment is not made to the Crown the very hour at which 
 it is due, the person should be punished for contumacy. 
 If he is punished it is by a pecuniary punishment, namely, 
 the interest of the money from the time of its being due till 
 it is paid ; which is a sufficient compensation to any country 
 for delay of payment. 
 
 Question of But here a new principle is laid down. This money being 
 
 money be- never strictly due ; being an illegal demand ; being a demand 
 
 :amc due. f QJ . w hi cn there was no stipulation, no agreement ; the period 
 
 when it became due was difficult to state : and yet it was 
 
 necessary to state that, to make the crime of delay im- 
 
 putable to the Raja. It was difficult to say this money was 
 
 due in June, or July or August. But Mr. Hastings found
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 229 
 
 another period ; it was demanded on such a day, and conse- 22 FEB. nss. 
 quently it became due from that time. If it had been a 
 demand upon a regular, annual, certain, stipend ; if I had 
 been accustomed to demand this ; if it is a matter of right ; if 
 it is a part of your obedience to me that I am to exact five lacs 
 of rupees from you every year, and 1 have every year exacted 
 that demand upon the 1st of July it might be said such 
 demand was to be expected on the 1st of July ; and conse- 
 quently, by a perverted, strange, tyrannical, reasoning, it 
 might be said to become due that day. But it is stated here 
 not to be a regular demand, but [nor ?] an annual demand. 
 Therefore that which is stated to be an insulated separate 
 demand, not of an annual payment, but of particular resource 
 in case of particular difficulty, the G overnor General states it 
 became due when ? the instant I demanded it ; and from 
 that hour the delay is to be stated as contumacy in the per- 
 son who knew nothing of the demand till the hour it was 
 made. 
 
 I contend it became due at no fixed date, but at such 
 times as it could be reasonably paid. However, it so hap- 
 pens upon this occasion that what I state to be Cheyt Sing's 
 punctuality what Mr. Hastings has stated to be Cheyt 
 Sing's contumacy has at least been a regular contumacy or 
 a regular punctuality ; for he paid on the first year the 
 whole on the 10th of October; in the second year upon the 
 21st; and in the third year upon the 20th of October. So 
 that I think your Lordships will admit that, if Mr. Hastings 
 could bring himself to acquiesce with those insufferable 
 delays of the Raja, he had no reason, if he could wait to the 
 10th of October for the first payment, to consider it an 
 intolerable delay to wait till the 2 1st for the second ; that if 
 any punishment was necessary for the Raja's delay in the 
 second, the punishment should have been the interest of five 
 lacs, that is 50,0007. Eleven days' interest upon fifty thou- 
 sand pounds was all the punishment he had a right to exact. 
 But on the third year it so happens that, taking for example 
 the first and second years, instead of being dilatory he is 
 precise and exact to his time ; or, if there is any difference, 
 he is one day sooner than he was the year before. Therefore 
 I beg to state to your Lordships that there is nothing in the 
 conduct of Cheyt Sing in the third year, with respect to 
 time and date, that was at all different from his conduct on 
 the first and second years ; and therefore there is no proof of 
 that species of contumacy which is stated by Mr, Hastings.
 
 230 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. However, Mr. Hastings, having found that he could not 
 Demand on upon this ground with any colour of justice state that Cheyt 
 of h cavairy g Sing na cl been guilty of any disobedience, had recourse to 
 another; and, as he was not always very judicious in his 
 choice of means indeed he had little need to be so, who was 
 of opinion that he was everything and the rights of the rest 
 of mankind nothing ; such persons do not give themselves 
 much trouble about fit opportunities and colourable necessities 
 he fixed upon the very worst opportunity he could have 
 found to make a charge upon Cheyt Sing ; for he chose to 
 make a demand of him for that which, by the very words of 
 the treaty, he was exempted from he chose to make a 
 demand of some cavalry. 
 
 Now the Governor General and Council, when, in the year 
 1775, they recommended to Cheyt Sing to keep up a body 
 of cavalry, expressly said that it was merely a recommenda- 
 tion and not a demand. Nay, they went further and said 
 " If you will keep them at our recommendation, we will pay 
 you so much a man whenever we ask them from you." 
 What says Mr. Hastings? "I will have two thousand 
 cavalry ; all that ever I recommended for him to keep up." 
 He reduces his demand to one thousand, and exacts that 
 directly. He exacts from Cheyt Sing that which he might 
 or might not have to give him. He exacts from Cheyt Sing 
 that which, by the very government of which he was a part, 
 he had only recommended to him, and had not directed 
 him to have. But I dare say your Lordships think that, 
 when he exacted this, he had not so totally lost in his mind 
 and memory all the principles of the connection between the 
 government and Cheyt Sing, but that he said to Cheyt 
 Sing " You shall have your so many rupees a man, and 
 so many rupees an officer." No ! no such thing ! He 
 exacts them of Cheyt Sing and does not propose to pay for 
 them. 
 
 One would imagine, if Mr. Hastings' object Avas that 
 wn i cn I state > l ? ms bj ect was to exasperate Cheyt Sing 
 the demand, to weary out his patience to drive him to rebellion, if into 
 rebellion he could drive him that he had taken the means 
 which could not fail of the effect. But here he failed too ; 
 for Cheyt Sing makes an offer upon this " I cannot spare 
 so much cavalry ; I have but 1,300 men in my whole pro- 
 vince. Of those I will give you 500 cavalry, and 500 match- 
 lock men besides, in lieu of 1,000 cavalry, which I cannot 
 spare out of my country." Here was a proposal which to 
 
 Proposal of
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 231 
 
 the mind of every man must seem more than equitable 22 FEB^ITSS. 
 more than reasonable ; which, one would have thought, must 
 have softened a heart of most inveterate malice ; which, to 
 the mind of any one else but the prisoner, would have shown 
 a degree of patience and determined acquiescence in every 
 degree of exaction that could be made upon him that, one 
 would have thought, would have softened a heart the most 
 set upon revenge, and a malice the most set upon its object 
 of persecution. 
 
 I shall prove this offer to be made to Mr. Hastings. But Determined 
 
 ., . ., f i j ., ., . j , hostuityof 
 
 it is not necessary to prove it, tor he admits it. And, what Mr. Hast- 
 I think will hardly be believed by this audience till it has ings ' 
 been proved, whatever credit they may be willing to give 
 me, Mr. Hastings not only confesses and admits this offer in 
 the way I state, but he gives this, which I state as submis- 
 sion and acquiescence, which raises in my mind an indigna- 
 tion at the servility of the man who was guilty of it, but 
 which I can excuse only from the miserable servility of the 
 country : 
 
 "Here I lost all patience," says Mr. Hastings, "and determined to 
 proceed in a vigorous manner against this man. I asked him for five 
 lacs of rupees he paid me five lacs of rupees. I asked him again for 
 five lacs of rupees, and he again paid me five lacs of rupees. I then pro- 
 ceeded to ask him for that which by the treaty he knew he was not bound 
 to give. I asked him contrary to his treaty, because I asked him for a 
 thousand cavalry, meaning that he should pay for them and not I. Of 
 all this he took no notice, but offered me 500 cavalry and 500 matchlock 
 men. At this I lost all patience." 
 
 I believe he did, because he was angry: "I lost all 
 patience. I find all my attempts to exasperate this man are 
 in vain ; all my attempts to make a quarrel with him are 
 fruitless. He is so patient, so submissive, that no breach of 
 treaty, no wrong, can drive him into any act that I can 
 construe into anything like disobedience into a quarrel. 
 Finding I could not extort any pretence for acting hostilely, 
 I did it without any pretence whatever, and acted upon my 
 own arbitrary principles." 
 
 My Lords, I have omitted in point of time a circumstance, Present to 
 in order to state what I did in a manner that might be more j^gs ^m 
 intelligible to your Lordships. I shall now state a circum- j Sin K' 8 
 stance in point of time which is very material to the under- 
 standing of this business, and which will be very material for 
 your Lordships to consider, when you consider the pretences 
 upon which Mr. Hastings supposes any guilt to be in Cheyt 
 Sing. About that time I believe two days before, but I 
 don't contend for the date at this moment about the time of
 
 232 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB.17S8. this third demand, an agent or vakil of Cheyt Sing's, called 
 Suddanund, makes to Mr. Hastings a present of two lacs of 
 intended by rupees, or 20,OOOZ. The legality of Mr. Hastings accepting 
 ing's to'be" sucn a present the discussion whether he accepted it pro- 
 applied to bablv for his own advantage or that of the Company I beg 
 
 the service J PHI 
 
 of the Com- leave at present not to enter upon ; because, tor all the pur- 
 poses for which I shall argue it, I shall admit that Mr. Hast- 
 ings was competent to receive such a present that he meant 
 to apply it to the publice service of the Company, and had 
 no intention of private profit in this transaction : I admit 
 that for the argument I am going to state I admit that so 
 far as goes to Mr. Hastings. But 1 will not admit and I 
 am sure it cannot be proved that what Mr. Hastings saw 
 in this light Cheyt Sing saw in the same light. 
 
 CheTsi dby ^ w ^ not contended, much less be proved, that 
 as a bribe. Cheyt Sing, at the time he was pleading his inability to pay 
 five lacs of rupees to the Company at the time he was 
 saying that he was forced to sell his jewels and was driven 
 to many distresses to raise that sum at the time he was 
 making all these various pretences, whether true or false it 
 will not be contended that at such a time Cheyt Sing made 
 a voluntary present to the Company of two lacs of rupees. 
 That cannot be contended. If it should be contended, that 
 will not be proved. 
 
 However pure Mr. Hastings' mind might be upon the sub- 
 ject of this present however he might predetermine it for 
 the use of the Company all 1 contend is, that Cheyt Sing 
 had no view of any such application of it : but that he in- 
 tended it as a present to Mr. Hastings is a point that is self- 
 evident. It is supposed that this was a mere friendly gra- 
 tuitous present from Cheyt Sing. Presents of this kind 
 are not very usual in any part of the world ; I believe as 
 little usual on that side of the globe as this. Besides, Cheyt 
 Sing and Mr. Hastings don't appear to be upon that re- 
 ciprocal mutual footing of friendship for such presents to be 
 exchanged between them. Cheyt Sing could give it him 
 in no other view than to influence him in his conduct. 
 Mr. Hastings had some hesitation about accepting the pre- 
 sent, for reasons concerning the public service which he 
 gives and which, for this moment and this moment only, I 
 beg to give credit to ; which, for the public service however, 
 he at length thought fit to accept, What must have been 
 the reasoning of Cheyt Sing's vakil upon this? What 
 account must he have given to his employer, Cheyt Sing ? 
 It must have been " I offered a present to the Governor
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 233 
 
 He has taken it. Therefore do you be assured of his favour ; 
 be assured of his forbearance. Depend upon it you have 
 a friend in him, who will extenuate your faults if he cannot 
 conceal them, and will at least act mildly with you in every 
 instance where you may be thought worthy of punishment 
 or worthy of censure." 
 
 Would not the mind of almost any other man that ever 
 appeared upon any public occasion have been influenced by 
 such a circumstance ? Would he not have said " If I see 
 a contumacy, if I see a dilatoriness in the payment of Chey t 
 Sing, I can account for it by a circumstance which is un- 
 known to the rest of the Council, unknown to my employees 
 at home, unknown to the people of England ; because, 
 though I know I received his money for pure and public 
 purposes, he thinks he has given a bribe to soften and mollify 
 me ; he thinks my acceptance of that bribe is a proof that 
 I mean to treat him unfairly on the part of my employers, 
 the Company, and that I mean to act partially and kindly to 
 him." For what purpose did he think Cheyt Sing had given 
 him that money ? For once I must take the opposite of 
 what is the general case, that, if Mr. Hastings had applied 
 this to his own purpose, he would have so far acted honestly 
 in this sense of it he would have taken the money for the 
 purpose for which it was given. But, applying it to the use 
 of the Company, he applied it to a use not intended by the 
 donor, and actually gave the Company money which he had 
 levied upon Cheyt Sing by false pretence : for Cheyt Sing 
 never would have given the money upon any other idea than 
 for the personal favour of the prisoner, to procure his 
 indulgence. 
 
 I beg leave to have this present considered in another The Cpm- 
 view for a moment. All that Mr. Hastings required of Sf&Vby the 
 Cheyt Sing was the payment of five lacs in 1778, of five lacs ^St^Sv 
 in 1779, and of five lacs in 1780. Cheyt Sing was dilatory ) payment 
 
 . , t-i-ip -'of exactions. 
 
 it seems in these payments. Admit that tor a moment ; what 
 disadvantage did the Company suffer from it ? The Company 
 suffered this disadvantage and this only that they received, 
 later according to his opinion than they had a right to do, 
 certain sums of money. But then they had an advantage to 
 which they had no right, no colour or shadow of pretence, 
 namely, the receiving, through their Governor, Mr. Hastings, 
 a present of 20,0007. not claimed of Cheyt Sing. Now add 
 that present, as it is fair and just you should do, to the other 
 three sums I have stated. The Company have received
 
 234 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 FEB. 1788. 20,0007. above what they had a pretended claim to; and you 
 
 will find that that 20,0007. much more than indemnified them 
 
 for any disadvantage under which they could have laboured 
 
 from the money having been paid some weeks or days later 
 
 than it should have been ; inasmuch as that 20,0007. much 
 
 more than covers all interest of the money that could possibly 
 
 be due, from the time when it is pretended it was due till it 
 
 statement was paid. Sensible of the weakness of this part of the cause, 
 
 thepay of there has been an attempt made to say that the Company, by 
 
 being^- 8 tne dilatoriness of the last payment, suffered an injury which 
 
 no payment in lieu of interest afterwards could compensate ; 
 
 cheyt n sing's because the troops suffered in the delay of their pay. This 
 
 aHty! nc1 is fin argument not supported by the facts: but we shall 
 
 show Cheyt Sing had actually paid the whole of his money 
 
 unto the Kesident at Benares, before any of it was applied 
 
 to the use of the detachment which is said to have suffered 
 
 for the want of it. I own that is little to the purpose ; but 
 
 it is only material for me because I think I can in this 
 
 instance which is a good deal to undertake I think I can 
 
 show that, in the parts immaterial as well as those which 
 
 are material to the cause, no one fact has been stated by 
 
 the defendant, in opposition to those stated by the accusation, 
 
 that will not be found to be false, misrepresented, or at least 
 
 very much discoloured. 
 
 Recapituia- ^ Lords, I will recapitulate very shortly, from the last 
 
 tion. period I brought your Lordships down before to the end of the 
 
 year 1775 [1780?]. In the year 1778 Mr. Hastings exacted 
 a payment of five lacs of rupees ; it was paid in October. He 
 repeated the same requisition the next year ; which likewise 
 was paid in October. In 1780 he received a present from 
 Cheyt Sing's vakil of 20,0007. He made the same exaction 
 upon Cheyt Sing the same year, and he received it. Subse- 
 quent to that, he made a demand of cavalry, first of 2,000 
 men, afterwards of 1,000; in which he made no mention of 
 intention of paying the money the Governor and Council had 
 engaged to pay ; and Cheyt Sing made an offer of 500 
 cavalry and 500 match-lock men. That is the end of the 
 business at the end of the year 1780. 
 
 Now the business will take a new appearance. Mr. 
 Hastings, in the year 1775 for it is impossible not to go 
 back to antecedent dates, to keep a much more necessary 
 order in your Lordships' mind I mean, a connection of 
 reasoning rather than a connection of dates Mr. Hastings 
 in 1775 had spoken like a prophet with respect to what
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 235 
 
 would happen to this miserable Eaja, Cheyt Sing; and his 22FEB.17S8. 
 prophecy was well accomplished. He seems to have looked 
 in his book of prophecy himself, and to have said " These 
 are the inconveniences which I foretold must result to the 
 Raja. They have not yet resulted to him, but now I am in 
 power I will make the prophecy good. Everything I said 
 that should happen to him of injustice, of oppression, shall 
 happen to him ; for I will be an unjust oppressor rather 
 than a false prophet. It is proposed to receive the payment Conse- 
 
 ,. ii-i i Qucnces of 
 
 of his rents at Jratna, because that is the nearest provincial receiving 
 station, and because it would not frustrate the intention ren e s 
 of rendering the Raja independent. If a Resident was ap- ^ r s idlnt a 
 pointed to receive the money as it became due at Benares, &reseen by 
 
 IT--T -ill n Mr - Hast- 
 
 sucna Resident would unavoidably acquire an influence over ings, 
 the Raja and over his country, which would in effect render 
 him the master of both. This consequence might not per- 
 haps be brought completely to pass without a struggle and 
 many appeals to the Council ; which, in a government con- 
 stituted like this, cannot fail to terminate against the Raja, 
 and, by the construction to which his opposition to the Resi- 
 dent would be liable, might eventually draw on him severe 
 restrictions, and end in reducing him to the mean and de- 
 praved state of a mere zamindar. The voluntary restraint 
 laid by the government on its own actions," by which, it 
 appears, Mr. Hastings thought that the government of 1775 
 was a restraint upon the actions of the Company, for it was 
 a voluntary restraint "will afford the Raja the greatest 
 confidence, and naturally inspire him with sentiments of 
 fidelity and attachment, both from the principles of gratitude 
 and self-interest. Without some such appearance, he will 
 expect with every change of government additional demands 
 to be made upon him" his expectations, my Lords, if he 
 entertained such, were certainly not disappointed "and will 
 of course descend to all the arts of intrigue and concealment 
 practised by other dependent Rajas, which will keep him 
 indigent and weak, and eventually prove hurtful to the Com- 
 pany." If therefore he did practise all those arts of intrigue 
 and concealment, they were not such crimes but what 
 Mr. Hastings had foreseen to be the natural consequence of 
 the situation in which he was to be put. Now, if a man is 
 put in such a situation in which he will naturally be led to 
 the commission of crimes, I don't say that therefore he ought 
 to go wholly unpunished, but I think that the person who is 
 of opinion that that situation will naturally lead to the
 
 236 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. commission of those crimes -will at least consider his guilt 
 with indulgence and partiality, and will consider such crimes 
 as naturally arise from his situation to be crimes pardonable 
 in human nature and not to be punished with the excess of 
 severity. " By proper encouragement and protection he 
 may prove a profitable dependent, an useful barrier, and 
 even a powerful ally to the Company ; but he will be neither 
 if the conditions of his connections with the Company are left 
 to future variations." 
 
 My Lords, these are the consequences which Mr. Hastings 
 foresees of that material difference, of that eternal distinction, 
 between the two propositions of his being to pay his tribute 
 at Benares rather than at Patna, and of having a Resident 
 in that country. If it was so mischievous to have a Resident 
 in that country, one would think the first act of Mr. Hastings 
 when in power would be to recall the person who was Resi- 
 dent there ; not for the purpose of replacing him with one of 
 his own, but for the purpose of correcting an establishment 
 of which he foresaw all the evil consequences, as stated upon 
 his minute. However, he was partial to his own prophecies, 
 and when he came into a situation of power he undoubtedly 
 did make them all good. New, unheard-of, demands were 
 made ; new disputes arose between the Resident and Cheyt 
 Sing. These were determined in favour of the Resident, 
 and Cheyt Sing was reduced to the miserable condition and 
 situation which Mr. Hastings so properly describes. 
 
 I have now stated the transactions of 1778 to 1781 ; and 
 I beg your Lordships to carry in your mind a recollection 
 that the subsidy, or exaction call it what you will was 
 paid in 1780 at the same time as it was paid in the ante- 
 cedent years 1778 and 1779 ; therefore this could not be 
 urged by Mr. Hastings as the immediate reason for his 
 anger. But he states others, and, among the rest, this of 
 the cavalry, which I am sure your Lordships will think 
 ought to have been a circumstance to have appeased his 
 anger, if he had conceived any, rather than a circumstance 
 to excite any new resentment 
 
 byMr'nas't- ^ r * Hastings, in prosecution of his plan of vengeance 
 ings of ins against Cheyt Sing, which I have stated, set himself down to 
 by levying a consider in what character, by what means, under what 
 g. pretences and by what authority, he should execute the 
 vengeance which he had conceived. One should have 
 thought that it did not require the resources which that 
 great man is said to possess such resources as your Lord-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 237 
 
 ships will hear in the course of this trial it did not require 22 FEB. nss. 
 the resources of tin extraordinary mind, to consider how one 
 should execute vengeance upon a man who is stated to be in 
 this predicament that Mr. Hastings' rights are everything, 
 and his vassal, Cheyt Sing's, nothing. I should think, upon 
 such an occasion, there did not require much difficulty [to 
 determine] how he should execute his vengeance. But, 
 whether from fancy or not I don't know, he seems to have 
 had a choice about executing that vengeance ; and he 
 seems to have determined that the mode in which he should 
 execute vengeance upon Cheyt Sing should be by levying 
 upon him an extraordinary sum of money ; and he whim- 
 sically enough chose to call that sum of money a fine, as 
 will appear to your Lordships, without having any precise 
 idea of what a fine means. 
 
 He states that Suja-ud-Dowla had levied a fine upon 
 Cheyt Sing merely upon the death of his father. One 
 would have thought by fine he had meant that species of 
 rent taken in the shape of a fine, by those who have a 
 right to exact it, upon those who hold lands upon the lives 
 of persons. There is no such instance in that country ; 
 and why it was introduced, unless to show the confusion of 
 a man's mind, that he did not know a fine in the shape of 
 a mulct from such a fine, I know not. But he says he 
 will levy a fine as a punishment upon Cheyt Sing for 
 his crimes. 
 
 This is a case which your Lordships will be peculiarlv Mr - Hast -. , 
 
 n . . -i . -i i L i i. i i i J injrs judicial 
 
 fitted to judge, because you must lately have turned your acts directed 
 minds and employed your thoughts on what is the duty of sireto gain 
 that sacred august character. Mr. Hastings leaves the money '- 
 character of general despot of Hindustan, in order to assume 
 a character of a very different nature the character of a 
 criminal judge, to try a culprit for a crime. Now we will 
 see how Mr. Hastings behaved as a judge upon that occa- 
 sion ; whether he followed those rules of criminal judicature 
 practised in the most enlightened modern times, or whether 
 he followed the example of the worst of judges that were ever 
 detested of mankind. But he assumes the character of a 
 judge. I will state to your Lordships what passed at the 
 outset ; which will be sufficient to give you an idea of what 
 was to be expected would be his subsequent conduct in it. 
 The honourable Manager who opened this prosecution stated, 
 that, in all Mr. Hastings' transactions in his negotiations, in 
 his conduct, in his treaties, in his legislative character, in
 
 238 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 His plea of 
 benefiting 
 the Com- 
 pany's ex- 
 chequer by 
 the fine. 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. his executive capacity, in his reasons for war, in his reasons for 
 peace, in every part of his government there was some 
 prevalent principle, namely, money that how to get money 
 for the Company or himself was the prevalent principle in 
 every transaction of Mr. Hastings' life. My honourable 
 friend mentioned many, but omitted [to state] whether out 
 of kindness to me, that I might have an opportunity of stating 
 it more fully now, or from forgetfulness, I know not but 
 certain it is, that money was the prevalent principle in his 
 distribution of justice. He applies money as the principle 
 not only of peace and of war, of negotiation and of legisla- 
 tion, but he applies money as the principle of criminal 
 jurisprudence, as the principle of criminal punishment ; and 
 he considers the distresses of the Company and their want 
 of money, at the moment he is erecting himself into the 
 character of a judge and is meditating levying a fine. If I 
 was now at the bar of this House, calling upon your Lordships 
 for your judgment upon the prisoner if, at the close of this 
 prosecution, I should be called upon so to do if your Lord- 
 ships find the prisoner guilty if I should state that this 
 country has been drained by an American war, has suffered 
 by a variety of accidents if I was to state, not that Mr. 
 Hastings is guilty, not that he has committed the crimes 
 imputed to him, but that he is very opulent, worth a great 
 deal of money ; that the finances of this country are in an 
 exhausted state ; that there is not that surplus which was 
 expected (I don't mean to say this is so I hope otherwise) ; 
 that the exchequer is poor : take this opportunity, therefore, 
 of converting the crimes of Mr. Hastings into an advantage 
 to the exchequer, and be sure you find him guilty and fine 
 him largely, it will be an improvement of the finances of 
 Great Britain if I were thus to address your Lordships, 
 you would send me away from your bar with the indigna- 
 tion that would become so detestable an argument. Dis- 
 graceful indeed is the sovereign who looks for his resources 
 in the crimes of his subjects ; who does not consider their 
 prosperity, their industry, as the means of his power and 
 wealth, but looks at their crimes, their fines and mulcts, as 
 a means of his resource. Disgraceful is the situation of 
 the sovereign. But most lamentable indeed is the situation 
 of the subject who comes to defend himself before a tribunal 
 who own they are in want, and look at the fine he is to pay 
 as a means of relieving their want, and a hope to supply 
 their exhausted finances. If I was to press such an argu-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 239 
 
 merit to your Lordships, you would send me away with every 22 FEB. i7*s. 
 mark of contempt, of degradation, which such an argument 
 would deserve ; and yet this is the very argument with 
 which the prisoner set out upon his judicial office and his 
 judicial character. 
 
 He begins with saying " I thought the Raja guilty of 
 great contumacy. I sent to examine into that business, and 
 to improve the interests of the Company," upon a sub- 
 sequent examination he says " by taking 500,000/. out of 
 Cheyt Sing's pocket, and putting it in theirs." How? As 
 a present ? As an extortion ? All this is bad enough. 
 No ! but ten thousand times more detestable ; not upon the 
 plea of necessity, of want, of absolute sovereignty, but upon 
 the plea of criminal jurisdiction that he is guilty ; and I 
 will make him pay that as a fine, as a punishment for his 
 guilt. We all know the sole object of punishment should 
 be example. Think of him who goes as a judge to punish, 
 not for example, but for the purpose of finding resources for 
 the Company for the punishing crimes as an improvement 
 of the interest of the Company in their territories ! 
 
 A judge who set out on his mission with such principles ^ Hast- 
 
 v o j. HUTS lour- 
 
 and professions was likely to act consonantly to them. This ney to 
 judge, as he calls himself, goes to Benares. He had time, 
 in his journey thither, to consider of all the sacred duties 
 that belong to that sacred office. I don't believe he spent 
 much time in the discussions which have lately employed 
 your Lordships, and which have employed us at the bar. He 
 did not consider who were the prosecutors : he did not con- 
 sider who was the defendant : he did not consider in what 
 manner the defendant was to manage his defence : he did 
 not consider that it was necessary that he should hear all 
 the charges against him before he spoke a word in his favour, 
 before he made his defence. I don't believe he considered 
 any one of these circumstances with that minuteness which 
 your Lordships have thought it necessary to consider them. 
 
 The complaint of Cheyt Sing was, not that his accusers ? Ir - Hast- 
 P i . , i ings acting 
 
 were not persons or authority, not that they were persons, as accuser, 
 as has been said, of ability, but that his accuser was no judge 
 other than his judge ; that his accuser and his judge was no ^^ f 
 other than the absolute despot who had power over him and 
 over everything in India. Such an accuser and a judge, 
 who must feel all the difficulties of these two characters 
 not very desirably connected with each other which were 
 forced to be so connected this accuser and judge, one would
 
 240 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEai788. have thought, would at least have affected all the delicacy 
 requisite upon such an occasion, and would have said " I 
 will take care, in the office of a judge, to pay no particular 
 respect to the accusation coming from myself, and to examine 
 the accusation more hard than I would any other accusation 
 that might come before me." He sends to Cheyt Sing : he 
 states his crimes. Does he call upon him for his defence ? 
 Does he hear witnesses against him ? No ! there was but one 
 witness against him. I suppose, at least, as the whole cause 
 depended upon one witness, that it was a witness perfectly 
 impartial that it was a witness who could not be suspected 
 of any interest in the cause. Who is that witness ? He 
 that was the accuser and the judge was the witness. He 
 that was the accuser and the judge and the witness was also 
 the Governor General, who professed he had the finances 
 of the Company in idea at the very moment of the trial and 
 judgment of the criminal ! 
 
 We are used here to modes of trial perfectly mild and 
 perfectly regular. Does it not suggest to your Lordships 
 some considerations of the peculiar situation in which we 
 now stand here, when we find that a judge, having acted in 
 that way in which" I state who was accuser, witness, judge, 
 party, and who was to profit by the consequences of the 
 conviction ; who was to profit by the fine when he judged 
 in this way, without hearing a defence, without giving 
 Cheyt Sing the means of defending himself, or giving an 
 opportunity for anything to be said in exculpation we 
 cannot but feel just admiration of the laws of England, and 
 we cannot help admiring his modesty when he comes to 
 your bar and talks by his Counsel of the extended privileges 
 to be granted to a man in such a situation ; that he is not to 
 open his defence till he has heard every accusation against 
 him? When we contrast the laws, we must say that oppres- 
 sors in India have every chance of escaping. After you use 
 every mode of oppression in that country, you are to be 
 tried here upon a mode, a system, of refinement in mildness 
 upon the judicial practice in any country whatsoever. 
 Coldness of With these dispositions that I have stated with this idea 
 of s chy? tlon of the judicial character he goes up to Benares. Cheyt 
 Smg. Sing comes to meet him. He receives him with great cold- 
 
 ness may be, with a coldness that might become him ; a 
 coldness that certainly befitted a person who was about 
 to judge an accused man ; for I am not one of those who 
 think that it would much become those who are to sit
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 241 
 
 in judgment upon any man to express sentiments before- 22 FEB. 1788. 
 hand which seem to imply any partiality in his favour. But 
 he received him with a proper and I suppose impartial cold- 
 ness. He then writes a letter, and received an answer to that His letter of 
 letter. I shall not trouble your Lordships with reading the cheytsing. 
 letter he wrote : it will be in evidence, and your Lordships 
 will judge upon it. But I will make one remark upon it 
 beforehand, in which if I arn wrong, it will be observed in 
 the course of the evidence. The letter he writes to Cheyt 
 Sing is full of reproaches is full of charges of blame but 
 there is not anything which can come under the description 
 of requisition in it. He does not say " You have offended 
 in this particular ; atone for your offence by submission ; 
 atone for your offence by paying a specific sum or by any 
 particular means." I know the reason Avhy it was so 
 written. It was because the Governor General had had 
 such repeated proofs of the exhaustless patience of Cheyt 
 Sing that he thought he could not put upon paper any de- 
 mand, however tyrannical or oppressive, that Cheyt Sing 
 would not comply with ; and thereby he would be prevented 
 of his intention, namely, the destruction of Cheyt Sing. To Willingness 
 believe that that was so, no small argument will arise from a sing\ C o re- 
 circumstance that will come out in proof that there is offences hy a 
 reason to believe that Cheyt Sing was willing to pay no less 
 a sum than twenty lacs of rupees for what is called his 
 offences. 
 
 Now, your Lordships will consider a little the offences and 
 the punishment. Cheyt Sing had been called upon for 
 50,OOOZ. three years following: he had paid them within a 
 short time of the time when they were required to be paid ; 
 but he had been dilatory in payment had been evasive 
 perhaps. Be it so : but he was willing to give no less a 
 sum than 200,000/. as an atonement for that crime. Need 
 I say more ? If I hear that a person who has committed the 
 offence of being dilatory in the payment of 150,0007., by a 
 few weeks and a few days, is willing to atone for that 
 offence by the payment of 200,OOOZ. at once, I must say that, 
 knowing such a disposition in such a person, I must reason 
 thus that there is nothing that I can state to him, as a 
 proper atonement for his crime, which he would not accede 
 to with readiness and with patience ; by which means I shall 
 be deluded and defrauded. Defrauded of what? defrauded 
 of my revenge. I shall not have an opportunity of making 
 an example of him. I shall not have an opportunity to 
 
 Q
 
 242 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 $ FEB.1738. show that an offence to me personally is an offence to be 
 punished with banishment from his kingdom is an offence 
 sufficient to turn, a sovereign prince into a wanderer. Cheyt 
 Sing seems to be a man of such patience such submission 
 such determined acquiescence in any demand that he 
 did not propose any [abatement ?] whatever, for fear it should 
 have been complied with. 
 
 Cheyt Sing's Now, having stated the subject of his letter, which I 
 
 answer to i i . i IT-, .. / . j i 
 
 the letter, would certainly read if it was not for wasting your Lordships 
 time, I shall beg that the answer of Cheyt Sing to that 
 letter may be read ; because I think it will be material that 
 that should be impressed upon your Lordships' mind at the 
 moment that I make the observations which I shall make 
 subsequent to it, 
 
 [Mr. Grey read the letter, which is as folloirs : ] 
 
 " I received your letter*, delivered to me by Mr. Markham ; and I have 
 understood every particular of its contents. Sir, after the arrival of 
 Shaich Ali Nuchy, I observed all the orders which you sent me ; and I 
 received the letter which the deceased Shaich brought me, informing me 
 that every suspicion was now completely removed from your mind, and 
 that I must consider you, as formerly, attentive to me. But I have not 
 experienced from you the same generosities as formerly. I sent you 
 repeatedly letters, representing to your consideration my unhappy circum- 
 stances ; but you never honoured me with any reply. For this reason 
 I sent my buksheef Suddanund to your presence, enjoining him to 
 represent to you the firmness of my obedience and attachment ; to lay 
 before you the particulars of my situation ; and to learn the disposition 
 of your mind towards me. He arrived accordingly in your presence and 
 represented everything in a proper manner. 1 have never deviated in 
 the smallest degree from these professions ; and the benefits and civilities 
 with which you have honoured me have given me the greatest satis- 
 faction ; and I have considered you as the source from which I derived 
 the fulfilment of all my wishes and desires. It is my firm hope that I 
 may be always favoured with your directions. In this manner I complied 
 with the utmost readiness with the order you sent me for the payment of 
 five lacs of rupees, on account of the expenses of the war. I sent first 
 one lac of rupees, with an answer to your letter; afterwards, having paid 
 to Mr. Fowke the sum of one lac and seventy thousand rupees, I sent a 
 letter requesting a further allowance of time to enable me to make some 
 preparations. To this I received no reply it being no time for delay. 
 Notwithstanding this, I was not a moment inattentive to this concern ; 
 and, as soon as my bukshee arrived, I paid immediately the remaining 
 part of the sum. The remitting of this to the army did not depend oh 
 me : if any delay happened on this head I could not help it. If, besides 
 the payment of the money, the remittance of it also to the army had 
 
 * The letter referred to, together -with that printed above, occur in Hastings' 
 " Narrative of the Insurrection," &c., page 15. 
 f A paymaster.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 243 
 
 rested with me, a delay of this kind should not have happened. I have 22 FEB. 1788. 
 
 enclosed in this letter a paper, specifying the particular sums which have 
 
 been advanced, with their dates. 
 
 " With respect to the horse, you desired me in your letter to inform 
 you of what number I could afford to station with you ; and I sent 
 you a particular account of all that were in my service, amounting to 
 one thousand three hundred horse, of which several were stationed at 
 distant places ; but I received no answer to this. Mr. Markham deli- 
 vered me an order to prepare a thousand horse. In compliance with 
 your wishes I collected 500 ; and, as a substitute for the remainder, 500 
 burkundasses,* of which I sent you information, and I told Mr. Mark- 
 ham they were ready to go to whatever place they should be sent. No 
 answer, however, came from you on this head, and I remained astonished 
 at the cause of it. Repeatedly I asked Mr. Markham about an answer 
 to my letter about the horse ; but he told me he did not know the reasons 
 for no answer having been sent. I remained astonished. With respect 
 to the sepoys, I received first an order to station two of my companies ; 
 which I did. I was then desired to give a tunkawf for the payment of 
 the sepoys, and likewise to pay the captain ; which has been done every 
 month. 
 
 " Excepting Abdullah Beg and his attendants, none of my people, 
 either dependents or servants, or others in any shape connected with me, 
 have ever gone to Calcutta. My enemies, with a view to my ruin, have 
 made false representations to you. Now that, happily for me, you have 
 yourself arrived at this place, you will be able to ascertain all the circum- 
 stances relative to the horse, to my people going to Calcutta, and the 
 dates of the receipts of the particular sums above mentioned. You will 
 then know whether I have amused you with a false representation, or 
 made a just report to you. I have given my aumilsj most particular 
 injunctions, and have taken a penalty bond from them, that they shall 
 keep no thieves in their district. What power have they to act otherwise ? 
 But if ever a murder or a robbery is committed in the country, I have 
 been careful to impale or otherwise punish the culprit. If a person 
 having committed a delinquency should escape to some other place, so 
 as to elude all discovery, I am in that case helpless ; but to the utmost of 
 my power I endeavour to fulfil your orders. 
 
 " I have never swerved in the smallest degree from my duty to you. 
 It remains with you to decide on all these matters. I am in every case 
 your slave. What is just I have represented to you. 
 
 " May your prosperity increase !" 
 
 [A/r. -Fox continues : J 
 
 Your Lordships, who I dare say have listened with atten- Reflections 
 tion to this letter, will observe that it is what a letter ought niis 
 to be in answer to such a letter as I have described, namely, 
 a letter which consisted of reproaches and imputation, 
 without desiring any specific answer to it by way of 
 offering an atonement or any other. Above all, your Lord- 
 ships will observe upon the style and manner of this letter; 
 
 * Men armed with matchlocks, and employed as police officers, 
 f Tankhwah an order or draft for money ; an assignment on the revenue 
 of a particular locality. Wilson's Glossary of Indian Terms. 
 \ Superintendent of a district. 
 
 Q 2
 
 2-1:4 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB.1788. and 1 have no doubt but your Lordships, who feel those 
 generous sentiments which belong to the high nobility in 
 this country, will feel for the degraded state of a man of 
 ancient family and high rank in that country, who could be 
 obliged to write a letter in such a style, so abject and sub- 
 missive that it almost takes away from the compassion one 
 should have for him. There appears such a degree of humi- 
 liation as to European ears is hardly possible to be endured. 
 When your Lordships consider that this was a man who paid 
 240,000/. a year to government when you consider that he 
 had of course a proportionable rent reserved to himself 
 when you consider him a man of ancient family and high 
 rank in this country, though he was a subject for a subject, 
 a vassal, they contend he is, and which I admit him to be ; 
 but such a vassal as paid 240, GOO/, a year clear rent is no 
 common and mean subject I say the high .blood of your 
 Lordships and your Lordships' liberiil sentiments must feel 
 a kind of disgust to think that a person so distinguished 
 by rank, by opulence, and distinguished by everything that 
 gives consequence, could be induced to write to a subject of 
 the King of Great Britain in a style rather becoming that 
 of a slave to his master than of a freeman even to the real 
 Sovereign of this country; that he could be induced to write 
 such a letter as your Lordships would be ashamed to read, 
 and much more would the person of the Sovereign be 
 ashamed to receive, on account of its abjectness and sub- 
 mission, from a subject of this country. 
 
 Now, your Lordships will see Mr. Hastings' behaviour. 
 You will keep the subject of the letter in your minds, and, 
 above all, keep the words of it in your minds. I will repeat 
 the last words of it : 
 
 " I have never swerved in the smallest degree from my duty to you. 
 It remains with you to decide on all these matters. I am in every case 
 your slave. What is just I have represented to you. May your pros- 
 perity increase !" 
 
 Mr. Hast- Mr. Hastings, giving a narrative of his proceedings to his 
 
 ints' oliscr- ,, n^i -11 i 
 
 vationson superiors, says " Inis answer you will perceive to be not 
 the answer. on i v unsatisfactory in substance" how, unsatisfactory in 
 substance ? to reproaches what could be replied but vindi- 
 cation ? " this answer you will perceive to be not only 
 unsatisfactory in substance, but offensive in style" yes, 
 offensive for its meaness, offensive for its abjectne^.s, offen- 
 sive for its submission, one would hope the prisoner must 
 have meant. I wish he could have meant so : the subse-
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 245 
 
 quent words prove he meant it in another sense " and 22 FEB.17S8. 
 less a vindication of himself than a recrimination on me." 
 The letter which you have heard from this poor abject man, 
 in these miserable and compassionate circumstances, is stated 
 not to be a letter in vindication of himself, but recrimination 
 of Mr. Hastings " It expresses no concern for the causes 
 of complaint contained in my letter nor desire to atone for 
 them, nor the smallest intention to pursue a different line of 
 conduct. An answer" I beg your Lordships to attend to 
 Mr. Hastings' description of this letter <e an answer 
 couched nearly in the terms of defiance to requisitions of so 
 serious a nature I could not but consider as a strong indi- 
 cation of that spirit of independency which the Raja has 
 for some years past assumed, and of which indeed I had early- 
 observed other manifest symptoms, both before and from the 
 instant of my arrival. 5 ' That answer which your Lordships 
 have heard, and which you must have heard with the feelings 
 and sentiments which I have supposed to be in the breasts 
 of your Lordships, this man at your bar, drunk with the idea 
 of arbitrary power, intoxicated and corrupted by that worst 
 of all intoxications and that most dangerous of all corrup- 
 tions, having power for which he fondly thought he had 
 no responsibility, being corrupted and destroyed by this, 
 states that which to every English to every European 
 I should think, to every Asiatic ear must be abject, low and 
 mean, to a degree, to be couched in terms of a defiance. 
 How defiances in that country are couched I know not ; but 
 if this is an instance of defiance, I should like, I own, as a 
 literary curiosity, to peruse some sample of what is called 
 submission in that country. 
 
 I have stated this in the manner in which I state it to 
 your Lordships in order to impress upon your Lordships, not 
 the general character of this man, for that is no part of my 
 business, but the character of this man in the subjects which 
 I shall bring before you ; which I know has by ignorant 
 people out of doors been called in some places a calumny 
 and abuse, but which it is necessary to state ; for an accuser 
 is to state what he thinks of the motives of the criminal. I 
 have stated this to your Lordships with that view. I trust, 
 in so doing, I do nothing but what the duty of my office 
 requires from me in this place. 
 
 My Lords, I state this to show the character of this man ; ParaiM be- 
 and I here find some little account in my own mind for a prisoner and 
 parallel which I hear was once made between the prisoner at 
 the bar and the greatest, though not perhaps the most
 
 216 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 22 i<-EB^i788. amiable, character of antiquity I mean Alexander the 
 Great. I have heard that the services of this man have been 
 compared to the important conquests of that extraordinary 
 character, who is so well known in every part of the 
 world by the name of Alexander the Great. I am told that 
 that has come from high authority ; that it has come from 
 a person of such rank and authority as to dispute in 
 some cases precedency with the princes of the blood in this 
 country.* I have heard that from such authority it has been 
 said there might possibly be some resemblance, and that it 
 has been attempted to draw a parallel between Alexander 
 the Great and the prisoner at the bar. I confess there is 
 some resemblance ; but it must be in Alexander's case when 
 intoxicated; when he had the vanity to suppose himself a 
 God and not a man ; when, in the heat of a debauch, he 
 set fire to a town to gratify his feelings at the moment ; 
 when, in a debauch, at the moment of rage, in fury and 
 corruption, he did those acts which cast a shade upon all 
 his conquests, and made it doubtful whether now he is more 
 to be revered for the great acts he performed or detested for 
 those disgraceful actions of which in those circumstances he 
 was guilty. In that view I see a resemblance between these 
 two persons. It appears as if the prisoner in his sober 
 moments was something like Alexander when rising from the 
 fumes of a debauch. If in that view the parallel was stated, 
 it was worthy of the great abilities by which, as I have 
 heard, it was drawn. 
 
 " All that disgraced my betters met in me " 
 
 is a compliment wisely and nobly refused by a great philo- 
 sopher and poet in this country.f If there be any resem- 
 blance in this case, it is only that the spot the specks the 
 blemishes of that great character resemble the constant 
 habits of the life of the man now before your Lordships. In 
 those paroxysms of pride and insolence in which he considers 
 expressions the most abject as expressions of recrimination on 
 him and of defiance, he does not forget that he is in the 
 awful in the impartial in the august situation of a judge: 
 he comes to judge and to punish Cheyt Sing. 
 
 Cneyt sing Cheyt Sing did not dispute with him about the time, and 
 
 underarrest. tne s t a g e and the season, in w r hich he should prefer his 
 
 defence. He was not permitted to prefer it at all ; for 
 
 immediately upon arriving at Benares, after receiving this 
 
 * The authority alluded to is Lord Thurlow. 
 i. f The poet Pope.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 247. 
 
 supplicating abject letter, the Governor General thinks proper 22 FEB.ms. 
 to put him under an arrest. I wish to have no recourse to 
 Asiatic manners I wish to* have no recourse to any Oriental 
 customs to state to your Lordships what must be the conse- 
 quence of that arrest. It lies upon those who support the 
 defendant it lies upon his Counsel to show that an arrest 
 and personal imprisonment, which in Europe is considered as 
 an important degradation, is in Asia considered as nothing 
 that there is something in the manners of that country which 
 makes that not repugnant to their ideas which here would be 
 thought intolerable. 
 
 Consider who Cheyt Sing was. A subject of the Com- 
 pany Mr. Hastings states him to be : so be it. But what 
 subject of the Company ? The first in point of rank and 
 opulence, paying a yearly tribute of 240,0007. : but that is 
 not all having a special grant from the Company of the 
 criminal jurisdiction and of the mint, or coinage of money. 
 Suppose any person call him prince, subject, vassal, what 
 you like suppose any person in Europe in possession of such 
 prerogatives, dealing out criminal justice to his subjects and 
 coining money for the purposes of commerce ; suppose such 
 a person, in his own dominions, by a foreigner, as it were, 
 put under confinement : is not that a complete annihilation of 
 him and of his authority in that country ? 
 
 Let us consider the principles upon which the prisoner Pretended 
 has endeavoured to justify this. First, as a fine. Consider ^^e arrest. 
 the crimes, and consider the punishment. The first crime 
 imputed is delay of a few months in paying 50,0007. The 
 next crime is, that when a thousand cavalry are nsked of 
 him he offered only five hundred cavalry and five hundred 
 matchlock men. So that the whole of the positive crime 
 of Cheyt Sing consists in the difference between the pay- 
 ment of these sums in October instead of July that is a 
 matter of arithmetic ; it may be estimated, and will amount 
 to, I believe, very few thousand pounds. The next is as to 
 the requisition of the cavalry which, whether it was legal 
 or not, I am not now disputing that, instead of a thousand 
 cavalry, he offered five hundred matchlock men and five hun- 
 dred cavalry ; therefore the difference is the expense to him 
 between five hundred matchlock men and five hundred 
 cavalry. For these crimes what is the punishment ? an 
 exaction of 500,0007. fine ; and before he has had an oppor- 
 tunity of paying that sum, an imprisonment of his person,
 
 248 Opening of the First Charge -Benares : 
 
 SS. a degradation from his sovereignty, and an annihilation of 
 
 his authority. 
 
 Dispropor. I laboured with your Lordships an argument, with un- 
 fenceand" doubteclly some degree of diffidence though at the same time 
 punishment. conn dence in my cause, because there I was resisting those 
 great and splendid abilities to which I before alluded, and 
 which somewhat differed from me upon that subject.* Here 
 I am happy to state that I agree with them; though it 
 was no more than was to be expected from the abilities of 
 the honourable person to whom I allude that, however he 
 might differ in point of law however he might differ with 
 respect to the constitution of that country, which he had 
 only studied as an exercise and not in the way in which 
 we study the constitution of our own country yet, when 
 he came to compare the disproportion between the crime 
 and the punishment, good sense drew from him what I am 
 confident it will draw from your Lordships that it is abomi- 
 nable that it goes to the conviction of all mankind that it 
 is not to be endured so to disregard the proportion between 
 the crime and the punishment as to exact 500,0007. ; namely, 
 ten times the whole sum which he had been dilatory in pay- 
 ing. I speak of the exaction of this fine, though undoubtedly 
 it never took place. I think I have a right so to speak of it ; 
 because it was declared as the intention of Mr. Hastings in 
 going to Benares, and that the imprisonment was leading 
 to the exaction of that fine. 
 Presumed I suppose those who undertake to defend Mr. Hastings. 
 
 OlICllPOS 1ITI~ * * 
 
 putedto having felt the weakness of the cause in this particular, 
 ing ' having seen the horrible disproportion between the crime 
 and the punishment in the way in which I have stated it, 
 have felt it so strongly, that this small crime of Cheyt 
 Sing's is forced to be aggravated and eked out as it were by 
 other supposititious and fictitious crimes, which Mr. Hastings 
 imputes to him in the paragraph which I have just read to 
 
 Spirit of in- your Lordships. He says, " I could not but consider it as a 
 J ' strong indication of that spirit of independency which the 
 Raja has for some years past assumed, and of which indeed 
 I had early observed other manifest symptoms, both before 
 and from the instant of my arrival." In another part of the 
 narrative he uses expressions to the like effect : he says 
 that he did not consider these particular disobediences of 
 
 * See preceding note, page 224.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 2-19 
 
 Cheyt Sing's so much on their own account, as inasmuch as 22FEB.US8. 
 they seem to imply a spirit of independency, and a desire to 
 shake off the British yoke. I wish that argument to be con- 
 sidered by your Lordships ; and I think, without any evidence 
 but that which they will allow to be the best evidence, 
 namely, Mr. Hastings' conduct, I can prove that he had no 
 such belief existing in his mind. I must first observe re- 
 specting this judge how exceeding easily he took impressions 
 of the kind which I stated to your Lordships ; for he says 
 that there were marks of independency in Cheyt Sing 
 which he had observed for some years. What those were I 
 am at a loss to know : but he says, not only for some years 
 past, but that indeed he had early observed other manifest 
 symptoms of it, both before and from the instant of his arrival 
 at Benares. 
 
 I have heard of the resources of Mr. Hastings ; I have Pi s r oved 
 heard of his commanding and penetrating genius ; but how, sfng's 
 the very morning after he had arrived at Benares and re- duct ' 
 ceived this letter from Cheyt Sing, and had an interview 
 with him, in which Cheyt Sing, by his own confession, 
 approached him with every mark of submission and laid his 
 turban on his lap how, after all these circumstances, with 
 all he had seen after he had been at Benares, how his pene- 
 trating genius and eagle eye could see those marks of inde- 
 pendency I am at a loss to conceive, and believe your Lord- 
 ships will be at a loss to conceive. But, my Lords, he saw 
 no such principles ; he did not believe that any such existed ; 
 he knew they did not. If he says to the contrary that he did, 
 
 11 11 J/L c i i. . . i .' stance of 
 
 he will only change the nature of his crime but not lessen it ; 3ir. Hast- 
 for if he did believe it, his going to Benares with so small a wrth g on?y a 
 force was unwarrantable. Did he go to this great subject, to 
 with these immense revenues, with these great riches for 
 Mr. Hastings states him to be rich with these claims to 
 independency, with these desires to shake off the British 
 yoke, and with a determination to it on the first opportunity 
 did he go up to him with such a weak guard, with so little 
 resources of defence, that in the subsequent event he seems 
 to think it very providential that Benares was not rescued 
 out of his hands, but was still a part of the possessions of the 
 Company ? " Though this wicked Raja hates the English, 
 though he has great wealth, is great and powerful, with evil 
 and malicious designs towards Great Britain, I don't think he 
 will have an opportunity at present. I am going to him upon 
 such an innocent errand, such a mere ceremonious visit, upon
 
 250 Openina of the First Char ye Benares: 
 
 22 FEB.,1788. an occasion so trifling and unimportant, that, whatever may 
 be at the bottom of his heart, he will have no pretence to 
 break out on this occasion : therefore I require no guards for 
 my defence or army to repel any resistance he may make." 
 He is going to this person, in whom for years past he had 
 observed strong indications of a spirit of independency, and 
 of which he had early observed manifest symptoms he goes, 
 weak, unarmed, defenceless, to do what ? to seize him in his 
 capital ; to take his forts in one alternative, or force him to 
 pay a fine of 500,000/. in the other, when he had before 
 shown himself unwilling to pay 50,OOOZ. He went to make 
 the most extraordinary demands upon a person whom he 
 knew unwilling to comply with them ; he went to inforce 
 them by the most violent and compulsive means : and this he 
 did with respect to a great, opulent and rich, prince whom 
 he knew to have designs adverse to the British interest 
 and this he did, going almost alone and without a guard. If 
 I admit his defence in one particular, then it only goes to 
 changing the crime. When I impeach him here of a gross 
 neglect of the British interests in India, going upon a 
 message which he must know to be a message of provoca- 
 tion to the Raja, going with a view to fine him, to imprison 
 him, without any means to quell and suppress the resistance 
 he would probably make upon such an occasion, he would 
 only change the nature of the crime, as I said, and not in 
 the smallest degree diminish or excuse it. But, that it is 
 impossible to be true, the very facts prove plainer than any 
 thing I can say. 
 
 The province of Benares was lost to the East India Com- 
 pany and recovered again: and that will be brought as a 
 proof of the merit of Mr. Hastings the merit of a man 
 recovering by resource or exertion what was lost by impro- 
 vident neglect. The province of Benares was lost what, 
 by the great power of Cheyt Sing ? No, by the weakness of 
 the British force. He says, " With respect to the British 
 interest in India, my person, which has the qualities of a 
 talisman, God knows." * To what did he intrust that sacred 
 
 * The following appears to be the passage referred to : " Let it not he sup" 
 posed that I attribute too much consequence to my own person when I suppose 
 the fate of the British empire in India connected with it. Mean as its sub- 
 stance may be, its incidental properties were equivalent to those which, like 
 the magical characters of a talisman in the Arabian mythology, formed the 
 essence of the state itself ; representation, title, and the estimate of public 
 opinion." Narrative of the Insurrection, &c., p. 29.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 251 
 
 talisman he so describes ? to a small, to an inconsiderable, 
 guard in the capital city of a person intriguing against the 
 British power, and known to be an enemy to the British 
 interest. If he intrusted that talisman with a weak guard, 
 upon what occasion was it? when he knew that person 
 before, an enemy was going to receive that which he would 
 think a provocation and justification for all manner of injuries. 
 If this be true, and he knew this really was the disposition of 
 the Raja, he is as guilty of neglect on that side as, on the 
 other, I state him to be guilty of oppression. But he knows 
 it was not true : and the subsequent event goes to demon- 
 strate what every other circumstance does that Cheyt 
 Sing knew that he was a dependent slave on the British 
 power ; that he must lay his rank, authority and existence, 
 at the foot of Mr. Hastings which he does in the most 
 abject and submissive manner ; and that he would have done 
 everything rather than come to the point, which he was 
 obliged to come to, of complete and acknowledged dispute 
 between him and the Governor. 
 
 There is one thing worthy your Lordships' observation upon chcyt sing's 
 the present which Cheyt Sing had made, with a view of jf/not ai? 06 ' 
 appeasing him. He meant it as a present to the individual {^^toiiis' 
 and not to the public. Mr. Hastings writes to Cheyt Sing present to 
 
 /? n /. J ,. i TIT nv. Mr. Hast- 
 
 a letter full of every species of reproach and blame. Cheyt ings. 
 Sing answers it in a style which I state to be everything 
 abject and submissive, and which Mr. Hastings states a.s 
 everything defiant and offensive that it was recrimination. 
 If he had been disposed to recriminate, Cheyt Sing would 
 have stated the illegal present he had made him, and which 
 he supposed Mr. Hastings converted to his own advantage, 
 though the contrary fact may be true. He does no such 
 thing : but, in a paper which cannot be evidence before your 
 Lordships, and which therefore I shall not mention to criminate 
 Mr. Hastings, in a manifesto Cheyt Sing published after- 
 wards, enumerating all the wrongs he had suffered from the 
 India Company, he never once mentions that present : he 
 never mentions it in any part of the dispute, nor in this 
 recriminatory letter not in this letter after his expulsion 
 from the country, nor in a letter which was written to 
 Mr. Hastings when in open acts of hostility, does he mention 
 it, 
 
 I mention this forbearance, to show your Lordships the ^^^ 
 nature of presents in that country ; that they are considered presents in 
 as so sacred that the name and character of an informer with
 
 252 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 Rccapituia- 
 Hastings' 1 "' 
 Benares. 
 
 The rebel- 
 Benares 
 
 22 FEB.17S8. respect to presents is there held so odious that even when in 
 open hostilities when declaring he has suffered every wrong 
 that can be conceived of by Mr. Hastings he still preserves 
 that species of fidelity which those linked in crimes do to one 
 another that he does not mention this which he paid as a 
 bribe. 
 
 I have now brought Mr. Hastings to Benares. I have 
 stated to your Lordships with what view he went there. He 
 went not as a legislator ; he went not as a military officer ; 
 he went not as Governor ; but he went in the sacred office 
 and character of a judge. I have shown your Lordships how 
 he performed the duties of that character. He performed 
 them by beginning with reproaching the criminal, and 
 declaring an abject defence of the criminal an open defiance : 
 he then proceeded to put under an arrest that criminal, being 
 under the circumstances which I have stated. 
 
 Now I am ready to maintain at the bar of your Lordships, 
 or of any tribunal in the world, that, if I have succeeded in 
 - proving which I have no doubt I have, unless I have stated 
 facts which the evidence will not afterwards bear me out in 
 if I have succeeded in proving this, that Mr. Hastings did 
 illegally and wantonly, under pretences and colour of justice, 
 endeavour to extort a sum of money from Cheyt Sing, and 
 put him in prison, without any just consideration moving him 
 thereto that all the consequences, the rebellion as he has 
 called it (miscalled it in my opinion), of Cheyt Sing, the 
 loss of the province of Benares, and the banishing Cheyt 
 Sing from the country, are all chargeable upon Mr. Hast- 
 ings, and he is answerable for all the consequences. 
 
 And having therefore proved I have no doubt to your 
 Lordships' satisfaction that there never was a more un- 
 warrantable act committed, and not excused but aggravated 
 a thousandfold by "the pretence under which it was com- 
 .mitted, and aggravated still more by assuming the sacred 
 character of a judge, it will not be necessary for me to prove 
 that all the consequences which followed that act were 
 imputable to that man originally. The consequences of the 
 imprisonment were such as might be expected. In the 
 course of the imprisonment there were many things dis- 
 gusting to Cheyt Sing. Among the rest, a man of low rank 
 in that country offered him an insult. Those who were 
 attached to their prince, whom they were used to obey under 
 the India Company, enraged at the insult, acted upon it as 
 men in such a situation ought to have acted ; for I must
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 253 
 
 say they acted justifiably upon that occasion. That pro- aaFEu. 
 duced that sort of riot which ended in what was called a 
 massacre at that place, and in the final expulsion of Cheyt 
 Sing. To whom do the British who were there massacred 
 owe their death ? If what I have stated is true, they owe it 
 to Mr. Hastings' unjust exaction and violent punishment. 
 If it is not true, still they owe their death to him ; because 
 he rashly went to provoke a power which he knew to be for- 
 midable and adverse, without having with him the means to 
 restrain and suppress the natural consequences arising from 
 such an action. 
 
 Therefore I stand here, and charge Mr. Hastings, not 
 only in the name of Cheyt Sing not only in the name of 
 that province which, from being the garden of India, is now 
 stated to be in that lamentable situation which Mr. Hastings' 
 glowing pen has well described in one of his letters I speak 
 not only on the part of Cheyt Sing and his unfortunate 
 subjects but that Mr. Hastings, either by his unwarrantable 
 exaction of the fine, by his improper imprisonment of Cheyt 
 Sing, or by neglecting to support those acts if proper, is 
 answerable for the loss of Benares and the consequences 
 which followed to the Company; for the province of Benares 
 was for a time lost, however it might afterwards be re- 
 covered. I am now drawing very near the conclusion of 
 what I have to offer to your Lordships. 
 
 I have stated the circumstances which took place in all Recapit 
 the years preceding 1778 : I will not recapitulate them. I vk>usst P ate"- 
 have stated the several demands of five lacs of rupees in mcnts - 
 1778, in 1779, and in 1780; I have stated the demand of 
 the cavalry, and the answer to it ; I have stated the imprison- 
 ment of Cheyt Sing ; I have stated the circumstances which 
 preceded that imprisonment ; and I have marked out which 
 I hope your Lordships will keep in your minds the two 
 points which seem to have been the real causes which pro- 
 duced Mr. Hastings' actions upon the moment ; that is, that 
 where he professes to have lost all patience was the offering 
 him the five hundred matchlock men instead of five hundred 
 cavalry ; that it was which made him take the determination 
 of going down to Benares to punish the Raja for his con- 
 tumacy ; [and] that, when he had taken that determination, 
 the terms in which the Raja's letter was couched prompted 
 him to the execution of these violent acts. 
 
 1 have stated also that he did all this which I consider 
 as a very high aggravation in the quality of a judge.
 
 254 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 & YKB.IISS. I ought to have stated (I omitted it in its place) what 
 
 Mr. Hast- I shall not much insist upon ; because I am perfectly clear 
 
 Ration of his that I am right in the argument : I consider it as merely an 
 
 GoverfiOTto aggravation upon this subject, however, if it had existed 
 
 Mr.wheeicr. alone and of itself, it might have been a crime worthy the 
 
 attention of your Lordships that, when Mr. Hastings went 
 
 up to Benares, he went not as Governor General, in any 
 
 known quality in which he could go ; but he had an illegal 
 
 delegation of all the powers of the supreme government to 
 
 himself in person. He at the same time redelegated them, as 
 
 it were, to Mr. "Wheler, who remained at Calcutta. 
 
 I am sure, to your Lordships who have the advantage of 
 great legal knowledge, many of yon, to your Lordships who 
 have the assistance of great legal knowledge, it is unneces- 
 sary for me to waste time to prove that, when an act of 
 Parliament has prescribed that there shall be a Supreme 
 Council at Calcutta, there is no power in the act to establish 
 two distinct Governors General and Councils, but one ; and 
 that that one may delegate to its servants such power as is 
 proper for delegation, but it cannot delegate the whole power 
 to another, to act the same as if it were there in person. 
 
 The reason why I do not dilate upon this is because, 
 mixed with the other business I have stated upon this 
 Article, I consider it only as an aggravation to the other 
 parts, which, great as the crime is of disobeying the oi'ders 
 of the act of Parliament, great as the crime is of perverting 
 and evading alLthe provisions of the act by creating a power 
 unknown to the laws of this country, is a subordinate 
 crime to those he committed in consequence of that dele- 
 gation. I consider it as an aggravation rather than a sub- 
 stantive part of this charge, and therefore I shall not much 
 dilate upon it. 
 
 other mat- Your Lordships are aware that, from the time of the expul- 
 irTthe pfe- d sion of Cheyt Sing, there is far from being an end of this 
 sent charge. Article, but that there are various other matters alleged in 
 it. I shall say shortly in a few words that my opinion is 
 that, in all those subsequent articles, in everything that 
 related to the capture of Bidjey Gur in everything that 
 relates to the subsequent imprisonment of Durgbejey Sing 
 in everything that relates to Mr. Hastings' removal of 
 Jagger Deo Sing everything happened which might 
 naturally have been expected, and that wicked beginnings 
 had proportion ably, as I hope always will happen, cala- 
 mitous ends.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 255 
 
 One of the honourable Managers with whom I have the 32FEB.1788.. 
 honour to act will, upon a future occasion, state that part of TO be""' 
 the charge to your Lordships, and will aggravate it in a an^her&a- 
 manner that will impress the minds of your Lordships more na s cr - 
 than anything I can say upon the subject. 
 
 But, before I finish, I must beg leave to state a very few Repetition 
 words for the consideration of your Lordships. I have proved 
 to your Lordships that, by an agreement with Cheyt Sing, 
 Mr. Hastings had no right to exact the five lacs of rupees, 
 but that- those five lacs of rupees were exacted in defiance of 
 that treaty. I state that to be a crime in Mr. Hastings. But 
 I state a subsequent part to be a still greater crime ; that, 
 when he received them in consequence of his exaction, 
 instead of bearing a favour, a partiality, as he ought, instead 
 of feeling indulgent sentiments to the man who had complied 
 with the requisitions of the Company I think illegal requi- 
 sitions, but certainly doubtful and disputable in point of law 
 in the Company instead of treating him with indulgence, 
 instead of treating him as a meritorious subject, who had 
 cheerfully complied with the demand of the Company in a 
 case where the right was doubtful he turned over and over 
 in his mind how he should bring him to future resistance 
 and consequently to future punishment ; that he took for 
 the means of his oppression the sacred garment of a judge, 
 which aggravates everything he did under that robe and 
 under that character ; that he chose, instead of stating it to 
 be a mere extortion, to state it to be the punishment for a 
 crime ; and, as he is a more sacred character that decides 
 upon criminals than he who decides between man and man, 
 he took therefore the sacred character of a judge in the 
 most responsible part of judgment he proceeded to judge 
 with that abominable principle that he was to look for the 
 resources of the India Company in the crimes of an in- 
 dividual a principle which, the 'moment it pervaded the 
 mind of the judge, was the cause of a punishment extortion- 
 ate and unjust ; that, when he went to Benares, though 
 everything he saw there Cheyt Sing's address in person, 
 and his letter to him were all calculated to soften, atone, 
 appease and conciliate, he perversely considers them as other- 
 wise ; and that everything that was calculated to appease 
 and conciliate he states, in the face of reason and the 
 feeling of mankind, to be couched in terms of defiance. 
 All this proves that he did accomplish that which he had 
 designed ; that he imprisoned him when there was no colour
 
 256 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. ires, for it; that he exacted this arbitrary fine when there was 
 no ground for it ; that he was guilty I speak the words of 
 others, not my own* of grinding oppression, tyranny and 
 injustice ; that he was guilty of a confusion of the proper 
 proportion between crime and punishment : and if there be 
 one office of a judge more sacred than another, after to do 
 justice, to acquit the innocent and condemn the guilty, it is 
 to proportion the punishment to the crime. For he who 
 annexes great punishments to small crimes, and light punish- 
 ments to heavy and grave offences, differs little from him who 
 condemns the innocent and acquits the guilty. If half a 
 million is exacted as a punishment for so light a crime as 
 delay of payment of a small sum, it is little better than if 
 the innocent be found guilty ; because he who is nearly 
 innocent has a punishment fit only for those that are 
 essentially guilty. On the other hand, if he who is greatly 
 criminal is lightly punished, the object of punishment, which 
 is to prevent the commission of crimes, is lost. Every judge 
 therefore who is guilty of an inattention to the due proportion 
 between crimes and punishments forgets the main part and 
 principle of his duty. If he does it in favour of the criminal 
 and not against him it is something more excusable. But 
 the prisoner at^your Lordships' bar has affixed crimes upon 
 Cheyt Sing which never had any existence. And here I beg 
 to recal to your Lordships 5 mind the state and situation of 
 that man at one view. 
 
 condition f ^ your Lordships could have a communication with this 
 Cheyt sing, unhappy man if you could inquire into his eventful history 
 and he could relate it to you what an effect it would have 
 upon your Lordships' minds ! Ask him who he was and 
 what he was. He would say " I was the llaja Cheyt 
 Sing. I was in my own opinion an independent Prince, 
 in the opinion of the Company a vassal of theirs but a 
 great vassal of theirs, who paid them two hundred and 
 forty thousand pounds annual tribute. I had given me the 
 exercise of criminal jurisdiction in the country ; I had given 
 me the coinage of money ; I had all the symbols and appur- 
 tenances of sovereignty, and I thought to have had a free 
 and uncontrolled sovereignty in my own dominions, subject 
 to obedience and tribute to the Company. That was my 
 situation : what am I now ? An exile upon the earth, sup- 
 ported by the charity of those who were formerly envious 
 
 * Again referring to Mr. Pitt's speech.
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 257 
 
 of my power; without home, without property, without any- 22 FEB. 1788. 
 thing but my existence left to me, after having been at least, 
 if not an independent Prince, the first of the British subjects 
 in India." 
 
 " How has this happened to you?" He would say he 
 knows not ; but that it happened by the arbitrary conduct 
 of the English in that country. You would say " Don't 
 imagine these things were done unjustly to you." He 
 would tell you " I thought I was to pay no more than was 
 stipulated in the agreement I had signed." He w r ould be 
 answered " No wonder you thought so, and it would have 
 been so. You would have been an independent Prince, inde- 
 pendent of the sovereignty of the Company; you would 
 have been at this moment reigning at Benares, distributing 
 criminal justice and coining money ; you would have been 
 at this moment in the receipt of such a revenue as would 
 enable you to give two hundred and forty thousand pounds 
 annual tribute to the Company all this would have been 
 so ; you would have been in the free exercise of independent 
 and uncontrolled authority in your province or zamindary, 
 whatever it is to be called ; all this would be so, but it is 
 now just you should have none of it." " "Why ? " " Because Effects of 
 you did not observe in your agreement that the tribute you tribute at e 
 were to pay was to be paid at Benares and not at Patna. Benares - 
 You would have had the command of your country and the 
 enjoyment of your revenue ; you would have been in the most 
 illustrious and opulent situation of any subject in all the 
 provinces belonging to the British government in that 
 country ; but when it was stipulated that your tribute was 
 to be paid at Benares, from that instant you were in the 
 situation of a depraved, degraded, zamindar. Like one you 
 are treated ; you are annihilated, exterminated. But you 
 have no right to complain. All this you ought to have 
 known would have been the consequence of paying your 
 tribute at Benares." He would have said " Good God ! 
 what a fine thing is English law nnd the construction of 
 English law ! What a pity that I had not an English lawyer, 
 who would have told me that my existence as a Prince did 
 not depend upon words, easy and intelligible, but that I 
 should have understood that, if the place of my payment 
 was at Benares, the whole agreement was null and void ; that 
 I was a slave and they my masters ; and that I had no rights 
 or any ground to stand upon in any dispute they might have 
 
 K
 
 258 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. against me." He would have lamented he had not learned 
 earlier this distinction, which was made for his utter ruin. 
 
 If you were to talk with him further upon the subject he 
 would say " Still this is hard; for, whether I had aright to 
 be exempt from the payment of the five lacs of rupees or 
 not, I paid it, and therefore upon that score no crime can be 
 laid to my charge. Therefore, whatever you tell me of this 
 distinction of Patna and Benares however unfortunate it 
 was that my tribute was paid at Benares however my 
 agreements were null and void however I was a mere 
 zamindar and you were omnipotent it is hard I should be 
 in this situation ; since whatever you asked I gave, whatever 
 you stated me to owe I paid." 
 
 Delay in The English gentleman conversing with him has been 
 
 exactions, better taught ; he would say i( Sir, these things appear so 
 to you, but you are mistaken. It is true you did all these 
 things, and you are not expelled for not doing them ; but 
 you are now expelled, not as a measure of government, not 
 for any purpose of the India Company to take the whole of 
 that revenue to themselves that would be a wicked design 
 in them but you are now suffering this as the effect of a 
 judicial proceeding, as a fine for your misconduct/' " My 
 misconduct !" " Why, how can you be such an hypocrite as 
 to attempt to conceal it ? Don't you know that, when five 
 lacs were asked of you in 1778, you pretended it was with 
 great difficulty you could pay it, and you kept back in 1778 
 50,000/. from the Company for near three weeks ; in the 
 year 1779 you kept it back something more than two 
 months, may be; and in the year 1780 you kept it back as 
 much ? Do you imagine that keeping back from the Com- 
 pany 150,0007., taking the whole together, for three months, 
 is not a crime for which you are justly expelled your zamin- 
 dary, for which you are justly converted from something like 
 a sovereign, from one with stipulations in his favour, to one 
 who has no rights at all, and is an outlaw, an exile, and wan- 
 derer upon the face of the earth?" 
 
 I think he, and those in similar situations in India, would 
 receive little consolation by being informed that all this was 
 done, not to secure to the India Company the revenues of 
 that country, but that it was done as a judicial proceeding, 
 as a punishment for that crime. "Well, but an insur- 
 rection happened. I was frightened, terrified, driven away. 
 What was it for?" "Why, you had to pay five hundred
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 259 
 
 thousand pounds." " For what?" " For the crimes which 22FEB.178S. 
 I have specified and enumerated ; that is to say, you have 
 delayed paying 50,0007. for two months, and you have offered, 
 in a wicked, audacious, manner, so as to make the Governor 
 General lose all patience, five hundred matchlock men 
 instead of five hundred cavalry a crime which justly merits 
 a fine of five hundred thousand pounds ; and if it was not 
 complied with, you justly merit what you have suffered." 
 Would not the inhabitants of that country gay " If this is 
 British justice, let us have Tartarian barbarity, rapine and 
 oppression ; for the oppressions of the Tartars, invasions of 
 the Mohammedans, the cruelties of all the tyrants in this 
 country, are not so terrible, are not so intolerable, as British 
 justice in the forms in which you state it." 
 
 It was said by a great man, that "the finger of the law [King] 
 would be heavier upon them [than the loins of the law]." ' 
 It is stated that he said it in another way. I am sure in this 
 case he might say, that the finger of the justice of England, in 
 a judicial punishment for the slightest offence that could be 
 stated to be committed, was an heavier oppression upon him 
 than the direct avowed oppressions, under the name of oppres- 
 sion, of all the Tartar conquerors, of all the Mohammedan 
 invaders and plunderers, that ever ravaged that unfortunate 
 country. 
 
 Let me put this to your Lordships' consideration. You ^^^{j* fo 
 are the first court of English iustice in this kingdom : it the cnarac- 
 
 i /> -i i ,1 c ,1 terofEng- 
 
 concerns you more nearly, if possible, than the rest of the ii s h justice 
 subjects of this country. Will you suffer this sample of mlndia ' 
 British justice to be exhibited in India and to have the 
 sanction of your approbation ? We are come to a period in 
 which it is in vain to dissemble ; we must own the con- 
 sequences of our decision. There was a period, I admit it, 
 when the affairs of India were so little known in this country, 
 when in the labyrinth of long and tedious volumes the whole 
 was so confused and obscured, that even those who were 
 willing to know found it a task too arduous for moderate 
 and common industry when those who were willing, acting 
 from their feelings rather than their knowledge when 
 those who were willing rather to express their gratitude to 
 those who had provided for their relations could at least 
 
 * The second Article of impeachment against the Earl of Strafford charged 
 him with having, at the York assizes, in the eighth year of Charles I., used the 
 following expression, viz., " That some of the justices were all for law, and 
 nothing would please them hut law ; but that they should find that the King's 
 little finger should be heavier than the loins of the law." 
 
 R 2
 
 260 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEai-s?. plead ignorance to their own conscience and lull the feel- 
 ings which must arise upon their minds from the eventful 
 history of that country, shutting their ears to anything 
 that came from it, except what came in an agreeable and 
 acceptable shape. Such was the case respecting that coun- 
 try, till the indefatigable zeal and industry of one man or, 
 to express myself more properly, the three distinguishable 
 characters of the English nation incorruptible virtue, sub- 
 lime genius, and warm enthusiasm (without which, virtue and 
 genius are insufficient and almost useless qualities to man- 
 kind) these great qualities combined in one individual 
 have torn the veil of ignorance from the eyes of the public. 
 We can no longer pretend not to know what the virtue, the 
 diligence, the zeal, the enthusiasm, and what the genius of 
 that man have brought before the public, whether we would 
 see it or not; what he has forced upon them in spite of 
 discouragement ; what he has forced upon them, with an 
 ardour and zeal that rarely accompany the pursuit of men 
 in any case where there is no personal object to be obtained. 
 He has done this ; he has done it greatly and nobly ; and his 
 name, if this country regains its fame in India, will go down 
 to posterity as having done the greatest service to this 
 country thnt ever was done by any man in it. That is with 
 respect to him. With respect to us, to your Lordships, to the 
 public, one consequence has happened you can no longer 
 plead ignorance. You hear the maxims, you hear the prin- 
 ciples, you hear the system upon which British government 
 has been exercised in India. You hear the ideas upon which 
 British juridical and British criminal justice has been distri- 
 buted in India. Your Lordships cannot pretend not to know. 
 You must now, therefore, come to this alternative you must 
 be the avengers of or the accomplices in the deeds of Mr. 
 Hastings. You have no other alternative but to punish Mr. 
 Hastings ; not with such a punishment as he inflicted upon 
 Cheyt Sing, with a punishment disproportionate to his 
 crimes, but apportioned to them if such power be within 
 the reach of your Lordships or, you must declare at once in 
 his favour, and render yourselves accomplices in his guilt by 
 giving your sanction to that iniquitous perversion of justice 
 I have stated. 
 
 Conse- All judicial punishments are for example, and so are all 
 
 nuencesof . ,. . , J . *. Tr . T .. . . ' ,, TT . 
 
 the acquittal judicial acquittals. It your Lordships acquit Mr. Hastings 
 
 fn!rsj r ' Hl >l " upon this charge you will send this out to India that your 
 
 idea of the proportion of crimes and punishments is this : that
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox. 261 
 
 a short delay in the payment of 50,0007., that an offer of 22FEB.1788. 
 five hundred matchlock men instead of five hundred cavalry, 
 shall be punished with a fine of five hundred thousand 
 pounds, with degradation from dignity, imprisonment of 
 person and expulsion from territory. You must be the ac- 
 complices, if you will not take the other glorious character 
 to be the avengers, of those crimes which 1 have stated to 
 your Lordships. 
 
 If it be asked if that pitiful, miserable, illiberal and con- 
 temptible, argument, which I cannot find epithets enough to 
 degrade, and to point out the scorn which I feel upon the 
 subject, should be stated to your Lordships that we are 
 not the wronged, the oppressed I say, though we are not the 
 oppressed, yet we are the wronged ; the British nation is the 
 wronged. Am I to flatter ourselves and the British nation, to Degradation 
 tell you that we bear a good character in Europe with respect country in 
 to our transactions in India ? If I did I should indeed 
 most grossly flatter. There was a period when Spain was 
 infamous, as it were, all over Europe with respect to her con- 
 duct to her colonies. Why ? Because she did not punish 
 the individuals who were guilty, and thereby let it remain a 
 stain and a reproach upon the national character. 
 
 We stand at issue now before the great tribunal of Europe 
 and of the world. These are the crimes, I contend, of an 
 individual ; but, if you acquit him, they are the crimes of 
 the nation. They stamp the national character in that 
 country, and an Englishman can hold up his head no more 
 with any professions of humanity, of justice, of liberty, or 
 any of those darling virtues which we have been fond to 
 appropriate to ourselves exclusively, in contradistinction from 
 the rest of the world. If there be anything worse than the 
 commission of those crimes I trust there cannot be it 
 must be a tribunal that can sanctify them. For, even in 
 the worst of crimes, there is something imputable to the 
 depravity of a single individual. What is done from passion 
 is more easily to be excused ; what is done from determined 
 malignity, bad as it is, you still see the source of it in the 
 human heart, because something of malignity is undoubtedly 
 a quality inherent in a great part of mankind ; but, upon 
 cool deliberate reason and examination, to sanctify injustice, 
 to uphold tyranny, and to declare British justice to be far 
 worse than any oppression in any country, is fixing an 
 indelible stain upon the character of your Lordships and 
 on the British legislation. They might say, " These men
 
 262 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 2i FBB.1788. talk of their own character ; they talk of the constitution of 
 their country, of the mildness of their laws, of the fair 
 chance that every innocent man has upon his trial, and the 
 certainty of conviction of every man who is guilty; but, 
 when facts are laid before them, when crimes are presented 
 to them, they have laid down as a principle, destructive to 
 the character of the English name, destructive of the liberty 
 of every man under the English government in this great 
 empire, that crimes and punishments ought to have no pro- 
 portion to each other." 
 
 The purity I say, to sanctify such crimes is, if possible, worse than to 
 concerned rt commit them. I speak not in any fear that such things will 
 in the fesu 1 * be done. I know this court. I see the publicity of it. I 
 
 of the trial. t ,, , . T i i i *> 
 
 know that the eyes of this country, I believe the eyes of 
 all Europe, are at this moment upon your proceedings ; and 
 therefore, if I had not that high idea of your Lordships which 
 I profess to have, I will venture to say there is no tribunal 
 in Europe which could dare to acquit this man this day, if the 
 facts I state are proved against him ; for no tribunal could 
 sanctify injustice of the quality and nature I have described. 
 There is no tribunal which could dare to teach this lesson to 
 all the world : " We have heard these facts ; we admit they 
 are proved ; but we say, what is justice in Europe is not 
 justice in Asia. There, whatever the crimes may be, the 
 punishment may be apportioned as the person pleases ; espe- 
 cially, if that person thinks resources may be drawn from 
 the crimes of individuals, he may justifiably act upon that 
 principle." Touching upon that, I touch upon another string 
 fatal to the reputation of this country. What made the 
 character of the Spaniards more odious, was an idea prevailing 
 that the gold and silver imported into Europe from those 
 provinces they oppressed reconciled them to the oppressions 
 there practised, and the disgrace that followed that oppres- 
 sion. Take care, my Lords, that this country comes under no 
 such imputation. It is true the India Company come under 
 it, and justly ; but if we sanctify, applaud, acquit, these 
 crimes in Great Britain, the world may believe that we are 
 favourable to the crimes, because individuals in the country, 
 and possibly the public itself, may have in some instances 
 derived pecuniary profit from the result of those crimes. We 
 shall then be the very thing with which I charge Mr. Hast- 
 ings that odious character of a judge who looks at the con- 
 viction of a prisoner as an advantage to himself or an advan- 
 tage to his country ; as a sovereign who looks upon the crimes
 
 Speech of Mr. Fox, 263 
 
 of his subjects, not with horror, but as a resource to his 22FBB.i78. 
 exchequer. There is horrid injustice, tyrannical oppression, 
 injustice aggravated by being committed under the specious 
 appearance of a punishment for an offence. There is oppres- 
 sion under every aggravation, being a legal oppression under 
 the name of criminal jurisdiction and that you look for 
 resources for your country in convicting a person whom you 
 ought to judge impartially. 
 
 I do not say that there are not other crimes in this great 
 impeachment which may be equal to this ; but, while my 
 mind is full of this, I cannot see what crime could be fitter 
 produced to show the intolerable guilt of the prisoner 
 showing the consequences of it by finally ending in the 
 expulsion of the Raja. And, lastly, if you do not find 
 him guilty, and if you do not give a severe punishment (for 
 none else could be pronounced), your Lordships are as 
 guilty as he ; and, fearful of becoming the avengers, you 
 become the companions in his crimes, and hold forth a prin- 
 ciple to the world incompatible with the honour of the 
 British nation. 
 
 I leave this with your Lordships, with firm and full confi- Conclusion, 
 dence that it is impossible that you should acquit, and that, 
 when found guilty, the delinquent should not be severely 
 punished ; but, with this desire and protest in favour of the 
 Commons of England, that they have shown, by their im- 
 peachment of this day and by the instructions they have 
 given me which I have endeavoured to make known in the 
 speech I have made to your Lordships that they abhor 
 all injustice ; but, of all other, that injustice which clothes 
 itself in the name of criminal jurisdiction is most odious and 
 abominable ; that extortions for money are in all respects 
 blameable, but infinitely more so when extorted under the 
 name of a mulct and a fine. 
 
 They have proved that these are the crimes, not of the 
 English nation they are not the national character they 
 are the crimes of an individual Englishman, whom they wish 
 to punish. But it is for your Lordships to follow their bright 
 example, to do that which will wipe out the stain upon the 
 English character, and will let us lift up our heads in the 
 presence of Europe, and declare proudly to the world in 
 general we have India in our possession, we govern that 
 country upon principles of liberty and justice ; and, if crimes 
 have been committed there that throw an odium upon the 
 British name in that country, know all the world these are
 
 264 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 22 FEB. 1788. not the crimes of Great Britain but the crimes of Warren 
 Hastings. We have fixed them upon the individual, and 
 exculpated the nation from the blackest stain ever endea- 
 voured to be thrown upon this country. 
 
 If I have gone more at length than I should have done 
 it has been from the mode of proceeding which your Lord- 
 ships have directed us to adopt. I thought it my duty to 
 state fully and at large most of what I conceive applicable 
 to the subject. Much I have omitted. There is much 
 gleaning for any one who would do me the honour to come 
 after ; but much I have stated to your Lordships to prove 
 that this is an important Article upon which you should fintl 
 the prisoner guilty. 
 
 Precision iu One word more I have heard that a general idea has 
 of impeach- gone forth of a want of certainty and precision in some of 
 these Articles. I think there is no such want : I think they 
 are drawn in the best way they could be. But, if it is any 
 convenience to your Lordships, I have no difficulty to state 
 that I conceive in this Article there are two distinct crimes 
 and more than two, as crimes, I do not charge upon Mr. 
 Hastings I mean, first the exaction of the five lacs of 
 rupees, and afterwards proceeding up to Benares and at- 
 tempting to exact five hundred thousand pounds, and the 
 consequent imprisonment and expulsion of Cheyt Sing ; 
 which I consider as another.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 265 
 
 SPEECH OF CHARLES GREY, ESQ., MANAGER FOR 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN CONTINUATION 
 OF THE OPENING OF THE FIRST ARTICLE OF 
 CHARGE, RELATING TO BENARES ; 25 FEBRUARY, 
 
 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, I am appointed by the gentlemen who 
 have the conduct of this prosecution to follow the honourable 
 Manager who had last the honour of addressing your Lord- 
 ships, in support of the first Article of charge exhibited by 
 the Commons against Warren Hastings. 
 
 Inferior, my Lords, as I feel myself, to the discharge of so 
 important a duty, I must solicit from your Lordships that 
 candour and indulgence from which I know I may expect 
 every proper consideration. If to this there could be added 
 any more powerful assurance, to support and encourage me 
 on so trying an occasion, it would be my confidence in the 
 goodness of the cause of which I am appointed to stand 
 forth the zealous, though weak and unworthy, advocate. 
 
 My Lords, the parts of this charge that are more imme- Parts of the 
 diately assigned me are those which relate to the acts com- slgn'edkfthe 
 mitted after the expulsion of Raja Cheyt Sing ; namely, the Mana er - 
 plunder of Bidjey Gur, and the subsequent changes made 
 by Mr. Hastings in the government of the province of 
 Benares. 
 
 I hope, however, that it will not be thought a transgression 
 beyond the limits of my duty, if I call the attention of your 
 Lordships to some observations with which I shall think it 
 necessary to trouble you on the preceding parts of this 
 charge, rather with a view to recal to the recollection, and 
 by that means to fix more strongly in the memory, of your 
 Lordships what has already been urged by my honourable 
 friend, than with any hope which would indeed be pre- 
 sumptuous that by anything I can say I shall be able to 
 add to the force of what has been so fully and irresistibly 
 detailed by him. 
 
 There is one point to which I more particularly wish to piicyt sing's 
 call the attention of your Lordships, because the prisoner ^'fto the* 
 himself declared that it embraces the whole merits of the 
 case I mean the question of right. It is upon this he has
 
 266 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 - 5 FEB^i788. declared his guilt or innocence ultimately to depend. My 
 Lords, lam willing to join issue with him upon this ground, 
 and to meet him upon the principles which he himself 
 asserts. He says in his Narrative : 
 
 " If Rajah Cheit Sing possessed the zemeedary of Banaris in his own 
 right, and with an inherent and exclusive authority ; if he owed no 
 allegiance to the Company, nor obedience, beyond the payment of a 
 stipulated tribute; I am liable to condemnation for exacting other 
 duties from him, and for all the consequences of that exaction; and 
 he is guiltless." * 
 
 I here join issue with him, and I undertake to prove that 
 the Raja owed no allegiance to the Company, nor obedience, 
 beyond a stipulated tribute ; meaning by obedience a com- 
 pliance with any exaction which the superior government 
 might think proper to impose ; and that Mr. Hastings there- 
 fore is liable to condemnation for exacting other duties from 
 him, and for all the consequences of that exaction. 
 Not derived To prove this, I shall not think it necessary to trouble 
 hfcfprede? 1 your Lordships with any discussion of the rights and tenure 
 Butoa'nt f Bulwant Sing ; whether he was amil,f or whether he was 
 Sin *- zamindar ; whether he had been a profitable or a dangerous 
 
 ally to the Company. These are points which I think little 
 material; certainly they are not essential to the establish- 
 ment of this charge. Such discussions, though Mr. Hastings 
 has thought proper to provoke an argument upon them, as if 
 in them were contained the whole merits of the cause, cer- 
 tainly cannot eventually decide, though they may serve as 
 powerful accessories to illustrate, the main principle on 
 which this question must turn. That Bulwant Sing was a 
 powerful chief or zamindar, that he did attach himself to the 
 English government in India, that the court of Directors 
 did think him of signal service to their affairs, and that, in 
 consequence of those services, whether supposed or real, he 
 was, by an article in the treaty of Allahabad, confirmed 
 in his possessions and all the rights annexed to them, are 
 points which can be proved by the most satisfactory evi- 
 dence : but whether he enjoyed the sovereign state of an 
 independent prince, or whether he was nothing more 
 than a mere tenant at will, subject to the unrestrained 
 power of a barbarous tyrant, will not affect the rights of 
 Cheyt Sing, which were established on the positive security 
 
 * "Narrative of the Insurrection," &c., p. 11. 
 
 f A farmer of, or contractor for, the revenue under the native system. 
 Wilson's Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 267 
 
 of grant or compact, perfectly sufficient for the establishment ^ FEB - 1 7ss- 
 
 of this charge. For I do not expect to hear it averred, even in 
 
 the political creed of Mr. Hastings, that what we had given 
 
 we had a right to resume, merely because we had given it ; 
 
 the terms on which the grant had been made having been 
 
 observed by the party more immediately bound by them 
 
 with the utmost punctuality and the most perfect good 
 
 faith. 
 
 But, my Lords, Raja Cheyt Sing held his territories, and Secured by 
 all the rights annexed to them, upon other principles and by 
 another tenure than the mere generosity and good-will of 
 the British government. He held them under the solemn 
 sanction of repeated treaties of treaties which had bound 
 the former sovereigns of Benares, and which, on the transfer 
 of the svereignty to the India Company, were confirmed 
 beyond all possibility of dispute. I have only to show what 
 Mr. Hastings' own construction of the rights of the Raja was 
 under these treaties : and if I can prove that, even in his opi- 
 nion, the Raja was to be exempt from every additional demand, 
 and subject to no authority, and bound to no extraordinary 
 duties beyond the payment of a stipulated tribute, there can, 
 I think, be little doubt as to the question of right on which 
 Mr. Hastings himself has declared his guilt or innocence 
 ultimately to depend. 
 
 Mr. Hastings says in his Narrative : Mr. Hast- 
 
 ings' state- 
 
 " On the succession of the Nabob Assof-ul-Dowlah, the rights of sove- }^J!*it~ 
 reignty which were held by him over the zemeedary were transferred by Cheyt Sing's 
 treaty to the Company. Those rights were indisputably his, and became rights, 
 by his alienation of them as indisputably the Company's ; and every 
 obligation of fidelity and obedience which is due from a zemeedar to the 
 superior magistrate by the constitution of Hindostan became as much 
 the right of the Company from Cheit Sing as it had been due to his 
 former sovereign, with the additional ties of gratitude for the superior 
 advantages which he was allowed to possess with his new relation. The 
 unexampled lenity of our government, in relinquishing to him the free 
 and uncontrouled rule of his zemeedary, subject to a limited annual fine, 
 and the royalties of the mint, administration of justice and police, ought 
 to have operated as an additional claim on his fidelity ; but evidently 
 served to stimulate his ambition, and perhaps to excite in his mind an 
 opinion that he possessed an inherent right of self-dependency." * 
 
 I must beg your Lordships to bear in your minds for Definition 
 the fact is material this one circumstance that Mr. Hast- sovereignty 
 ings claims no power which the former Mohammedan sove- te r con> by 
 reigns of Benares had not. tf The rights of sovereignty were 
 
 * " Narrative of the Insurrection," &c., p. 8.
 
 268 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 25 FBB^i788. transferred to the Company." True, they were so : but let 
 us examine a little what those rights of sovereignty were. 
 In the instructions sent to Mr. Bristow, relative to the treaty 
 concluded with Asoff-ud-Dowla, in 1775, they are declared 
 to be little more than a nominal authority, and therefore it 
 is supposed the Wazir can have no objection to cede rights 
 which are of so little advantage to him. But Mr. Hastings 
 probably will object to that, as being an opinion expressed in 
 a letter written by the directions of the majority of the 
 Council on a subject he had uniformly opposed with all 
 his influence, which opinion therefore cannot be binding 
 upon him. But, my Lords, that is not my only dependence. 
 I have Mr. Hastings' own authority to prove that the rights 
 of sovereignty were not to interfere witli the rights of the 
 Raja, when, in the year 1773, he interfered to prevent Snja- 
 ud-Dowla from seizing the forts of Bidjey Gur and Luttec- 
 poor, and from exacting ten lacs of rupees over and above 
 the stipulated tribute, It then appeared that the Raja pos- 
 sessed certain rights which were not on any account to be 
 invaded ; though, at that time, every argument of political 
 expediency that reprobated argument of expediency, which 
 the learned Counsel told us the other day was the foundation 
 of all bad precedents and the source of all injustice (but, bad 
 as it is, if he deprives Mr. Hastings of that argument I fear 
 he will deprive him of the greatest part of his defence) 
 every argument of political expediency favoured the purpose 
 of the Wazir, who was at that time engaged in a war with 
 the Mahrattas, and was on the point of entering into a new 
 one, in conjunction with the British government, for the 
 noble and generous purpose of extirpating the Rohillas. 
 But these rights of sovereignty did not confer 011 Asoff-ud- 
 Dowla, who succeeded in 1775 to the government of the 
 province of Oude and to the sovereignty of Bennrcs, which 
 was then annexed to it, the right even of levying a part of 
 the tribute in advance. Mr. Hastings himself interfered to 
 prevent the Nawab Asoff-ud-Dowla levying five lacs of 
 rupees, only in advance of the stipulated tribute, though for 
 the purpose of making good a payment to the Company ; and 
 authorised Mr. Bristow, then Resident at Lucknow, to declare, 
 that the rights of the Company's dependents were not to 
 be infringed upon ; that Raja Cheyt Sing was to be con- 
 sidered in that light; that the Wazir must expect to see him 
 protected, for he was not to be put on a footing with his 
 other zamindars. He was then, it seems, upon a footing some-
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 269 
 
 thing better than that of a mere zamindar, when the adminis- 25 FEB. ms. 
 tration of justice had not yet been conferred upon him, and 
 when he was not invested with the symbols of sovereignty, 
 the profits of the mint, and the administration of justice and 
 police. 
 
 But what I wish your Lordships more particularly to Exactinp 
 observe is, that the levy even of a part of the stipulated advance 11 
 tribute in advance is here considered as an infringement of the meii 
 rights of the Raja, which the Governor General and Council, ^.ia's 
 as guarantees of those rights, could by no means suffer. ' ! 
 A fortiori, we,succeeding to the sovereignty on the same terms 
 as Asoff-ud-Do\vla, could not have a right to levy any 
 extraordinary sums beyond the stipulated tribute. 
 
 But " Every obligation of fidelity and obedience, which 
 was due from a zemeedar to the superior magistrate by the 
 constitution of Hindostan, became as much the right of the 
 Company from Cheit Sing as they had been due to his 
 former sovereign." This too I acknowledge. Every obliga- 
 tion of fidelity and allegiance which was due from Cheyt 
 Sing to his former sovereigns certainly became, by the trans- 
 fer of the sovereignty itself, in like manner due to whoever 
 should succeed to that sovereignty. But here let us again 
 inquire how far these obligations of allegiance and fidelity 
 were due to his former sovereign. I answer, so far as he was 
 bound to a regular payment of his tribute, and a strict 
 observance of his engagements. Beyond this, every kind of 
 demand and every species of exaction, even of a part of the 
 stipulated tribute in advance, was considered as an undue 
 exercise of an illegal power on the part of the Wazir ; in fact, 
 a power which he had not, and which we therefore, succeed- 
 ing to the sovereignty on precisely the same terms, could 
 not with any colour of justice exercise or claim : but least 
 of all could we pretend to any power which we had ourselves 
 declared not to be vested in him, to be contrary to the faith 
 of treaties or engagements, call them which you will, and 
 had therefore prevented his exercising. 
 
 But to these obligations of fidelity and allegiance were Pretended 
 joined " the additional ties of gratitude in the relation in c 
 which the Rajah stood to the East India Company." Grati- gratitude. 
 tude for what ? " For the superior advantages which he 
 was allowed to possess with his new relation." What were 
 those superior advantages ? "A free and uncontrouled rule 
 in his zemeedary, subject to a limited annual fine, and the 
 royalties of the mint and administration of justice and
 
 270 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. police ; which ought to have operated as an additional claim 
 on his fidelity." Here then we have a double confirmation 
 of what was already confirmed beyond all possibility of doubt 
 or hesitation, and further evidence, furnished us by the 
 accused himself, to prove what was already incontestibly 
 established. The Raja possessed, not only all the rights of a 
 free and uncontrolled authority in his zamindary, which he 
 had enjoyed under his former sovereigns, but he possessed 
 them with the superior advantages which the unexampled 
 lenity of our government had bestowed upon him he pos- 
 sessed them subject to a limited annual tribute, with an 
 exemption from every other species of exaction. Those 
 rights were acknowledged by Mr. Hastings himself, con- 
 firmed and enlarged by additional royalties, an extended 
 jurisdiction, and, I wish I could have added, the superior 
 good faith and humanity of the government on which he 
 was in future to be dependent. But, my Lords, what the 
 unexampled lenity of the English government had given him, 
 the unexampled perfidy of the Governor General resumed; 
 and not only resumed that which, though our free gift, could 
 not with justice be resumed, but he destroyed and trampled 
 on those very rights which he had himself declared to be 
 beyond the power of the superior lord, and peculiarly sacred 
 from all violation. 
 
 Principle of But, my Lords, waiving the particular circumstances in 
 exactions "which Chey t Sing stood in his relation to the English govern- 
 not justified merit, let us examine a little how far this principle of levying 
 
 byfeudal , ,. . ., , r . i . ,1 i *? 
 
 law. any sum that the discretion or the sovereign might think it 
 
 necessary or expedient to impose on his vassal is justifiable, 
 according to the principles of the feudal law. For this is 
 one of the arguments maintained by Mr. Hastings, as well 
 as by some others, that, the constitution of the Hindustan 
 governments nearly resembling our old feudal institutions, 
 the vassal may in the same manner be called upon in times 
 of extraordinary emergency for extraordinary aids; that 
 Cheyt Sing stood precisely in that predicament, and, the 
 public exigency of the moment making the demand necessary, 
 as news of the war with France had just been received at 
 Calcutta, it was justifiable, according to the acknowledged 
 principle of the feudal law. 
 
 In the first place, I deny the necessity at least at the 
 time the first demand was made. That, however, has already 
 been observed upon to your Lordships ; and it will be fully 
 proved, under the handwriting of Mr. Hastings himself, that,
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 271 
 
 in his opinion at least, no sucli necessity existed. But, my 25 FEB. 
 Lords, allowing it to have existed in the full extent in which 
 Mr. Hastings pretends it did, I should still argue that his 
 particular conduct to Cheyt Sing was perfectly unjustifiable, 
 even according to the loose principles of the feudal institu- 
 tions. I allow that by those institutions the vassal was 
 bound to perform certain services, in consequence of which 
 he enjoyed the best security both for himself and his pro- 
 perty that could be had in those times under the protection 
 of his superior lord. He was bound to accompany him with 
 a certain military force in time of war, and to pay him a 
 stipulated rent in time of peace. But, my Lords, those services 
 were by no means indefinite ; they were precisely marked in 
 the terms of his tenure. Even those extraordinary cases 
 in which the safety and honour of the kingdom were imme- 
 diately involved, and in which, therefore, some extraordinary 
 contributions might be expected even those extraordinary 
 cases were themselves specified ; namely, the captivity of the 
 King, the marriage of his eldest daughter, and the knighting 
 of his eldest son. According, therefore, to the acknowledged 
 principles of feudal law, the demand of any extraordinary 
 sum, beyond that which was specified in the terms of his 
 tenure, could not be authorised : and even upon this ground, 
 which seems to have been chosen as a peculiar stronghold by 
 Mr. Hastings, the demand of any such sum from Cheyt Sing 
 no such case having been specified in the terms of his 
 agreement ; on the contrary, it having been expressly pro- 
 vided against cannot, by any mode of reasoning that I can 
 conceive, ever be justified. 
 
 But, my Lords, much less can it be justified when we con- 
 sider that, by no law and by no institution, neither feudal 
 nor any other, with all his wild ideas of the despotic insti- 
 tutes of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, under no law, could 
 it ever be deemed competent for the sovereign to make a 
 partial, perhaps a vindictive, selection of any rich and power- 
 ful individual, to impose on him such part as he might think 
 proper of the public burdens, without making a proportion- 
 able equitable division of them, according to their different 
 abilities, among all the classes of his subjects. I think there- 
 fore there can be very little doubt as to the question of 
 light; and I, for one, shall not hesitate to urge this conclu- 
 tion, established by Mr. Hastings himself, that he is " liable 
 to condemnation for exacting other duties from Cheit Sing, 
 and for all the consequences of that exaction."
 
 272 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Crimes 
 charged 
 against 
 Cheyt Sing, 
 justifying 
 forfeiture of 
 his rights. 
 
 Delay in 
 paying ex- 
 tra tribute. 
 
 Mai-admi- 
 nistration 
 of his coun- 
 try. 
 
 But certain crimes were alleged against Cheyt Sing, 
 which crimes might imply a forfeiture of his rights. Mr. 
 Hastings says, our bounty to him had " evidently served to 
 stimulate his ambition, and perhaps to excite in his mind an 
 opinion that he possessed an inherent right of self-depen- 
 dency ;" and that this manifested itself in an intention to rebel 
 and a preparation to throw off his allegiance to the British 
 government. Let us examine in what this and other 
 charges against him consist. 
 
 The first charge alleged is his delay in the payment of the 
 extra five lacs, by which ruin was nearly brought on the 
 detachment under Colonel Carnac. The demand being 
 unjust, not only the delay but an absolute refusal of the 
 demand cannot be criminal, if it had existed : but to that 
 there is a plain and distinct answer, an answer given by 
 Cheyt Sing himself : " The remitting of this to the army 
 did not depend on me. If any delay happened on this head 
 I could not help it. If, besides the payment of the money, 
 the remittance of it also to the army had rested with me, a 
 delay of this kind should not have happened." Your Lord- 
 ships have already been told that a considerable sum had 
 been paid to the Resident ; that it had lain in his hands idle 
 and unemployed, and had never been ordered to be remitted to 
 Colonel Carnac ; or, if it had been ordered and not remitted, 
 it was owing to the Resident's negligence that it had not been 
 remitted. This charge therefore will be thoroughly refuted 
 by the evidence which we shall produce, and I shall not trouble 
 your Lordships with any further observations upon it. 
 
 There is a second charge: but neither upon that will 
 it be necessary for me to trouble your Lordships much 
 at length ; as Mr. Hastings himself, although he put it in, 
 probably to swell the catalogue of the Raja's guilt, has declared 
 he did not act upon it that was, the want of police and the 
 mal-adininistration of affairs in his country ; that robberies 
 and murders were daily committed ; " that the relations and 
 dependents of the Raja, or the merchants, whose credit was 
 useful to him in the payment of his revenue, might violate 
 the rights of their fellow-citizens with impunity ; and the 
 sacred character of a brahman, or the high rank of the 
 offender, were considerations which stamped a pardon on the 
 most flagitious crimes." This is a heavy charge, if it were 
 true ; but that it was not true I can prove by that same 
 letter in which the charge is made, where Mr. Hastings tells 
 us that persons who had acquired independent fortunes in
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 273 
 
 other parts of India came to Benares to enjoy them in the 25 FED, nss. 
 peaceful shades of an holy retirement. They came to enjoy 
 them in quiet in a spot famed for licentiousness, and where 
 from the outrages that were daily committed there was no 
 security cither for person or property. 
 
 There is a third charge ; namely, the refusal to supply Refusal to 
 the cavalry which Mr. Hastings demanded. But neither & w&\^. 
 can I think Cheyt Sing criminal in this respect. I must 
 here again remark, that the demand was unjust, and such as 
 Mr. Hastings had no right to make. But, arguing from his 
 own account of it, let us see how the case stood. Mr. 
 Hastings first demanded two thousand, then fifteen hundred, 
 afterwards one thousand. To this last demand Cheyt Sing 
 made an offer of five hundred cavalry and five hundred 
 matchlock men. Mr. Hastings did not think proper to make 
 any answer to this offer : and, till Cheyt Sing could know 
 whether it was accepted or not, he can hardly be said to have 
 absolutely refused compliance or to have merited any censure 
 or punishment, at least such punishment as Mr. Hastings 
 thought fit to inflict. 
 
 There is a fourth charge ; namely, a disposition to rebel Disposition 
 and throw off obedience to the British government. That, to 
 however, is clearly refuted by the small number of troops 
 Mr. Hastings took with him to Benares. And although he 
 declares upon oath in his Narrative that he thought Cheyt 
 Sing entertained such designs, yet in his defence before the 
 House of Commons he says he never had any such suspicion. 
 
 These charges, therefore, my Lords, I think cannot be con- SuS pi cion 
 fidered as of any great weight. But, unfortunately, there is ^t heriting 
 another charge alleged against Cheyt Sing by Mr. Hastings ; wealth. 
 and that I fear it will be more difficult to refute : of that I 
 fear I shall be obliged to acknowledge him guilty. He says, 
 in enumerating these different instances of criminality in 
 Cheyt Sing, " It was reported that he had inherited a vast 
 mass of wealth from his father, Bulwant Sing, w r hich he had 
 secured in the two strong fortresses of Bidjey Gur and Lut- 
 teepoor, and made yearly additions to it."* This indeed was 
 a grievous fault, and grievously has Cheyt Sing answered it. 
 This was a fault which neither the public exigencies of the 
 Company nor the private rapacity of Mr. Hastings could 
 suffer him to pardon. He says, " Possibly it may be sus- 
 pected and may God forgive those who know me and 
 
 * " Narrative," p. 7. 
 
 S
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 
 ings influ- 
 enced by 
 rapacity 
 and merce- 
 nary inte- 
 rest. 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. countenance the suspicion; I have no title to an exemption 
 from it with others that I was influenced by a secret and 
 mercenary interest." * 
 
 My Lords, in the first place my thanks are due to Mr. 
 Hastings for having included me in this anticipated prayer 
 for forgiveness. I believe I do know him ; and it is from 
 that very knowledge of him and his principles that I not 
 only suspect but accuse him of such mercenary interest. He 
 goes on to say: 
 
 " I have heard of the practice of holding out the terrors of authority 
 and the denuntiations of disgrace, dismission and war, as the instruments 
 of private rapacity. Though the charge, if true, is capable of positive 
 conviction, yet I know of no direct evidence which could refute it if it 
 were false ; for no one can be conscious of the recesses of another's 
 mind." * 
 
 My Lords, 1 will tell him how it might have been refuted 
 if it were false. It might have been refuted by entering 
 upon the consultations and the minutes of the Council, as it 
 was his duty to do, his intentions and the avowed principles 
 upon which he designed to act. If the crimes of Cheyt Sing 
 were notorious, if the principle of converting his contumely 
 into a benefit for the state a wicked and atrocious principle, 
 and such an one as your Lordships will not countenance but 
 if it be, as Mr. Hastings says, a principle fit ' to be acted 
 upon, he ought to have recorded it upon the consultations. 
 He would then have had a fair and indubitable appeal, by 
 which he might have refuted, if false, any charge of a secret, 
 mercenary, interest that might be alleged against him. But 
 he says he did not enter it upon the consultations, nor did 
 he think it necessary so to do, because this plan of the fine 
 was not a fixed plan, but to be regulated by circumstances, 
 both as to the extent of it and the mode. 
 
 ]y[y Lords, if he did not enter it upon the consultations 
 
 '. ., .. */' i p i 
 
 because it was a thing indefinite and not nxed, and only, as 
 he afterwards tells us, a speculative resource, why then did 
 he enter a false and evasive minute, which he might after- 
 wards alter and put such a construction upon as he pleased ? 
 The avowed intention of his journey to Benares was to " im- 
 prove the interest the Company had in that territory, and to 
 form such arrangements as were fit and consistent with the 
 mutual engagements subsisting betweenthe Company and the 
 Rajah." This he entered on the minutes of the Council as the 
 
 Object of his 
 
 journey to 
 
 Benares 
 
 * " Narrative," p. 12.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 275 
 
 object of his journey to Benares; and he afterwards tells us 25 FEB. 17$$. 
 that, Cheyt Sing having been guilty of certain crimes, he 
 thought his proceedings perfectly consistent with the mutual 
 engagements subsisting between him and the Company, and 
 that this plan of the fine was the very improvement of the 
 Company's interest to which he alluded in his minute. Per- 
 haps, if Cheyt Sing had bid up to the expectations of Mr. 
 Hastings at his own sale, and that fatal event afterwards 
 had not happened which destroyed all measures between 
 them, we might have heard of a very different improvement 
 of the Company's interest, and of very different arrangements 
 made, conformable to the engagements subsisting between 
 him and the Company. 
 
 It is upon this ground upon the concealment and mystery 
 attending this transaction upon the disavowal of his real 
 purpose, and the assigning a false and evasive intention it is 
 upon this ground that I do accuse him of mercenary interest. 
 He could have none but a mercenary interest, or some other 
 equally corrupt and fraudulent intention. But when to 
 these circumstances of concealment and mystery is added 
 prevarication in the different defences he has given, it 
 amounts to a great deal more than suspicion. " Quos Deus 
 vult perdere prius dementat " is an old and established maxim. 
 It has been principally established by the prevarications of 
 the guilty, by which they have themselves afforded the means 
 of their conviction when all other evidence has failed. If 
 ever there was a striking proof of that maxim it is to be 
 found in Mr. Hastings, whose contradictions, inconsistencies Mr. Hast- 
 and prevarications, are not less numerous or less various vacation, 
 than the crimes with which he is charged. They enable us 
 in many instances to trace his windings and detect his 
 iniquities, when perhaps it might have been impossible by 
 other means to trace or to detect them. 
 
 At the time he wrote this Narrative there was an impu- 
 tation of one motive against which it was particularly neces- 
 sary to guard. Perhaps, conscious that it was his real motive, 
 he might think as guilty people generally do that the 
 eyes of all mankind were directed to that point in which 
 he was most criminal. To prove he was not actuated by 
 any corrupt interest, he tells us that, before his departure 
 from Calcutta, he tied himself down to a decided process and 
 series of acts. " Is it likely or morally possible," says he, 
 " that I should have tied down my own future conduct to so 
 decided a process and series of acts, if I had secretly intended 
 
 S 2
 
 276 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788 
 
 Offer of the 
 Nawab of 
 Oude to 
 purchase 
 .Benares. 
 
 The Raja's 
 expressions 
 of submis- 
 sion pur- 
 posely mis- 
 const rued. 
 
 to threatc :i or to use a degree of violence, for no other pur- 
 pose than to draw from the object of it a mercenary atone- 
 ment for my own private emolument?" Then this fine was 
 not to be regulated by circumstances ; it was not a specula- 
 tive resource ; it was fixed and unalterable. The ability of 
 the Raja to pay was notorious, his crimes equally notorious, 
 and Mr. Hastings had tied him down to a decided process 
 and series of acts by communication with his colleague in the 
 government, Mr. Wheler, and his two confidential agents, 
 Major Palmer and Mr. Anderson. But he knew that nothing 
 could have tied him down but the entering his intention on 
 the consultations ; which, if fixed and irrevocable, as in his 
 Narrative he tells us it was, he ought to have done, but 
 which he now justifies himself for not having done, it being 
 necessai'y to defend himself against the accusation of a breach 
 of duty, by assigning reasons directly contradicting those 
 he then assigned, when it was more immediately necessary 
 for him to defend himself against the imputation of a corrupt 
 motive. 
 
 There is another circumstance attending this transaction 
 which proves that Mr. Hastings has indeed heard " of the 
 practice of holding out the terrors of authority and the 
 denuntiations of disgrace, dismission and war, as the instru- 
 ments of private rapacity." Your Lordships have not yet 
 been told that he had received an offer from the Xawab of 
 Oude for the purchase of these territories, and that this was 
 one of his plans for the improvement of the Company's in- 
 terest. He says he had never an intention of accepting 
 such an offer, but that if he held out such an intention it was 
 only in terrorem. For once I believe him ; for I believe he 
 never received any such offer ; nor will your Lordships think 
 it probable that the Wazir, who was at that time pennyless 
 and negotiating for the sale of part of his dominions to the 
 Company, should offer to purchase other parts of the British 
 dominions. I believe it was held out in terrorem, to prevail 
 upon Cheyt Sing to bid more largely for his pardon : and, as 
 it was Mr. Hastings' avowed intention to inflict exemplary 
 punishment or make him pay largely for his pardon, I am 
 justified in that belief. These were the designs and such the 
 principles with which Mr. Hastings proceeded to Benares. 
 
 The Raja met him on the way, meaning to show him 
 every possible mark of respect and attention, with a nume- 
 rous attendance. So unfortunate, however, was this un- 
 happy prince, that everything he did his submissive and
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 277 
 
 humble letters, disgusting by their abject meanness, but 25 FEB. 
 which Mr. Hastings terms offensive in style and unsatis- 
 factory in substance that not only those were construed into 
 a defiance, but this mark of his attention and respect was con- 
 strued also into a proof of a premeditated scheme of rebellion. 
 
 " At Buxar, Rajah Cheit Sing paid me the customary duty of respect, 
 by advancing to that place, which lay nearest to the boundary line of his 
 zemeedary. He brought with him a great fleet of boats, which, as I 
 afterwards learned, were crowded with two thousand armed and chosea 
 men. This circumstance was noticed by many of the gentlemen who 
 accompanied me, and was certainly a deviation from the established rules 
 of decorum ; not only such as are observed from vassals to their superiors, 
 but even such as pass between equals." * 
 
 Equals! Superiors! He! Mr. Hastings the superior of Cheyt 
 Sing, an independent Prince, possessed of the government 
 of a country affording an annual revenue of between four 
 and five hundred thousand pounds sterling, and containing 
 nearly two millions of people ! But, my Lords, I think it 
 will not appear very probable that Cheyt Sing could have 
 any such design as Mr. Hastings affects to impute to him ; 
 for, if he had, he would not have trusted himself in the power 
 of Mr. Hastings. 
 
 The first thing he did, though he came with these two The Raja 
 thousand men ready prepared for open rebellion, was to himself 
 go and meet Mr. Hastings on board his own pinnac3, 
 unarmed and undefended, and to surrender himself entirely power. 
 into his power. Of the conversation that passed in the 
 pinnace Mr. Hastings says he kept no minutes, because it 
 formed no part of his plan. I believe it did not ; neither 
 did the patient submission of the Raja form any part of the 
 plan. In that interview he affirmed his allegiance to the 
 Company with the most solemn protestations, accompanied 
 with a circumstance of proof which ought to have been 
 satisfactory to a mind less obdurate than that of Mr. Hastings. 
 He placed his turban on his knee ; an action which denotes 
 in that country the abandonment of life, property, and every 
 earthly possession, to be disposed of at the discretion of the 
 person before whom an act of such abject humiliation is 
 performed. But this did not satisfy him. The Raja's 
 humiliation had only been private, it had only passed on 
 board his pinnace ; his private resentment might be satisfied 
 with it, but his pride was not yet gratified. It was neces- 
 sary that Cheyt Sing should be humbled in the sight of his 
 
 * " Narrative," p. 1.
 
 278 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEauss. own people ; that he should be degraded and disgraced in the 
 eyes of the world ; that all mankind should know that if he 
 was a great prince, Mr. Hastings was a great king. 
 The Raja The first thing he did on his arrival at Benares, was 
 Mr b Hast> peremptorily to forbid him his presence : that alone was an 
 sence P and act ^ considerable disgrace and degradation to the Raja. 
 arrested. But, however, this was not enough. It was necessary that he 
 should feel the weight of Mr. Hastings' authority. In order to 
 convince him that he was serious he must indeed have been 
 incredulous if he was not already convinced that Mr. Hast- 
 ings was serious he was put under arrest. To this also 
 the patient man quietly submitted. In the course of this 
 arrest he wrote to Mr. Hastings two letters,* in the same 
 offensive terms and in the same style of defiance with that 
 which I had the honour of reading to your Lordships when 
 my honourable friend opened the first part of this charge. 
 He says : 
 
 His letters to At this time Mr. William Markham, being come to me, has informed 
 ings. a me that your Highness' orders are that I should remain under a guard. 
 My protector, I before represented to you, on board your pinnace, that I 
 was the servant of the honourable Company, and was ready from my heart 
 and soul. Whatever may be your pleasure, do it with your own hands : 
 I am your slave. What occasion can there be for a guard ? " 
 
 There are other letters to the same purpose, with which 
 I will not trouble your Lordships. I am sure they must be 
 disgusting to your Lordships, as they are to every good and 
 generous mind. 
 
 " From the apparent despondency with which these letters were 
 written," says Mr. Hastings, " I thought it necessary to give the Rajah 
 some encouragement, and accordingly wrote to him the following answer: 
 Mr. Hast- ' I have received your two arzees from the hands of Mr. Markham, and 
 ings' answer, understand their contents. That gentleman will wait on you in the 
 afternoon and explain particulars. Set your mind at rest, and do not con- 
 ceive any terror or apprehension.' "f 
 
 This was the consolatory style in which Mr. Hastings wrote 
 to relieve the mind of this unhappy Prince from the terror 
 and apprehension which you will think he had too justly con- 
 ceived. I do not myself think they were much calculated to 
 produce such an effect. I rather think they ought to have 
 connrmed his terror and apprehensions. He, however, seems 
 to have been willing to receive them in that light, and wrote 
 again to Mr. Hastings thanking him for his goodness, and 
 again throwing himself upon his generosity and his mercy. 
 
 * Printed in Hastings' '' Narrative," p. 21. f Ibid., p. 23.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 279 
 
 There is a point beyond which human nature cannot 25 Fas-iyss. 
 brook indignity or suffer insult. Weakness itself by re- 
 peated outrages will at last be roused to resistance and 
 endeavour to throw off that tyranny which becomes too 
 intolerable to be endured. 
 
 The Hindus are the most mild, the most patient, and the Exaspera- 
 
 ,1 mi D j.i tionofthe 
 
 most enduring people upon earth. Ine system or their Raja's sub- 
 laws, the form of their government, the tenets of their reli- Jects< 
 gion* and the habits of their education, all join to confirm 
 in them that mildness, gentleness and humanity, which 
 nature itself seems to have implanted in them as the pecu- 
 liar and distinguishing characteristic of their disposition. If 
 anything could so far provoke and exasperate such a people 
 as to make them forget those qualities, it would be the sight 
 of any indignity offered to their Prince, to whom they are 
 attached with the highest enthusiasm, not only as their civil 
 governor, but as the head of their religion. 
 
 The first circumstance of his arrest had not failed to pro- 
 duce some symptoms of 'discontent. Troops of armed men, 
 as Mr. Hastings tells us, had come from the opposite side of 
 the river, and, assembling tumultuously about the palace, 
 had shown some disposition to attempt a rescue. On this 
 account he had sent to Major Popham for a reinforcement, 
 in order to support the guard who were already placed over the 
 Raja ; who, it seems, were without ammunition, and incapable 
 of resisting so numerous a body, in case they should be incited 
 to attack them. Though assembled in this manner, however, 
 they had remained quiet, still obedient to the desires and com- 
 mands of their Prince, though disgraced and in captivity. They 
 did not attempt to molest the guard, and it is probable that 
 they would not have done so, but from a circumstance which at 
 last happened, and which was too great an insult even for their 
 patience to bear. A chobdar, or bailiff, came a vile wretch, j^R^ 
 one of the lowest of the people, who, for some crimes of which a person of 
 he had been guilty, had been formerly punished by Cheyt Sing, raster, 
 and who on that account had conceived some enmity against 
 the unhappy Prince was sent by Mr. Markham with a mes- 
 sage to him, and now took this opportunity of procuring 
 himself that malignant pleasure which none but a base and 
 brutal mind can feel that of insulting a superior already 
 humbled by disgrace and misfortune. He approached Cheyt 
 Sing with this message, while at his devotions, in the sight 
 of his people, and interrupted and reviled him in terms of 
 the grossest abuse and most shocking indignity. This was
 
 280 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. more than even this patient people could bear. All their 
 insurrection best feelings were shocked, and, their superstitious pre- 
 peopfc. judices co-operating with their rage, they could be no longer 
 restrained either by the entreaties of Cheyt Sing or the 
 danger to which they exposed themselves. They broke into 
 the palace ; and what follows is, as Mr. Hastings has truly 
 said, a scene of too much horror to be described. The first 
 victim of their resentment was as he deserved to be the 
 insolent chobdar. The whole guard suffered the same fate. 
 During the confusion, Cheyt Sing found means to effect his 
 escape ; and the reinforcement 'sent by Major Popham arrived 
 just in time to witness the last groans of their companions, 
 without being able to afford them any relief. Their blood 
 be on his head by whose pride, rapacity and injustice, they 
 were thus wantonly sacrificed ! 
 
 imputl- to But shall we impute this to any premeditated rebellion 
 rebellion on * ne P art ^ Cheyt Sing ? To entertain so absurd an 
 ?,? ai " s * idea, we must first suppose that he was possessed of some 
 
 Cheyt Sing. f /.. . . , , . . . 
 
 laminar spirit who conveyed to him private intelligence 01 
 the secret designs of Mr. Hastings, and that, possessed of 
 this intelligence, he waited till this moment of favourable pro- 
 vocation. But if proofs were wanting to show there could 
 not exist any such concert among them, it would be found 
 to be in the very circumstances by which this tumult was 
 provoked and the manner in which it was effected. If there 
 had been any concert or premeditation, would it not have 
 been natural Mr. Hastings has told us it would have been 
 easy for them to have proceeded immediately to his 
 quarters, where there was no force to resist them, and they 
 were sure of meeting with no opposition ? There they might 
 have broken that magic talisman in which the essence of the 
 British government was contained, and relieved themselves 
 for ever both from the tyranny and the tyrant. But, follow- 
 ing the first impulse of their rage, they had broken out and 
 revenged the injury offered to their Prince. He being rescued 
 from the hands of his enemies for during the tumult he 
 found means to escape through a wicket which opened to the 
 river, the banks of which being exceedingly steep in that 
 place, he let himself down by turbans tied together into a 
 boat which was waiting for him, and got in safety to the 
 opposite shore they made no further attempt, but flocked 
 tumultuously after him. This is a strong and convincing 
 proof that there could not possibly be any premeditated 
 design or concerted Bchenie of rebellion. But, if there
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 281 
 
 wanted proof, there is still more; for Cheyt Sing, now the 
 mask was thrown off, that he had it in his power effectually 
 to destroy the British government for, as Mr. Hastings 
 tells us, there was a general insurrection in his country, all 
 the people to a man having taken up arms in his support 
 on the very night on which he escaped, wrote another of 
 these contumacious letters to Mr. Hastings, offering to His oiler to 
 surrender himself, begging him only to spare his life, and hinwtff 
 declaring that he was his servant in every respect. But 
 Mr. Hastings tells us he considered himself as now engaged 
 in a civil Avar, and would not listen to any terms. The 
 force he had with him, however, was not sufficient to with- 
 stand the rage of a whole country ; he was accordingly 
 forced to retire secretly in the night, and get, with what 
 haste he could, to a place of safety to Chunar. 
 
 In the first engagements with our troops Cheyt Sing was 
 victorious, owing perhaps principally to the ardour and 
 superior numbers of his people, and the misconduct, I believe, 
 in some instances, of our officers. But not even by success 
 could his mind be elated ; and, with this advantage, he still 
 continued to write to Mr. Hastings letters of the most 
 abject submission. One of these I shall beg leave to read to 
 your Lordships : 
 
 " When I waited upon your Highness in your pinnace, I represented Letter of 
 to you everything which was proper to be represented that my life, my afterhfs n 
 country and property, belonged to your Highness requesting that you lirst suc- 
 would order whatever was your pleasure, and that I was ready to obey it cesscs - 
 with pleasure. I, besides, performed all the duties of obedience and 
 humility, and represented all the particulars with a view to the present 
 time ; for I well knew that as soon as Owsan Sing should be introduced 
 to your Highness, Mr. Markham and the moulavies, &c., having settled 
 this plan, would make you conceive displeasure against me. At that 
 time your Highness answered that you had no business with my life or 
 property ; that you had not given admission to Owsan Sing or any of his 
 people; that you had no connexion with any of my relations. What 
 crime did I afterwards commit, that by the advice of my enemies you 
 should resolve to confine me with such disgrace ? However, I remained 
 until evening in confinement, and behaved in no otherwise than with the 
 greatest humility and obedience. I addressed several arzees, expressing 
 my readiness to obey your orders, and that I was your slave, and was 
 ready with my life and property. Observe that Cheit Ram chubdar 
 came to me, and reviled me, and with a loud voice gave both me and my 
 people the vilest abuse. The people of the Sirkar first fired balls from 
 their guns and discharged their muskets. Immediately the tumult 
 arose, and, notwithstanding my most earnest request for them to desist, 
 no one would hear me. Myself, after being wounded by a sword in the 
 hand of the captain, escaped with life from that imminent danger, and 
 withdrew myself. If you will examine with an eye of justice and not
 
 282 
 
 Opening, of the First Charge Benares ; 
 
 No answer 
 returned by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings. 
 
 -25 FEB. 1788. listen to talebearers and informers, you will find no crime in me, and 
 . your mind, which is the mirror of the world, will I am certain approve of 
 it. I have before addressed arzees to you, but have not yet been honoured 
 with an answer. Owsan Sing has not yet ceased from ruining the affairs. 
 Should now my life and honour be left to me, I am your slave. Beneram 
 Pundit will have represented my situation to you, and will continue to 
 do so." * 
 
 In another of these letters he says : 
 
 " Although I have been guilty of no fault, yet the slave is by all means 
 criminal, and the business of the master is to pardon. By the blessing of 
 God, your Highness is the master and is just : let him consider that in all 
 the three battles the army of the Sirkar was the aggressor."f 
 
 My Lords, to these letters, which Mr. Hastings says con- 
 tained only expressions of slight concern, and professions, but 
 indefinite and unapplied, of fidelity, he thought proper to 
 return no answer. If he had accepted the submission of the 
 Raja, all that horrid scene of blood and devastation would have 
 been spared which afterwards followed, and the measure of 
 Mr. Hastings' crimes would not have been full. His resent- 
 ment was not to be satisfied but by the complete ruin of 
 Cheyt Sing and the complete devastation of his country. 
 This was too soon effected ; for the cause of virtue and of 
 right, supported only by irregular troops and a tumultuous 
 though an attached and zealous people, could not prevail 
 against the more regular troops and the more effectual dis- 
 cipline that fought under the banners of injustice and oppres- 
 sion. The whole country was soon reduced, and Cheyt 
 Sing driven out, an exile and a wanderer, to seek for an 
 asylum in the arms of our enemies. 
 
 Such was the unexampled lenity of the English govern- 
 ment, and such the superior advantages which were conferred 
 on Raja Cheyt Sing in the transfer of his sovereignty from a 
 Mohammedan prince to the English East India Company 
 from a barbarian bred up in habits of despotism to the mild 
 and more enlightened rule of a free and civilised people from 
 a cruel and ferocious tyrant who respected neither the interest 
 of humanity, the ties of engagements or the happiness of 
 his subjects, whose will was his law, and want of power the 
 only restraint upon his will, to a people famed for public 
 faith and a strict observance of all engagements ; whose native 
 government is formed on principles the most consonant to 
 the common interests of humanity ; where the laws are 
 
 Reduction 
 of the 
 country by 
 British 
 troops. 
 
 Reflections 
 on the 
 tyrannical 
 conduct of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings. 
 
 * Printed in Hastings' "Narrative," Appendix, p. 106. , f Ibid., p. 109.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 283 
 
 superior to the will of the sovereign ; where the meanest indi- 25 FEB. rrss. 
 vidual has a sure asylum from oppression ; and which, [where 
 the government ?] by securing all orders of men in the full 
 enjoyment of their natural rights, as far as they can be enjoyed 
 under any system of government, might seem to give that 
 additional confidence and security to the Raja which such 
 principles naturally tend to inspire, if any additional confidence 
 and security were necessary to strengthen and confirm the 
 solemnity of a strict engagement. But Mr. Hastings does 
 not allow that the mild and liberal principles of the British 
 constitution have yet been able to supersede the despotic 
 institutes of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. No, not the 
 institutes, but the practice of tyrants and usurpers was a 
 rule of government better suited to his genius, and better 
 calculated to carry into effect the base purposes of his 
 corruption. Accordingly, my Lords, this, unhappy Prince 
 experienced under an English Governor,' unrestrained by 
 English laws, all the aggravated evils of extortion, injustice 
 and oppression. Instead of protection he met with wrong and 
 violence instead of good faith, the most unexampled perfidy. 
 Instead of a mild and lenient government, the most cruel and 
 afflicting tyranny ; and that mind which, in one of the letters 
 I have just read to your Lordships, he calls the mirror of 
 the world, he found to be the mirror of every vice, every 
 wickedness of pride, avarice, implacability and falsehood. 
 Quas res luxuries injlagitiis, crudelitas in supplidis, avaritia 
 in rapinis, superbia in contumeliis, efficere potuisset, all these 
 things, to a degree of aggravation and an extent that a good 
 mind cannot conceive or the most patient spirit endure, all 
 these did Chey t Sing suffer under the merciless grasp of that 
 fell and insatiate tyrant. 
 
 My Lords, such were the uses to which Mr. Hastings 
 applied that power which he justifies by the examples of 
 Aliverdy Khan and Cossim Ali. The rest of this charge is 
 a continuation worthy such a beginning ; for now that there 
 would seem to be left no object for his resentment that 
 Cheyt Sing had been ruined, expelled, an exile and a 
 wanderer that everything had yielded to the furious torrent 
 of his rage and his ambition my Lords, we still see his eye 
 red with indignation, the ministers of vengeance still waiting 
 on his nod, and this unhappy country not yet exempt from 
 the scourge of his oppression. 
 
 My Lords, the remaining parts of this charge form such a 
 sequel as might have been expected from such beginnings.
 
 284 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. They are horrid illustrations of the dreadful effects of 
 arbitrary power placed in the hands of wicked men, acquired 
 by bad means and exercised upon worse principles. 
 
 charge The next instance of criminality alleged against the 
 
 against Mr. . , ,, , ,. . .. -, i < T -i i 
 
 Hastings prisoner at the bar, in the Article now before your JLordships, 
 thc p pi c un"der relates to the plunder of Bidjey Gur. This was, as Mr. 
 Hastings has told us, an almost impregnable fortress, to 
 which Cheyt Sing had retired on the rapid success of our 
 arms ; but which he afterwards abandoned, taking with him 
 a considerable treasure in money and jewels, on the approach 
 of the troops under the command of Major Popham. The 
 only persons therefore remaining in the fort, when besieged 
 by the English troops, were Panna, the mother of Cheyt. 
 Sing, his wife, and the remaining women of the family of 
 his father. 
 
 The prisoner is charged with having ordered the seizure 
 of this fort and all the property contained in it, without 
 inquiring whether it belonged to Cheyt Sing or his mother, 
 and without pretending that this woman had been guilty of 
 any crime or of any offence whatever against our govern- 
 ment. He is further charged with having stimulated the 
 army to rapine and outrage by the orders given by him for 
 the division of the property found in the fort as plunder. 
 It is also stated, as an aggravation of this part of his 
 offence, that he showed a spirit of insolence and revenge in 
 the orders he gave respecting the Rani ; that by giving the 
 property found in the fort to the army he completely failed 
 in that which he avowed to be his purpose, namely, the 
 obtaining a sum of money for the Company ; and that he 
 endeavoured to resume, by a breach of faith with the detach- 
 ments, what he had unlawfully granted them by a breach of 
 duty to his constituents. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, in his answer to this part of the charge, 
 admitting all the facts, except the having given any such 
 orders as are stated, by which a spirit of rapacity was 
 excited in the soldiery, says that he was not guilty of any 
 breach of faith with them, or of any breach of duty to his 
 constituents, inasmuch as they had no right to divide the 
 property found in the fort under any authority given by him. 
 How far this denial is founded in truth I shall proceed to 
 show, and on what ground it is that Mr. Hastings expects 
 credit from your Lordships in declaring himself innocent of 
 a charge of which I doubt not but I shall be able to convict 
 him upon the clearest testimony the testimony of the accused
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 285 
 
 himself; the principal evidence I shall use being the evidence ^ FEB-ITSS. 
 of Warren Hastings. 
 
 It is not necessary to detail to your Lordships a long circum- 
 
 c -Vi L' u A i a' /^stances of 
 
 account or our military operations subsequent to the night the capture 
 of Cheyt Sing. It is enough to say that, after a rapid b^Malor* 
 conquest of the whole country and how could it be p P liam - 
 otherwise in a country filled only with irregular troops and 
 defenceless persons, for such were the mighty preparations 
 Cheyt Sing had made for his intended rebellion? Major 
 Popham advanced to Bidjey Gur. It appears that, soon 
 after the place was invested, Panna offered to capitulate. 
 Her offers, however, were so unreasonable that they could 
 not be accepted ; and it was not till after she was reduced to 
 all the extremities and hardships which persons who are 
 besieged usually suffer that she wrote a letter to that 
 respectable character of whom your Lordships have heaiM 
 Cantoo Baboo, the banya of Mr. Hastings beseeching 
 him to sue for safety and protection for her person and 
 honour. In consequence of this letter Cantoo was despatched 
 to the fort ; articles of capitulation were soon agreed on ; 
 and the troops of Major Popharn took possession of the place. 
 It was in consequence of this that Mr. Hastings wrote two 
 letters to Major Popham relative to the conditions to be 
 granted to the Hani, and granting to the detachment as a " the con- 
 
 o o tiition.s to DC 
 
 reward of their services all the property that might be p-anted to 
 taken. theKailL 
 
 It is on the authority of these letters, supported by some 
 oral testimony which at a proper period we shall produce, 
 that we accuse Mr. Hastings of having stimulated the army 
 to rapine and outrage. These letters will be read in evi- 
 dence.* I shall therefore only trouble your Lordships with 
 such parts of them as will tend to make the matter clear 
 and intelligible. 
 
 In the first he says, speaking of the Rani : 
 
 " I apprehend that she will contrive to defraud the captors of a con- 
 siderable part of the booty, by being suffered to retire without examina- 
 tion ; but this is your consideration and not mine. I should be sorry 
 that your officers and soldiers lost any part of the reward to which they 
 are so well intitled, but I cannot make any objection, as you must be 
 the best judge of the expediency of the promised indulgence to the 
 Ranee." 
 
 * The letters are printed at length in the " Minutes of the Evidence taken at 
 the Trial," &c., pp. 282, 283.
 
 286 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 2o FEB. 1788. In the next he says : 
 
 " If she complies, as I expect she will, it will be your part to secure 
 the fort and the property it contains for the benefit of yourself and 
 detachment." 
 
 The army It is upon the authority of these letters that we have 
 byThem'to ventured to accuse Mr. Hastings of having stimulated the 
 rapine. army to rapine and outrage. I doubt not it will be thought 
 by your Lordships a sufficient authority to establish and 
 support the truth of this allegation. They carry with them 
 their own comment ; for never was there given, I will 
 venture to say never, by a freebooter to his associates, or a 
 captain of banditti to the gang under his command, a more 
 direct instruction to plunder and pillage whomever they 
 may meet, without any regard to age, sex or condition, or 
 the common feelings of humanity : and such were the 
 effects they produced upon this army : 
 
 " The Ranee left the fort attended by 300 women, under the faith of 
 certain articles by which 15 per cent, was to be reserved to her on all the 
 property found in the fort, with a safe retirement for herself and her 
 attendants." 
 
 These were the principal articles of capitulation ; to these 
 the faith of the British commander was pledged ; and if that 
 was not sufficient, it was confirmed by the sacred protection 
 of that awful character, the black diwan of Mr. Hastings. 
 Licentious- But, my Lords, by neither of these could the avidity of a 
 licentious soldiery, who had already tasted the sweets of 
 plunder, be restrained. The property which had already 
 been found and divided amounted to the enormous sum of 
 250,0007. This treasure, however, great as it was, instead 
 of satisfying seemed rather to have increased their desire 
 for pillage. They did not forget the friendly hint of the 
 Governor General : they were unwilling to be deprived of 
 any part of the reward they had so justly merited, by 
 suffering the Rani to retire without examination. Accord- 
 ingly, the articles of capitulation were broken; and this 
 helpless woman a woman of the first rank in India, to 
 whom, according to the customs of the country, the very 
 sight of man was pollution this Princess, with the remains 
 of the family of the just and benevolent Bulwant Sing, 
 whom tenderness for their sex and respect for their rank, 
 heightened and increased by that claim which misfortune 
 always has on every good mind, if not a regard for public 
 faith, ought to have secured from every violence, were exposed 
 
 ness of the 
 soldiery. 
 
 The Rani 
 insulted.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 287 
 
 to personal indignity were disgraced in the eyes of their 25 FEB. ms. 
 country by a personal search. Even the ornaments of their 
 sex and tokens of the generosity and tenderness of their 
 former lords, the poor remaining pledges of happier times, 
 were torn from them by the rude hands of unrestrained ruf- 
 fians. Such were the laurels which the British arms acquired 
 in the 'reduction of Bidgey Gur, which Mr. Hastings tells 
 us had yielded to Major Popham "the peculiar credit of 
 having surmounted all the obstacles Avhich nature and art 
 had opposed to the conquest of two of the fortresses of 
 Hindostan, which had been before universally deemed im- 
 pregnable." * Take nothing from me, my Lords. I may 
 perhaps exaggerate ; but it is not painted in less lively 
 colours by the commander of the British forces himself: 
 
 " The Ranee came out of the fort with her family and dependents, the 
 10th, at night; owing to which, such attention was not paid to her as I 
 wished; and I am exceedingly sorry to inform you that the licentious- 
 ness of our followers was beyond the bounds of control. For, notwith- 
 standing all I could do, her people were plundered on the road of most 
 of the things which they brought out of the fort ; by which means one 
 of the articles of surrender has been much infringed. The distress I have 
 felt on this occasion cannot be expressed, and can only be allayed by a 
 firm performance of the other articles of the treaty." f 
 
 But was Mr. Hastings concerned in this ? No ; he, good 
 man, gave no such orders as are stated ; he did nothing that 
 could excite this spirit of rapacity in the soldiery. 
 
 My Lords, if you are not now, I trust it will not be long ? Ir - Hast- 
 
 i r> J * . -, i ings charge- 
 
 before you become acquainted with these arts, no longer to able with 
 
 be duped by that affected sorrow with which he condemns conimittel es 
 
 measures -which had been owing to his own directions. I 
 
 charge this breach of the articles of capitulation directly to 
 
 him I charge it to have been the natural consequence of 
 
 the letters, which I assert contain direct and positive orders. 
 
 The charge appears to me to be so self-evident that I should 
 
 not think it necessary to observe much upon it, had not 
 
 Mr. Hastings, by the mode of his defence, made it necessary 
 
 for me to trouble your Lordships with a few observations. 
 
 The grounds of his defence are palpable, but as they are 
 
 only taken upon a construction of words, upon a cavil, upon 
 
 a distinction between the positive authority of a public 
 
 order and the confidential declaration of a private intention 
 
 * " Narrative," p. 53. 
 
 f Letter of Major Popham to Mr. Hastings, dated 12th November, 1781. 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 283.
 
 288 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 x FEB^i788. In a letter, I trust they will not have much weight with 
 
 your Lordships 
 Mr. Hast- My Lords. I must first remark, that for the establishment of 
 
 ings' letters ,, . , ... .1 i . i 
 
 equivalent this charge it is not necessary to prove these letters to have 
 to orders, been orders ; nor should I think it in any respect necessary 
 to prove that to have been an order in all due form, which 
 certainly was virtually an. order, and produced all the effects 
 and consequences that could have been produced by the 
 most positive injunction. But they are stated generally in 
 the charge to have been orders, licences or directions I 
 give Mr. Hastings his choice of the words ; for, whichever 
 they may have been, I shall contend that he was equally 
 criminal. And here, my Lords, I must have recourse to the 
 opinion of Mr. Hastings himself. He, in his Narrative, 
 declares Cheyt Sing to have been equally criminal " whether 
 the excesses committed by his people were authorised by his 
 express order, or perpetrated under the influence of his 
 example and with a knowledge of his inclination." Let us 
 apply this maxim to the point in question. Major Popham, 
 if he did not act under the authority of an express order, 
 certainly did act with a clear and certain knowledge of the 
 inclination of the Governor General ; for Mr. Hastings, in 
 the only justification which he had offered of himself in this 
 particular, to take from the letters the authority of orders, 
 says they were declarations of his private intentions. This, 
 my Lords, he admits ; and the consequences of such an 
 admission, according to his own mode of reasoning which 
 for once I think a just one must be that Major Popham 
 acted, if not under the authority of an express order, yet 
 with a clear and certain knowledge of the intentions of the 
 person to whose authority he was subject ; and that there- 
 fore Mr. Hastings was equally criminal. 
 
 ills intcn- To show that this knowledge of his intentions extended 
 stwd by the to the army, and might produce the same effects on them, 
 army. j g ] ia ]i ca jf witnesses who will prove to your Lordships that 
 these letters had been communicated to the officers, and 
 were publicly known in the camp some time previous to 
 the surrender of the fort. But, my Lords, they acted also 
 under the influence of example. Lutteepoor had been 
 taken by Colonel Crabb ; the property found there di- 
 vided among the detachment under his command ; and to 
 this Mr. Hastings did not object, probably because his 
 avarice had not been disappointed, by being deprived of so 
 great a sum as was found, contrary perhaps to his expec-
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 289 
 
 tation, at Bidjey Gur. But, my Lords, still, allowing these 25FEE.1788. 
 letters to have been only declarations of a private opinion 
 an admission which I only make in order to show the 
 futility of Mr. Hastings' defence in. his own mode of 
 arguing I shall think him not quite so exempt from all 
 criminality as he seems to imagine the admission of such a 
 plea would make him. That this was only a mean device, 
 afterwards invented to defraud the soldiery, is too palpable ; 
 but, in any sense of it, I shall still contend that in this he 
 acted in a manner no less contrary to bis own avowed 
 sentiments and opinions, publicly declared on a former 
 occasion, than to his duty as the head of the Company's 
 government in India. And here I shall again arraign 
 Mr. Hastings from his own words. We have, my Lords, a Previous 
 letter written by Mr. Hastings to Colonel Champion in the Mrfiiast- 
 year 1774, which for this purpose I shall beg may be read. jJatuigThe" 
 
 system of 
 
 [Mr. Adam reads zAj prize money. 
 
 " Hitherto every part of your conduct has met with my most entire 
 approbation. But there is one subject which in some measure alarms 
 me. The very idea of prize money suggests to my remembrance the 
 former disorders which arose in our army from this source, and had 
 almost proved fatal to it. Of this circumstance you must be sufficiently 
 apprised, and of the necessity for discouraging every expectation of this 
 kind amongst the troops. It is to be avoided like poison. However, in 
 case any considerable capture should attend your future operations, I 
 think you cannot pursue a better conduct than that which you intended 
 to determine nothing yourself, but acquaint the board with the cir- 
 cumstances and wait for their decision."* 
 
 Here, my Lords, the very idea of prize money is " to be 
 avoided like poison." Having formerly found its way into 
 the army it carried ruin and destruction with it, and must 
 be therefore avoided and discouraged by every possible 
 means. My Lords, I think we may assume, without ven- Review of 
 turing a great deal, that these letters of Mr. Hastings SS?15rt 
 might propagate at least this poisonous idea in the army ; Jf^jJ^ * 18 ^ 
 for the declaration of the private intentions, even of a person soldiery 
 
 fd A. i ii -J.VL- resulted 
 
 possessing sumcient authority to execute those intentions, from Mr. ( 
 might encourage something more than a bare idea, or even JJtttrs. 8 " 
 hope or expectation, on the subject. It might give to 
 persons acting under him a pretty reasonable assurance. 
 On whatever ground, therefore, Mr. Hastings may choose to 
 stand for his defence, I will meet him on that ground, and, 
 with his own letters and his own opinions, aided by the first 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 291. 
 T
 
 290 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. principles of common sense and common justice, undertake 
 to defeat him. For my own part, my Lords, I shall contend 
 that these letters were orders in the strictest sense of the 
 word. And that I trust will be sufficiently apparent from 
 the style and tenour of the letters themselves. For it is 
 hardly possible to conceive any letters to be written in a 
 style more authoritative and commanding than these very 
 letters, which Mr. Hastings now contends to be only the 
 means of a private and confidential communication. The 
 very terms in which the grant of the property is made 
 " It will be your part to secure the fort and the property 
 contained in it for the benefit of yourself and detachment " 
 though not containing any order which I suppose it 
 would be very disagreeable for any officer to execute, cer- 
 tainly denote the superiority of a person in command writing 
 to an inferior subject to his authority. But we have a sen- 
 tence a little below in the same letter which puts the 
 matter out of all doubt : 
 
 " But, should she refuse to execute the promise she has made, or 
 delay it beyond the term of twenty-four hours, it is my positive injunc- 
 tion that you immediately put a stop to any further intercourse or 
 negotiation with her : on no pretext renew it." 
 
 Is a positive injunction an order ? or was this meant to 
 be a sufficient authority for Major Popham to act upon, in 
 the conditions he was to grant to the Rani ? It certainly 
 was. The whole letter therefore must be of equal influ- 
 ence : and, were it necessary to prove it to have been the 
 most positive order, I should have little doubt as to the 
 result of your Lordships' decision. Away then with these 
 cavils and distinctions upon words. I will call on any 
 military man and many among your Lordships are well 
 acquainted with the rules and principles of war I will 
 venture to ask whether a letter written from any person 
 at the head of an army for Mr. Hastings had delegated 
 to himself the powers of Commander-in-Chief as well as 
 Governor General and Council whether such a letter, 
 written by a person at the head of an army to an officer 
 acting under his command, would not be deemed a sufficient 
 authority to make division of property so granted among 
 his soldiers ? I anticipate the answer which every fair and 
 candid man must give. 
 
 Terms of I therefore charge Mr. Hastings with a breach of duty 
 
 pge< to his constituents, in having granted that property which 
 
 he ought not to have granted. I charge him with having
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 291 
 
 stimulated the army to rapine and outrage, as well by 25 FEB. ms. 
 these letters as by the actual division of the plunder, by 
 which that idea must have been introduced among them 
 which he himself declares to have been so poisonous and 
 baneful in its consequences. I charge, therefore, all the con- 
 sequences that followed the breach of the articles, and the 
 plunder of the Rani as iniputable to him and his wicked 
 instigations. 
 
 So far I have confined myself to the plunder of the fort. 
 But there is another part of one of these letters to which I Prohibition 
 
 r, 11 i i if T i i > - of any con- 
 
 Snail beg leave to call your Lordships attention : ditums for a 
 
 * provision 
 
 " What you have engaged for I will certainly ratify; but as for per- for the Rani, 
 mitting the Ranee to hold the pergunnah of Kurteek or any other in the 
 zemindary, without being subject to the authority of the zemindar, or 
 any lands whatever, or indeed making any conditions with her for a 
 provision, I will never consent to it." * 
 
 My Lords, this seems to convey the authority of an order; 
 but it is not for that purpose that I have now quoted it. To 
 say nothing of the cruelty and insolence of such an order, this 
 severity, which I think could in no instance whatever be justi- 
 fied, was in this a positive breach of public faith. In a pro- 
 clamation which Mr. Hastings had issued, on the 25th of Sep- 
 tember, he promises a full pardon and security to all persons 
 who should submit to the British government, excepting only 
 Chey t Sing and his brother Sujan Sing, and the inhabitants of 
 Gopeagungi, a village where two of his soldiers had been mur- 
 dered. This full security and pardon, it is clear from the terms 
 of the proclamation itself, must have been meant to extend 
 itself to the property as well as the persons of those who, in 
 consequence of it and with a dependence on the faith of the 
 British government, should submit, and who had not been 
 excepted in the terms of the general pardon. The Rani 
 and all the persons in the fort of Bidjey Gur stood pre- 
 cisely in this situation. No crime had been alleged against 
 them, no affidavits had been taken to prove that they enter- 
 tained any scheme of rebellion, or that they had any pre- 
 meditated design of throwing off their allegiance to the 
 British government. They therefore were intitled to every 
 indulgence promised in that proclamation ; they had a 
 claim to our protection ; they had a right to security, 
 both for their property and their persons. When Mr. Hast- 
 ings therefore refuses to listen to any terms but those of 
 
 * Letter of Warren Hastings to Major Popham, dated 22ud October, 1781. 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 282. 
 
 T 2
 
 292 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788. 
 
 Failure in 
 his object 
 of securing 
 money for 
 the Com- 
 pany. 
 
 His at- 
 tempts to 
 defraud the 
 army of 
 their booty. 
 
 security for the person of the Rani, and will not consent 
 to any conditions for a provision for her of any kind, I 
 tax him, not only with inhumanity and pride, but with 
 the most wanton injustice and the grossest breach of 
 public faith. Compare now this Alexander warring upon 
 women, tearing from an helpless and a venerable Princess 
 the provision of her age, and turning her adrift, destitute 
 and comfortless, upon the world compare him now with 
 his great original in the camp of Darius, consoling the 
 mother and the wife of the unfortunate Prince whom he 
 had conquered, and by his humanity and kindness making 
 them almost forget that they were captives. "We must 
 lament this one instance at least in which the resemblance 
 fails us, and Mr. Hastings falls short of that great cha- 
 racter to which he has been so well and so justly compared. 
 
 This then, both as cruel and unjust, as a violation of the 
 feelings of humanity and a breach of public faith, I urge 
 as a considerable aggravation of his offence. But there is 
 another aggravation of it singularly striking I mean the 
 complete failure of his dishonourable purpose, which he 
 avowed to be that of procuring for his constituents a con- 
 siderable sum of money an application to their interests 
 which he has often found effectual to reconcile them to 
 his most unjust measures. In this he completely failed. 
 The only money taken was at Bidjey Gur ; and the crimes 
 of Cheyt Sing were converted into a benefit for the de- 
 tachment who shared the plunder ; but to the Company 
 was allotted the disgrace brought on their government by 
 these acts of cruelty and oppression. Even his own pre- 
 dominant avarice was disappointed ; nor could the present 
 of a very fine scymitar and some other trinkets, I believe 
 of no great value, sent by the detachment as a peace- 
 offering to propitiate that benign divinity, Mrs. Hastings, 
 and engage her saint-like intercession with this supreme 
 disposer of all good things in India, reconcile him to a 
 measure by which all his corrupt schemes had been baffled 
 and his favourite object destroyed. 
 
 He accordingly endeavoured unjustly to resume what he 
 had before unjustly granted, and to defraud the soldiers 
 of the property of which they had thus possessed them- 
 selves ; first, by wheedling them into an idea of a loan. 
 They knew him, however, too well to be so duped or to 
 trust to such security. He had then recourse to a court 
 of justice. There the arguments which I have been attempt-
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 293 
 
 ing to combat appear to have been more successful than 1 25 FEB. ITSS. 
 trust they will be in this court, though the cause is 
 not yet finally decided, as I believe it is now depending 
 before the Council. Such were the circumstances as they 
 relate to Bidjey Gur. 
 
 My Lords, I shall now proceed to the settlement, and the impolitic 
 
 i i i - * TT , , i f am > ruinous 
 
 subsequent changes made by Mr. Hastings in the province or settlement 
 Benares. These I shall state to have been no less contrary ince e . pn> 
 to true policy and the real interests of the Company than 
 ruinous to the country itself, and destructive of every prin- 
 ciple of natural justice. This, my Lords, is a heavy charge ; 
 for it might have been expected that, having at last gratified 
 his pride and his resentment by the expulsion of Cheyt Sing 
 and the plunder of his mother, he would have endeavoured 
 to alleviate and soften the miseries and distraction that had 
 torn and divided this before happy province that he at least 
 would have settled it on such terms as he himself had 
 declared, and it was obvious to all the world, would make 
 it of the most essential advantage to the Company that he 
 would have introduced some system of government by which 
 its trades, its revenues and its cultivation, might be in- 
 creased; its happiness protected, and its religion, of which it 
 is the sanctuary, secured against profanation. These things 
 might have been expected from common policy at least, if 
 not from common humanity. But policy and humanity are 
 equally strangers to the head and heart of Mr. Hastings. 
 Without any legal authority to do so for even by that 
 illegal self-delegation of power, which he had assumed before 
 he left Calcutta, no such power was given him he took 
 upon him to make an entire new settlement of the whole 
 province. In this settlement he controverted not only every controverts 
 sentiment and principle he had ever maintained with regard secuSngtiie 
 to the true policy of securing the sovereignty of Benares to to v tho ignty 
 the British government, but introduced an entirely new untjsh 
 system, equally injurious to the interests of the Company as e " 
 destructive to the commerce and welfare of the country 
 itself. In this settlement he considered all the treaties Abrogates 
 which had subsisted with Cheyt Sing as entirely at an end : {^tu s 
 the new regulations went to a total abrogation of them, and 
 in his defence upon this Article he says we had no treaties 
 with the state of Benares. That is a discussion into which 
 I shall not enter. I shall not dispute whether Benares was 
 a state or not ; or whether or no we had any treaties with it 
 as a state. All I shall contend for is that, according both to
 
 294 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 FEB. 1788. the letter and spirit of those agreements by which he boasts 
 of having secured to Cheyt Sing and his family the first 
 legal property they had in the territory of Benares, it 
 appears if indeed he did succeed to them, as Mr. Hastings 
 tells us he did because he was the next lineal heir that 
 the next heir ought to have succeeded him upon the same 
 terms. 
 
 " In consequence of the full powers which I possessed 
 from the board for that purpose, I resolved to bestow it," 
 says he, " on the next lineal heir; this was Bauboo Mehip- 
 narain." If he was his heir, then I contend that he ought 
 not to have suffered for the crimes of his predecessor, and 
 that he ought, both according to the letter and spirit of those 
 agreements which were procured by Mr. Hastings himself, 
 to have succeeded to the territory on the same terms on 
 which Cheyt Sing had held it. But Mr. Hastings tells us 
 he was not his heir. I have just read your Lordships a sen- 
 tence in his Narrative, given upon oath, in which he says he 
 bestowed it upon him because he was the next lineal heir. 
 In his Defence before the House of Commons he says, that 
 not being Cheyt Sing's heir he had no claim of right, and 
 he saw no objection to making the Company's interests his 
 first principle of action. 
 
 My Lords, I leave you to settle the point between these 
 contradictions of Mr. Hastings. Whichever may be true, I 
 shall contend that the new regulations were equally unjust. 
 If Mehipnarain was not his heir, whoever was so ought to have 
 succeeded ; but at all events the country had incurred no 
 forfeiture by the crimes of Cheyt Sing, if he had been guilty 
 of any. An oppressive imposition therefore upon the country 
 itself must in all circumstances be unjust. 
 
 3k-hipna- Let us now see how he made the Company's interests his 
 sing's heir, first principle of action. He says, " The easy accumulation 
 eed to of too much wealth had been Cheit Sing's ruin." Truly 
 Sa ^' ^he easv accumulation of too much wealth had indeed 
 been Cheyt Sing's ruin. " It had buoyed him up with 
 extravagant and ill-founded notions of independence" how 
 true that is your Lordships have already seen " which I 
 very much wished to discourage in the future Rajah." If he 
 did wish to discourage such notions in the future Raja it 
 must be confessed that he took pretty effectual means to do 
 so. He conferred on Mehipnaraim the dignity of Raja, 
 it is true, but without power or revenues. He assigned him 
 an allowance of six lacs of rupees, of which he never received
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 295 
 
 n shilling. He reduced him to the ' depraved state of a mere 25 FEB. 1788. 
 zarnindar ' ; or, if there be a more depraved state, according 
 to Mr. Hastings' idea of it, he reduced him to that. He Appoint- 
 appointcd his father guardian over him on account of his 
 youth and inexperience, and made him collector of the 
 province. But to Mr. Markham, whom he continued Resi- 
 dent in defiance of the positive order of the Directors, he controlled 
 gave a controlling authority over both. dent, Mr." 
 
 I must recall to your Lordships' recollection the principles ^arWiam. 
 
 i i i i T> i mi Mr. Hast- 
 
 whicn Mr. Hastings has maintained about Kesicients. Iney ings' views 
 were quoted by my honourable friend in his speech upon the 
 first part of this charge. It will not, therefore, be necessary 
 to requote them; but your Lordships know it was this 
 appointment of a person who bore even a distant resemblance 
 to a Resident to receive these revenues at Benares, during a 
 temporary commission, that he foretold, in the spirit of 
 prophecy, would lay the foundation of that evil that dan- 
 gerous and impolitic power that power so pregnant with 
 every mischief that power so sure to create disaffection 
 and consequent rebellion on the part of the Raja that 
 power of the consequences of which he was aware, and had 
 opposed by every possible means, but at last so contrary to 
 the natural benignity of his mind and the general mildness 
 of his temper, he was forced " very unexpectedly to exert." 
 All the other propositions he had made for rendering the 
 Raja independent had been voted unanimously. Speaking of 
 the consequences attending the appointment of Mr. Fowke 
 to receive the revenue at Benares, which was the only point 
 in which he was overruled in his defence before the House 
 of Commons, he says: 
 
 "I consider Chert Sing precisely what they had made him, a tribu- 
 tary landholder ; not what I would have made him, but was overruled, 
 an independent Prince and powerful ally, placed as a barrier between the 
 Vizier and the government of Bengal. I would have caused the Com- 
 pany's tribute to be received at Patna, within the Company's provinces ; 
 they caused it to be received at Benares. I would have renounced the 
 sovereignty of his country ; they assumed it. What they assumed fell 
 to my lot very unexpectedly to exert." 
 
 What he did he now does in this new settlement. Did 
 he now make the Raja f an independent Prince and powerful 
 ally, placed as a barrier between the Company's provinces 
 and the government of Oude ' ? No ! he made him that 
 which he falsely asserts his predecessor to have been, a 
 tributary landholder ; but upon terms so infinitely grievous, 
 when opposed to those on which Cheyt Sing held his
 
 296 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB. 1788 
 
 His inten- 
 tional degra 
 dation of 
 the Raja. 
 
 Revenues 
 S^ranted 
 away in 
 
 pensions. 
 
 Monopolies 
 granted to 
 theResident, 
 
 Exaction of 
 
 excessive 
 
 revenue. 
 
 territories, that they will not for a moment bear a com- 
 parison. 
 
 He now, unrestrained and of his own authority, caused 
 the Company's tribute to be paid at Benares, and not at 
 Patna. He now asserted that dangerous power which 
 before he would have renounced. Why, and for what 
 reason ? Not because he was overruled, but because he was 
 obliged to acquiesce in the opinions and decisions of a 
 prevailing party ? No ; there was now no majority against 
 him. Unhappily for India, two of the great characters 
 which composed that majority were dead, and the third was 
 returned to England.* "What will he now, then, urge as a 
 reason for having established the government of Benares on 
 those very terms which he asserts to be so dangerous and 
 impolitic, which in direct contradiction of all his former 
 principles and opinions he now did ? He placed at the head 
 of it, as I have already stated, a Raja without power, dignity 
 or revenues. To the naib or guardian he gave the admi- 
 nistration of the country, without any efficient power to 
 conduct that administration. The real and substantial 
 power was given to a man of his own confidence, to the 
 Resident, Mr. Markham. These were the first steps he took 
 for the improvement of the Company's interests. The rest 
 were not more likely to promote them. 
 
 The next thing he did, was to grant a considerable part 
 of the revenues he had thus violently and unjustly assumed 
 in pensions to persons who had been useful to him, as he 
 tells us, in the late commotions. This was the second step 
 he took for the improvement of the Company's interests* 
 
 The third, was to grant a monopoly of the saltpetre and 
 opium of the province, together with the mint which he 
 has himself told us was a symbol of sovereignty, but which 
 he did not give for that reason, I believe, but because it was 
 a place of great profit to the Resident. My Lords, these 
 were the next steps he took for the improvement of the 
 Company's interests. 
 
 The last, was to impose a grievous burden upon the 
 country which it could not bear, and which, though it might, 
 
 * The members of the Council of Calcutta uniformly opposed to Mr. Hastings 
 were Colonel Monson, General Clavering and Mr. Francis. Of these, Colonel 
 Monson died in September, 1776, General Clavering in November, 1777, and 
 Mr. Francis returned to England in the year 1780, in consequence of ill health, 
 resulting from a wound received in a duel with Mr. Hastings, fought on the 
 17th of August of that year.
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 297 
 
 according to his own principles, produce for the moment a 25 FEB. nss. 
 large sum, must eventually tend to ruin the country and 
 diminish its resources. He insisted upon a clear annual 
 revenue of forty lacs of rupees, or 400,0007. of our money. 
 It will be proved that, under the mild government of 
 Bulwnnt Sing and his successors, this country, when every 
 attention was given to its trade and its cultivation, had 
 never produced more than forty-five lacs of rupees. How, 
 then, was it possible, after the allowances to the Raja, the 
 grant, pensions, the monopolies, and other deductions which 
 I have stated, that it should produce a clear revenue of 
 forty lacs to the Company ? It was impossible ; and Mr. 
 Hastings seems himself to be sensible that it was impossible ; 
 for, in consideration of the distraction and miseries that had 
 prevailed in the province, which having been the theatre of 
 a civil war certainly must be supposed a little deficient in 
 cultivation and in prosperity, on these considerations he 
 granted for the first year a deduction of six lacs, and 
 promised a deduction, not so great as that of the first year, 
 but a deduction upon the gross revenue of forty lacs at 
 a subsequent period, whenever the Company's affairs should 
 be able to afford it ; provided the minister in the meantime 
 was punctual in the distance of his payments of the 
 revenue. 
 
 This revenue, however, could not be produced, and upon ThcRajaand 
 its falling in arrear the new Prince and guardian, or minister, deposed? 
 was deposed without ceremony, and with as little thrown 
 into prison. The power of making his collections,, and 
 enforcing the payment of any balances that might be due to 
 him was by this means taken from him. He was not even 
 allowed to be heard in his defence, although the Rani, and 
 his son the Raja, wrote the most earnest supplications 
 to Mr. Hastings, intreating an inquiry, and throwing the 
 blame which had been imputed to them upon the Resident. 
 
 To give your Lordships a fit idea of the nature of these 
 supplications, I will read the letters to your Lordships. 
 
 [Mr. Adam read the copy of a letter received the \5th 
 December, 1782, and likewise a petition from Raja Mehip- 
 narain.*~\ 
 
 "FROM THE RANEE, WIDOW OF RAJAH BULWANT SING. Letter of 
 
 supplication 
 " I and my children have no hopes but from your Highness, and our in behalf of 
 
 honour and rank are bestowed by you. Mr. Markham, from the advice * he R f l ,> a 
 
 ~~ Baui. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 303.
 
 298 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 1 25 FEB. 1788. of my enemies, having protected the farmers, would not permit the 
 ~~ balances to be collected. Baboo Dirgbejey Sing frequently before 
 desired that gentleman to show his resentment against the people who 
 owed balances, that the balances might be collected, and to give ease to 
 his mind for the present year, conformably to the requests signed by 
 the Presence, that he might complete the bundebust ; but that gentleman 
 would not listen to him, and, having appointed a muteseddy and 
 taveeldar, employs them in the collections of the year, and sent two 
 companies of sepoys, and arrested Baboo Dirgbejey Sing upon this 
 charge that he had secreted in his house many lacs of rupees from the 
 collections, and he carried the muteseddies and treasurer, with their 
 papers, to his own Presence. He neither ascertained this matter by 
 proofs, nor does he complete the balance of the sircar from the jaidads of 
 the balances. Right or wrong, he is resolved to destroy our lives. As 
 we have no asylum or hope except from your Highness, and as the 
 Almighty has formed your mind to be distributor of justice in these 
 times, I therefore hope, from the benignity of your Highness, that you 
 will inquire and do justice in this matter, and that an ameen may be 
 appointed from the Presence, that, having discovered the crimes or 
 innocence of Baboo Dirgbejey Sing, he may report to the Presence. 
 Further particulars will be made known to your Highness by the arzie of 
 my son, Rajah Mehipnaraim Bahader." 
 
 Letter from "ARZIE FROM RAJAH MEHIPNARAIN BAHADER. 
 
 3Iehipna- 
 
 rain him- j b e f ore this had the honour of addressing several arzies to your 
 
 Presence, but, from my unfortunate state, not one of them has been 
 perused by your Highness, that my situation might be fully learnt by 
 you. The case is this : Mr. Markham, from the advice of my enemies, 
 having occasioned several kinds of losses, and given protection to those 
 who owed balances, prevented the balance from being collected ; for this 
 reason, that the money not being paid in time, the Baboo might be 
 convicted of inability. From this reason all the owers of balances refused 
 to pay the malwajib of the sircar. Before this the Baboo had frequently 
 desired that gentleman to show his resentment against the persons who 
 owed the balances, that the balances might be paid, and that his mind 
 might be at ease for the present year, so that the bundebust of the 
 present year might be completed ; adding that, if next year such kind of 
 injuries and protection of the farmers were to happen, he should not be 
 able to support it. But that gentleman did not reprove the owers of 
 balances, and with respect to the satisfaction for the present year he said 
 that he could not at this time do it. From this reason so great a balance 
 to the sircar still remains. Besides this, upon the false representations of 
 my enemies, that gentleman said to the Baboo : ' You have secretedin 
 your house several lacs of rupees from the collections, and do not pay 
 the balance to the sircar.' The Baboo requested that this matter might 
 be properly inquired into ; but that gentleman, without ascertaining it, 
 appointed a muteseddy and a treasurer from his own sircar for the collec- 
 tions of the present year. Afterwards, on the 4th of Zeheidja, he sent an 
 English gentleman with two companies of sepoys, who put the Baboo 
 under arrest. At the same time he threw the muteseddies and 
 treasurer, with their papers, into confinement, and brought them 
 to his own Presence, and told me that orders had come from the 
 Presence for a new naib, and that I must appoint Jagger Deo Sing 
 naib to furnish the bundebust of present year, and that having settled
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 299 
 
 .this point with the Ranee I should return. I gave him a proper answer, and 25 FEB.17S*. 
 again went to the Presence of that gentleman, and, conformably to the 
 directions of the Ranee, I said to him that, ' with respect to the naibut of 
 Jagger Deo Sing which he had ordered, I was now myself able to 
 attend and manage the affairs of the sircar, and that the Ranee did not 
 consent to or approve of a naib that it would have been incumbent on 
 him first to have proved the crime of Baboo Dirgbejey Sing, and then 
 confine him; and that this would have been proper, because, in the 
 room of all the ranks and honours bestowed upon him by the Presence, 
 from the event, disgrace and injury without bounds had come upon 
 him that now, from the carrying the muteseddies and treasurer, with 
 their papers, to the Presence, no secrecy remained. If this matter 
 should be carried to the proofs, the Baboo is entirely guilty ; but in case 
 of his innocence let the guard be taken off, and then the affairs of 
 this year may be fully discussed.' Mr. Markham replied that he would 
 again write this matter to the Presence. 
 
 " My master, I do not know what he may have written to your 
 Presence. I therefore have represented fully my distressed situation. 
 My only hopes are from your Highness. My honour and rank are 
 bestowed by you. Mr. Markham, having written false complaints to He demands 
 your Presence, has brought me to this situation, and has thrown the 
 concerns of this year into incompletion and ruin. I am therefore 
 hopeful that an ameen may be appointed, who, having inquired into 
 the crime or innocence of the Baboo, may inform the Presence and may 
 compel the owers of balances to pay the balance of the sircar. You 
 have approved of the concerns of the present year being completed by me. 
 Favour me so far as to prevent the injuries and protection of the farmers 
 from that gentleman, and that I may remain firm, conformably to the 
 requests signed by the Presence, that I may complete the malwajib of 
 the sircar with ease." 
 
 My Lords, you have now heard this letter, and the grounds The appii- 
 
 . 'f L J J J T\ 1, ! cation foran 
 
 upon which an inquiry was demanded, lo these appli- inquiry not 
 cations, however, Mr. Hastings did not think fit to pay any M 
 attention. He had already received accusations from this ings> 
 very Resident, alleging against the minister charges of pecu- 
 lation and embezzlement, which, without inquiry, " for good 
 and sufficient reasons," as he tells us, he believed, and 
 entering into a private correspondence with the Resident 
 which he did not communicate to the board for some 
 months afterwards, contrary to his duty, upon the plea of 
 his being at too great a distance at Calcutta, although he 
 was only at Nia Sirau, a place not above twenty-five miles 
 distant he presumed of his own usurped authority to order 
 another change to be made in this government, by the depo- 
 sition of the present minister and the appointment of 
 another person to succeed to Jiis station. 
 
 The breach of his duty in not entering these things on the 
 minutes is what I here allege against him as the least part of 
 his crime. What I urge as the great material point is the
 
 300 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 25 FEB^i783. 
 
 Hisinjus- 
 
 th(f 
 
 payments 
 
 Second ap- 
 
 plication of 
 
 the guardian 
 
 and 
 
 Imprison-* 1 
 ment. 
 
 inhumanity and injustice with which the whole of this pro- 
 ceeding is marked. For would your Lordships think it 
 sufficient to say, sitting in your judicial character on this 
 solemn process, without any examination of witnesses, any 
 regular mode of inquiry, or any form or appearance even of 
 investigation would you think yourselves justified to say 
 that you had good and sufficient reasons to believe the alle- 
 gations of one party against the other, and so, without any 
 farther ceremony, proceed to judgment? So far from doing 
 it yourselves, your Lordships would be shocked at the idea 
 of any other persons acting upon so wicked and flagitious 
 a principle. But yet precisely such was in this instance 
 the conduct of Mr. Hastings. The minister begs to be 
 heard in his defence ; throws the blame that is imputed 
 to him on the Resident ; and only solicits a fair and 
 impartial inquiry. These complaints are contradicted by 
 assertions on the part of the Resident ; and, without further 
 form or process, and without any inquiry or investigation 
 of any kind by which the truth of these assertions could be 
 substantiated, they are to be substantiated for good and 
 sufficient reasons which Mr. Hastings does not even think 
 it necessary to communicate; and so ends the business. 
 He did not even inquire whether the minister was really 
 anc ^ truly in arrear or not. His former payments had been 
 made with what is thought sufficient punctuality in that 
 country. One month was paid under another ; a pnrt even 
 of the last payment had been discharged, and for what re- 
 mained due, if any did remain for some was paid after he 
 was imprisoned he claimed a deduction, which Mr. Hast- 
 ings indeed refused ; but at all events I will prove the 
 amount of the sum for which the deduction was claimed, 
 and which was all that then remained in arrear, not to have 
 been near so great as that by which Mr. Hastings had over- 
 rated the revenue. 
 
 The minister was released from his first imprisonment, 
 
 _, ....... . 
 
 and went to Calcutta again soliciting inquiry. He was again 
 refused ; thrown a second time into prison ; and his property 
 confiscated to make good a payment which docs not appear 
 to have been really due, and which at all events the country 
 could not have borne. Such was the justice of Mr. Hast- 
 ings, and such the principle upon which he tried, and con- 
 demned or acquitted, others. He appoints a man to the 
 administration of a great province in a time of peculiar 
 distress and difficulty ; he exacts from him an exorbitant
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 301 
 
 revenue which the country cannot afford ; and because that 25 FEB.ITSS. 
 revenue cannot be punctually paid he throws him into 
 prison, Avithout inquiry, and pursues him even unto death. 
 His life, he says, in one of his letters to Mr. Markham, 
 shall answer for a default of payment : and so it did. He His d <tii. 
 died in confinement soon after the departure of Mr. Hast- 
 ings from Calcutta, oppressed with all the aggravated 
 miseries of poverty and disease. If such be the punishment 
 due to such an offence, and if a mere deficiency in the 
 payment of a revenue which the country could at no 
 time afford, but which at this particular season, on account 
 of a drought which had prevailed a circumstance which 
 Mr. Hastings afterwards mentions in the description he 
 gives of the miseries of this unhappy province, but to which 
 he did not think fit to pay attention could not possibly be 
 collected ; taking also into consideration this other circum- 
 stance that Durgbejey Sing asserted the arrear to be owing 
 to the fault of the Resident (and as no pains were taken to 
 contradict that assertion we have a right to believe it) if 
 under these circumstances a delay in the payment of an 
 exorbitant revenue be thought a crime of so deep and 
 flagrant a nature as to merit the most cruel persecution, 
 imprisonment and death, if such be the punishment due to 
 such an offence, to what shall he be doomed who stands at your 
 Lordships' bar, charged and it shall be proved upon him 
 with every crime that can disgrace and blacken human 
 nature with the perversion of the powers delegated to him 
 for the purposes of good government to the most wicked 
 and abominable tyranny who never left Calcutta, as we 
 are told, but his footsteps were marked with the devastation 
 of a province, the ruin of a people, or the deposition of a 
 Prince. 
 
 After this, example, held up in terror to whoever might Reflections 
 succeed to this dangerous office of which Durgbejey Sing sequences " 
 had been thus cruelly and unjustly deprived after such an acts! 686 
 example, your Lordships will not think it wonderful if who- 
 ever might be next appointed should esteem every other 
 consideration of either the happiness or ease of the people 
 as inferior to that of a punctual payment of the revenue. 
 He would necessarily reason in this manner " I am ac- 
 countable to a man who regards no crime as equal to a 
 default of payment. It is true he has imposed on the country 
 a tribute which it cannot bear, but my predecessor, by his 
 lenity to the people, has drawn down the heavy hand of
 
 302 Opening of the First Charge Benares : 
 
 25 FEB.1788. cruelty and vengeance upon himself; it must therefore be 
 ray care, as I tender the safety of my person and property, 
 not to incur the same penalty. Let the country suffer 
 what it may, the revenue must be collected." Such must 
 have been the reasoning of whoever might succeed to 
 
 Im g a rDeo Durgbejey Sing and such it was. Jagger Deo Sing 
 
 pointed was appointed by Mr. Markham, under the authority of 
 ter ' Mr. Hastings, to succeed him, and acted upon this avowed 
 principle that the revenue must be collected. Notwith- 
 standing, however, every means that could be devised, 
 every practice of oppression and species of exaction, the 
 
 Ruin of the revenue was still in arrear. The longer so ruinous a 
 system continued the greater the deficiency must every day 
 g r NV : an( ^ accordingly, at the end of two years that Jagger 
 l)eo Sing held the government, he was in arrear nearly 
 double the sum for which his predecessor had been deposed, 
 and the country fell into a state of complete ruin. No 
 language I can use can paint the miserable state to which 
 it was reduced in consequence of these revolutions so 
 strongly as a letter written by Mr. Hastings himself: 
 
 Letter of '' If the same administration continues, and the country shall again 
 Mr. Hast- labour under a want of the natural rains, every field will be abandoned, 
 scribing the *^ e revenue fail, and thousands perish through the want of subsistence, 
 condition of For who will labour for the sole benefit of others and to make himself the 
 the country. su bj ec t o f vexation ? These practices are not to be imputed to the aumils 
 employed in the districts, but to the naib himself. The avowed principle 
 on which he acts and which he acknowledged to myself is, that the 
 whole sum fixed for the revenue of the province must be collected ; and 
 that for this purpose the deficiency arising in places where the crops have 
 failed or which have been left uncultivated must be supplied from the 
 resources of others, where the soil has been better suited to the season, 
 or the industry of the cultivators more successively exerted a principle 
 which, however specious and plausible it may at first appear, certainly 
 tends to the most pernicious and destructive consequences. If this 
 declaration of the naib had been made only to myself I might have 
 doubted my construction of it, but it was repeated by him to Mr. Ander- 
 son, who understood it exactly in the same sense. In the management of 
 the customs the conduct of the naib, or of the officers under him, was 
 forced also upon my attention. The exorbitant rates exacted by an arbi- 
 trary valuation of the goods, the practice of exacting duties twice on the 
 same goods, first from the seller and afterwards from the buyer, and the 
 vexatious disputes and delays drawn on the merchants by these oppres- 
 sions, were loudly complained of; and some instances of this kind were 
 said to exist at the very time when I was in Benares. Under such cir- 
 cumstances we are not to wonder if the merchants of foreign countries 
 are discouraged from resorting to Benares, and if the commerce of that 
 province should annually decay. Other evils or imputed evils have 
 accidentally come to my knowledge, which I will not now particularize, 
 as I hope that, with the assistance of the Resident, they may be in part
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 303 
 
 corrected. One, however, I must mention, because it has been verified 25 FEB. 1788. 
 
 by my own observation, and is of that kind which reflects an unmerited 
 
 reproach on our general and national character. When I was at Buxar, 
 the Resident, at my desire, enjoined the naib to appoint creditable people 
 to every town through which our route lay, to persuade and encourage 
 the inhabitants to remain in their houses, promising to give them guards, 
 as I approached and they required it for their protection. And, that he 
 might perceive how earnest I was for his observance of this precaution 
 which I am certain was faithfully delivered I repeated it to him in 
 person, and dismissed him that he might precede me for that purpose : 
 but to my great disappointment I found every place through which I 
 passed abandoned, nor had there been a man left in any of them for their 
 protection. I am sorry to add that from Buxar to the opposite boundary 
 I have seen nothing but the traces of complete devastation in every 
 village, whether caused by the followers of the troops which have lately 
 passed for their natural relief and I know not whether my own may not 
 have had their share or from the apprehensions of the inhabitants left 
 to themselves and of themselves deserting their houses. I wish to acquit 
 my own countrymen of the blame of these unfavourable appearances, and 
 in my own heart I do acquit them. For at one encampment near a large 
 village called Den-era, in the pergunnah of Zemaneea, a crowd of people 
 came to me complaining that their former aumil, who was a native of 
 the place and had long been established in authority over them, and 
 whose custom it had been, whenever any troops passed, to remain in 
 person on the spot for their protection, having been removed, the new 
 aumil on the approach of any military detachment himself first fled from 
 the place, and the inhabitants having no one to whom they could apply 
 for redress or for the representation of their grievances, and being thus 
 remediless, fled also ; so that their houses and effects became a prey to 
 any person who chose to plunder them. The general conclusion appeared 
 to me an inevitable consequence from such a state of facts, and my own 
 senses bore testimony to it in this specific instance. Nor do I know how it is 
 possible for any officer commanding a military party, how attentive soever 
 he may be to the discipline and forbearance of his people, to prevent 
 disorders, when there is neither opposition to hinder nor evidence 
 to deter them. These and many other irregularities I impute solely 
 to the naib ; and I think it my duty to recommend his instant 
 removal." * 
 
 This is sufficient to give your Lordships an idea of the 
 effect of these different revolutions. There are other parts 
 of this letter which are well worth your Lordships' attention ; 
 but, as it will be produced in evidence, I shall not think it 
 necessary now to detail and trouble your Lordships with it. 
 
 Your Lordships have heard the description of the effects of 
 these revolutions, given by the Governor General himself. 
 You have heard the sentiments with which the people are 
 actuated at the approach of a British Governor. Instead of 
 flocking to meet their sovereign, to testify their affection for 
 his person and gratitude for his paternal care, as in the times 
 
 * Letter of Warren Hastings to Mr. Wheler and the Council ; dated Luck- 
 now, 2nd April, 1784. Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 306.
 
 304 
 
 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 Manifesto 
 of Cheyt 
 3ing, de- 
 jcriof 
 
 23 FEB. 1788. of Bulwant Sing, they saw nothing in his approach but a 
 gloomy tyrant, coming perhaps to impose new exactions and 
 to add fresh oppressions to his former injustice. They fled 
 at his approach : the villages were everywhere deserted, and 
 the whole country presented to his view a scene of complete 
 devastation. Let us compare this description of the country 
 with that which. Cheyt Sing gives of his government, in a 
 
 condition of manifesto which he published after his flight from Benares. 
 
 his province. This manifesto was brought over to us and is universally 
 acknowledged to be authentic. I will therefore read part of 
 it to your Lordships : 
 
 " What have I done to be treated in this manner to have my treasures 
 demanded, and my fort, the deposit of my family, wrested from me, and 
 my person disgraced and dishonoured? Have I been guilty of injustice 
 or mal-administration in my country ? Look to my districts look to 
 theirs. Do not the different pictures which they present to you mark 
 the limits more strongly than the boundaries which nature itself has 
 drawn out ? My fields are cultivated; my villages are full of inhabitants; 
 my country is a garden ; and my ryots are happy. My capital is the 
 resort of the principal merchants of India, from the security I have given 
 to property. The treasures from Mahrattas, the Junths, the Seieks, and 
 the most distant nations of India, are deposited here. Here the orphan 
 and the widow convey their property, and reside here without fear of 
 rapacity or avarice. The traveller from one . end of my country to the 
 other lays down his burden and sleeps in security. 
 
 " But what a different picture do the Company's provinces present ! 
 There famine and misery stalk hand in hand through uncultivated fields 
 and deserted villages. There you meet with nothing but aged men, who 
 are not able to transport themselves away, or robbers and tigers in the 
 fields, now overgrown with woods." 
 
 Reflections 
 on the ruin 
 of the 
 country 
 occasioned 
 by British 
 rule. 
 
 And such now, my Lords, became the picture of Benares ; 
 as if the poisonous breath of British influence was doomed 
 to nip the bud of cultivation, and blast the fruits of improve- 
 ment, in every country to which it might extend itself. 
 This country, which under the mild government of its 
 Hindu princes had been eminent for its riches, revered for 
 its sanctity, and a garden in point of cultivation this 
 favoured spot, to which the merchants from the most distant 
 parts of India resorted for the purposes of commerce, and 
 the devout for those of religion ; where the pilgrim deposited 
 the pious offerings of his zeal and the traveller laid down 
 his burden and slept in security this country, which the 
 Mohammedan conquerors of the East had respected and left 
 undisturbed in its government, its laws and its religion, 
 which even the more pitiless arm of British violence had 
 hitherto spared this terrestrial paradise this seat of peace
 
 Speech of Mr. Grey. 305 
 
 and plenty this land flowing with milk and honey now 25 FEB. 1735. 
 became the seat of wretchedness and despair; its Prince 
 was dishonoured and banished ; its temples were polluted ; 
 its laws abrogated ; and its ancient government destroyed. 
 Licentiousness took place of order ; military violence 
 subdued all restraint; the people were driven from their 
 habitations ; the country itself became a desert; and rapacity 
 and avarice completed the hard work of ruin and desolation. 
 Such were the effects of these revolutions; such the effects, 
 as Mr. Hastings himself describes them ; who, as usual, 
 punishes the unhappy instrument of his tyranny for the 
 consequences of those acts for which he alone is accountable. 
 Jagger Deo Sing was in his turn deposed. 
 
 But, my Lords, when we hear of evils such as these, it is The results 
 scarce possible to conceive that they should all arise entirely uponMr. 
 from the acts of one man. No, not of one, but of many Hastin s - 
 corrupt and abandoned traitors, of whom he stands supreme 
 he whom, if no regards controlled me, I should not hesi- 
 tate to call the accursed destroyer of persons, places, pro- 
 vinces all that were involved in the general devastation. 
 For the sower of the seed must surely be considered as the 
 real author of the whole harvest of mischief. He it was 
 who by an usurped power expelled the native Raja of 
 Benares, under whom the fields were cultivated, the villages 
 full of inhabitants, the country a garden, and the ryots 
 happy. He it was who, after the expulsion of that Prince, 
 introduced a system of government of government shall I 
 call it ? rather of the most cruel and vexatious oppression, 
 by which "complete ruin was brought upon the country, and 
 famine and misery stalked hand in hand, through uncul- 
 tivated fields and deserted villages." To him therefore, and 
 to the arbitrary, illegal, unjust and tyrannical, acts, either 
 caused or committed by him, I assert all these horrid con- 
 sequences to be imputable, and that for all and every one 
 of the same he was and is guilty of high crimes and 
 misdemeanours. 
 
 Having now, my Lords, gone through such parts of this Conclusion, 
 charge as were appointed me having stated to your Lord- 
 ships the nature of the facts themselves and the consequences 
 of those facts I shall leave this cause to your decision. 
 
 I have only to request of your Lordships, before I sit 
 down, to believe that I have spoken upon this occasion, if 
 with some warmth and who is there in reciting acts of such 
 delinquency that would not be actuated with indignation ? 
 
 U
 
 306 Opening of the First Charge Benares: 
 
 25FEB.1788 yet without malice, and with no other view than to rescue 
 the name of Englishman from the foul disgrace with which 
 this man has sullied it; to assert the cause of British 
 justice ; and, at the same time, with an ardent hope that this 
 prosecution may eventually tend to afford some consolation 
 at least, if not some positive relief, to the ruined inhabitants 
 of India. Populata, vexata, funditus eversa provincia, socii 
 stipendariique nostri afflicti, miseri,jam non salutis spem sed 
 exitii solatium qucerunt. 
 
 If in such a case I have spoken in a manner not altogether 
 unsuitable to its importance, I have done as my wishes 
 dictated ; if too deficiently, as my abilities would admit. 
 But, my Lords, it is not on my abilities no, not even on 
 those of my honourable friends who have preceded me 
 that such a cause can or ought to depend for its support. 
 It is too powerfully upheld by its own merits to require any 
 additional strength from their talents or to fear any debili- 
 tation from mine. It is not oratory it is not genius it is 
 not an artful construction of phrases, nor laboured deduc- 
 tions of implied criminality from premises obscure and 
 uncertain from reports unwarranted and ill authenticated 
 from suggestions of public delinquency and imputations 
 of evil designs, unfounded and improbable no ! the great 
 God of justice forbid that Mr. Hastings should be tried after 
 the principles and precedents of his own practice it is the 
 clear, the obvious, the incontrovertible, evidence of facts 
 it is the convincing voice of truth that gives me the surest 
 ground of confidence in the event of this charge. It is the 
 goodness of the cause itself and the known justice of your 
 Lordships.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 307 
 
 SPEECH OF JOHN ANSTRUTHER, ESQ., MANAGER 
 FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING 
 UP THE EVIDENCE ON THE FIRST CHARGE, 
 RELATING TO BENARES ; 11 APRIL, 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, It is now my duty to address myself to 
 your Lordships, in performing that part which is assigned to 
 me by the Managers of the Committee of the House of 
 Commons, to sum up and to state that very long and very 
 intricate evidence which has been presented to your Lordships 
 by them, in the course of what they have offered upon the 
 head of the Benares charge. 
 
 I should feel the duty that is imposed upon' me to be 
 infinitely more difficult and laborious had it not been that, 
 from the nature of the evidence itself, the right honourable 
 and the honourable Managers who preceded me had it in 
 their power to comment and observe upon that evidence 
 which they were to produce. As it was mostly in the nature 
 of written evidence, which they had an opportunity of seeing 
 before they produced it to your Lordships, they have 
 necessarily and naturally [so commented] and happy I am 
 that they have, as they have anticipated many of the obser- 
 vations which would naturally occur upon the stating that 
 evidence, and have thereby reduced the task they had 
 imposed upon me to perform to be less laborious and less 
 difficult than it otherwise would have been. 
 
 Your Lordships, I am sure, in reading this evidence, which Complete; 
 is now printed and in your Lordships' hands, must have Sence pn> 
 observed, upon the very first view of it, how closely and duced - 
 strictly the evidence applies to the charge, and how com- 
 pletely the evidence which the Commons have adduced 
 upon this charge proves everything which was asserted 
 by the two gentlemen who opened this charge to your Lord- 
 ships. And indeed it would be almost sufficient to say that 
 everything which they have asserted has been proved to 
 your Lordships by strict legal evidence evidence admitted 
 because it was impossible that such evidence could have been 
 rejected. 
 
 u 2
 
 308 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 APB.178S. j n the course of the evidence, the Commons have pro- 
 Evidence duced to your Lordships every account of the transactions 
 
 derivedfroin i TI i i i r i ^i 
 
 Mr. Hast- respecting Benares which has been given by the person 
 m)?s< standing at your Lordships' bar, during the whole period of 
 
 the time while he continued Governor General of Bengal. 
 They have produced the account of the state and situation 
 of Raja Bulwant Sing and Raja Cheyt Sing, which he gave 
 in the years 1772 and 1773, when he finally renewed and 
 confirmed the rights of that Prince, then holding under Suja- 
 ud-Dowla. They next produced the accounts which he gave 
 of the rights and the situation of that Prince, when he again 
 renewed and confirmed them by ne\v grants and new additions 
 in the year 1773 [1775 ?]. Then they produced to your Lord- 
 ships another account which he gave of the transaction, in a 
 narrative which he made of his proceedings at Benares a 
 narrative made for the purpose of justifying the violence 
 and the atrocity of that act. And, last of all, they have 
 produced to your Lordships the account which he gave of 
 the transaction when he chose to come forward, voluntarily 
 and at his own petition and by his own desire, to the House 
 of Commons, to state what he had done, and to justify that 
 measure which, upon the first face of it, appeared to be so 
 violent. 
 
 If all these accounts agreed in all the particulars, the task 
 I have would be easy indeed ; but, as it happens that every 
 one of these accounts is at variance one with the other, I am 
 afraid I shall be obliged, in the course of what I have to say 
 to your Lordships, to take up some part of your Lordships' 
 time in comparing these different accounts with each other, 
 for the purpose of showing to your Lordships that every 
 justification which has been set up of this measure every 
 attempt which has been made to palliate it every attempt 
 which has been made to fix crime upon the Raja every 
 attempt which has been made to find any justification of any 
 sort for the conduct of Mr. Hastings was, from his own 
 accounts, within his own knowledge, unfounded, at the very 
 time that such justifications were made. 
 
 The first piece of evidence which the Commons presented 
 to your Lordships, after proving the general allegations of the 
 preamble, was applicable to that which properly forms the 
 want Sing. fl rg Dranc h. of the charge I mean with respect to the situa- 
 tion, the rank, the character, and the first connection of the 
 East India Company with, Raja Bulwant Sing. 
 
 Evidence
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 309 
 
 Your Lordships must see, from that piece of evidence, that 
 another assertion which was made by the two right honour- 
 able gentlemen who opened this charge is strictly founded on 
 the nature of the evidence itself. Your Lordships must 
 recollect they stated that they did not mean to involve you 
 in any questions of Indian law. They did not mean to call 
 upon your Lordships to interpret laws with which you could 
 not be supposed to be so perfectly conversant as you are 
 with the laws of Europe in general and of the laws of your 
 own country in particular. They called upon your Lordships 
 to interpret English treaties, made by an English Governor, 
 under the authority of an English act of Parliament. That 
 is the whole case: that is all the question which your Lord- 
 ships have to decide in this cause. Your Lordships will 
 recollect that, upon the first part of the charge, respecting the 
 rights of the Raja of Benares and the situation which he 
 stood in with respect to our government, the first piece of 
 evidence which was produced to your Lordships was a resolu- 
 tion of the President and Council (as it was then called) of 
 Bengal respecting the nature of the alliance, and the situa- 
 tion with respect to our government into which they meant 
 to place Raja Bulwant Sing, in the course of those wars in 
 which we have been involved, and in the course of that war 
 in particular against Snja-ud-Dowla in consequence of the 
 revolt of Cossim Ali Khan.* 
 
 In the month of December, 1764, Bulwant Sing, as Alliance of 
 appears by the first piece of evidence, had made certain sing with 
 offers to join our forces and to enter into an alliance with ofBengai b 
 the then Nawab of Bengal, who wr.s connected with iis. He 
 knew the instability of Indian faith, and he would not enter 
 into that alliance with the Nawab of Bengal unless that 
 alliance was confirmed by the English East India Company. 
 The evidence states this that the Nawab (meaning the 
 Nawab of Bengal) was very anxious that the treaty should be 
 brought to a conclusion, and proposed to the General to set 
 his seal to it upon the part of the English, without which 
 the Raja would not enter into any engagement. This is 
 transmitted by the General to the Council ; and he takes the 
 opinion of the Council upon the nature of that treaty which 
 he ought to enter into with him, and upon the stipulations 
 which ought to be made binding upon the English govern- 
 ment in that treaty. 
 
 * S?e the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 10.
 
 310 Summing of .Evidence on. the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APE. 1788, 
 
 Guarantee 
 of indepen- 
 dence to 
 Bulwant 
 Bin*. 
 
 Treaty of 
 Allahabad 
 negotiated 
 by Lord 
 Clive. 
 
 I desire your Lordships particularly to attend to that 
 paper ; for it is extremely important in this cause that the 
 very first resolution which was made with respect to the 
 Raja of Benares, when we had any idea of entering into a 
 treaty with that people, was a resolution to protect and 
 maintain Raja Bulwant Sing independent both now and 
 hereafter. The very first condition of our first connection 
 with him the first idea which was then proposed when 
 entering into a treaty with him was to render him per- 
 fectly independent both now and hereafter. In consequence 
 of that resolution, which was communicated to the General, 
 Bulwant Sing and his troops joined the army in the course 
 of the campaign. The consequence of that was, what has 
 been read to your Lordships in the course of this evidence, 
 that the Directors of the India Company, who may be 
 supposed to be good judges of that matter, at the very time 
 and when the treaty was over, declared that Raja Bulwant 
 Sing's joining with them at the time that he did was of 
 signal service, and that the condition which they meant to 
 give him of independence was well earned upon his part. 
 Posterior to that period, Lord Clive, in the year 1765, 
 arrived in Bengal, with those extraordinary powers which 
 were indeed only fit to be trusted to so extraordinary a 
 man. He arrived in Bengal, and he found the government 
 one scene of confusion ; he found it engaged in projects ; he 
 found it engaged in distant wars; he found it engaged in 
 expensive operations ; and, as he describes it himself in one 
 of his minutes, our troops marching half way to Delhi. The 
 first great operation which that great man undertook was 
 finally to fix and settle the political interests of India ; and 
 he did it in that treaty which has been produced to your 
 Lordships, called the treaty of Allahabad, which was one of 
 the first pieces of evidence that the Commons produced to 
 your Lordships on this charge.* And I wish your Lordships 
 particularly to attend to that treaty ; for you will see the 
 care, the attention and the w r isdom, of Lord Clive in that 
 treaty, as applicable to all the different Princes of India 
 with whom we were at all connected. He found, imme- 
 diately after his landing at Calcutta, that British faith, 
 British justice and British moderation, were in very little 
 respect among the Princes of that country. He wished to 
 plant the root of our dominion deep in justice, in modera- 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 12.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 311 
 
 tion and in magnanimity. To accomplish that great and u APB - 1788 - 
 glorious end, the first object of my Lord Olive was to take 
 hold of that which governs all mankind, public opinion to 
 take hold of that public opinion by standing forth as the 
 protector of the ancient hereditary monarch of that country, 
 the Great Mogul, then existing in the person of Shah Alum. 
 
 The next object of my Lord Clive was to give an instance 
 of magnanimity, of moderation and of virtue, that should 
 astonish the nations of Asia with respect to Europe. It was 
 to restore to his dominions Suja-ud-Dowla the very domi- 
 nions that Ave had conquered from him when he was our 
 enemy. But that was not enough; it was not enough to 
 lay hold of the hereditary prejudices of the natives ; it was 
 not enough to impress them with ideas of our magnanimity 
 and moderation ; it was necessary to impress them with ideas 
 of our good faith and justice. He had an opportunity of Buiwant 
 doing that by this treaty, and by that very article of that sessions 08 " 
 treaty which was read to your Lordships, with relation to 
 Buiwant Sing. By that treaty he carried into execution 
 the original intention which he took, in the year 1764, of 
 rendering Buiwant Sing independent. He made it a special 
 article of that treaty that Buiwant Sing should retain pos- 
 session of those territories which belonged to him ; and he 
 guaranteed those territories by British faith armed with 
 British power. 
 
 My Lords, I have stated to your Lordships the first resolu- 
 tion of making Raja Buiwant Sing independent. I have 
 shown your Lordships that resolution carried into effect by 
 the treaty of Allahabad under Lord Clive. That treaty 
 gained this approbation from the court of Directors : 
 
 " We approve of what you have done ; and we hope that the modera- 
 tion and attention paid to all those who have espoused our interest in 
 this war will restore our reputation in India, and that the Indian powers 
 will be convinced that no breach of treaty will ever have our sanction." 
 
 Then, my Lords, if it had stopped here ; if no other treaty 
 had ever existed ; if no other act had ever been done by the 
 British government ; I say the charge would have been just 
 as strong against Mr. Hastings as it is at this moment ; for 
 by the treaty of Allahabad we were bound to protect him 
 and maintain him independent. 
 
 But, my Lords, the Commons do not leave their evidence 
 merely upon that. The treaty of Allahabad continued in 
 force for a considerable time, without indeed any attempt
 
 312 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 Am. 1788. having been made to infringe it; and, previous to the change 
 Succession f government which took place by the institution of the 
 sin^on* Supreme Council, Chey t Sing had succeeded to his father ; 
 the death of and, by the intervention of the British government, as your 
 
 Bulwant T j /. -11 i, ,i i / T 
 
 Sing. .Lordships will see by turning to the evidence, he Avas placed 
 in the same situation that his father had been : and your 
 Lordships will, in the course of that evidence, remark these 
 singular words. The Council, writing home to their masters 
 here, tell the Directors at home that he is considered as 
 holding his situation exactly upon the same terms that his 
 father did; that is to say, he is holding that situation under 
 the protection and guarantee of that treaty of Allahabad 
 which I have stated.* 
 
 My Lords, so it continued till the year 1773 ; when 
 Mr. Hastings, having some negotiations to settle and some 
 business to do, which your Lordships will hear of in an 
 after charge, proceeded from Calcutta to Benares ; and one 
 of the professed objects of that journey was, as is stated 
 
 u lie f2- to m the very instructions which he gave to himself, to renew 
 
 Clieyt Sii'itr * 
 
 of the stipu- in behalf of Raja Cheyt Sing the stipulations that had 
 
 with hi* 1 been made with his father in consideration of his services. 
 I desire that your Lordships would specially mark every 
 word of the paragraph in those instructions; because it 
 has pleased Mr. Hastings to deny every word of that para- 
 graph in the course of some other parts of what 1 have to state, 
 as your Lordships will see. 
 
 5Tour Lordships see that he went up for the purpose, 
 not of conveying any new right to Cheyt Sing, but for the 
 purpose of renewing his ancient right. 
 
 Cheyt Mr. Hastings has stated in his Narrative, and stated in his 
 
 Defence, that Cheyt Sing acquired the first legal title that 
 ^ e ^ a ^ to ^ 8 & ^ u ^ lon fr m those articles in 1773. I quote 
 
 of 1773. Mr. Hastings against himself he did nothing new in 1773 ; 
 he only renewed, confirmed, those acts which had been 
 already done. It has also pleased Mr. Hastings, in that 
 Defence which is before your Lordships, to state that he did 
 not know what services Bulwant Sing had done to the 
 Company. Your Lordships see that, by the very instructions 
 he gave himself, in the year 1773, he stated that those rights 
 were granted to Bulwant Sing in consideration of those 
 services which, when he comes before the House of Commons, 
 he says he was ignorant of. 
 
 * See " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 37.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 313 
 
 Having stated the objects of Mr. Hastings' journey to HAPIMTSS. 
 Benares, at least in so far as applicable to the matter of 
 charge before your Lordships, I wish to direct your Lord- 
 ships' attention next to what Mr. Hastings did when he 
 was in that situation. And there I desire your Lordships 
 to look at those rights which he then granted to interpret 
 those instruments according to the fair plain sense and plain 
 understanding of the words. Mr. Hastings obtained from Conditions 
 the Nawab Suja-ud-Do\vla certain instruments in favour o 
 Cheyt Sing. Those instruments bear that no increase 
 his tribute should ever be demanded. They bear that there 
 should be no deviation whatever from this agreement. They 
 bear and Mr. Hastings countersigns them according to the 
 treaty of Allahabad that there never should be any breach 
 or deviation. Words cannot convey ideas stronger than 
 these do confirming, ratifying, guaranteeing, over and over 
 again, the rights which were granted originally by the treaty 
 of Allahabad. There was to be no deviation ; no increase 
 whatever was ever afterwards to be demanded ; and there 
 never should be the least breach in this agreement. What 
 was that agreement, my Lords ? It was an agreement to pay 
 a certain specific sum to the Nawab of Oude a specific sum 
 and nothing else : it contains nothing else. 
 
 Now let me call your Lordships' attention to a paper, 
 which I shall be obliged to have recourse to again and 
 again, referring your Lordships back to it as I come to the 
 particular parts of the evidence which will require such 
 reference I mean to the paper which is called Mr. Hastings' 
 report of what he himself had done.* He says in that paper Protection 
 that the ]N r awab of Oude had granted to Raja Cheyt Sing, ifa,stinp.s of 
 upon the death of Bulwant Sing in the year 1770, ft kairi- Jg*$j? 
 nama exactly of the tenor of that which was then granted ; oJ ^ 1 ^" 18 
 that the Nawab himself thought his act of little validity ; wab, in 1773. 
 but Mr. Hastings, at that moment feeling all the force and 
 operation of the treaty of Allahabad, thought that that act 
 was of great and binding validity. The Nawab wished 
 to do what Mr. Hastings afterwards did to take ten lacs of 
 rupees from the Raja. Mr. Hastings refused to let him. 
 The Nawab wished to seize the forts of the Raja. Mr. Hast- 
 ings would not permit him to seize the forts of the Raja. 
 And yet that very Mr. Hastings comes forwards afterwards 
 and demands five lacs of rupees, stating himself to act under 
 
 \ 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 38.
 
 314 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APE, 1788. the same authority that the Nawab of Oude did. Mr. Hast- 
 ings seizes the forts belonging to the Raja of Benares, and 
 tells you in his Defence that a person in the situation of the 
 Raja of Benares could have no use for forts but for rebellious 
 and disaffected purposes. 
 
 Was Mr. Hastings in the year 1773 protecting Cheyt 
 
 Sing in rebellion? Was Mr. Hastings in 1773 infringing 
 
 the rights of the Nawab of Oude ? Was Mr. Hastings 
 
 insisting against his legal sovereign that he should not take 
 
 those things which his legal sovereignty gave him ? And 
 
 yet Mr. Hastings comes now and tells your Lordships : 
 
 Repudiation I n the year 1773 I disgraced myself; I prevented the 
 
 iiastingsof Nabob of Oude from exercising his legal prerogative; I 
 
 interference protected his subjects in rebellion ; I insisted that he should 
 
 Cheyt sYnpf keep forts which he could keep for no other than disaffected 
 
 and rebellious purposes : and now I desire you to judge me 
 
 in this way. I have acted wickedly and cruelly in the year 
 
 1773 as against the Nabob of Oude ; and therefore, because 
 
 I did so then I desire you to acquit me now as with respect 
 
 to the Raja of Benares." 
 
 Your Lordships will not admit of any such excuse. You 
 will bind Mr. Hastings down to the interpretation he gave 
 to those acts at the time he gave it. You will not take 
 his interpretations at the times when it suited his purpose to 
 give false glosses and untrue colourings to his acts. You 
 will take them at the time he did them. You will take his 
 explanation at the time. 
 Answer to Another thing in this report is extremely material : it is 
 
 Mr. Hast- ., . mi -,-> to . /. T> ir -a * 
 
 ings' asser- this : The Raja of Benares, says Mr. Hastings, had 
 BuvJant executed a kaulnama of the same tenor in the year 1770.* 
 amfi wasan He also says that that kaulnama, executed in the year 1770, 
 was of the same nature and the same tenor with that 
 under which Bulwant Sing held. I desire your Lordships to 
 remark this ; because it has pleased the person at your bar 
 to take up a great portion of his defence in stating to your 
 Lordships that Bulwant Sing was an amil only. I defy your 
 Lordships by any possible construction to say that he was an 
 amil, or that he was anything else than that which Mr. 
 Hastings made Cheyt Sing in 1773. Mr. Hastings says 
 the instrument that passed in 1770 was the same as that 
 which now passed. That instrument passed in 1770 was 
 
 * The sentence appears corrupt. The meaning intended is, probably, that 
 the Raja of Benares had received from the Wazir of Oude in 1773 a kaul- 
 nama of the' same tenor with that executed in 1770.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 315 
 
 the same with the instrument under which Bui want Sing 11 APE. iiss. 
 held. Therefore, if all the three instruments were the 
 same, and if the last of those three instruments clearly 
 establishes him a complete and perfect zamindar, it will 
 follow that Bulwant Sing was a complete zamindar; 
 because, by Mr. Hastings' own report, he held under the 
 same right by a kaulnama by deeds of exactly the same 
 tenor as those which passed in 1773. 
 
 Your Lordships asked me, in the course of the proceeding?, 
 whether I could show under what tenure Bulwant Sing 
 held. I think I have proved, as completely as anything 
 can be proved, that he held precisely under that tenure 
 which Mr. Hastings now says was granted by him first, but 
 which lie then said was precisely the same with that under 
 which Bulwant Sing held. 
 
 My Lords, having now done with those acts which passed 
 in 1773, 1 must call your Lordships' attention to another piece 
 of evidence, which as against the prisoner cannot lie it is 
 impossible that it should that is, the interpretation which Mr. 
 Hastings himself put upon those acts of the year 1773, after 
 he had done them. This brings me down to the year 1775. 
 
 In the year 1775 the Nawab of Oude wished to make A demand 
 some extraordinary demands upon this man. He wished to ^aicftrom 1 " 
 demand a sum of five lacs of rupees in advance. He wished the Ra J a f 
 
 1 I'lll -l 1 1 1 a P a y m eHl' 
 
 that his tribute should be paid, not in the way in which it of tribute in 
 usually had been paid, but that he should demand it in resisted by 
 advance. He did not demand five lacs in addition, as Mr. ^g'J Iast ~ 
 Hastings afterwards did ; all that he demanded was that he 
 should be permitted to demand that tribute in advance : and 
 your Lordships will observe that that payment in advance 
 was a payment to be made to the East India Company. 
 What was the conduct of Mr. Hastings upon this occasion ? 
 
 " Though it is for the benefit of the East India Company, consistently 
 with justice I cannot permit it to be done ; consistently with the obliga- 
 tions I have entered into it cannot be. I direct the Resident at the 
 court of Oude to remonstrate against such proceedings." 
 
 And why ? As your Lordships will see by referring to the 
 evidence in 1 775, which is in the 40th and 41st pages of the 
 printed evidence, the reason why that payment was resisted 
 was that it should not be a precedent. Rights may some- 
 times be established by precedents : it is necessary to resist 
 them in the first instance. It was resisted, and successfully 
 resisted, by Mr. Hastings. It was successfully resisted by 
 the Raja, under the guarantee Mr. Hastings had given him
 
 316 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APB.1788. successfully resisted as against the Nawab of Oude, who 
 was that sovereign which Mr. Hastings now tells your 
 Lordships an Indian sovereign is, whose rights are everything 
 and Cheyt Sing's rights nothing. 
 
 Cheyt Sing was that zamindar who, Mr. Hastings now tells 
 your Lordships, owed an unreserved and implicit obedience 
 to every demand that was made upon him. If he did so, 
 why in the year 1775 did he protect that zamindar? Be- 
 cause there was a guarantee of the British faith that 
 rendered Bulwant Sing independent that rendered Cheyt 
 Sing independent, and prevented any sovereign, of what- 
 ever rank, character, name or situation, he might be, from 
 demanding either sums in advance or extraordinary pay- 
 ments beyond that amount which was stipulated in the 
 treaty. I desire that your Lordships would peculiarly look 
 to that letter of the Resident from Oude, where he conveyed 
 to the Board the information of what he had done upon that 
 occasion. He tells the Nawab that the Board at Calcutta would 
 not see the rights of their dependents infringed upon, and 
 that he was not to consider Cheyt Sing as upon a footing with 
 his other zamindars, because he was protected by the faith 
 ^ a British treaty. What became of that treaty, when 
 Mr. Hast- Mr. Hastings tells you he is a mere zamindar ? What he 
 Rate's was in the year 1775 he was in the year 1781. If he was 
 not in 1 775 a mere zamindar he Avas not so in the year 1781. 
 If he was to be protected against his lord and master at 
 that time, he was to be doubly protected against the East 
 India Company ; because they had superadded obligations 
 to protect him. The power, the sovereignty and the duties, 
 of a guarantee were united in their persons ; and, by a 
 strange logic which Mr. Hastings .uses, when both these 
 duties were imposed upon the Company, both it seems were 
 completely abolished. So far from superadding additional 
 obligations so far from having a double tie upon them so 
 far from being obliged to execute their duty as sovereigns 
 and as guarantee both Mr. Hastings says, " I will neither 
 execute my duty as a sovereign nor will I execute it as a 
 guarantee : both are gone and abandoned ; and he is now 
 in a situation the most abject that Indian slavery knows." 
 
 My Lords, having now commented upon those acts in 
 1775 which, with the acts in the year 1773 and the treaty 
 of Allahabad, I hope your Lordships never will allow for one 
 moment to escape your recollection let us see, tracing it 
 according to its order of time, what was next done with
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 317 
 
 respect to the rights of this person. In the year 1775, in HAPE.1783. 
 the very same year in which he had been protected by sovereignty 
 Mr. Hastings, upon the death of the Nawab of Oude, J5SSto 
 negotiation was entered into by the East India Company the Com - 
 for the purpose of a new treaty with the then reigning 
 Prince. The effect of this treaty was to transfer the sove- 
 reignty of Benares from the Nawab of Oude to the India 
 Company. What the Nawab of Oude had he would convey; 
 what he had not he could not convey. The Nawab of Oude 
 held the state of Benares under the protection of a British 
 guarantee. He could not convey to abolish that protection 
 and to do away that guarantee. The Nawab of Oude had 
 no right to demand sums in advance ; he had no right to take 
 the forts ; he had no right to take ten lacs of rupees for his 
 necessities. He could not convey a right to take those forts ; 
 he could not convey a right to take that money. But I wish 
 your Lordships particularly to attend to these proceedings in 
 1775 ; because it has pleased Mr. Hastings, both in his Nar- 
 rative and in his Defence, setting all these proceedings at 
 nought, to tell your Lordships, " I am not to be bound by any- Mr. Hast- 
 thing I said or did at that period:" and why ? " Because "otbeing 
 I was not in the majority of the Council." If Mr. Hastings h? s U o\vnacts 
 had not been in India if Mr. Hastings had been in England, th^m^orit 1 
 and had gone out to India in the year 1778 he was bound as of the conn- 
 an English Governor by the acts of an English government. C1 
 If Mr. Hastings was in the minority of the Council, and a 
 measure Avas carried by any majority against any opinion 
 of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Hastings was bound by the acts of 
 that majority ; because the acts of that majority were the 
 acts of an English government. 
 
 But I shall prove to your Lordships and I state this now 
 to call your Lordships' attention to the absolute falsehood of 
 such a pretence that, so far from not being in the majority 
 of the Council at that time, my Lords, they are his own pro- 
 positions, his own acts, assented to, proposed, supported 
 and argued upon, by himself at the very time. Your Lord- 0^$^^ 
 ships will turn to page 44 of the evidence, where it appears ciimncgo- 
 that, upon the death of the Nawab of Oude, the five gentle- treaty g with 
 men who composed the Council agreed to meet, and each of i"^ azil% in 
 them to propose their opinions in writing, with respect to 
 what ought to be done with regard to the new treaty which 
 was to be negotiated with the Wazir. Mr. Hastings indeed 
 was of opinion that the old treaty was not expired ; the 
 other members were of opinion that it was expired. When
 
 318 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 APR. 1788. that resolution was carried against him which was the only 
 resolution that ever was carried against him in the whole 
 course of the proceedings Mr. Hastings, in the same man- 
 ner as the other members of the Council, comes forward and 
 makes certain propositions and certain proposals for the 
 purpose of that new treaty which was to be executed. Those 
 proposals your Lordships will see upon the proceedings of 
 the 13th of February, ] 775. The five gentlemen, each of 
 them, proposed different conditions for that treaty, and 
 almost all of them except Colonel Monson agree in this, 
 that it be made an article of that treaty that the Raja 
 Cheyt Sing should be rendered completely independent. 
 And I beg that your Lordships would attend to this, because 
 it is a consideration perfectly distinct from the person to 
 whom he was to pay his tribute. Mr. Francis, Mr. Barwell 
 and Mr. Plastings, all agree that the Raja of Benares should 
 be rendered more independent than he was. Mr. Barwell 
 expressly and explicitly states that the independency of 
 Ghazeepore on Oude is a great political object and ought 
 to be insisted on, whatever became of the payment of 
 his tribute, whether he pays it to you or pays it to me. 
 Whatever may be resolved respecting the revenue paid by 
 the Raja, the English government ought not to stand in 
 the same relation to it as the then Wazir. They want the 
 English government to stand in a better relation to it than 
 the then Wazir. Mr. Hastings then proposes that the 
 perpetual and independent possession of the zamindary of 
 Benares and its dependencies be confirmed not that it 
 should be granted. Your Lordships will observe not that 
 it should be given but that it should " be confirmed and 
 guaranteed to Raja Cheyt Sing and his heirs for ever, 
 subject only to the annual payment of his tribute ; and that 
 no other demand should be made upon him." Such was 
 Mr. Hastings' then opinion. 
 
 And, to show your Lordships that that is a consideration 
 perfectly distinct from the payment of his tribute, he next 
 proposed that one half of his tribute should be paid to the 
 Nawab of Oude, the other half to the English Company : 
 and that is the only point upon which there was the least 
 difference with him. The only point upon which the majority 
 of the Council differed with him was upon how much of that 
 tribute should be paid to the Company, and how much to the 
 Nawab of Oude. They agreed that it was a fit and proper 
 article of the treaty that he should be made independent ;
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 31 9 
 
 they agreed that it should be the subject of negotiation how UAPIUWSS. 
 much of that tribute should be paid to the Company 
 " Resolved that a demand be made for the tribute of 
 Gauzipore." Your Lordships will observe that Ghazeepore 
 and Benares both mean the same " Resolved that a 
 demand be made for the tribute of Gauzipore, but that it 
 be not considered as an absolute and indispensable article in 
 the negotiation with the Nawah/'* 
 
 Now, to show your Lordships how little these were the Guarantee 
 propositions of these gentlemen, and how much they were dence e of n " 
 the propositions of Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will perceive p^posed^y 
 that, upon the 3rd of March, 1775, various questions Avere ? Ir - Hast- 
 proposed, some by Mr. Hastings, and some as appears by 
 the other members of the Council. But I should wish to 
 call your Lordships' attention to the third of those proposals, 
 which was made upon that day. Your Lordships will see 
 that those propositions were questions made out of the 
 minutes which had been given in by the different gentlemen, 
 containing the different ideas of settling the state of this 
 kingdom, The Governor General proposes the following 
 questions : 
 
 " Whether it should be made a condition of the new treaty that 
 Raja Cheyt Sing shall exercise a free and independent authority in 
 his own dominions, subject only to the payment of his tribute ? 
 
 " Mr. Francis. Yes. 
 
 " Mr. Harwell. Yes. 
 
 " Colonel Monson. No, I think not. I see no advantage in it for 
 the Company's interest. 
 
 " General Clavering. Provided he pays his tribute to the Company, 
 I think he should be rendered independent. 
 
 " Governor General. Yes." 
 
 Then your Lordships observe that this question, such as it 
 is, is carried by the voices of Mr. Francis, Mr. Bar well and 
 the Governor General, against the opinion of Colonel 
 Monson, and with the opinion of General Clavering given 
 under a condition. But your Lordships will observe that 
 the opinions of these three gentlemen are clear, distinct, 
 unequivocal, and unclogged by any condition whatever, that 
 it should be made a condition of that treaty that the Raja 
 should be rendered independent. 
 
 The next proposal concerns the transfer of the tribute 
 " That it shall be made an article of negotiation." And 
 that negotiation ended in conveying the whole to the 
 
 * See the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 48.
 
 320 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APB.1788. Company. And then they write and inform the court of 
 Directors what they have done, stating those articles I have 
 read as the fundamental propositions. As a matter of 
 policy with respect to what ought to be done to the Raja 
 of Benares, they agree that he ought to be made inde- 
 pendent ; and then they submit to whom his tribute should 
 be paid as a matter of negotiation with the Wazir. And 
 your Lordships will particularly observe that that was the 
 special proposal of Mr. Hastings himself, and carried by him 
 and his friend Mr. Harwell, with the concurrence of Mr. 
 Francis alone, and against the opinion in some degree of 
 both the other gentlemen. 
 
 Your Lordships too, upon the statement of this question, 
 will observe another thing to which I shall have occasion by- 
 and-by to refer your Lordships your Lordships will observe 
 tnat ' Hastings, in the Narrative he has printed of his 
 
 tribute and transactions at Benares, chooses to raise an argument upon 
 whether it is a rent or a tribute that is paid by the Raja 
 of Benares. What the argument would make, if admitted, 
 I don't know ; because I cannot comprehend why a rent 
 guaranteed, confirmed and stipulated for, is not tantamount 
 to and exactly the same as a tribute : but I call your Lord- 
 ships' attention to that argument to show you the strange 
 and inconsistent mode in which this man reasons. He says 
 in that Narrative : 
 
 " Those who have been accustomed to regard Cheyt Sing as a vassal 
 or tributary Prince may revolt at the idea of treating him with such 
 cruelty, and call it an oppression. They will suppose nothing due from 
 him to the Company but the payment of his stipulated tribute, and that 
 the pledge of his exemption from every other claim." * 
 
 How does he answer that question in the Narrative ? By 
 saying " He paid no tribute to the Company, but a fixed 
 annual rent." And now I refer your Lordships to the 
 deliberate question put by Mr. Hastings himself, where he 
 expressly states whether he should be rendered independent, 
 subject only to the payment of a tribute. If anything could 
 come from such a miserable argument as could be raised by 
 a distinction between rent and tribute, that argument wants 
 facts to support it. I will quote the authority of Mr. 
 Hastings in the year 1775 against his own Narrative in 
 1781. He paid no tribute, says he, in 1781; he paid a stipu- 
 lated rent. In 1775 he pays a tribute, says Mr. Hastings. 
 
 * " Narrative," p. 9.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 321 
 
 And I desire your Lordships will also attend to Ihis, that HAPH.ITSS. 
 above twenty times in the course of these proceedings it is 
 uniformly called by Mr. Hastings himself tribute, tribute, 
 tribute ; and yet the whole argument in the Narrative turns 
 upon the supposed distinction between these two words. 
 
 These questions being then carried, it being agreed that 
 he should be rendered independent and it being agreed to 
 negotiate for the transfer of the sovereignty to the Company, 
 I could wish your Lordships to attend to a letter which is indcpcn. 
 received from the Resident, and which is inserted in page 50 
 of the printed evidence ; because that letter will show your 
 Lordships] the sense and the principles upon which this 
 negotiation was conducted : it will show your Lordships what tions - 
 he thought at that time of the independent situation of the 
 Raja of Benares : it will show your Lordships that he was 
 not the mere zamindar of the Nawab of Oude : it will show 
 your Lordships that the Nawab of Oude could not exercise 
 authority within his dominions: and it will show your 
 Lordships that the Nawab of Oude had little authority in 
 those dominions in comparison with any other part of his 
 country. And, since so much stress is laid upon succeed- 
 ing to the rights of the Nawab of Oude, it is necessary to 
 dwell upon this part, to show your Lordships what those 
 rights were in the opinion of the very persons who are now 
 sheltering themselves under them. Your Lordships will see 
 that, upon the 17th of May 1775, Mr. Bristow sends to the 
 Board at Calcutta an account of what he has done in conducting 
 this negotiation ; and it contains a memorial or representa- 
 tion which he gave to the Nawab of Oude, in order to induce 
 him to come to this cession of his sovereignty. 
 
 " It occurs to me that if your Excellency would grant the Company the 
 revenue and perpetual jurisdiction of Rajah Cheyt Sing's zemindary, 
 on condition of their protecting the countries of Oude, Corah and 
 Allahabad, as specified above, and increase the sum formerly stipulated 
 for the pay of the English troops, the English chiefs would probably 
 consent thereto. The resigning them so small a district, from which your 
 Excellency derives so little advantage, and where your authority is so 
 limited in comparison of your other dominions, is a matter of no 
 consequence to you." 
 
 Is it possible or is it conceivable that any minister nego- 
 tiating any treaty could assert such a fact to the prince with 
 whom he was negotiating, if such a fact was not true? 
 Would not the Nawab of Oude have said directly, " Why do 
 you tell me I have no authority in that country ? He is my 
 
 x
 
 322 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares; 
 
 11 APE. 1788. zamindar a mere zamindar. My authority there is as 
 extensive as in any other part of my dominions. He is in 
 the same situation as other Indian subjects. How dare you 
 tell me I have no authority over the dominions of the Raja 
 of Benares?" But this was said by the Resident uncontra- 
 dicted by the Nawab ; and it was resigned to the Company 
 because the NaAvab of Oude's authority was so limited there 
 in comparison with his other dominions. 
 
 Having now stated all the different situations in which 
 the Raja stood with respect to the Nawab of Oude, and 
 having concluded it with an assertion from the government 
 of Bengal, acting through the'r representative, Mr. Bristow, 
 at the Court of Oude, that his authority was extremely 
 
 Reason for limited there in comparison with his other dominions, let me 
 
 dwelling on ,, T i i > ' 1 T r> ,1 
 
 the rights of now call your .Lordships attention to the proceedings or the 
 ing> government of Bengal posterior to the acquisition of that 
 sovereignty, which is the last thing I shall have occasion to 
 state upon the rights of the Raja of Benares. And I am 
 so long upon this part, the rights of the Raja of Benares, 
 because the prisoner at your Lordships' bar has chosen in that 
 Narrative to take issue upon that question. He has chosen 
 to turn the whole hinge of the cause in a manner upon it ; 
 and he states, " if those rights are as he has represented, the 
 Rajah is innocent ; if as I have represented them, he is 
 guilty." My Lords I shall have occasion to state that if 
 these rights are as he as stated them he is guilty. But, 
 upon the present state of the argument, I am to show your 
 Lordships that these rights do not exist in the way in which 
 he puts them. 
 
 Propositions Upon the transfer of the sovereignty of Benares. Mr. Has- 
 
 of Mr. Hast- . . . . , , . T i T -i i 
 
 ings respect- tings thought it his duty and here again 1 beg your .Lordships 
 Govlmment to attend Mr. Hastings thought it his duty to come forward 
 of Benares. w jth certain propositions respecting the government of that 
 country. The principle upon which they are brought for- 
 ward your Lordships will see in the observations upon the 
 first of these propositions that is, that a certain proposal, 
 which I shall mention by and by, would not frustrate the 
 intention of rendering the Raja independent. Mr. Hastings 
 then knew that, but a few months before, he had come to a 
 vote that the Raja should be rendered independent ; and 
 therefore he takes care that those propositions which in 
 June 1775 he introduced to the Board should square with 
 that resolution which he himself moved that is to say, that 
 they should carry into effect the intention of rendering* him
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 323 
 
 more independent. Now what are those propositions ? n APE. ms 
 They are : 
 
 " That he should pay his tribute into the Company's treasury at Patna. 
 
 ' That the Rajah shall be empowered to exercise a complete and uncon- 
 trolled authority over his zemindary under the acknowledged sovereignty 
 of the Honourable Company in the government of the country dependent on 
 him, in the collection of the revenues, and in the administration of justice. 
 
 " That sunnuds be granted to the Rajah, specially conferring upon him 
 the power of appointing officers to the charge of the cutwally* and the 
 mint of Benares ; the latter to be subject to such rules and regulations 
 as the Governor General and Council at any time think proper to decree. 
 
 " That, in return for these concessions, and for the performance 
 of his duty as a vassal to the Company, the Rajah shall engage to main- 
 tain in constant pay and ready at all times for immediate sen-ice a body 
 of 2,000 horse, on such a fixed establishment as shall be prescribed by 
 the Governor General and Council ; and that, whenever the service of 
 this corps shall be required by the Governor General and Council, it 
 shall be consigned to the command of such officer or officers as they 
 shall appoint, and be allowed from the Company an additional pay or 
 gratuity of 1 5 rupees per month for each private man, and in proportion 
 for the officers of the said corps, during the time of such service. 
 
 " That, while the Rajah shall continue faithful to these engagements 
 and punctual in his payments, and shall pay due obedience to the 
 authority of this Government, no more demands shall be made upon 
 him by the Honourable Company, of any kind, nor on any pretence 
 whatsoever shall any person be allowed to interfere with his authority 
 or to disturb the peace of his country." f 
 
 Every one of these propositions was expressly agreed to Reception 
 by the majority of the Council, except that one in which he ^sitionVby 
 is desired to do something in performance of his duty as a the Council, 
 vassal to the Company. That he should pay his tribute at 
 Patna is agreed to ; but it is proposed whether it would not 
 be more convenient to pay it at Calcutta, and they to make 
 him an allowance for it. It is agreed he should have the 
 mint, the kotwali, and all the prerogatives attendant upon 
 sovereignty ,for the sole purpose of " raising him to a state of 
 power and dignity unknown to any of his ancestors," that 
 the condition of his connexion with the Company should not 
 be left open to future variations. But Mr. Hastings wanted 
 something more. He stated that, in performance of his duty 
 as a vassal, he ought to maintain a body of 2,000 cavalry. 
 What say the majority of the Council to that ? " We have no 
 right to make such a demand upon him: it would be in effect 
 an increase of his tribute. We cannot call upon him to do it; 
 we have no right to do it" say Mr. Francis and Mr. Barwell 
 
 * Kotwali office of police. 
 
 f Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 52. 
 
 x 2
 
 324 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 it APE.1788. " it is an increase of his tribute : we cannot do it." What 
 says Mr. Hastings then ? Does he then fight manfully 
 upon the point that it is the performance of a duty as a 
 vassal to the Company ? No, he gives it up : he abandons 
 it : he says, " I only proposed it as an article of speculation." 
 Then the only thing which Mr. Hastings insisted upon that 
 the Raja should do in performance of his vassalage, as he 
 states it, is that which they contradict him in, and which 
 he gives up, and says, " I only proposed it as an article of 
 the JCC ro? f speculation." I hope your Lordships will attend to the 
 positions to principles, the grounds and reasons, why Mr. Hastings pro- 
 Chqyt sing posed, and why the Council agreed to, all these proposals : 
 indepen- jj. j^ ^. Q ren( ] ei . the Raja independent. The payment is to be 
 at Patna, that it may not frustrate the intention of making 
 him so. He is to exercise a complete sovereignty, to " raise 
 him to a state of power and dignity unknown to any of his 
 ancestors." He is to get the mint and kotwali for the 
 express purpose of giving him ensigns of royalty ; and, 
 because they have been a heavy grievance to him at former 
 times, the Company are to exercise no more demands of 
 any kind upon him and why ? Because, if they do, he 
 will expect from every change of government additional 
 demands ; and for this express purpose, " that the conditions 
 of his connexion should not be left open to any future 
 variations." 
 
 Now what must Raja Cheyt Sing have felt upon that 
 occasion? Must he not have felt that the services of his 
 father had secured to him the favour of the East India 
 Company ; that the duties attached to the East India Com- 
 pany by the treaty of Allahabad were still considered by 
 them as binding upon him ; that, so far from wishing to 
 infringe or break in upon the duties imposed upon the 
 India Company by that treaty, they wished to extend 
 his rights, to carry further his prerogatives, and to "raise 
 him to a state of power and dignity unknown to any of 
 his ancestors "? Why was he to be raised to that ? That 
 he might be a powerful ally and an useful, barrier. This 
 man, who it is said can have no forts but for the pur- 
 pcses of rebellion, is to be an useful barrier ; and lie 
 who can have no troops, as we are now told, except for 
 the purposes of rebelling against his sovereign, is to be an 
 useful ally he is to be a barrier without forts and an 
 ally without troops. Such is the construction Mr. Hastings 
 now puts upon that agreement.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 325 
 
 Let me suppose that, at that moment, any person who 11APE 1788 ' 
 was an enemy to the British power in India had gone to 
 the Raja, when he was exulting in all these new grants 
 and feeling himself safe under the protection of old ones ; 
 that they had told him " You know not these faithless people 
 you have to deal with. They tell you they are to make you 
 more independent, that they are to raise you to a degree of 
 power and dignity unknown to any of your ancestors, and 
 that the condition of your connexion shall not be left open to 
 future variations. Mistaken young man ! The time will 
 come when the very person who now says this will tell you 
 that these very acts he is now doing, for the purpose of 
 raising you to a degree of power and dignity these acts 
 which are for the purpose of settling your rights beyond the 
 possibility of doubt or variation these very acts reduce 
 you to the mere state of a zamindar, where his power 
 is everything and your rights nothing ; which reduce 
 you to a state of implicit and unreserved obedience, even 
 to the extent of your life and property. At some future 
 day you will be told by that man and that very faith- 
 less people 'It is true I said at that time I would 
 raise you to a degree of power and dignity : you had sanads, 
 pattas and kaulnamas, and the treaty of Allahabad : but 
 those acts of 1775 are the very acts and deeds themselves 
 which reduce you to that state of abject and miserable 
 slavery.' " Would not Cheyt Sing have told a person who 
 should have ventured to prophesy in that manner " I know 
 everything that Hindu craft and intrigue can do ; I know 
 everything that Persian perfidy can execute : I know every- 
 thing that Tartar violence and the intolerant principles of a 
 Mohammedan religion can do. But I cannot conceive that 
 there exists in the world a nation so faithless, so perfidious, 
 so wicked a nation, so little bound by the faith of treaties 
 and by the solemn acts of their own government, as to con- 
 tradict and cut up by the roots these very acts which they 
 fraudulently, deceitfully and wickedly, hung out to me as 
 raising me to a state of power and dignity unknown to any 
 of my ancestors." 
 
 I must here beg your Lordships' attention to one part of^^J^f 
 what Mr. Hastings relies upon in that paper which he calls i )a >" his 
 
 . . -r-x /. TT i tribute at 
 
 his Defence. ie says that they assumed the sovereignty Benares 
 meaning the then majority of the Council and he exercised 1 ol 
 it; "they caused his tribute to be reserved at Ban ares : I 
 would have it received at Patna.'' The gist of that argu-
 
 326 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 APR1788. ment, if there is any gist in it at all, is this that the appoint- 
 ment of a Resident at Benares, and the alteration of receiving 
 the tribute at one place rather than another, produced all 
 this wonderful change in the situation of this person. If the 
 argument means anything, it must mean that the paying it at 
 Benares instead of paying it at Patna that the appointment 
 of a Resident at Benares reduced Cheyt Sing from that 
 high state of power and pre-eminence unknown to any of 
 his ancestors to the mean and servile state of a mere zamin- 
 dar. Then how will your Lordships be astonished when I 
 tell you that the appointment of a Resident at Benares 
 was the act of Mr. Hastings ; that the payment of the 
 tribute at Benares instead of Patna was the act of 
 Mr. Hastings! He now defends himself by charging these 
 acts upon others, which I shall prove to your Lordships, 
 by stating the evidence, were his own proposition and specific 
 acts. 
 
 the2of b Your Lordships will see that, in the year 1775, the then 
 Mr. Hast- Council, not being able to ascertain the state of the coin at 
 Benares, and for the purpose of conferring a dress of honour 
 upon the Raja, deputed Mr. Fowke on an embassy to that 
 Prince, and for the further purpose of conveying to him that 
 degree of power and dignity which was unknown to any of 
 his ancestors. Another object of Mr. Fowke's mission was 
 to settle a mode for the remittance of the tribute. Your 
 Lordships will also observe that Mr. Fowke was not the 
 Resident at Benares, but was sent there for a temporary 
 purpose only. And I state this from an authority that the 
 prisoner at your bar cannot dispute ; because I state it from 
 his own authority. The moment Colonel Monson died, 
 Mr. Hastings declared that the purpose for which Mr Fowke 
 had been sent to Benares was perfectly accomplished ; it was 
 in the nature of it a temporary commission at first. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, upon the 2nd of December 1776, expressly 
 moves at the Board that Mr. Fowke be recalled from 
 Benares and his commission annulled, the express purposes 
 thereof having been accomplished. From that moment 
 Mr. Fowke's commission was totally at an end. Mr. Benn told 
 your Lordships yesterday that Mr. Fowke was not a Resi- 
 dent; and your Lordships will observe that, in the year 
 1776, by the death of Colonel Monson, Mr. Hastings 
 Appoint- acquired a majority in the Council. Upon the 23d of 
 Fowke as r ' December, Mr. Hastings moved that a civil servant be 
 s* at appointed to reside at Benares, for the. purpose of trans-
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruthcr. 327 
 
 acting any occasional business that may arise with the Raja. 11APB - 1788 - 
 That moment is the first appointment of a Resident at 
 Benares. If it is a crime to appoint a Resident there if 
 appointing a Resident there altered the situation of the Raja 
 it was Mr. Hastings' doing ; Mr. Hastings, who gave him 
 all those great prerogative rights, is the person who took 
 them away, if it was done by appointing that Resident. 
 
 One of the objects of Mr. Fowke's mission to Benares was 
 to settle the terms of remittance. Mr. Fowkes did settle 
 the terms of remittance. A paper was read to your Lord- 
 ships yesterday expressly giving an account how those terms 
 were settled ; and it was settled to be, not a payment at 
 Benares, but at Calcutta ; and a consideration was given to 
 the Raja for the difference of distance between Calcutta and 
 Patna.* Upon the 1st of February 1776, a proposal was 
 made to Cheyt Sing to remit his tribute to Calcutta, and 
 fifty days' grace were allowed to him for the remitting that 
 tribute. Upon the 26th of February 1776, Mr. Fowke 
 informed the Council that the Raja had accepted the offer 
 of paying his tribute in Calcutta, with an allowance of 
 2 per cent, premium for remittance. From that moment it 
 was no payment at Benares, but a payment at Calcutta: 
 from that moment the Raja had fifty-one days granted him 
 for the purpose of remitting his tribute to Calcutta ; and in 
 some after part of this cause I shall have occasion to direct 
 your Lordships' attention to that. I only state it now for 
 the purpose of answering that triumphant part of the Defence, 
 " I would have had it received at Benares [Patna ?]. They 
 did not make it received at Benares [Patna] : they made it to be 
 received at Calcutta" [Benares ?]. If it was ever after changed 
 to Benares, [Calcutta ?] it was Mr. Hastings that changed it. 
 Therefore all that miserable defence which arises from the 
 miserable difference of whether a sum of money is paid at one 
 place or at another turns out to be, not only unfounded in argu- 
 ment, but perfectly untrue in every fact upon which it rests. 
 
 I have now finished what I have to address to your Lord- 
 ships upon the subject of the rights of the Raja of Benares : 
 and, having been so very long upon that part of the case, I 
 shall think it my duty to be a good deal shorter upon the 
 other parts of it. 
 
 My Lords, under these rights, under these stipulations 
 and under these powers, pre-eminences and prerogatives, 
 
 * " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 71.
 
 328 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11APB.1788. 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' plan for 
 the defence 
 of India in 
 1788. 
 
 Cheyt Sing 
 singled out 
 for pecu- 
 niary ex- 
 actions. 
 
 Raja Cheyt Sing continued to enjoy his situation down to 
 the year 1778. In the year 1778 General Clavering and 
 Colonel Monson being then both dead there was a great 
 and strong probability, almost amounting to a certainty, from 
 the information that Mr. Hastings had received, that war was 
 declared between the two powers of France and England. 
 Mr. Hastings, upon the 9th of July 1778, produced to the 
 Board what he calls a general plan for the defence of India. If 
 it were material to observe upon this plan, I should be at a good 
 deal of difficulty to discover wherein the generality of the 
 plan consists ; for it seems to me that the principal part of 
 the plan is confined to the militia of Calcutta, to the fortifi- 
 cation of the river, and to some other modes of impeding the 
 enemy from making an attack upon Calcutta. I make that 
 observation to your Lordships because Mr. Hastings men- 
 tions it as a general plan of defence, as if it had been a 
 general increase of establishment all over the country. 
 
 The only person who had any pecuniary demand made 
 upon him the only person who was desired to raise a 
 soldier the only prince, zamindar, amil call him what 
 you will upon whom any pecuniary demand of any sort or 
 kind was made, was Raja Cheyt Sing. And I call your 
 Lordships' attention to the plan, that you may see that it 
 was upon him, and him alone, that any demand was made. 
 Raja Cheyt Sing is called upon to furnish three battalions 
 for the expense of the war. It is a little singular that 
 Mr. Hastings should in his Defence state to your Lordships, 
 that " there was no other person in the situation of Raja 
 Cheyt Sing/' If Raja Cheyt Sing was the person whom I 
 describe him to be, there were no other persons in the 
 situation of Raja Cheyt Sing. But if Cheyt Sing was that 
 person whom Mr. Hastings describes him to be a mere 
 zamindar there were thousands in all our provinces, from 
 one end to the other. There might be none so rich, so 
 opulent, so able to pay so large a demand : but that there 
 were zamindars without number and without end is a fact 
 undoubted, and known perfectly well to all of your Lordships 
 who know anything of the history of that country. If he 
 was not in that circumstance, the levy was the most out- 
 rageous one that was ever made upon a subject. It was a 
 specific demand upon a single individual. If Mr. Hastings 
 means to justify himself by saying that he made a general 
 tax for the purpose of carrying on the war, why did lie not 
 make it general ? Because there was no person in the
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstrntlur. 329 
 
 situation of Cheyt Sing. "Why? Because Cheyt Sing was " APR-ITSS. 
 not in the situation Mr. Hastings describes him to be. 
 Mr. Hastings says that there was no other person in the 
 situation of Cheyt Sing. Either he must admit that there 
 were no zamindars or that Cheyt Sing was not one of those 
 zamindars. 
 
 I call your Lordships' attention to this matter, which ^ai^'thc 
 passed in the year 1778, for the purpose of stating to your exactions 
 Lordships, from the authority of Mr. Hastings himself, that the P Councii. 
 there was at that time a dispute upon that right. For, if 
 your Lordships will look at the minute of Mr. Hastings 
 himself, when Mr. Francis proposed a qualification to 
 the motion, your Lordships will see that Mr. Hastings 
 refuses to agree to Mr. Francis' qualification, upon this single 
 and only ground, that there is a dispute about the right : 
 
 " For," says Mr. Hastings, " perceiving that the difference in our 
 opinion upon the subject arises, not from a disagreement respecting the 
 requisition, simply considered by itself, but from a different understand- 
 ing of the right of the Company to exact under any pressure of affairs 
 more than the sum stipulated by the sunnud granted to Cheyt Sing and 
 the cubbooleat [kabuliyat]* given by him in return, I must adhere to 
 the question as it stands, wishing to avoid the question of right.'"f 
 
 There was a dispute upon the right which Mr. Hast- 
 ings did not choose to enter into. Mr. Francis expli- 
 tly denied the right ; which is clear from this ; or 
 Mr. Hastings must be talking absolute nonsense, and 
 debating a question which was not before him But he 
 refuses the qualification, because there was a dispute upon 
 the right the right of Cheyt Sing being asserted by 
 Mr. Francis. Your Lordships will observe that, from the 
 first instant when that demand was made, it never had the 
 acquiescence of that gentleman. That, in a moment of war, 
 of peril and of difficulty, he did not choose to be over anxious, 
 standing single in that Council, to dispute, to cavil, and to 
 discuss rights, is a fault, if it is one, which I am sure no 
 man would think a considerable one if it were true that 
 Mr. Francis had not disputed the right. But the reverse is 
 true : he did dispute the right from the beginning, and 
 proposed a qualification to the motion ; which motion seems, 
 if your Lordships attend to the evidence, to be introduced 
 
 * A written agreement, especially one signifying assent. Wilson's "Glossary 
 of Indian Terms." 
 
 f Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 67.
 
 330 Summing of Evidence on tfa First Charger-Benares : 
 
 11 APK.U88. into the Council as if Mr. Hastings had obtained the 
 consent of the vakil of the Raja at least to pay it for that 
 year. 
 
 The ground of right upon which that motion was founded 
 was expressly disputed by Mr. Francis and asserted by 
 Mr. Hastings ; and then, at that moment, Mr. Hastings 
 again refers to the sanad and the kabuliyat, as if these had 
 been the only rights under which Cheyt Sing held his 
 Mis-state- country. And I desire here to call your Lordships' attention 
 ^ectfng 6 " to that part of the Narrative where he states those rights 
 rights' ili ng ' s which Cheyt Sing held. I desire to call your Lordships 
 ings'^r- attention to it for this purpose ; because you will see how 
 rative. falsely and untruly, upon every occasion, Mr. Hastings 
 chooses to state the rights of that man. In 1778, he states 
 them as if he had no rights but under the sanad and kabuliyat. 
 He states them in 1781 ns if he had no rights but under that 
 sanad and kabuliyat; he states them as if all the acts in 1773 
 were done away, as if all the interpretation of the treaty of 
 Allahabad was done away, and as if every preceding act and 
 confirmation which had been granted to him did not exist. 
 And, for the purpose of supporting such an opinion, he pub- 
 lishes in that very Narrative a false sanad, a false patta and 
 a false kabuliyat. I say, my Lords, he publishes in that very 
 Narrative as I can conceive for no other purpose than 
 giving a false colour to that transaction a false sanad, a 
 false patta and a false kabuliyat, and he inserts these words : 
 " and that all preceding sunnuds shall be null and void, and 
 of no force." Why, Mr. Hastings knew that that clause was 
 expunged by Mr. Hastings himself, upon the objection of the 
 Raja; and yet, at Calcutta, with those very consultations 
 lying before him or they might be if he had chose in 
 which that clause was expunged, he inserts in his Narrative 
 a false account of it, by inserting that clause in it : which 
 could be for no purpose that human ingenuity can conceive, 
 except to give a colour to that idea, which he presses all 
 along, that all former rights did not exist but were done 
 away, and that the question stood merely upon those two 
 instruments I have now alluded to. 
 Demand of }[ y Lords, I will now go on with the demand in the year 
 
 money made *. T i n i i -r -i i % 
 
 upon Cheyt 1778. 1 shall not take up much of your Lordships time in 
 
 177!. m stating it, referring you only to the evidence, and stating 
 
 this fact with respect to it, Mr. Hastings desires the Raja's 
 
 consent to a demand for the war. The Raja's vakil gives 
 
 that consent to a demand for one year only. And then
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 331 
 
 Mr. Hastings turns short round upon the Raja, and says, J 1 APE-ITSS. 
 
 " You want to limit your payment to one year : then I 
 
 demand it in five days." Mr. Hastings did not feel any 
 
 pressure for the want of money ; but the immediate demand 
 
 of a payment, all at once, was in consequence of a supposed 
 
 idea that the Raja would not give it again. In that year, 
 
 before any payment was made, Mr. Francis states his 
 
 opinion. He says, " There is no question that the Rajah 
 
 will yield to the power of this government, and I shall be as 
 
 willing as any man to support its authority ' how long? 
 
 '' as long as its power is supported by justice."* And God 
 
 forbid the authority of any government should be supported 
 
 when it is not directed by justice ! He then proceeds to tell 
 
 you, that " If such demands can be increased upon him at 
 
 the discretion of the superior power, he has no right, he has 
 
 no property, or at least he has no security for either. Instead 
 
 of five lacks let us demand fifty, and whether he refuses or is 
 
 unable to pay the money the forfeiture of his zemindary 
 
 may be the immediate consequence of it." Little did 
 
 Mr. Francis know at that time that this very extravagant 
 
 idea which presented itself to his mind, of demanding fifty 
 
 lacs and his forfeiting his zamindary for not paying it, should 
 
 suggest itself to the mind of Mr. Hastings. He puts it here 
 
 as an argumentum ad absurdum. He states it as a thing so 
 
 wildly ridiculous as that no man could conceive, that a 
 
 demand so absurd an act so atrocious could be done. 
 
 And yet in 1781 that very demand is made, and these very 
 
 consequences follow from it. I shall only observe upon this, 
 
 that this demand was not paid till pretty late in the month 
 
 of October in that year. 
 
 I shall next refer your Lordships to the then state of the 
 treasury, to show that there was no pecuniary want at that 
 time ; there being then, by Mr. Hastings' own account and 
 confession, two millions in the treasury, which is stated in 
 the argument either of Mr. Barwell or Mr. Francis to be a 
 sum far exceeding all possible idea of demand. 
 
 I next shall bring your Lordships to the year 1779. At ; Jj^*"^ 
 the very beginning of the year 1779 the Raja expressly 1779. 
 refers to the sum demanded of him in his patta : "It is now cheyt sing's 
 absolutely out of my power to raise the sum required ; and 
 I am therefore hopeful that you will be kindly pleased to 
 
 * Extracts from Bengal Secret Consultation of the 28th September 1778. 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 76.
 
 332 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 A j ^ > 1789 ' excuse me the five lacs now demanded, and that nothing may 
 be demanded of me beyond the amount expressed in the 
 patta which, through your favour, I obtained from the 
 Honourable English Company."* The Raja expressly says, 
 " Don't ask me for any more. I don't think you have any 
 right to ask me for any more. Keep me to the sum 
 expressed in my patta the instrument in which my tribute 
 is stated. I am ready to pay that ; don't demand any more." 
 Mr. Francis again explicitly says, " I never agreed to the 
 right to demand these sums." And your Lordships will 
 observe that upon this the single observation upon the delay 
 of the llaja is made, which is to be found in page 90 of the 
 Evidence: "We shall make but this short observation 
 upon the conduct of the Raja, that, whether it proceeded 
 from an apprehension of establishing a precedent for exceed- 
 ing the sum of his annual and stipulated revenue or from a 
 sense of independence, it was equally unreasonable." Is it 
 unreasonable, my Lords, in a person who holds by a specific 
 right to state his rights, and to say, " I am not bound to any 
 more?" Is it ungrateful, or showing a sense of indepen- 
 dence, to say, " You ought to be bound by the bargain 
 which you have made with me ?" Is it extravagant, foolish or 
 rebellious, to insist that Mr. Hastings should keep his agree- 
 ments, that the acts of the English government should be 
 uniformly guided by faith? Your Lordships will see that, 
 in the month of September, Cheyt Sing again says he dis- 
 charges his revenue according to his patta, and he hopes that 
 this order will be revoked. 
 
 Your Lordships will see in this evidence, which I shall not 
 trouble you now by stating or rather by the piece of 
 evidence read yesterday you will see that the demand was 
 paid some time about the 20th of October in that year, after 
 the payment of it had been compelled by a military force. 
 And now I shall bring your Lordships down to the year 
 1 780, which is the third year of the demand ; because it is 
 the nonpayment of that demand which Mr. Hastings grounds 
 so much upon. 
 
 Demand Your Lordships will see that, in the year 1780, the same 
 
 J780. " demand was made upon him very near a month sooner than 
 
 it was made the year before. Upon the 10th of August he 
 
 paid one lac of rupees ; and between the 10th of August and 
 
 the 7th of September he had paid another lac and 47,000 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 89.
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 333 
 
 rupees. Now I would call your attention to the circum- n APE, irss. 
 stances under which that payment was made. In the month 
 of June 1780 Mr. Hastings had received right or wrong, 
 I don't care which from the Raja, at Benares, two lacs of 
 rupees. If he received it rightly, in fairness, justice and 
 candour, he ought to have been credited for it in his ac- 
 count, in payment of his subsidy. And if your Lordships 
 will add that to the other two sums which I have stated, 
 you will see that the whole sum, within 3,000 rupees, was 
 that year paid a great deal sooner than upon any other year. 
 If you take the two lacs given to Mr. Hastings in June, the 
 one lac which was paid to the Resident and remitted to 
 Calcutta in the month of August, and the lac and a half 
 which was paid to the Resident between that and the 7th 
 of September, they all together make within a trifle of five 
 lacs of rupees. Take it in that way, and the whole sum 
 was paid that year sooner than any other. But if you 
 don't take it in that way, but say, " I will demand your 
 subsidy and pocket your present into the bargain," you 
 commit gross injustice, You don't give him credit for that 
 which you take from him you say in the way in which it 
 is given (?) and you have rendered him less able to pay 
 by taking that present. 
 
 Mr. Hastings states that the great fault committed by Answer to 
 the Raja was the non-remittance of the money to Maj 
 Carnac's detachment ; and that, owing to the non-remittance 
 of that money, Major Carnac's detachment fell into great 
 difficulties at the place where they were. Your Lordships Major Car- 
 will observe that, of the Raja's tribute, one lac was sent to na 
 Calcutta in August, [and] a lac and a half was paid to the Resi- 
 dent at Benares in the beginning of the month of September : 
 and, by the letter of the 18th of October, it appears that 
 that money lay in the Resident's hands from the 7th of 
 September till the 18th of October. And therefore, if 
 Major Carnac's detachment suffered anything for the want 
 of that money, it is the grossest injustice and the most 
 scandalous cruelty to impute that which was the fault of the 
 Resident to the Raja ; for the money lay in the Resident's 
 hands from the beginning of September till the 18th of 
 October. When it was remitted I know not ; but I know 
 it was not remitted in September ; and therefore it was the 
 Resident's fault and not the Raja's if that money did not go 
 to Major Carnac if it was ever intended it should go to 
 Major Carnac, and it was the 7th of September before
 
 334 Summing of Evidence on the first Charge Benares : 
 
 of the noii- 
 
 Councii. 
 
 any order was given to the Resident to send the money to 
 Major Carnac. Therefore the whole blame, if any there was, 
 lay upon the Resident and not upon the Raja. 
 
 And here I must call your Lordships' attention to another 
 strange assertion which is to be found in this paper, which is 
 called a Narrative. Mr. Hastings says that, " in the year 
 1780, Cheyt Sing was extremely dilatory in his payments, 
 and he did not make them till there was an order of the 
 Board for the march of a detachment for the purpose of 
 compelling him to it ; this order had a principal effect in 
 bringing him to compliance, I believe/' How will your 
 Lordships be astonished when your hear that the whole pay- 
 ment of the five lacs was made and finally completed two 
 days before any such order existed ! The whole payment 
 was completed on the 18th of October, at Benares, and this 
 order for marching the detachment only existed the 20th 
 of October, at Calcutta. And yet Mr. Hastings, in his 
 Narrative, for the purpose of loading and oppressing this 
 man for the purpose of throwing blame upon him which 
 he does not deserve in order to make it appear that he 
 was induced to pay by marching a military force transposes 
 the two dates; whereas your Lordships will see that the 
 payment was made two days before the date of the order 
 issued at Calcutta, and therefore it is physically impossible 
 that this order could have a principal effect, as Mr. Hast- 
 ings states in his Narrative, of bringing him to a com- 
 pliance. 
 
 Now, having done with these three payments, I have only 
 to state to your Lordships that, whether the demand was 
 just or unjust, whether it was made under an actual right, 
 under a disputed right, or under no right at all, the payment 
 was ma( ^ e u P on the 18th of September 1780. From the 
 18th of September 1780 till the date of this Narrative, 
 you never hear a complaint against Cheyt Sing from 
 ^ r - Hastings. If this non-payment was in effect a circum- 
 stance so atrocious, so violent, and indicated rebellion so 
 strongly as Mr. Hastings has stated it, how comes it that 
 the records of Calcutta are silent for a whole year upon the 
 subject ? at least within six weeks of a whole year ; for, 
 from the 18th of October 1780 till you find Mr. Hastings 
 at Benares in 1781, you never hear one single word of all 
 this violent, this rebellious, behaviour that is now pretended. 
 Mr. Hastings carefully keeps it out of the records. Not a 
 whisper of discontent, not a mention of his name in the
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 335 
 
 whole proceedings, till you find it mentioned as a justifica- 
 tion in the course of this Narrative. 
 
 And let me call your Lordships' attention to another circum- 
 stance. In the year 1780 a demand was made for such a num- 
 ber of cavalry to be supplied by the Raja. I shall not go into 
 the discussion whether the demand was right or not. I have a 
 right to argue, from what passed in 1775, that the demand was 
 violent and unjust, and that it was not even consistent with 
 the terms which Mr. Hastings had proposed in 1775. But 
 this I have to say, that, be it what it would, in spite of all 
 that he has said upon the subject, the demand was complied 
 with literally, in the terms in which it was made. 
 
 Mr. Hastings would have your Lordships to believe that Demand of 
 a demand was made by the Board of 2,000 cavalry. No ca 
 such demand was made. A demand was made upon the 
 Raja for as many cavalry as he could spare. He wrote 
 Mr. Hastings an answer, telling him he could spare so many. 
 This so many he offered he furnished they were ready. 
 That letter Mr. Hastings never answered, and he expelled him 
 from his dominions for complying literally with the order of 
 the Council. This demand of cavalry was made early in 1780, 
 and in the whole course of proceedings in Calcutta, from Sep- 
 tember 1780 till the time that this Narrative is printed, there 
 is not one word of this wonderful contumacy of Cheyt Sing 
 in not complying with those demands. Can I have a 
 stronger argument to prove that Mr. Hastings did not think 
 that he had all these rebellious intentions? that he did not 
 think anything of this little delay of payment ? that he 
 did not think anything of this not complying with the 
 demand of 2,000 horse which was made by Mr. Hastings, 
 but not authorised by the Board ; for the Board only 
 authorised to call upon Cheyt Sing to furnish as many as 
 he could spare. One would expect to find upon the 
 records, in the course of that year, some complaint some 
 minute some conversation between Mr. Hastings and his 
 friend Mr. Wheler respecting this supposed contumacy of 
 the Raja. Not one word 'of it in the whole records of 
 Calcutta till after the publication of this Narrative. 
 
 I desire your Lordships, too, to attend to the act which ^.^f. 1 " 
 Mr. Hastings did previous to his going from Calcutta. I mites on MS 
 
 ill T J !_ VT- u i e ^ journey to 
 
 troubled your Lordships with hearing a minute read or the Benares 
 21st of May 1781,* and another of the 3d of July 1781, 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., pp. 536, 537. 
 
 Cheyt Sing's 
 rebellion.
 
 336 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares; 
 
 11 APB.1788. from Mr. Hastings, stating the reasons, objects and inten- 
 tions, of this journey he Avas to take to the province of 
 Benares. I read those papers for this purpose, that I could 
 not conceive, if a great Governor of your empire in the 
 East is stating to his fellow councillors the object of an 
 extraordinary commission at least and if a great member 
 of your empire is in almost a state of actual rebellion, of 
 treachery, of betraying you to your enemy, and of sub- 
 verting entirely, as Mr. Hastings calls it, your power, and 
 erecting his own independence upon its ruins I cannot 
 conceive that, if Mr. Hastings at that time thought that 
 such a thing existed in the mind of Cheyt Sing, these 
 ofche W t rd mmutes > stating the object of his journey to Benares, should 
 sing's dis- have been totally silent upon the whole subject. The 
 
 affection i i p .1 , , ,1 / 
 
 appears in principal object or that journey is to visit the province of 
 
 the minutes. 
 
 " The province of Oude having fallen into a state of great disorder 
 and confusion, its resources being in an extraordinary degree diminished, 
 and the Nabob, Asoff-ud-Dowla, having earnestly entreated the presence 
 of the Governor General, and declared that unless some effectual mea- 
 sures are taken for his relief he must be under the necessity of leaving 
 his country and coming down to Calcutta, to represent his situation to 
 this Government, the Governor General therefore proposes, with the 
 concurrence of Mr. Wheler, to visit the province of Oude as speedily as 
 the affairs of the Presidency will admit, in hopes that, from a minute 
 and personal observation of the circumstances of that country, the 
 system of management which has been adopted, and the characters and 
 conduct of the persons employed, he may possibly be able to concert 
 and establish some plan by whicht he province of Oude may in time 
 be restored to its former state of affluence, good order and propriety." 
 
 I have read that to your Lordships because the object 
 which Mr. Hastings professed in that minute he never 
 accomplished. Those things which he has not professed in 
 that minute he did accomplish. And therefore I have a 
 right to argue that, when a man conceals his real purpose 
 and does not execute his ostensible purpose, there is some 
 fraud, some deception, some design at bottom, which he 
 does not choose to trust upon those minutes upon which it 
 is his duty to put every design he has. He states in his 
 minutes that the object of his journey is to make a minute 
 and personal observation of the circumstances of Oude; to 
 acquire a knowledge of the character and conduct of the 
 persons employed. He never entered the province of 
 Oude. The Nawab met him ; stayed a few clays with him 
 at Chunar. He never inspected the state of it. He had no 
 opportunity of gaming any personal knowledge of persons
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruthcr. 337 
 
 concerned in the management of it, except that three or four HA.PR.179S. 
 days he stayed with him at Chunar. He never executed 
 the purpose he professes ; but he did execute another pur- 
 pose which he has carefully concealed from the minutes. 
 And I desire your Lordships especially to attend to these 
 things which he calls credentials. He there introduces the 
 word Benares, and he there hints in the credentials not in 
 the reasons he gives for his journey that it is probable he 
 may go through the province of Benares that he may have 
 something to do there. What ? " to form an arrangement 
 consistent with the mutual engagements subsisting between 
 the Rajah and the Company." 
 
 Is this the language of a man who believes that the 
 person he is going to see is in a state little short of actual 
 rebellion ? If the greatest of your subjects is in a state 
 little short of actual rebellion if he has collected troops 
 if he has built fortresses if he is in correspondence with 
 your enemies would you, if you are in your senses, talk 
 of forming an arrangement consonant to the mutual engage- 
 ments subsisting between you ? Is that the language of a 
 man who believed that there was at that time a rebellion 
 in the contemplation of Cheyt Sing ? 
 
 My Lords, having stated Mr. Hastings' journey to Be- Extraordi- 
 nares, I desire your Lordships would look at that extra- assumed by 
 ordinary power which he took to himself a power absolutely ing 
 inconsistent with the very nature of the office which he held, 
 Instead of establishing one Governor General and Council, 
 he made two. He established Mr. "Wheler at Calcutta, 
 with all the powers belonging to the Governor General and 
 Council, absolute and uncontrolled. He established him- 
 self, with all the powers belonging to the Governor General 
 and Council, without the provinces, absolute and uncon- 
 trolled. He Avho is sent there to deliberate and consider 
 in Council bound himself to approve of every act which 
 Mr. Wheler did: Mr. Wheler bound himself to approve 
 of those acts which Mr. Hastings should do : and the 
 whole power of the Governor General and Council existed 
 at one and the same moment in two places. According 
 to this mode of proceeding, you may have five Governors 
 and Councils in five different places, each possessing the 
 whole power of Governor and Council, and four out of the 
 five absolutely giving up their opinion, binding themselves 
 to approve the acts which should be done by one and one 
 only.
 
 338 Summing of Evidence, on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APE. 1788. j^ ot on | v t ^- g ^ my L or j s> k u t he took to himself a power 
 Assumption an( j authority absolutely inconsistent with the nature of 
 
 of military _' ! i i i i 7^ 
 
 authority, his office I mean military authority ; which the Governor 
 General is expressly forbid to do in his instructions. He is 
 self-elected Generalissimo of all the troops of the East India 
 Company that were beyond the provinces, that is, beyond 
 the river [Ganges] and then, having taken to himself this 
 extraordinary power and authority, he sets out upon this 
 journey from Calcutta, as your Lordships will see, not putting 
 upon any minute any one intention that he had to execute 
 respecting the Raja of Benares, not saying one word about it 
 upon any official proceeding in the government of which he 
 was governor. 
 
 against Now your Lordships will attend to a strange incon- 
 
 crfi^ftatcd 8 ^ stencv which there is between the different arguments 
 
 rebellion, which Mr. Hastings has at different times used in defence 
 
 of this measure. He says, in the 7th page of that paper 
 
 which is called a Narrative: 
 
 " These instances of contumacy and disobedience, criminal as they 
 were in themselves, and aggravated by the extreme and known distresses 
 and dangers of the superior state to which he owed, not only personal 
 fealty, but every voluntary aid which all the resources of his zemindary 
 could contribute, appeared to me of less consideration as such than as 
 they were evidences of a deliberate and systematic conduct aiming at 
 the total subversion of the authority of the Company and the erection of 
 his own independency on its ruins." 
 
 He then says that Cheyt Sing had inherited a vast mass 
 of wealth ; that he had fortresses ; that his tenants treated 
 the English passengers with inhospitality, and that he main- 
 tained a correspondence with the Mahrattas and other 
 powers, who either were or might eventually become the 
 enemies of our state, and, if the disaffected zamindars of 
 Fyzabad and Behar were not included in the report, which 
 I do not recollect, we have had woeful proof that there was 
 equal room to have suspected the like intercourse between 
 them and, lastly, that he was collecting or had prepared 
 every provision for open revolt. 
 
 Every evidence of a perfect, deliberate, systematic, con- 
 duct, aiming at independency and the subversion of our 
 government, which Mr. Hastings has stated in this Narra- 
 tive, was perfectly and completely known to him before he 
 left Calcutta ; and if Mr. Hastings then thought, as he says 
 in this Narrative he did think, that they were the evidences 
 of a systematic conduct leading to an open rebellion then 
 why did he leave Calcutta in the manner he did ? To a
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 339 
 
 person aiming at your subversion, do you go upon a friendly ll ^-ra/ms. 
 visit with the company of a few sepoys ? Do you make no 
 preparation against his revolt ? Do you assemble no troops ? 
 Don't you deliberate with your colleague upon the conduct 
 which you ought to hold towards him ? I say, from the 
 want of these circumstances in the conduct of Mr. Hastings 
 it is physically (?) impossible that it can be true that he then 
 believed Cheyt Sing aimed at a total subversion of our 
 dominion. It cannot be true ; because, if it had been true, 
 no man out of Bethlem would have acted the part Mr. Hast- 
 ings has acted. 
 
 As to the other part of the charge insinuated, that he Ofcorre- 
 
 o s ponclciicc 
 
 maintained a correspondence with the Mahrattas and other with the 
 powers who either were or might eventually become the 
 enemies of our state, I defy Mr. Hastings to produce a 
 shadow of evidence of it. He has roundly asserted it in 
 this Narrative. I have read it from beginning to end ; I 
 have read every paper which it has relation to ; and a tittle 
 of evidence of such a charge I cannot find. If it exists, let 
 Mr. Hastings produce it. But I will tell your Lordships 
 why it did not and it does not exist, because, says Mr. Hast- 
 ings, in that paper which he calls his Defence, "at tho time 
 I left Calcutta I did not believe him guilty of the premedi- 
 tated project of driving the English out of India with which 
 I afterwards charged him." And why did he not ? for he 
 had all the evidence in his hand that he now has. You, 
 Mr. Hastings, had all that evidence in your hand which you 
 yourself in your Narrative state to be complete evidence of 
 that systematic and deliberate conduct. Reconcile the Defence 
 then with the Narrative. It is perfectly impossible. The 
 Narrative grounds itself upon this that he saw the neces- 
 sity of curbing the overgrown power of a great member of 
 the empire ; that he saw evidence of a deliberate and sys- 
 tematic conduct to subvert that empire. The Defence says, 
 and says truly, that he did not believe him at that time 
 guilty of the premeditated project of driving the English out 
 of India, with which he afterwards charges him. 
 
 But I will tell your Lordships of what he believed him 
 guilty he believed him guilty of being rich; and the India 
 Company at that time was poor. He believed him guilty of Resentment 
 paying more attention to the British government than to dL 
 the individual person of a British governor; and he thought * ^ 
 that for a piece of personal disrespect a fine was sufficient cif ic 
 500,0007. is to atone for a little personal offence ; but expul- 
 
 T 2
 
 340 Summing of Evidence on tlie First Charge Benares: 
 
 APE. ires, sion from dominions is only fit to atone for rebellion against 
 the Company. My Lords, I don't state this without autho- 
 rity ; I state it from the authority of Mr. Hastings himself. 
 Says Mr. Hastings, in this paper which is called a Defence, 
 which is at the top of the twenty-eighth page in the printed 
 evidence : 
 
 " So lonjf as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and contumacy to 
 have me rather than the Company for its ohject, at least to be merely 
 the effect of pernicious advice or misguided folly, without any formal 
 design of openly resisting our authority or disclaiming our sovereignty 
 I looked upon a considerable fine as sufficient, both for its immediate 
 punishment and for binding him to future good behaviour." 
 
 So long as it had me for its object so long as I was reveng- 
 ing personal affronts of my own so long as I was departing 
 from the character of a governor, and using powers for the 
 purpose of revenging that which was mere personal disrespect 
 to myself so long as I acted in that situation and in that 
 character, a fine of 500,0007. was sufficient to atone for a 
 piece of disrespect to me : expulsion is to atone for an offence 
 against the government. He left Calcutta, he says, impressed 
 with an idea that a strong power was necessary to curb the 
 overgrown power of this man. If he had meant to expel 
 him from his dominions he would have collected his troops 
 have mustered his forces ; but, not going upon any public 
 purpose, going to revenge this little insult to himself, con- 
 ceiving the Raja's conduct had Mr. Hastings and not the 
 English for its object, he then thought that a mere fine of 
 500,0007. was sufficient. My Lords, I say, upon his own 
 authority, that he entertained then no serious thoughts of 
 expelling him ; because no man could be so extravagant 
 not even Mr. Hastings himself as to expel a prince from 
 his dominions merely. for a piece of personal disrespect to 
 himself. 
 
 I have stated to your Lordships the motives of Mr. 
 Hastings' conduct ; I have stated the duplicity of it ; and 
 have shown from Mr. Hastings' own authority that he went 
 to Benares merely to revenge a personal insult. I have 
 shown that the defence he has set up in his Narrative of sys- 
 tematic and deliberate conduct to overturn our dominions is 
 untrue, and contradicted by his last defence. I have shown 
 that he left Calcutta for another purpose than that which 
 he professed, concealing his real purpose ; and Mr. Hastings, 
 acting in that double manner and in that double charac- 
 ter, leaves Calcutta and arrives at Benares. His first act
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 341 
 
 at Benares is to deliver a charge in writing against the HAPE.ITS 
 Raja; which charge the Raja answered in terms respectful Mr. Iiast- 
 and decent. Some parts he stated to be untrue ; upon other j"^.' r iti^ 
 parts he offered sufficient matters in alleviation ; and, upon ^f c in t st sin 
 the whole, all that he asked was an inquiry into the truth andtbe 
 of the charges which had been made against him. If your ^ve?. 8 a ' 
 Lordships read the charge, which is to be found in the 
 Narrative, you will find that I have stated already the 
 only charges which he had to make against him, to wit, the 
 non-payment of that money at the time Mr. Hastings 
 conceived he should pay it, and the non-remittance of the 
 money to Major Carnac. I have stated already the false- 
 hood of that charge, and that if the whole money taken from 
 the Raja had been applied to the account of the Raja, his 
 whole subsidy, within a trifle, was completely paid up. 
 
 I gave in evidence to your Lordships yesterday a short paper 
 of Mr. Hastings, in which he says that the whole extra expense 
 of Major Carnac 's detachment could not exceed two lacs of 
 rupees ; and he offered as his own that which was not his 
 own at that time two lacs of rupees, to make it good.* 
 
 The next charge is, Charge re- 
 
 specting the 
 
 " I required in the name of the Governor General and Council by requisition 
 letter, and ordered Mr. Fowke to repeat the requisition in person, that 0) 
 you should furnish a body of horse to assist and act with the armies of 
 the Company; and, when Mr. Markham succeeded Mr. Fowke, I gave 
 him an order to repeat the demand; which he did accordingly with 
 frequent and almost daily importunity, limiting the number to 1,500, 
 and afterwards to 1,000. To this demand you returned evasive answers; 
 nor to this hour have you contributed a single horseman."f 
 
 My Lords, the Raja completely and perfectly answers 
 that charge ; and the only crime that I can find imputable to 
 him upon the whole of this business is, that he dared to tell 
 the truth in his own defence ; and that is the true reason 
 why he was expelled. He says, 
 
 " With respect to the horse, you desired me in your letter to inform 
 you of what number I could afford to station with you, and I sent you 
 a particular account of all that were in my service, amounting to 1,300, 
 of which several were stationed at distant places ; but I received no answer 
 to this. Mr. Markham delivered me an order to prepare a thousand 
 horse. I complied as far as I could, I furnished 500, and I gave a sub- 
 stitute, such as I had, for the rest. I told Mr. Markham they were ready 
 to go where they should be sent. No answer came upon this head. I 
 remained astonished at the cause of it."J 
 
 * Minute of Mr. Hastings, 26th June, 1780. Printed in the ".Minutes 
 the Evidence," p. 342. 
 
 f Mr. Hastings' "Narrative," p. 16. % "Narrative," p. 18.
 
 342 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 nApH.1768. Says Mr. Hastings, "to this hour you have not contributed 
 a single horseman." Says the Raja, "the horsemen were ready. 
 I wrote to you to know what I should do with them. They 
 were there for you ; they are there for you now. You never 
 gave me any answer to it. And now you charge me with 
 never having furnished a single horsemen, because you would 
 not take those I furnished. You change the terms of the 
 demands of your own Government ; you demand move horse- 
 men than I can possibly spare, because my troops are con- 
 cerned in the collection of the country ; and, that being the 
 case, I cannot furnish any more. Such as I have, there they 
 are. You charge me with not furnishing them, \vhen they 
 are there ready for you to take them if you choose it." 
 
 Charge of The other charges he makes asrainst him he passes over. 
 
 exciting dis- TT T , i /> T 
 
 ordersfnhis He says, "I pass over other instances or your conduct, in 
 government, w hj cnj through the means of your secret agents, you have 
 endeavoured to excite disorders in the government on which 
 you depend/' What is meant by that charge ? What proof 
 there is of that charge, upon what it is founded, I profess 
 myself totally, perfectly and completely, ignorant. For in 
 no paper which Mr. Hastings has Avritten upon the subject, 
 in no narrative, defence, minute or anything else, has he 
 ever condescended to say what he meant by that paragraph. 
 This I know, that the Raja says, " Excepting Abdullah Beg 
 and his, none of my people, either dependents, or servants, or 
 others in any shape connected with me, have ever gone to 
 Calcutta," He gives a complete denial to every charge 
 which has been made against him, and he concludes his 
 answers with saying, " Now you are come to Benares, all I 
 wish, all I desire, is, that, now you are here yourself upon the 
 spot, you will take the pains to inquire into the matter your- 
 self." Does Mr. Hastings take the pains to inquire ? No. 
 That instant he disgraces him at the head of his government ; 
 he refuses to see him ; and that instant he orders him into 
 arrest under the custody of Mr. Markham. 
 
 Circum- And Qow, my Lords, before I proceed further in this 
 
 Mr^PoVife's Business, it is absolutely necessary that I should upon this 
 
 removal part of the charge state how Mr. Markham came to Benares. 
 
 nares.and Mr. Hastings refused, as your Lordships will see by the 
 
 hIira?SJ" evidence, till Sir Eyre Ccote came out, to let Mr. Fo\vke, 
 
 ^Resident. w ^ was a PP omte d by the Company, go as Resident to 
 
 Benares. Upon the lith of January 1781, just before Mr. 
 
 Hastings proposed to leave Calcutta, he removed Mr. Fowke, 
 
 who was specially placed in that situation by the court of
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 343 
 
 Directors. And I wish your Lordships to attend to the HAPB.1788. 
 principal grounds and reasons why he removed Mr. Fowke. 
 Was it because Mr. Fowke was unequal to the duties of his 
 situation? Xo. Was it because Mr. Fowke was not 
 diligent and faithful in the duties of his office ? No. Was 
 it because Mr. Fowke wanted honour, probity or ability ? 
 No. But it was because he was put there by the court of 
 Directors, and for no other reason whatever. And I state 
 this to your Lordships from the authority of Mr. Hastings 
 himself. He says, 
 
 "Speaking for myself alone, it may be sufficient to affirm that Mr. Fowke 
 is not my agent that I cannot give him any confidence that while 
 he continues at Benares he stands as a screen between the Rajah and 
 this Government, instead of an instrument of control, and that the 
 Rajah himself, and every chief in Hindostan with whom we are in con- 
 nexion, will regard it as the pledge and foundation of his independence. 
 To Mr. Fowke himself I have no personal objection. I approve his 
 conduct and esteem his character; and I believe that I might depend 
 upon his exact and literal obedience and fidelity in the execution of the 
 functions annexed to it. My objection I have stated above, and it is 
 insuperable."* 
 
 And, my Lords, for fear any imputation should rest upon 
 the character of Mr. Fowke, he does the most extraordinary 
 thing that I believe any Governor ever did he removes 
 him ; and he proposes to give him the appointment of agent 
 (as it is called) for the provision of all boats to be employed 
 for the military services of this establishment, with an allow- 
 ance of a commission of fifteen per cent, upon his disburse- 
 ments. But there immediately occurs to the mind of 
 Mr. Hastings an objection to this mode of proceeding ; and 
 it is, that, when you give a man so much per cent, upon 
 what he lays out, it is a great temptation to him to lay out 
 more than is necessary. Mr. Hastings sees the objection ; 
 he takes it, and he likes his plan, because it has the objection; 
 for says he : 
 
 " I propose this method in preference to a contract, because I am 
 convinced from experience that the service will be better performed by 
 this alteration, although it is liable to one material objection in its 
 natural influence on his expenses. This is a defect which can only 
 be corrected by the probity of the person who is intrusted with so 
 important a charge ; and I am willing to have it understood as a proof 
 of the confidence which I repose in Mr. Fowke." 
 
 * Minute of AVarren Hastings, 14th January, 1781. Printed in the " Mi- 
 nutes of the Evidence," p. 280.
 
 344 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 Am. 1788. Having said in the beginning of the minute that he had 
 no confidence at aty in Mr. Fowke, at the end of the minute 
 he transgresses the general principle by saying, " I wish to 
 have it understood as a proof of the confidence which I 
 repose in Mr. Fowke that I have proposed this appoint- 
 ment in opposition to a trust so constituted." This man, 
 who has no confidence at all in Mr. Fowke, concludes by 
 making a proposal to prove his infinite confidence in him. 
 Why is he to be removed from Benares ? Because he was 
 a screen between the Raja and this government. If 
 Mr. Fowke was all that Mr. Hastings describes him, how could 
 he be a screen ? I will tell your Lordships how he was a 
 screen. It was by that exact and literal attention to the duty 
 of his station ; by all that probity and virtue which forced 
 itself upon the conscience of Mr. Hastings, he was a screen 
 between the Raja and the evil acts of this government. He 
 knew the rights upon which the Raja stood independent ; 
 he would not while there submit to Mr. Hastings' destroy- 
 ing those rights at his will. In that sense he was a screen. 
 He was not the dependent of Mr. Hastings. His faith, 
 probity, honour, integrity, and exact and literal obedience 
 to the orders of the Directors who sent him there, rendered 
 him unfit for that situation when Mr. Hastings was going 
 to Benares. If he had been a screen in any other way he 
 could not be the man Mr. Hastings has described him to be. 
 If he had been a screen against the just demands of govern- 
 ment he would neither have been faithful, just, full of pro- 
 bity, nor deserving that confidence which Mr. Hastings 
 reposed in him. And therefore the only way he could be 
 a screen was, that he would have protected the Raja from the 
 oppressive acts of Mr. Hastings. 
 
 Arrest of Then, having removed Mr. Fowke, he puts the Raja in 
 arrest, under the orders and control of Mr. Markham, whom 
 he had appointed with the assistance of Mr. Benn, whom he 
 had sent up along with Mr. Markham. For what reason 
 was the Raja to be put in arrest? Because he had ventured 
 in the humblest manner to suppose he had a defence against 
 the charges because he desired to be tried because he 
 wished Mr. Hastings to inquire and because he stated the 
 truth to Mr. Hastings in his answer. I have a right to say 
 so; because Mr. Hastings himself tells you, in the same 
 Narrative : 
 
 " The Rajah, in his reply to the charges which I had made against him 
 insists much on the many letters which he wrote to me, praying to be
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 345 
 
 dispensed from the orders of Government, and my neglect to answer the ll APE. 1788. 
 same ; and this charge against me he repeats in a manner not the most 
 respectful I don't know but it may be true." 
 
 " You the Raja have told the truth ; you have written 
 about your horse and I have not answered yon, I have left 
 you in doubt and difficulty. You have written praying to 
 have a month or two's time to pay this money. I have not 
 answered you. I left you in the dark with respect to my 
 intentions. You dare to tell the truth in your own defence. 
 The charge you make against me is true ; you repeat it not 
 in a manner respectful. But, for having the daring assurance, 
 the boldness and the violence, to teach a Governor what is 
 truth to state a defence for yoursef you shall be put under 
 an arrest." 
 
 And under arrest accordingly he was put by Mr. Hastings. 
 The personal consequences of the arrest to the Raja, in point 
 oi ? lowering him in the estimation of the inhabitants in 
 point of preventing him from ever after collecting his reve- 
 nue without force, if he continued in the government your 
 Lordships were told yesterday by Colonel Gardiner : says he, 
 " I don't think he could afterwards have collected his reve- 
 nue without force,"* so completely was he degraded. And 
 why was he degraded ? For no other reason than for those 
 matters which 1 have stated to your Lordships, other than an 
 idea that Mr. Hastings seemed to have had, that without an 
 arrest he never would have submitted to a fine of fifty lacs. 
 
 Was he ever asked to submit to a fine of fifty lacs, or Presump- 
 had Mr. Hastings any right to ask such a question ? Colonel refusal to* 
 Gardiner has told your Lordships he believes he would have 
 parted with everything that he had rather than have rebelled 
 and resisted. Did Mr. Hastings ever require him in any 
 form or in any manner to pay those fifty lacs ? He has not 
 said that lie did. I don't know that he did. I don't believe 
 that he did. Had Mr. Hastings any reason to believe that 
 he would not pay fifty lacs, even if the demand was atrocious 
 and violent ? Mr. Hastings had every reason to believe that 
 he would pay the demand of fifty lacs ; for he had offered to 
 Mr. Hastings to pay a sum of 200,0007. to assuage his vio- 
 lent anger. Here let me ask your Lordships what part of 
 the proceedings of the government of Calcutta that offer 
 appears upon? Mr. Hastings concealed from his colleague, 
 Mr. Wheler, that ever an offer of 200,000/. was made by 
 Cheyt Sing as an atonement for his offences. It was his 
 duty to communicate it to Mr. Wheler ; and, if Cheyt Sing 
 
 * " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 352.
 
 346 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APE. 1788 
 
 Colonel 
 Gardiner's 
 evidence, 
 disproving 
 charge of 
 rebellion 
 against 
 iQneyt Sing. 
 
 was to be punished, Mr. Wheler ought to have been con- 
 sulted whether this was not a sufficient atonement for any 
 offence he had committed. 
 
 The whole penalty imposed upon him by his agreement 
 was a certain fixed penalty of one quarter per cent, per diem, 
 for delay in the payment of five lacs, for payment of which 
 there was no stipulation. He is to be fined 500,0007. ; he 
 offers 200,0007. instead of that quarter per cent. Mr. Hast- 
 ings conceals that offer. Your Lordships know nothing 
 about it. His colleague, Mr. Wheler, who had and ought to 
 have had a voice on that subject, does not hear one word 
 about it. It is kept in the dark, and is not told till after the 
 expulsion of the Raja upon other pretences the supposed 
 rebellion, which happened afterwards. Having voluntarily 
 offered 200,000?. is sufficient proof that he would have been 
 ready to come forward with more that he would have 
 given everything he possessed, short of his honour, to have 
 assuaged the anger of Mr. Hastings. But why is a fine of 
 500,0007. to be imposed upon him? 200,0007. which he 
 offered is a sum far exceeding any possible idea of supposed 
 delinquency. In what could any delinquency consist ? In 
 this, and nothing more state it according to Mr. Hastings' 
 own way of putting it in the non-payment of a small sum 
 of money for a very few weeks. If it had been his tribute 
 instead of his subsidy, Mr. Hastings had no pretence for 
 demanding above a quarter per cent, per diem. He offers 
 200,0007. for having delayed payment of 25,0007. for a few 
 weeks. Mr. Hastings refuses it. He does not consult with 
 his colleague about it ; and he goes and puts this man under 
 arrest disgraces him for ever in the eyes of his subjects, in 
 order to demand 500,0007. from him, which I don't know 
 whether he did or no (sic). And here I must recall your 
 Lordships' attention to the evidence of Colonel Gardiner. 
 
 Your Lordships know that the fort of Chunar is situated 
 in the middle of the province of Benares. It is the key of 
 Benares. It is within fourteen miles of the capital city 
 itself, and in the centre of the province. Residing for five 
 or six years in the character of chief engineer at that place, 
 perfectly conversant with the country, knowing everything 
 that was done in the country, making frequent excursions 
 into every part of it, he says, " If Cheyt Sing had made pre- 
 parations, I must have known of it. If he had collected 
 troops and stores, I must have heard of it. I know nothing 
 of any intention he had to rebel ; I, a military officer, saw 
 not the least symptom of any such design upon the part of
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruthcr. 347 
 
 the Raja. I was with Mr. Hastings at the time ; T did not HAPH.178S. 
 see anything before, after, nor at the time, nor at any period 
 whatever did I ever perceive any intention in the Raja to 
 rebel/' " Ay, but/' says the Counsel in the cross examina- 
 tion, " he was erecting batteries ; he was erecting bastions 
 at Ramnagur; for three years he had been employed in 
 adding a single bastion to the fort which surrounds his 
 palace." Did Mr. Hastings ever make that charge against 
 him ? Why did he not send and desire him to stop that 
 bastion ? He must have known it in the course of these 
 three years. 
 
 But what right had Mr. Hastings to say that that Prince 
 who was to be a barrier to your country should not repair 
 his fortresses ? that that Prince from whom Mr. Hastings 
 prevented Suja-ud-Dowla taking those forts, when he had 
 the same dominion over him what right had Mr. Hastings 
 to say that he should not garrison them? that he should not 
 provide ammunition? that he should not build new bastions ? 
 He could not effectuate his alliance with the Company with- 
 out it. Our troops had no business in that country during the 
 time Cheyt Sing was governor of it, and to very little good 
 purpose, as your Lordships will see by and by, have they come 
 into it since. Therefore, against this man because he was 
 repairing an old fortification, because he was collecting a few 
 troops which Colonel Gardiner who was present thought no 
 instance of rebellion, which Mr. Hastings, who knew it and 
 must kno\v it, thought no instance of rebellion it is now 
 to be raised up as an atrocious offence and worthy these vio- 
 lent measures. Colonel Gardiner, perfectly knowing the sub- 
 ject, perfectly competent to determine, being upon the spot 
 at the time, says : 
 
 " This insurrection, as he called it, was a sudden affray raised by the Circum- 
 imprisonment of the Rajah, a consequence of Mr. Hastings' violence a thTtmnult 
 consequence of that arrest and disgrace no sympton of any intention occasioned 
 on the part of the Rajah to rebel ; so far. from it that it was a loose fe tl ] e 
 popular tumult, of which the Rajah was as much afraid as anybody else, priionmcnt. 
 and the Rajah flies away himself among the first in order to avoid the 
 effects of that tumult." 
 
 How was that tumult raised ? You have the evidence of 
 Mr. Hastings, in the papers which he has attached to this Nar- 
 rative upon that subject. This unfortunate Raja, put under 
 arrest, retired to his devotions. Your Lordships know that he 
 sustained the character of Prince and the character of High 
 Priest of that nation. Your Lordships know the respect in
 
 348 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 APE. 1788 
 
 References 
 to the affi- 
 davits col- 
 lected by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings for his 
 justifica- 
 tion. 
 
 Major 
 
 Eaton's 
 
 affidavit. 
 
 which the devotions of bramans in high rank are held by the 
 people in that country. The Raja retired to his devotions. 
 In the midst of those devotions he is insolently attacked by a 
 servant of Mr. Markham's, a person of the rank as it is called 
 of a chobdar ; which I take to be pretty near about the same 
 rank as one of those tipstaffs which attend without your 
 Lordships' door. That person goes up to him ; in that holy 
 and in that sacred situation he insults the Prince, he 
 insults the High Priest of his nation in the face of all his 
 people assembled around in consequence of these violent 
 and atrocious proceedings. He comes up to him and he tells 
 him, " I am Cheyt Earn, what are you but Cheyt Sing ? " 
 And then he proceeds to threaten him. In consequence of 
 this atrocious insult, at such a moment and to such a person, 
 a tumult arises. The sepoys sent there carelessly without 
 ammunition are killed; the officers are killed too. Cheyt 
 Sing flies ; and the whole ends in a violent popular tumult 
 at the moment. And this account of the transaction I don't 
 take from Colonel Gardiner, but from the affidavits collected 
 by Mr. Hastings himself in justification of his own proceed- 
 ings, and as a full and complete defence for himself in this 
 business.* 
 
 Can your Lordships wonder that such an act, at such a 
 time, should excite a good deal of popular commotion? Can 
 your Lordships ascribe it to a deep design to rebel to ran- 
 corous intentions to destroy Mr. Hastings, that at such 
 a time, from such an act, such an event followed. And yet, 
 if your Lordships will read over these affidavits, it is the 
 only act I can find which, in any degree or in any respect, 
 can be construed into an act of opposition to the English 
 government. 
 
 Your Lordships no doubt have looked over this immense 
 volume of affidavits. You would expect to find evidence of 
 some acts of Cheyt Sing's prior to this supposed insurrection, 
 some accounts of his connexions with other powers, to 
 find an account of some one transaction of his prior to the 
 day upon which that tumult happened. If your Lordships 
 expect it you will look for it in vain ; for, except the first 
 four affidavits, an affidavit of Major Eaton and one other 
 affidavit which gives an account of the number of forces 
 Cheyt Sing went down the river with, there is not an affi- 
 davit or paper of any sort which relates to any act of Cheyt 
 
 * Forming Part III. of the Appendix to his " Narrative."
 
 Speech of Mr. Ansfruther. 849 
 
 Sing whatever prior to this date of the insurrection; and u APE. nsa. 
 
 Mr. Hastings is to be vindicated in expelling Cheyt Sing 
 
 from his dominions upon acts which arose after he had driven 
 
 him into rebellion, and after Mr. Hastings had expelled him 
 
 from his dominions. What that affidavit of Major Eaton is 
 
 I will explain to your Lordships. It only amounts to this 
 
 that some sepoys had gone out of the garrison at Chunar 
 
 and had been ill treated. A little riot between two or 
 
 three villagers and two or three sepoys is the only act 
 
 of the kind which, with all the industry of Mr. Hastings, 
 
 he has been able to collect of Cheyt Sing's ill disposition 
 
 to the Company acts which are totally denied by Colonel 
 
 Gardiner. " I lived long in his neighbourhood," says the 
 
 Colonel, " I knew him well : he was polite, gentle in his 
 
 manners, attentive to his subjects and beloved by them. I 
 
 knew of no riot, confusion or disorder, that happened in his 
 
 country/' 
 
 The only defence Mr. Hastings has, prior to the date I 
 am now stating, is a supposed ill usage of two or three care- 
 less sepoys, wandering from their fort into the country of 
 Chunar, into which county they had no business to go. And 
 when they did go, as your Lordships will hear from after 
 conduct I shall state, there was no great reason to suppose 
 that they went there with moderation or with much attention 
 to justice. 
 
 Having examined the facts, let me call your Lordships' Mr. Hast- 
 attention to some of the supposed arguments by which "affouof his 
 Mr. Hastings chooses to defend himself. " My predecessors," thafofw^ 
 says he, "it may be here observed, both in language and predeces- 
 concluct equalled at least or rather exceeded everything of 
 which I am now accused." What was it that his predecessors 
 did ? They were bound by no treaty, connected by no tie. 
 Bulwant Sing was then with his forces in the army of Suja- Proceedings 
 ud-Dowla whom we w r ere opposing. They proposed to con- 
 quer the country of Suja-ud-Dowla and the country of 
 Bulwant Sing, in a state of actual war and hostility. He 
 was not our ally ; he was not our dependent ; he was not our 
 subject ; he was not in any shape or in any manner or way 
 connected with us, on the contrary, in actual war, in a state 
 of open hostility, with 10,000 horse in the camp of Suja-ud- 
 Dowla. They propose, as a part of the conduct of that 
 war, to dispossess Bulwant Sing of his dominions ; " and," 
 says Mr. Hastings, " because my predecessors endeavoured, 
 as a plan and a measure of war, to take possession of the
 
 3.50 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 Srove that 
 ulwant 
 Sing was 
 not a za- 
 mindar. 
 
 11 Api^i788 country of Bui want Sing, as an enemy, I will dispossess Cheyt 
 Sing when he is an ally, a dependent and a subject. Every- 
 thing they threatened in a state of war and hostility I, in a 
 state of peace and tranquillity, will do, and will justify myself 
 under that which they offered as a justification to them/' 
 
 The next thing he states is a long history, in this paper 
 which is called a Defence, in order to prove that Bulwant 
 Sing was not a zamindar but anamil. Whether he is zamin- 
 dar or arnil, by whatever name or descriptions Mr. Hastings 
 chooses to call him, I care not ; I know he was a man 
 protected by British faith, under the sanction of British 
 guarantee; and that he was the subject of a British Governor. 
 I should not state that Mr. Hastings had laid any stress upon 
 it, if it had not been that I have, in the former part of the 
 argument, pointed out by Mr. Hastings' own confession that 
 Cheyt Sing was the exact same thing that Bulwant Sing 
 
 Arument was. If Cheyt Sing was a zamindar, Bulwant Sing was 
 ' Hast a zamiudar. And, in this Defence, let me call your Lord- 
 ships' attention to a curious and strange argument used by 
 Mr. Hastings to prove he was not a zamindar. 
 
 " In the 5th article of the treaty of Allahabad, his Highness Suja-ud- 
 Dowla engages to continue Bulwant Sing in the zemindaries of Benares, 
 Ghazepore, &c., &c. ; and in the seventh article of the same treaty it is 
 resolved to restore to his Highness the country of Benares and the other 
 districts now rented by Bulwant Sing. Both of these articles cannot be 
 admitted in their true and literal sense. If the zemindary belonged to 
 Bulwant Sing he could not be said to rent it ; he paid tribute only." 
 
 In this Defence, the test of zamindar or no zamindar is a 
 payment of tribute. If Bulwant Sing had been a zamindar 
 he would have paid tribute. Says Mr. Hastings in his 
 Narrative, Cheyt Sing was a zamindar; but being a zamin- 
 dar he paid no tribute but a rent. The argument in the one 
 is completely the reverse of the argument in the other. The 
 same argument that is used to prove that Bulwant Sing was 
 no zamindar is used to prove that Cheyt Sing is one. Cheyt 
 Sing paid no tribute, he was a zamindar ; zamindars all pay 
 rent. Bulwant Sing was no zamindar ; why ? because if he 
 had been he would have paid a tribute, whereas he paid a 
 rent ; therefore he was no zamindar. Let Mr. Hastings put 
 these two propositions together and reconcile them ; and then 
 let him take them to be either zamindar, amil, renter or 
 whatever name he chooses, and I shall tell him that no name, 
 word or forced construction, will get rid of the sense and 
 substance of an English treaty with an English subject. One 
 of the learned Counsel, upon reading the treaty of Alia-
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 351 
 
 habad, said " Attend to the word malguzari."* What is HAPK.1788. 
 
 meant by that I am at a loss to understand; but this I know, 
 
 the treaty of Allahabad does make Cheyt Sing independent. 
 
 And -your Lordships will not, upon a doubtful construction 
 
 of a Persian word if such a Persian word does exist do 
 
 away the faith of British treaty do away the faith of 
 
 British guarantee, and all the sanctions of British justice. 
 
 Having given the papers in evidence, it is necessary I 
 should point out how much is well and how much ill 
 founded. 
 
 The next defence he makes is a letter which he quotes 
 from the fifth Report, where he states that here was precisely 
 the place to have pleaded his right of possession and title of 
 inheritance. " I will agree," says Bulwant Sing. " to hold 
 Benares and Gauzipoor, &c., which have long been under 
 my jurisdiction, on the same terms from the Company as I 
 did from Suja-ud-Dowla." Here, says Mr. Hastings, was 
 precisely the place to have pleaded his right of possession, 
 and his title by inheritance ; instead of which, he only says 
 those places had long been under his jurisdiction ; which, if 
 any meaning be annexed to the words, must imply that 
 they were not always so. Whether they were always so or 
 not I don't care. This letter was read to your Lordships 
 yesterday. It is a proposal contained in a letter from the 
 Raja Shi tab Roy, who was in one of the highest offices under 
 the Mogul government in that country. And if Mr. Hastings 
 had gone on to the end of that letter, and stated it fairly, his 
 whole argument would have been at an end. For the con- 
 cluding words are these, and that person from his rank is 
 competent to know what he asserts, he says, " the Rajah is 
 a man who adheres to his engagements, and is a person of 
 high rank, a zemindar of a frontier country." Mr. Hastings 
 garbles the letter in the Defence ; because, if he had gone on 
 to the end of the letter in that Defence, the whole argument 
 would be cut up and put an end to. 
 
 The next defence Mr. Hastings chooses to set up are three Rights of 
 several rights of fining. He has been so good as to detail 
 them at "length. The first is, because Mr. Francis and 
 General Clavering annexed a penalty to his coining bad 
 rupees in the mint, and that penalty was a forfeiture of the 
 mint. The next is, that Suja-ud-Dowla levied a fine on the 
 death of the father for investing the son. 
 
 * See the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 14.
 
 352 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11 APE. 1783. The third right to fine is, that, " had not our powerful in- 
 terposition prevented the consequences of Bulwant Sing's 
 treachery to his master in 1764, Suja-ud-Dowla would pro- 
 bably have exerted with signal rigour a third right of fining, 
 and have furnished me with a precedent full in point to my 
 treatment of Cheyt Sing." 
 
 The first right of fining, your Lordships observe, is this, 
 " I gave you the mint, which you never had before, and I 
 make a bargain with you that if you coin bad money you shall 
 forfeit that mint." That is not a fine, it is the condition of 
 a bargain. 
 
 The second right to fine, according to Mr. Hastings, is, 
 Cheyt Sing had no right to succeed to the territories, and 
 he made another bargain with Suja-ud-Dowla. How they 
 are any rights of fining I cannot understand. They are 
 conditions which two persons making a bargain impose upon 
 their bargain, and no right of fining of any description. 
 
 The third is a right of fining which, according to 
 Mr. Hastings' own expression, never existed ; but if it 
 had existed it would have been a precedent full in point . 
 Now, if it had existed, it would not have been in point; 
 Bulwant Sing had then joined our forces in our camp, 
 and his sovereign, if he could have conquered his country 
 back again, would probably not have put him again in poses- 
 sion of it. But, because Suja-ud-Dowla would have put him 
 out of those territories when in rebellion, therefore we were 
 to put him out when in no rebellion at all. Therefore this 
 right of fining was, according to Mr. Hastings' own defini- 
 tion, that which never existed at all. But your Lordships 
 will not suffer power and right to be so confounded as it is 
 by Mr. Hastings throughout this Defence. 
 
 Hisasser.; Mr. Hastings conceives he has a right to do everything 
 despotic which he has a power to do. Nay he goes farther a great 
 power ' deal; for in the latter part he tells your Lordships that 
 " sovereignty in India, implies nothing but despotism." I 
 know not how you can form an estimate of its power but 
 from its visible effects. I don't dispute that it is in the 
 power of a despotic sovereign to be unjust; but I deny that 
 he has a right to do any act which the most equitable and 
 mild sovereign could not do. He is not to measure that 
 right by the extent of his power. Then he goes on to 
 say: 
 
 " The whole history of Asia is nothing more than precedents to prove 
 the invariable exercise of arbitrary power. To all this I strongly alluded 
 in the minutes I delivered in Council, when the treaty with the new
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruiher. 353 
 
 Vizier was on foot in 1775; and I wished to make Cheyt Sing inde- 11 APE. 1788, 
 
 pendent, because in India dependence included a thousand evils, many 
 
 of which I enumerated at that time, and they are entered in the ninth 
 clause of the first section of this charge. I knew the powers with which 
 an Indian sovereignty is armed, and the dangers to which tributaries are 
 exposed ; I knew that from the history of Asia and from the very nature 
 of mankind the subjects of a despotic empire are always vigilant for the 
 moment to rebel, and the sovereign is ever jealous of rebellious inten- 
 tions. A zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the 
 common lot of his fellows. The mean and depraved state of a mere 
 zemindar is therefore this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic 
 government, this very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very 
 exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are 
 consequent on the political state of Hindoostanic governments. Bulwant 
 Sing if he had been, and Cheyt Sing as long as he was, a zemindar, stood 
 exactly in this mean and depraved state by the constitution of his 
 country. I did not make it for him, but would have secured him from 
 it. Those who made him a zemindar entailed upon him the consequences 
 of so mean and depraved a tenure. Aliverdi Khan and Cossim Ali fined 
 all their zemindars on the necessities of war, and on every pretence either 
 of court necessity or court extravagance."* 
 
 These are the precedents which your Lordships are desired 
 to follow. The history of Asia is nothing but the continued 
 practice of arbitrary power. Be it so, my Lords. That 
 there is a great deal of oppression, injustice, violence and 
 cruelty, to be found in the history of Asia I don't dispute. 
 But I will not try Mr. Hastings by the abuse of rights. I 
 will not allow him to set up infractions of justice and of law 
 in order to make precedents for defending himself. Let him 
 go to the laws of Asia if he pleases, and 1 would follow him 
 there for the purpose of trying him. It is not by the law of 
 the country it is not by the principles of justice it is not 
 by the principles of humanity that he wishes to be tried ; 
 but it is by the practice of wicked and arbitrary princes, 
 by the practice of Aliverdi Khan and Cossim Ali Khan. 
 
 Let me ask your Lordships if, in the later periods of 
 the Roman history, any Governor from the East had been 
 brought before the Senate of Rome, even at the moment 
 when it was in its most depraved and degraded state, when 
 so brought would he have told them, " Yes, it is true I have 
 ravaged your countries it is true I have ravaged Asia it 
 is true I have despoiled Cilicia it is true I have banished 
 from their dominions the allies of the Roman people all that 
 is true ; but I desire that you will not try me by any princi- 
 ples of morals or religion which are to be found in your own 
 
 * Hastings' Defence before -the House of Commons. Printed in the " Mi- 
 nutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 28. 
 
 Z
 
 354 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 APE. ITS?, hearts. I desire you will not try me by the law's of Asia. 
 I desire that you will not try me by the laws of Cilicia. 
 Try me, not by your own mild institutes try me, not by 
 the institutes of Justinian try me, not by the laws of Ulpian 
 but try me by the practices of Nero and Caligula, and no 
 doubt I shall be acquitted. Try me by the practice of 
 Aliverdi Khan, who murdered his father ; try me by the 
 practices of Cossim Ali Khan, who betrayed his master : no 
 fear I shall be acquitted. They fined their zamindars upon 
 every instance of court necessity and court extravagance ; 
 establish to me that court necessity and extravagance as a 
 sufficient reason for doing what I have done, and no fear 
 I shall be acquitted by any tribunal." 
 
 I know your Lordships too well to have the most distant 
 idea that you can listen for one moment to such arguments, 
 or ever permit such an idea to enter into your minds. You 
 will try him by the principles of justice. You will try him 
 by the principles of law. You will try him by the practice 
 of your ancient ancestors, executing that great delegated 
 trust of justice now in your Lordships' hands, and not by 
 any principles of court necessity and court extravagance, 
 which are the only points by which this man wishes to be 
 tried. 
 
 Having gone through, and I am afraid taken up too much 
 of your Lordships' time upon, this part of the case, I shall 
 now bring your Lordships to the next Article in the charge 
 which is the posterior conduct of Mr. Hastings after the 
 expulsion of Raja Cheyt Sing. 
 
 Your Lordships know extremely well that, if I have made 
 out a crime in the first part of this Article, it is sufficient to 
 gain a conviction upon it, whether Mr. Hastings be innocent 
 or guilty in any of the other parts of the Article. They are 
 distinct crimes ; distinctly stated ; and not part of this great 
 crime ending with the expulsion of Cheyt Sing. 
 
 No\v, with respect to the remainder of the Article, it 
 divides itself into two parts. The first respects the seizure 
 of. the treasures found at Bidjey Gur; the other part the 
 settlement under Mehipnarain, and the various settlements 
 under Durgbejey Sing and under Jagger Deo Sing. 
 
 This part was so very fully stated and ably canvassed by 
 
 the honourable Manager who went before me in stating this 
 
 business, that your Lordships would think I took up too 
 
 Mr, Hast- much of your time if I went much at large into it ; but I 
 
 to g ft s [ajo t r er must call your Lordships' attention to the two letters under
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 355 
 
 the authority of which that division was made ; to show the iiApH.ms. 
 strange, inconsistent, manner in which this man acts. p op h^ 
 
 Your Lordships will see by these two letters he expressly the P tr C ei ng 
 writes to Major Popham thus: sures taken 
 
 at Bidjey 
 
 " Secure the fort for the benefit of yourself and your detachment. 
 Whatever you give her (the Rani) is your business, not mine ; make 
 what bargain you like. I desire you to make no conditions with her, 
 even for a provision." 
 
 Major Popham would not act so : he did make a bargain 
 with her for a provision; he allowed her fifteen per cent. 
 upon all that was to be found, and divided the rest under the 
 authority of Mr. Hastings' letter. 
 
 My Lords, it is now said that those letters are no authority. 
 Whether they are or not, it is stated as a licence given by Mr. 
 Hastings to do this. Whether he had authority to do it or not I 
 do not care : he did it. He granted them a licence to do that 
 which he himself in another part of the business says was to 
 be avoided like poison. " The very idea of prize money/' says 
 he, " suggests to my mind all the dangers that formerly 
 belonged to it ; it is to be avoided like poison/' But in the 
 year 1781 he says, " Secure the fort for the benefit of your- 
 self and your detachment : it is your business and not mine." 
 So says Mr. Hastings at that time. Now what is the 
 defence ? Why in truth these letters are not orders. Your 
 Lordships will hear from some of our friends who are to 
 open some other charge something upon that distinction. A 
 letter which begins " Dear Sir," is no order ; but a letter 
 which begins " Sir/' is. A letter which finishes " Dear 
 Sir " is no order, nor a letter that finishes " Your's affection- 
 ately." These are the distinctions. Will your Lordships 
 sanction these distinctions, or judge from the sense of the 
 letter ? It is the only ground of defence Mr. Hastings takes 
 that this letter began familiarly " Dear Sir," and did not 
 begin formally " Sir : " it therefore is no order. Jf your 
 Lordships acquit him upon this you must adopt that reason- 
 ing, for you have no other reasoning upon which you can go 
 to the only ground he has given for acquitting him upon 
 that part. 
 
 Your Lordships will look at the letter, and will see that 
 the letter which could authorise the march of a detachment, 
 which could sanction a capitulation and regulate the army 
 in various points, would be a sufficient authority for Major 
 Popham to do that which he did. If it was private in one 
 case it could not be an order in the other. But, be it order 
 or not, it was a licence given by Mr. Hastings, who had 
 
 z 2
 
 356 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares: 
 
 11APH.17S8 
 
 Tlio sub- 
 sequent 
 settlement 
 of the pro- 
 vince of 
 Benares. 
 
 Tribute 
 raised to 
 400,000?. 
 
 Mr. Bonn's 
 evidence. 
 
 authority, as he himself states, to do it ; because he had all 
 the authority of Governor General and Council, and nobody 
 disputes they have authority to do it. Therefore in that way 
 it was a licence from Mr. Hastings to do that which he 
 did; that is, to bring that upon the army which was "to 
 be avoided like poison," which was forbid by the autho- 
 rity of their masters and reprobated again and again by 
 Mr. Hastings himself. 
 
 Now, let me call your Lordships' attention shortly to the 
 subsequent settlement. We will suppose for argument that 
 Cheyt Sing had been guilty of what was sufficient to deprive 
 him of the zamindary: but is the guilt of Cheyt Sing a 
 reason for oppressing every inhabitant in that zamindary ? 
 If the ancient tribute continued, the next heir ought to have 
 succeeded. And here again I must call your Lordships' 
 attention, as my honourable friend did, to the strange incon- 
 sistency of Mr. Hastings. Tn one paper, Mehipnarain is 
 called in terms the lineal heir ; in another, the only justifi- 
 cation that he offers for raisins; this tribute to an extravagant 
 
 o o 
 
 height is because he was not the lineal heir. " I thought I 
 might bring some of the superabundancies of that province 
 into the exchequer." In one case he is stated to be the 
 heir, in the other the exorbitance of the tribute is grounded 
 on his not being the heir. How to reconcile lhat I know 
 not : but this I know, that, whether he was heir or not, 
 Mr. Hastings had no right or authority to oppress and ruin that 
 unhappy country. If he was the heir, he had a right upon 
 the expulsion of Cheyt Sing to have succeeded him : for he 
 and his country never had been in rebellion. If he had no 
 right to the rajaship, the inhabitants of that country had a 
 right to live under their ancient establishment. They were 
 not to be oppressed because Mr. Hastings had received 
 personal offence from Cheyt Sing, or because Cheyt Sing 
 had rebelled. Your Lordships have now in evidence before 
 you that this arbitrary tribute was raised to 400.000/., a 
 sum far exceeding [the resources of the country], as your 
 Lordships heard from the witness yesterday : and your 
 Lordships must have remarked how unwillingly that came 
 from him. Your Lordships will not be astonished at that 
 when I have read to your Lordships to-day that he was 
 appointed Assistant Resident upon the removal of the just 
 of the honest Mr. Fowke. Upon the removal of 
 Mr. Fowke, Mr. Benn wns appointed Assistant Resident. He 
 might have been of the party to be at Benares ; whether he
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 357 
 
 was or not I don't know; but he was appointed in conse- 11 APE. i:s?. 
 quencc of that removal, and upon that removal only. He 
 told your Lordships the country cannot pay 400,0007. con- 
 sistently with any allowance to the Raja. Plow was that 
 matter settled by Mr. Hastings? We are to take 400,0007., 
 the Raja is to have 60,0007. a year. I am to take a tribute 
 from that country which will leave the Raja starving. I 
 nominally give him 60,0007. I know the country will not 
 produce it. He has it not. The descendant of Bui want 
 Sing, who was of signal service to you, must be reduced to 
 beggary, want and ruin, under a nominal income of 60,0007., 
 owing to Mr. Hastings having raised the tribute too high 
 for the purpose of obtaining 400.0007. to the Company. 
 And under what circumstances and in what situation did he 
 do it? Your Lordships know that, in 1775, the mint was 
 given to Cheyt Sing; it was given to him because the want 
 of it had been a great grievance to his predecessor. The 
 mint is taken from Mehipnarain for no other purpose than to 
 put the money into the pocket of the Resident, Mr. Markham. 
 The profits of the mint will be seen in the deductions 
 claimed by Durgbejey Sing: he is allowed 16,000 rupees 
 a year as a compensation for the mint. Your Lordships 
 have it in evidence over and over again that the profits of 
 the mint Avere taken from the Raja, the Prince of the 
 country, for a job to an English Resident. 
 
 The country was to pay 400,0007. a year to the India Monopolies 
 ^ it. 1 ' o -it. i rewired to 
 
 Company under what circumstances : with a monopoly tne Resi- 
 
 to the Resident of opium, a monopoly to the Resident of ellt ' 
 saltpetre, the most lucrative commodities in which there is 
 any trade in that country : all the profits of these commo- 
 dities are to go into the pocket of the Resident. It was a 
 long time before Mr. Benn would confess that the trade in 
 opium was a monopoly : ajt last he did say it was one in the 
 only sense in which a monopoly could be, namely, that no- 
 body could buy or sell but the Resident. If that be not a 
 monopoly I do not know what is. The trade in saltpetre is 
 exactly in the same situation. Mr. Benn stated the profit 
 upon opium to be about 4,000 or 5,000 rupees a year. 
 So that this poor unfortunate Raja, under a semblance of a 
 revenue of 60,0007., which it is in evidence to your Lord- 
 ships he never received and he never could receive, is 
 stripped and robbed, for no other purpose than to put profit 
 and emolument into the pocket of an English resident. He 
 is to have the profits of the mint, he is to have the profits of
 
 358 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 11 APE. 1788. opium, he is to have the profits of saltpetre, and the revenue of 
 this unfortunate country is to be raised upon that unfor- 
 tunate people, their commerce cramped, their hands tied up, 
 and the most lucrative branches of their trade put into the 
 hands of private individuals. So stands the state of this 
 settlement. 
 
 Expulsion Now, let me call your Lordships' attention to the extra- 
 Sing^ 8 ' ejey vagant and violent expulsion of Durgbejey Sing. It is in 
 evidence that the first eleven payments, that is, the first 
 eleven months of the year, had been regularly, fairly and at 
 stated and proper times, paid to the Resident, and of the 
 twelfth month two lacs of rupees were paid, three lacs more 
 were paid in the month of April. 
 
 Let me call your Lordships' attention to Mr. Hastings' 
 own sentiments when he settled that tribute. He says, 
 
 "Although I am convinced that, with proper encouragement, the 
 zemindary might yield an amount considerably exceeding that which I 
 have taken as an estimate of its value, yet I must express my appre- 
 hension that, unless the Naib can find means to avail himself of better 
 official assistance than he at present possesses, his real profits will fall 
 below the allowed amount. But, on this account, I have encouraged 
 him to hope that, if he shall prove himself diligent in his office and 
 punctual in the discharge of his kist to the Company, he may hereafter 
 obtain from the indulgence of the Board some remission from the 
 stipulated jummah, whenever the actual demands of the Company shall 
 be lessened and the state of their treasury will admit of it. And this I 
 shall recommend as an act of generosity becoming their former relation 
 to this province, and equally warranted by the principles of good policy. 
 For there are certain lines beyond which the exaction of a public revenue 
 will not only defeat its own purpose, but operate as effectually to a reduc- 
 tion as an intentional act of bounty could do." 
 
 In the very moment that Mr. Hastings is making this 
 settlement, at the time that he is stating it to be 40 lacs of 
 rupees, he tells you, 
 
 " I know it is too high : prepare yourself against a proposal that I 
 shall make to reduce it. I state this to you now that any future propo- 
 sition may not appear to arise wholly from the instant occasion of it. I 
 state that to you that you may not be surprised and think I am doing 
 anything wrong, if, some time after, I come with a proposition to lower 
 the tribute." 
 
 With such an idea in his mind at making the settlement, 
 what does he do ? Eleven months are paid with the utmost 
 regularity ; part of the twelfth month is in arrear. That 
 unfortunate man the Raja, as appears from the letters of 
 Mr. Markham, had been confined by illness for two months ; 
 a part of his tribute was in arrear. The tribute is ficknow-
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 359 
 
 ledged by Mr. Hastings to be too high: it is confessed, at 11 APR. i7s. 
 
 the very time of making the settlement, to be far. too high. 
 
 The Raja is expelled, and thrown into prison, and his whole 
 
 estate sequestered for the purpose of the payment of this sum. 
 
 My Lords, this unfortunate man was kept in prison till he 
 
 died, and, at the same time that he was kept in prison, his 
 
 whole jagir of 60,0007. a year was sequestered for the use of 
 
 the Company, that is to say, for the purpose of the payment 
 
 of a debt of 12,0007. or 14,0007., which is the whole amount 
 
 of the kists due that year unpaid. An estate of the value of 
 
 60,0007. a year is taken from him and kept in the hands 
 
 of the Company for four or five years, and he kept in prison 
 
 too. Was there ever such injustice? Can your Lordships 
 
 sanction it, and not see that the moment a man begins to 
 
 deviate from the path of right there is no point at which 
 
 he will stop ; but he will go on altering, shifting, changing 
 
 the circumstances of the country, just as suits his own private 
 
 occasion. 
 
 It is further stated in the Article that Mr. Hastings after- 
 wards, without any authority from the Council, put another 
 person, Jagger Deo Sing, in that situation by the authority of 
 Mr. Markham. Mr. Hastings says he was too far from the 
 Council to consult them ; though he was at Nia Sirai a 
 place about twenty miles up the country from the Ganges. It 
 was too far for him to consult his Council at twenty miles 
 distance ; but it was not too far for him to send an order 
 200 miles for expelling Durgbejey Sing and appointing in 
 his stead another Naib. This person did not continue long 
 in his favour ; for, about a year after, this identical person 
 is expelled from his dominions and his territories, because 
 he was afraid of Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings made it a 
 point to collect the whole tribute : the country could not 
 pay it : he was expelled for collecting it. The other did 
 not collect the whole tribute, and he was expelled for not 
 collecting it. Having done this, Mr. Hastings gives an 
 account of the miserable state to which he had brought that 
 country. 
 
 In this letter, where he advises again to turn off Jagger 
 Deo Sing, and to appoint another person, he says : 
 
 " I am sorry, that from Buxar to the opposite boundary I have seen Expulsion 
 nothing but the traces of complete devastation in every village, whether j^^ 1 
 caused by the followers of the troops which have lately passed for their sing. 
 natural relief, and I do not know whether my own may not have had State of the 
 their share, or from the apprehensions of the inhabitants themselves, pr 
 and of themselves deserting their houses ; I acquit my own countrymen 
 of this."
 
 360 Summing of Evidence on the First Charge Benares : 
 
 .ti APE.I 788. Because, forsooth, at one place the inhabitants had fled and 
 bays Mr. Hastings, no wonder, for the amil had fled too 
 I acquit my own countrymen of this ; for no better reason 
 than that because the terror of British troops coming into 
 that country is so great, the devastations they have com- 
 mitted have been so enormous!. And your Lordships have 
 an account of those devastations in the report of Mr. Benn, 
 where it appears that they robbed the farmer of his grain, 
 and paid him in many cases not a fifth of the price that 
 ought to have been paid him : in some cases it was a hun- 
 dred per cent., in other cases 120, below the market price. 
 These devastations committed by the British troops had 
 excited such an alarm in the whole country that, in truth, 
 not only the inhabitants of the village, but the very persons 
 in execution of power and government fled too. 
 
 And Mr. Hastings set up this, by a strange mode of 
 reasoning too, as a justification of the conduct of the poorer 
 inhabitants that not only the poorer fled but the higher 
 men too ; and because they fled, says Mr. Hastings, I acquit 
 my own countrymen : because the terror was so great that 
 even the magistrates themselves durst not abide in their 
 situations, therefore I acquit my own countrymen ; because 
 the magistrates ought to have stayed and protected them. 
 They knew the fact, they could not protect them. They 
 had felt the robbery, devastation and plunder, committed by 
 these sepoys in the different marches they had made in the 
 country, and no wonder there was devastation in every 
 village. 
 
 Upon the faith of this ocular demonstration of Mr. Hast- 
 ings, he soon expels Jagger Deo Sing from his situation and 
 sets up another person. No\v, it has been stated in the 
 evidence by Mr. Benn and what sort of evidence Mr. Benn 
 gives, your Lordships know that the country was in a 
 flourishing state in the years 1783 and 1784, when this 
 happened. I care not whether your Lordships take the 
 account of Mr. Benn or Mr. Hastings. If it was in a 
 flourishing state, for what good purpose could Mr. Hastings 
 describe it as he has done in this letter? for what good 
 purpose could he tell you that there was devastation from 
 end to end of the country ; that it was ruined and in danger 
 of a rapid decline ; that everything was going into confusion 
 as fast as it could from the oppression and poverty that 
 attended it, and the famine likely to come upon it ? If it 
 was rt the flourishing situation described by Mr. Benn, for
 
 Speech of Mr. Anstruther. 361 
 
 what purpose could Mr. Hastings write this letter, unless it 
 was to serve some private purpose, falsely to accuse Jagger 
 Deo Sing, and set up some other person of his own ? If 
 your Lordships take Mr. Hastings' account, you see the 
 destruction, the confusion and devastation, he has brought 
 upon this unhappy country. 
 
 My Lords, I have now finished what I have to offer to Conclusion, 
 your Lordships. I am afraid I have taken too much time 
 about it ; but the subject is great and important ; great 
 minuteness and detail was necessary. Having finished it, I 
 am sure your Lordships will be satisfied, comparing the 
 evidence you have heard, that the Commons have not 
 brought before your Lordships a light or a frivolous charge. 
 They have not brought before you a charge which they 
 could not substantiate by evidence ; nor have they brought 
 before you a charge supported by evidence garbled and 
 mangled. Your Lordships have printed the whole of the 
 minutes which related to any of the subjects from which the 
 Commons read a word ; and your Lordships will see from 
 that the faithfulness, the justice, the attention, which the 
 Commons have paid to this business, in producing those 
 parts of the minutes, and those only, which would materially 
 affect the points in question. But, from the mode which 
 your Lordships have taken to print it, though it may be 
 more laborious to your Lordships to read, yet I am sure it 
 will leave this impression upon your Lordships' minds, that 
 the Commons have acted fairly, honestly and honourably, 
 in producing their evidence, and that they have brought a 
 weighty and consequential charge before your Lordships, 
 which loudly calls for the interposition of this High Court, 
 in punishing that person who has been guilty of what we 
 state to be an atrocious breach of British faith ; acting under 
 the authority of a British government, in the highest situa- 
 tion almost a British subject can be placed in, and most 
 unquestionably in that trust above all others which requires 
 the most attention, because the person has it most m his 
 power above all others to do evil.
 
 362 
 
 Observations on the Evidence Benares : 
 
 OBSERVATIONS OF THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND 
 BURKE, MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COM- 
 MONS, ON THE EVIDENCE ON THE FIRST CHARGE; 
 11 APRIL, 1788. 
 
 Observa- 
 tions on 
 Mr. Benn's 
 evidence. 
 
 Imprison- 
 ment of 
 Durgbejey 
 Sing. 
 
 MY LORDS, I do not know whether it will be necessary 
 (though I take it we are fully competent and right to do it) 
 to make any considerable observations upon the evidence 
 that has been lately delivered at your Lordships' bar. 
 
 The first thing that your Lordships will remark is the 
 character, situation and competence, of the evidence. The 
 person who gives the evidence against Durgbejey Sing was 
 one of the principal instruments employed in oppressing 
 him. 
 
 My Lords, you are to judge what degree of credit is to 
 be given to an oppressor, measuring the quantity and rate 
 of his oppression. Your Lordships are to judge and decide 
 whether the man who acts as an imprisoner a gaoler is 
 the proper person to tell how much a prisoner suffers. Your 
 Lordships know whether a person who is an instrument in 
 doing the wrong would not be, by the very nature of his 
 situation, disposed to alleviate the wrong of which he is the 
 instrument. With these reflections I readily commit it to 
 your Lordships to judge whether the long imprisonment of 
 Durgbejey Sing for a small balance, after a confiscation of a 
 great estate, is or is not a hardship. If it is not a hardship 
 in the opinion of Mr. Benn, I trust it will be considered to 
 be a grievous hardship in the opinion of your Lordships. 
 The person whom this unfortunate Durgbejey Sing repre- 
 sented, and whose father in law he was, had had his whole 
 allowance sequestered in the same manner ; when he was 
 obliged to go in debt to the banker of Benares, as we proved 
 to your Lordships yesterday in the petition of Mehipnarain, 
 transmitted" in a letter of Mr. Hastings of the 14th of March 
 1784. Your Lordships will then judge whether, with such 
 an estate sequestered, both from the actual person in the 
 administration of the power of the country and from his 
 father-in-law administering it, whether they, plunged addi- 
 tionally in debt to the banker, are or not to be considered 
 as suffering a grievous hardship for this small balance; 
 and whether your Lordships do not see more of oppression,
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 363 
 
 cruelty, tyranny, and of revenge in it, than any disposition 11 APE. 1788. 
 to secure that object 0*" which they missed at last. 
 
 Your Lordships will remark, not only upon the credit of His insoi- 
 the evidence, but on the defects of it. Not one word has vcncy - 
 been attempted to prove that this unfortunate man, who died 
 in the hands of persecutors and oppressors, had any worldly 
 estate to answer the demand. Your Lordships know there 
 is a total failure of proof There is not an attempt made 
 upon any part, nor have we by all our researches been able 
 to discover, that this unfortunate man who died in prison 
 did not die nay I trust we shall prove hereafter that he 
 died absolutely insolvent ; that they were pursuing an 
 insolvent man for a falling revenue, which they knew at the 
 time they imposed it was excessive. They took away from 
 him likewise the power to produce that revenue. From 
 these things your Lordships will judge whether ii was a 
 proper, coercive, judicious, mode to get a balance of revenue 
 which was recoverable, or whether it was not a cruel oppres- 
 sion of a man, upon whom first an exorbitant demand was 
 made, and who, upon failure of power in the country to 
 answer that demand, was a victim of that cruelty and 
 oppression that originally made the demand upon the 
 country. 
 
 The part I would recommend principally to your Lord- 
 ships' attention, is this miserable and unfortunate prince, 
 whose father-in-law was in this cruel manner imprisoned, 
 and who died persecuted to the last. Your Lordships will 
 hear what his son says, " Out of regard to the orders of the 
 Presence, and hoping the release of the Mahals, I paid the de- 
 mands of the sircar* through Gopaul Doss " that is, a great 
 banker at Benares. " Notwithstanding which my jaghire is 
 still in sequestration, and from the day of my exaltation to 
 the Raja I have not received a single dam of the established 
 allowance for support and fsebundy."| Here is the man 
 who is ostensibly put into the government, by Mr. Hast- 
 ings' order, and not his own desire consenting to be sure 
 to it, because he could not refuse his consent to any arrange- 
 ment this man is stripped of his allowance, to answer the 
 deficiencies of another, and that other imprisoned after this 
 person has plunged himself into debt to the usurers at 
 
 * The government. 
 
 f " Sibandi," charge for the expense of troops. 
 
 ^ "Petition of Raja Mehipnarain." Printed in the "Minutes of the Evi- 
 dence," p. 326.
 
 364 Observations on the Evidence Benares : 
 
 11APH.17SS. Benares to pay it, and had paid it, as he asserts, and which 
 
 is nowhere disproved. 
 Degradation My Lords, an attempt has been made to prove that an 
 
 by imprison- . P "i ^ i i 
 
 ment. imprisonment or a principal magistrate and a great ruler of 
 that country in such an outrageous manner does not lessen 
 his consequence, and is held to be no disgrace. To that we 
 shall answer in the words of a great Prince, once Sovereign 
 of that country, that is, Suja-ud-Dowla. Suja-ud-Dowla is 
 of opinion, upon a question of much less consequence and 
 concerning a much less people, that it is the greatest of all 
 possible disgraces. 
 
 " My friend, the case is that all the infantry in my service knew the 
 custom of the army, that if any one commits a fault he will be impri- 
 soned for it, and think nothing of being put under a guard. But there 
 are other Hindostanies and the Najib battalion, and others in my ser- 
 vice, who consider it as the highest disgrace to be put under a guard ; 
 and if any one attempts it they will defend themselves against it, and 
 rather lose their lives than submit to such a dishonour."* 
 
 My Lords, it is a disgrace and must be a dishonour to all 
 people. He says there are some battalions of infantry of a 
 lower kind of sepoys who consider it as no disgrace ; but 
 those who serve in the battalions of a somewhat higher order 
 there are other Hindustani, the natives of this country in 
 which Mr. Benn thinks it no disgrace to be imprisoned 
 who consider it as the highest disgrace to be put under a 
 guard, and if any one attempts it they will defend themselves 
 against it, and rather lose their lives than submit to such a 
 dishonour. 
 
 After this, will your Lordships believe that it was nothing 
 to imprison a person in the situation of Cheyt Sing ? that it 
 was nothing to imprison a person in the situation of Durg- 
 bejey Sing, Avho was the father of the reigning Raja of the 
 country, and intrusted with the actual administration of it ? 
 that it answered no purpose to imprison him ? I need not 
 press nor trouble your Lordships very much, because it is 
 plain that the man died in their hands. If they looked for 
 vengeance they had it: they oppressed and ruined him. 
 If they looked for revenue they missed it : they never 
 recovered it. The person died insolvent, and they knew all 
 along that he was so. This is sufficient to remark upon this 
 kind of posthumous evidence. 
 
 * Letter to the Governor General, dated 28th November, 1774. Printed in 
 the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 281.
 
 Speech of Mi: Burke. 365 
 
 Xow I shall only say one word as to the punishment of iiApR.1788. 
 the hooka, which is likened to a taking away a snuff-box. Duriiedgy 
 If there is a great revenue which it is necessary to exact by p^tion'of 
 means of severities, can any one present to your Lord- ! lis hooka 
 
 ,. -JT 1 j.u i m prison. 
 
 ships anything more ridiculous than coercing a person who 
 is debtor to the sovereign by depriving him of his snuff-box? 
 It is evident that this was a personal insult, to render con- 
 finement and degradation more bitter, and it could answer 
 no other purpose. If no more was intended, it was an 
 affront and outrage, but could never be a coercive process of 
 law to recover a great debt due to government. It suffi- 
 ciently shows in what manner they proceed. They first 
 imprison him; they deprive him of his rank, his conse- 
 quence sequester his fortune; they deprive him of his 
 liberty and his honour ; and then don't even allow him his 
 snuff-box to console him in his misfortunes. That circum- 
 stance is an aggravation ; it is a proof of the seventy they 
 treat him with, which they attempt to make light of it. If 
 it is light, why do it? It is an outrage to a man Avho has 
 nothing but his snuff-box left. You will let him have none 
 of those poor miserable consolations which comfort distress, 
 and make people forget their misfortunes in the small amuse- 
 ments by which our nature, when reduced to its lowest state 
 of degradation, takes comfort. But when you talk of the 
 hooka the snuff box to those who enjoy, as your Lord- 
 ships do, rank and dignity who enjoy, as your Lordships 
 do, large and plentiful fortunes when in those situations 
 you talk of the loss of a snuff-box, you talk of little ; but if 
 you talk of a peer of this kingdom, degraded from his rank, 
 stripped of his situation, imprisoned by his enemies without 
 hearing, called to account without the means of accounting, 
 under the general sequestration of all his fortune if you 
 were to tell of the insult of a gaoler who deprived the miser- 
 able man of his snuff-box when nothing else was left him ? 
 
 I remember that a poor miserable man, confined in the 
 Bastile in the manner in which Durgbejey Sing was in India, 
 had trained a spider to relieve him in the midst of his 
 anxiety, and he employed himself in the play of that spider. 
 He bore the torments and the miserable allowances of the 
 Bastile ; he bore the deprivation of his friends ; but when 
 they came and killed his spider the man fell into despair and 
 agony, and all he suffered was nothing in comparison of it. 
 To people in affluence, ease, power, authority and liberty, 
 these things are nothing : put to ruin, to disgrace and im-
 
 366 Observations on the Evidence Benares: 
 
 u APE. 1788- prisonment, the last miserable consolation is found out by 
 the researches of mankind. Deprived of everything great 
 and advantageous, the taking these from them degrades them 
 and fills up the cup of their misery ; and Mr. Benn has 
 proved they had nothing else left to coerce this poor man 
 with than by depriving him of an amusement in his solitude. 
 What these people consider light your Lordships will I trust 
 and believe consider as matter of great aggravation. 
 
 Question in My Lords, this is what I little expected, and therefore 
 
 ofCheyt ,. i i i I,TIIII 
 
 sing's caste, was little prepared, to observe upon; but 1 shall beg just 
 to observe upon another circumstance that is much insisted 
 upon that is, that Cheyt Sing was not a sacred person. 
 My Lords, with regard to who he was what his caste 
 was or what his character I declare I am not enabled or 
 instructed to prove. It comes upon us at a moment when 
 we are not prepared ; for Mr. Hastings in no part of his 
 Narrative in no part of his Defence before the House of 
 Commons throughout all his large and voluminous corre- 
 spondence upon this subject has said one word of the 
 situation and caste of Cheyt Sing. Whether, therefore, 
 he was of the sacred caste of the bramans, in whose hands 
 the whole government of the country was for many ages, 
 but whose religion has been of late trampled upon by the 
 prevalence of Mohammedan power or whether he was of 
 the rajepoot or noble caste, which is the warrior caste like- 
 wise I do not know. I have heard some people say it is 
 not in any part- of the charge some people have considered 
 that, because he reigned at Benares, he was a braman ; and 
 many great Rajas of the country are bramans. But 
 The insult whether of the rajepoot or braman caste I know not ; but 
 while aUifs an insult offered to a great prince, considered within his 
 prayers. dominions as a despotic prince, with power of life and death 
 bound as every caste of the Hindus is to great religious 
 observances in the moment of his distress, when he flew to 
 the last resource of misery, that is to God, in prayer, in his 
 chapel, which is the place in which he was found in an 
 open chapel called Shewallah Ghaut at the moment of his 
 devotions, when, abandoned apparently for a moment, dere- 
 licted by his people, persecuted by those who by treaty, by 
 every principle, tie and obligation, were bound to protect 
 him, he retired for a moment to his prayers, to go to that 
 last resource of misery, which indeed ought to be the 
 resource of mankind in all times, as well to praise in pro- 
 sperity as pray in misery, but is peculiarly sacred in times
 
 Speech of Mr. Burke. 367 
 
 of misery misery in itself is sacred; misery in prayer is n APB. ma. 
 doubly sacred, because it is there in a place of sanctity 
 and that this great and falling prince, in the very moment 
 of his prayer, when, oppressed by mankind, he is flying to 
 our common Judge and common Refuge that just at that 
 moment the vilest of mankind should be sent to insult him 
 to break upon him in those devotions, the fervour of which 
 in those people is known to all the world if he was not a 
 braman and a high priest, yet he was a prince ; a man in 
 misery ; a man in misery prostrate at the feet of our common 
 Father, to whom we all fly for refuge at that moment to 
 send the vilest of mankind, a servant dismissed from him- 
 self, to insult him in that prayer, was and did justify the 
 manly spirit of his subjects, who did to that wicked man 
 what you would wish every friend and faithful subject 
 would do if you saw your Prince insulted in this manner. 
 They did their duty ; they killed this man : and every man 
 would deserve the same fate who dared insult a dignified 
 person fallen into misfortune and at his devotion; and it 
 would make no difference whether the person be a bishop 
 or a peer. 
 
 I believe, if the Chancellor of England was insulted at 
 his devotions, and some person, not acquainted with his 
 situation but knowing his zeal for the church and other 
 circumstances consonant, took him for a bishop, that if he 
 was insulted in the same way at his devotions, with the same 
 mistake, and he was found to be the Lord High Chancellor 
 instead of a bishop, it would not have lessened the offence, 
 but made the natural and just impression upon your Lord- 
 ships' minds which I trust it will make upon the minds of 
 every person in the kingdom. 
 
 I beg pardon for saying a word : for any one that could 
 add, or think he could add, to the noble, manly, speech made 
 before you, in the best and noblest cause, would be a person 
 that would be guilty of the temerity of which I should 
 never be guilty anywhere much less in this awful 
 presence.
 
 368 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 SPEECH OF WILLIAM ADAM, ESQ., MANAGER FOR 
 THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN OPENING THE 
 SECOND CHARGE, RELATING TO THE BEGUMS 
 OF OUDE ; 15 APRIL, 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, I ana commanded by the Commons to lay 
 before your Lordships the second Article of Impeachment 
 against Warren Hastings. 
 
 My Lords, when I say I am commanded so to do, I speak 
 in a manner in the literal sense of the word. I am perfectly 
 conscious of my inability to discharge that duty ; and I 
 reflect that those who have commanded me to lay this Article 
 before your Lordships, heard the duty in their House dis- 
 charged upon this Article in such a manner as to terrify the 
 boldest and those who may have the most confidence in their 
 ability. It is, therefore, my Lords, a command which I have 
 to execute, not a situation which I have solicited ; and I 
 bring before your Lordships, I am afraid, little more than 
 zeal to recommend me zeal founded upon the clearest and 
 most decided conviction, after the most minute and laborious 
 inquiry, that those facts which I have to state to your Lord- 
 ships, and that matter which I am this day to lay before you, 
 contain a body of such high crimes and misdemeanors as 
 w r ell Avarranted the Commons to have preferred this Article 
 of charge at your Lordships' bar. 
 Difference Your Lordships will observe in perusing these Articles, 
 
 between the j .1 -^i J.T. c A i 
 
 crimes in- and in comparing them with those statements or crimes that 
 
 tKrtides take place in the other courts of criminal judicature in this 
 
 mentanrt 01 ' 1 " coun try, that there is a wide distinction between this species 
 
 thoso tried of crimes and those which are discussed there. 
 
 court*. In every civilised society all the relative duties between 
 
 man and man are clear and distinct; they are all perfectly 
 
 understood. Every one knows that he is not to infringe 
 
 his neighbour's property; every one knows he is not to 
 
 take his neighbour's life ; every one knows he is not to bear 
 
 fake witness against his neighbour; every one knows that 
 
 transgressing any of these rules is a breach of duty : there-
 
 Speec/i of Mr. Adam. 3G9 
 
 fore all preliminary matters in common crimes are unneces- 
 sary to be stated. 
 
 My Lords, it is not so in cases of high crimes and misde- 
 meanors. It is not so in such crimes and misdemeanors as 
 these. It cannot be so in any political question out of which 
 misdemeanors arise ; and if those political questions are 
 involved in history and long detail, it becomes absolutely 
 necessary that the judges Avho are to try the cause should 
 know, and that the parties who bring the cause before them 
 should state upon record, those rights and those duties which 
 are left out in the proceedings in common courts of judica- 
 ture. These [are the] circumstances that make this Article, Prolixity of 
 and all articles of high crimes and misdemeanors, of greater * ' 
 prolixity than the proceedings in common courts of law. 
 But although they are prolix they are therefore more bene- 
 ficial to the person against whom such charges are made. 
 They state, they detail the rights and duties, and they assert 
 te acts which are the violation of those duties and the 
 violation of those rights. My Lords, that is the form in 
 which the Article I have the honour to lay before your Lord- 
 ships appears. Your Lordships will find that it contains 
 every constituent part of a crime. That it contains allega- 
 tions of the rights, in the first place ; contains allegations of 
 the duties, in the second place : and contains allegations of 
 acts in the last place, which are the violations of those rights 
 and of those duties. 
 
 My Lords, I am perfectly sensible, from the investigation 
 which I have had an opportunity of giving this subject, that 
 I have little more to do in this business than to make the 
 matter clear. My Lords, perspicuity shall be my aim; be- 
 cause I am perfectly convinced that if I can only instruct your 
 Lordships' understandings I am certain of convincing your 
 judgments. With that view, I will do a thing which perhaps 
 has not been frequent in courts of common judicature, which 
 has not hitherto been practised here, which perhaps may be 
 a little tiresome to your Lordships, but will tend to perspi- 
 cuity. I will endeavour to state to your Lordships, before 
 I proceed to narrate the evidence which is to prove it, the 
 different parts of the Article which go to those three different 
 heads which I have stated the Article to contain. I will 
 even venture to ask your Lordships' indulgence to permit 
 me to state it thus minutely. Your Lordships are possessed 
 of the printed copy of the Articles. Your Lordships will 
 find, upon enumerating them, that this Article contains thirty 
 
 A A
 
 370 Opening oftlie Second Chary c Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APE. 1788. paragaphs. Twill proceed to state to your Lordships [the 
 substance of each paragraph], in such a manner that if your 
 Lordships have the inclination you may insert my statement 
 upon the margin of the different paragraphs of that printed 
 Article which form the different allegations necessary to be 
 proved and made good in this charge. 
 
 Contents of The first paragraph of the Article contains an allegation of 
 paragraphs the rank and condition of the Princesses of Oude ; for this 
 Artie!* Article charges Warren Hastings with various acts of cruelty, 
 oppression, tyranny, violence and breach of faith, towards 
 those persons who, when I come to state the evidence upon 
 that part of the charge, namely, upon the first paragraph] I 
 shall prove to your Lordships to be persons of high rank and 
 birth, of great property in consequence of that rank and 
 birth, and possessing a variety of rights, all of which show 
 that it was impossible for him. to act as he did without being 
 chargeable before your Lordships with those high crimes 
 and misdemeanors with which the Commons charge him. 
 
 The second paragraph contains allegations respecting the 
 property of the Princesses of Oude. 
 
 From the third to the seventh paragraph your Lordships 
 will find allegations respecting the guarantee of the Kast 
 India Company, through the medium of .the Governor Gene- 
 ral and Council, Warren Hastings being the Governor 
 General, of the rights and property of the Princesses of 
 Oude ; that is, the third to the seventh paragraph inclusive, 
 contain allegations respecting the guarantee to the younger 
 Princess, the wife of Suja-ud-Dowla and mother of Asoflf- 
 ud-Dowla a person who was left in possession of great 
 property by Suja-ud-Dowla at his death. 
 
 The eighth and ninth parapraphs contain Mr. Hastings' 
 opinions and transactions in confirmation of that solemn 
 guarantee. 
 
 The tenth paragraph contains the guarantee to the elder 
 Princess, the mother of Suja-ud-Dowla, the grandmother of 
 AsofF-ud-Dowla, and a person, as I shall have occasion to 
 state to your Lordships, of very high rank and quality in 
 Hindustan. 
 
 The eleventh paragraph and the twelfth relate to another 
 branch of the subject ; for with the tenth paragraph con- 
 cludes the rights of the Princesses of Oude not only their 
 rights, as absolutely possessed by them, but as guaranteed by 
 the India Company. Then there is a statement of the duties 
 of the Governor General, particularly the duties of Warren
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 371 
 
 Hastings. AVith regard to the duties of his office your is Am.i7. s 8. 
 Lordships will observe that they are stated in the preamble 
 to the Articles; and your Lordships will have in mind that 
 all the statement that is necessary respecting that is fully 
 before your Lordships, when I shall have occasion to allude 
 to his absolute duties, unconnected with any transactions of 
 his own, accumulating upon himself additional responsibility, 
 lie does, however, accumulate upon himself additional re- 
 sponsibility by various acts. Those acts are set forth in the 
 eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth, paragraphs of this Article. 
 There is another circumstance which adds to his responsi- 
 bility, and makes him, with regard to the country of Oude 
 more peculiarly responsible, set forth in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth pai'agraphs, namely, that the country of Oude was 
 dependent upon the government of England in India, and 
 more peculiarly upon the Governor General ; and that the 
 Governor General, Mr. Hastings, invested Mr. Middleton, 
 the Resident at Oude (whose situation I shall have occasion 
 hereafter to explain), with full power and authority to 
 transact the whole business of government in the country 
 of Oude. 
 
 Then there come two paragraphs of general conclusion. 
 The eighteenth paragraph proceeds upon another branch of 
 the Article the last part namely, the commencement of 
 these acts which were a violation of the rights of the 
 Princesses, and a breach of Mr. Hastings' duty. The eigh- 
 teenth paragraph accordingly contains allegations respecting 
 the resumption of the real estate, the landed property of the 
 Princesses, called their jagirs : and likewise, towards the 
 close of it, an allegation that the promise which he made at 
 the time the treaty was entered into to resume these jagirs, 
 namely, to give them the amount of these treasures in money 
 annually, was not performed. 
 
 The nineteenth paragraph is likewise a general conclusion 
 of criminality. 
 
 The twentieth contains an allegation respecting the 
 guarantee of the personal property of these Princesses by the 
 India Company. That is likewise included in the paragraphs 
 I have antecedently stated, from the third to the seventh. 
 
 The twenty-first paragraph contains a determination to 
 seize the treasures or personal property of those ladies. 
 
 The twenty-second paragraph contains an aggravation of 
 that crime by a statement that the Wazir of the empire, 
 Asoff-ud-Dowla, the son and grandson of those ladies, was 
 
 A A 2
 
 372 Opening of the Second Charge Beg urns of Oude ; 
 
 is APE. 1788. instigated by Warren Hastings to be the unwilling instru- 
 ment of seizing the treasures and the real property of his 
 mother and grandmother. 
 
 The twenty-third paragraph contains an allegation of 
 the violent orders given by him to produce that effect. 
 
 The twenty-fourth paragraph contains allegations respect- 
 ing his approbation of the execution of those orders, and his 
 finding fault with a short delay. 
 
 The twenty-fifth paragraph contains allegations respecting 
 the cruelties that were the consequence of those orders. 
 
 The twenty-sixth paragraph is a general conclusion of 
 criminality. 
 
 The twenty-seventh paragraph contains allegations of 
 aggravation respecting this matter by the instruments 
 which Warren Hastings employed ; namely, Sir Elijah 
 Impey, the Chief Justice of India, sent out by the Parlia- 
 ment of England to distribute justice in that country, for the 
 protection of the natives of that country, as one, and Asoff- 
 ud-Dowla, the son and grandson of the ladies, as the other. 
 
 My Lords, the twenty-eighth paragraph contains further 
 matter of aggravation by an allegation that Mr. Hastings' 
 justification for those acts was false in fact and illegal in 
 conclusion, even if it were true in fact. 
 
 The twenty -ninth paragraph contains a further aggravation 
 of these crimes, by alleging that Warren Hastings stifled an 
 inquiry directed by the court of Directors here at home and 
 proposed by Mr. Stables, one of the Supreme Council abroad, 
 into the circumstances of those transactions. 
 
 The last paragraph, the thirtieth, contains an allegation of 
 his having received a bribe, as a further aggravation, and as 
 a motive inducing all those matters which I shall have the 
 honour of stating to your Lordships. 
 
 My Lords, I flatter myself that, in this minute statement 
 of the Article, I have not consumed more of your Lordships' 
 time than was necessary for the clear understanding of the 
 subject. I have endeavoured by that means to make, as it 
 were, a sort of induction to the evidence, by which your 
 Lordships will be able to follow me throughout all I shall 
 be under the necessity of addressing to you. 
 
 Description Before I enter upon the first paragraph of the Article, it 
 
 country of w ^^ ^e necessary that I should make your Lordships ac- 
 
 Oude - quainted with the nature and peculiar circumstances, and the 
 
 situation of the country about which the Article treats, and 
 
 with respect to which the Commons accuse Warren Host.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 373 
 
 ings of having been guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, is APB.ITSS. 
 Your Lordships very well know that the country of Oude 
 lies a considerable way up the Ganges. It is of considerable 
 extent and very considerable wealth. It is 360 miles in 
 length and 180 miles in breadth ; by which it will appear 
 to your Lordships that it is very near as long as England, 
 and that it is as broad as England from the Isle of Angle- 
 sea to the mouth of the Humber. It is about 70 miles 
 longer than Ireland, and broader than Ireland throughout at 
 the broadest part. It is a country of very considerable 
 wealth ; insomuch that, for the year that is to succeed the 
 present year, that is for the year 1789, upon the testimony 
 and settlement of Mr. Hastings himself, he thinks that 
 this country, after all the ravage that has been committed 
 in it, after all the devastation that has existed in it, after all 
 the violence that has existed in it, after fortune has come into 
 this country after fortune, and traversed the oceans to find 
 its way hither from that desolate and depopulated country 
 he still states that country at the amount of three krors 
 of rupees annual revenue, being upwards of three millions 
 sterling. It is a country that did and does maintain a con- 
 siderable body of troops : and, to prove that this was a 
 country of very great strength and importance, and that 
 those who presided in that country, and those who are 
 connected with those that did preside in and rule that 
 country, must be persons of high rank, and quality and 
 consideration, your Lordships will find that, by a treaty of 
 1768 entered into between the East India Company and the 
 Nawab of Oude to reduce the army establishment, because 
 he was considered as a dangerous rival to the interests of 
 this country in India, the reduction of that establishment was 
 left at 35,000 men, rank and file. 
 
 It is a country in some parts of considerable manufacture, 
 and in other parts of very considerable cultivation in point 
 of agriculture ; especially two parts of it, which have been rp he Duab 
 added since the accession of Mr. Hastings to the government *^^ hil " 
 of India, at least one if not the other ; the one called the 
 Duab, which I believe was added to it before ; the other 
 Kohilcund, or the country of the Rohillas, which was added 
 to it by means of Mr. Hastings, as I shall be under the 
 necessity of stating to your Lordships shortly. 
 
 Before the accession of those two countries, I will state Revenue of 
 to your Lordships, from an authority which Mr. Hastings Oude 
 cannot dispute, because Mr. Hastings has solemnly acted
 
 374 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude: 
 
 5 Am. 1788. upon that authority, before the accession of this country, 
 the country about which I speak, namely, the original 
 country of Oude, was completely adequate and sufficient to 
 all its own establishment, and all that was necessary for the 
 connexion that England had with it. In a letter written 
 towards the end of 1775 or the beginning of 1776 by the 
 younger Princess of Oude to Mr. Hastings, she expressed 
 herself in this manner : 
 
 " In the Nawab's lifetime " that is, Suja-ud-Dovvla's lifetime " he was 
 possessed of no more than the single Soubah " without Rohilcund or 
 Duab "and the dues of the English chiefs were paid out of the revenues 
 of it, as also the expenses of their army and his own. At present, that 
 the Soubah is increased to three times its former extent, what becomes of 
 the revenue? No one thinks of making this inquiry; but sums are 
 constantly taken from us helpless women."* 
 
 Your Lordships will see in the sequel that Mr. Hastings 
 acted upon the authority of this letter ; and he cannot now 
 say that it does not throughout speak the truth. It may be 
 necessary to be still more minute, for the sake of perspicuity 
 in what is to follow, and to state that the capital of this 
 country is Lucknow, situated in the heart of the country 
 that the old capital was Fyzabad, situate ninety miles further 
 up, upon the western extremity of the country, and upon 
 the confines of two districts of that province which it may 
 be necessary to mention, the province of Baraitch and 
 Goruckpore. Fyzabad was the original residence of the 
 Prince, but that now is no longer his residence. But his 
 palaces and houses remain, and are inhabited by the 
 Princesses of Oude, the mother and grandmother of Asoft- 
 ud-Dowla. 
 
 provinces of Your Lordships likewise know that upon the southern 
 confines of this country is the province of Benares ; that the 
 province of Benares runs along almost all the southern 
 confine of it ; that Chunar is in the province of Benares', 
 about fifteen miles from Benares, and about three days 
 journey, according to some accounts, a little more according 
 to others, from Fyzabad or Lucknow. 
 
 "- l lavc 11OW finished all the statement that is necessary, 
 
 connexion as 1 think, to make your Lordships acquainted with the 
 
 withOude. , * JL 
 
 particular nature of the country, and will now state to your 
 
 * Letter of the Bow Begum, mother of the Nawab Asoff ud Dowla, to 
 Mr. I Fastings, received the 20th December, 1775; printed in the "Minutes of 
 the Evidence," &c., p. 445.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 375 
 
 Lordships the origin (and I shall do it shortly) of the is APK. ms. 
 English connexion with that country. Your Lordships 
 kno\v perfectly well that after the battle of Buxar, in which 
 Suja-ud-Do\vla was conquered by the British arms, he never 
 again rallied, but that at a subsequent period the treaty 
 of Allahabad established a connexion between Oude and 
 England. Your Lordships likewise know that, in the year 
 1773, Mr. Hastings, before the arrival or even before the 
 appointment of the Supreme Council, under the act of the 
 13th of His Majesty, made a journey to the upper provinces: 
 and I will state to your Lordships, from Mr. Hastings' own 
 
 words, the objects of that journey. The principal object of The Rohiiia 
 , T J c ,, ii T j A. enterprise. 
 
 it 1 know perfectly well I am prevented entering into 
 minutely as a matter of charge respecting the liohil- 
 las. The House of Commons in their wisdom thought it 
 right not to prefer that charge at your Lordships' bar. I 
 mean to make no comment unfavourable to the wisdom 
 that so directed them, the principles upon which that House 
 acted, and the principles of those who directed their conduct 
 if it can be supposed that their conduct was directed in 
 that matter. They have brought to your Lordships' bar a 
 matter of charge so grave and material, that the thanks of 
 the country the thanks of India the thanks of posterity 
 the thanks of all the humanised world will I am sure be 
 due to them for those virtuous inclinations and opinions 
 that led them to prefer a charge at your Lordships' bar, 
 which will redeem India from the injuries that it has suf- 
 fered, when it receives the sentence which I know your 
 Lordships must pronounce upon it. But I mention the 
 Rohilla question merely to show the origin of the connexion 
 of this country and Oude. Mr. Hastings says, in a minute 
 of the 25th of October, 1774:- 
 
 " This enterprise, the design of which furnished the first occasion of my 
 meeting with the Vizier " that enterprise is the Rohilla enterprise " was 
 an article of the original draught of our treaty, but it was omitted at his 
 desire ; and I promised that it should still take place, if it suited the 
 affairs of the Company, at any other time when he should find himself in 
 a condition to resume it. Accordingly, in the month of January, 1774, 
 the Vizier made a formal requisition of the assistance of a brigade of the 
 Company's forces, for the defence of his dominions and for the prosecuting 
 his former purpose of invading the country of the Rohillas. For this 
 purpose, he engaged to pay the Company, besides the stipulated subsidy, 
 forty lacs of rupees (four hundred thousand pounds sterling) when it 
 should be concluded."* 
 
 * See the Minute, printed entire in the Appendix to the " Minutes of the 
 \^,\An.T> nn " ~K~ "Y WTir 
 
 Evidence," No. XXVIU.
 
 376 Opening of the Second Charyc Begums of Ou.de: 
 
 15APB.1788. Your Lordships see what the advantages to accrue from 
 this expedition were : first, an acquisition of territory to the 
 Nawab ; secondly, the employment of a considerable part 
 of the Company's forces ; and lastly, the stipulation of 
 400,000/. to be paid to the Company on the conclusion of 
 the undertaking. In a letter from Suja-ud-Dowla, of the 
 28th September, 1774, addressed to Mr. Hastings,* it is 
 said " Consider, my friend, that it was my absolute deter- 
 mination to extirpate the Rohillas, and that I requested 
 the assistance of the English troops for the purpose." In 
 Mr. Hastings' answer to the Honse of Commons, after he 
 had had fourteen years to deliberate upon the subject, which 
 answer was put in upon his own petition, deliberately 
 and gravely considered, Mr. Hastings says, " It was the 
 proposed intention of the Nawab Suja-ud-Dowla, and of 
 course mine as connected with him, to exterminate the 
 Kohillas ; that is, to expel or remove them from the country 
 they occupied, without allowing the smallest vestige of their 
 power to remain in it/'f 1 leave these facts without 
 comment upon your Lordships' memory, sensible that they 
 will impress your minds as they must do the mind of every 
 feeling man, or every person capable of drawing a conclusion 
 from sentiments such as your Lordships have heard, in the 
 very short extract which I have had the honour to read to 
 you. 
 
 Debt arising The consequence of this was, that the great object of 
 . Mr. Hastings, namely, the 400,000. for exterminating the 
 Kohillas, never has been paid that at this moment part of it 
 remains due. But this was not all ; it was the beginning of 
 rivetting our connexion with [the province of Oude], and 
 of continuing a military establishment in that country to a 
 very considerable amount (as your Lordships will hear by 
 the evidence) which military establishment the Nawab was 
 bound to pay ; which military establishment he never did 
 pay, but run in debt for ; the expense of which military 
 establishment was defrayed in chief by the India Company ; 
 and by that means that debt, which existed at the end of 
 the Rohilla Avar, kept increasing. All the embarrassments 
 arising from that arrangement produced a closer connexion 
 between England and Oude, so as to introduce all that spe- 
 
 * The entire letter is printed in the Appendix to the Report of the Com 
 mittee of the House of Commons on the Itohilla War, No. XXVI. 
 
 f See " The Minutes of what was offered by Warren Hastings, Esq., at the 
 Bar of the House of Commons," &c. Printed for Debrett, 1 788 ; p. 23.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 377 
 
 cics of interference which your Lordships will find detailed 15 Apli - 178 - 
 in the subsequent part of what I have to address to you. 
 
 My Lords, among other things, it produced the appoint- Appoint- 
 ment of a Resident not in the degree of an ambassador to Resident in 
 reside at the Court of Oude, to observe the motions of the Ol 
 Court of Oude, on the part of Great Britain, but a person 
 Avith an establishment of a civil nature, interfering with 
 every act of government, so as to render it impossible to say 
 whether the Kesident of the East India Company of England, 
 or the Prince of the country himself, was the person most 
 to be obeyed, or the person who most commanded the 
 government of the country. This seems to me to be all 
 that is necessary to address to your Lordships upon the 
 subject of the origin of our connexion with Oude. 
 
 I now come to the first clause of the Article, namely, the ist Clause 
 allegation respecting the rank and character of the Prin- Article 
 cesses. Your Lordships will find, by looking into the history dfaracTefof 
 of India, that the eldest Princess was the daughter of Saadat thcPrin- 
 
 . ,. , . , . e . T ,. , cesses. 
 
 All, a person or great rank and consideration in India, and Thc eldcst 
 who vied at one time with the famous Wazir of the empire, ^"i^of 
 the Nizam of the Carnatic a person who had well nigh at Snja-ud- 
 onc time overturned the power and authority of that great 
 Wazir, and a person who, finding he was not able to over- 
 turn his power, had accepted a situation almost equally the 
 same Captain of all India. This lady was his daughter. 
 And Saadat Ali was one of the most extraordinary characters 
 India ever produced. He bestowed his only daughter upon 
 a person of the name of Suffdar Jung, a person whom some 
 historians of India relate to have been of very low origin, 
 and whom others represent otherwise ; but be it as it may, 
 she is a Avoman of great consequence. Suffdar Jung was 
 allied to her ; and Suffdar Jung, by the will of Saadat Ali, 
 succeeded to the government of Oude. Suffdar Jung was a 
 person of great consideration, and before the King of Delhi, 
 or the Great Mogul, became a mere cypher in the govern- 
 ment of India, he obtained the place of Wazir or Minister 
 of India ; which was handed down from him to Asoff-ud- Theyounger 
 Dowla, the present Nawab of Oude. The younger Princess widow of 
 is the widow of Suja-ud-Dowla, a person of great rank and D"^^" 
 character in India a person who your Lordships know 
 vied in the field with England, and a person who afterwards 
 became the close and firm ally of this country. This is not 
 all that is necessary for your Lordships' consideration with 
 regard to the situation of these ladies : 1 have another circum-
 
 378 Openiny of the Second Charge Beyutns of Oude : 
 
 15 A Pit. 1788. stance to add, which I am sure, in any country, but particu- 
 larly in this country, and when applied to Indian ladies, 
 will strike deep in your Lordships' minds, as making this 
 charge a fit subject of consideration for your Lordships. My 
 Lords, I mean the sex of the persons about whom this charge 
 treats. Throughout the world all mankind are agreed in 
 
 RI 'liar. i mvinii peculiar protection to that sex. But in India it is 
 
 shown to . i i i i -111 
 
 women in almost peculiarly necessary that peculiar protection should 
 be given to them. The Jaws of that country therefore liave 
 made many wise and useful regulations which put them in 
 a situation of peculiar respect, because they are peculiarly 
 defenceless. 
 
 My Lords, that is to be found in every history of India ; 
 but I wish to go to that history which the person at your 
 bar cannot contradict. My Lords, in the course of the dis- 
 cussions of the Supreme Council at Calcutta with respect to 
 the distribution of justice in India, a letter is sent home 
 to the Secretary of State here, signed by Mr. Hastings, 
 Mr. Francis and Mr. Wheler, of which this is a paragraph : 
 
 " To those who are acquainted with this country and the character of 
 its natives, it is well known that, among the stubborn and immutable 
 usages of a people who by an unheard of policy are thus attempted to be 
 dragged within the pale of our laws, there are not any who are so imme- 
 diately blended with their natures, so interwoven with their very exist- 
 ence, and a force upon which were therefore so likely to drive them to 
 desperation, as those which regard their women ; a reason for which \ve 
 presume, you will think with us that policy and humanity should in all 
 situations respect them."* 
 
 My Lords, I have likewise the authority of the person who 
 was sent out Chief Justice to India upon this head, who 
 writes upon the 25th March, 1775 : 
 
 "A woman, Hindu or Moor, if not of the outcast of the people, can 
 by no treatment be provoked to apply to a court of justice if she must 
 make her personal appearance. There is no process she would not stand 
 out rather than appear as a witness. An accusation against her, if she is 
 brought forth to make answer, is equal to a capital offence. The indig- 
 nity in either case is so great, and her feelings of it so strong, she woidd 
 after such an exposure consider it a disgrace to live." 
 
 Your Lordships find, therefore, from these two authorities, 
 as well as from the uniform and uncontradicted history of 
 India, that the appearance of women in public is considered 
 as a disgrace ; and, when your Lordships consider the peculiar 
 
 * The letter is dated 25th January, 1780, and the extract is printed in the 
 ' Minutes of the Evidence," p. 420.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 379 
 
 institution of that country with regard to marriage, I am is APR. ms 
 sure your Lordships will agree that it is a wise and a salutary 
 institution in that part of the globe. Besides this, if your 
 Lordships will look into the kuran, particularly into the 
 fourth chapter, which is peculiarly appropriated and set 
 apart to this subject, your Lordships will find, at the same 
 time that there is a stream of beautiful and just morality 
 running through the whole of it, Avith the single exception of 
 the peculiarity with respect to the institution of marriage, 
 that all that is here stated by the two authorities I have 
 quoted to your Lordships is perfectly correct and just. 
 Then, my Lords, I have established the first part of this 
 charge, namely, that these women were of high rank, and 
 that women are held in a peculiarly sacred situation in that 
 part of the globe. 
 
 The next part to which I proceed is that which regards Property of 
 their property. And here, as there has been a great deal cesses!" 1 " 
 of dispute at different times as the person at your bar has 
 held very different language concerning it -as the situa- 
 tions in which he has been placed have led him to view the 
 circumstances of their rights differently at different times 
 it becomes essentially necessary that I should establish upon 
 the ground of argument those facts which will be in proof 
 to your Lordships, to show your Lordships that the persons 
 whom I have described were left in possession of a very 
 considerable property, real and personal., both jagirs and 
 treasures, by their deceased husbands. 
 
 Your Lordships will find, in the first place, with regard jagirs pos- 
 to the jagirs, that the Wazir expresses himself thus, in a ^cm? by 
 treaty which will be read to your Lordships, namely the 
 treaty of the 15th of October, 1775 " I also engage that I 
 will never molest my mother in the enjoyment of the jaghires, 
 gunges, ike., or the mints of Oude, Fyzabad, &c., conferred 
 on her by the late blessed Nabob ; but will leave her in the 
 full possession of them during her lifetime." Your Lord- 
 ships observe then, by the declaration of the person most 
 interested, namely the declaration of Asoff-ud-Dowla him- 
 self, that he gives it under his hand, in a treaty entered 
 into under all the forms and solemnities of the Mohammedan 
 religion, as his firm opinion that these jagirs were granted 
 to his mother by Suja-ud-Dowla; and he engages that he 
 will never molest her in the enjoyment of them. 
 
 In a letter of the 3d of April, 1778, which I shall have 
 occasion to allude to afterwards, your Lordships will find 
 that Mr. Hastings was of the same opinion. I will not
 
 380 Opening of the Second Charge Beyums of Oude: 
 
 of Snja-iul- 
 Dowla 
 
 13 APE. 1788. trouble your Lordships with citing the passages at present, 
 but with the date only. The authority of Mr. Hastings 
 and of Asoff-ud-Dowla I consider as complete and positive 
 evidence to show that the jagirs were granted to her 
 I speak of the youngest Princess by her deceased husband, 
 Suja-ud-Dowla, and that she was clearly and legally in 
 possession of them. 
 
 Treasures With regard to the treasures, as there has been more dis- 
 
 beloniring to ' , , -, . 
 
 the widow pute about them so there is a greater degree ot intricacy 
 concerning them ; but I flatter myself I shall be able to 
 establish most clearly to your Lordships, in argument 
 which argument will be supported and enforced by the 
 evidence that Avill be called that those treasures of right 
 belonged to this Princess likewise. First of all, she was in 
 possession of them ; and the mere circumstance of her being 
 in possession of them is at least presumptive evidence that 
 the property belongs to her. In the next place, that there 
 is nothing in the laws of the kuran, nor in the laws of that 
 country, that make it impossible or improper for Suja-ud- 
 Dowla to grant such treasures to his wife upon his death- 
 bed, or otherwise, by leaving her in possession of them. 
 
 In the next place, she was in possession of them by their 
 being in the zamina. And here it is necessary to state that 
 the zanana is the apartment particularly allotted to the 
 women, where no person can go but their own nearest rela- 
 tions ; where they never see the face of man, but when 
 they see their husband, their son, or their brother. Here 
 therefore it is impossible for any man to enter. Force could 
 not go to deprive them of these treasures, and their being 
 deposited there was equivalent completely to their having 
 been granted to her by will or devise. 
 
 My Lords, the next stage of proof I have to state is the 
 opinion of Mr. Bristow, who was Resident at the Court of 
 Otide in the year 1775, and who had occasion, as your 
 Lordships will hear in the sequel, to inquire very minutely 
 into this matter. Mr. Hastings entered into a negotiation, 
 on the part of the Nawab, with the Princess his mother, 
 for the purpose of obtaining from her part of those trea- 
 sures; therefore, when Mr. Bristow's letters are read, your 
 Lordships will always carry this in your mind that a 
 great part of these letters are the representations of a 
 negotiator, upon one part, to the person with whom he is 
 negotiating [on the other part]* in order to obtain his end. 
 
 rived from 
 their being 
 in the 
 zannim. 
 
 Opinion of 
 
 Ufill 
 Ur. 
 
 to the 
 treasures. 
 
 * Supplied by Mr. Adam.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 38 1 
 
 Your Lordships will find therefore that, when Mr. Bristow is APR.ITSS. 
 relates what he said to the Princess mother, on the part 
 of the Nawab of Oude, he states it in a manner ad- 
 verse to her interests and her rights, and that he repre- 
 sents that statement to his employers, the Council at Calcutta. 
 But when you strip Mr. Bristow's evidence of that circum- 
 stance when you divest him of the character of a negotiator, 
 and take him in the situation of Resident at the court of 
 Oude your Lordships will find that Mr. Bristow's evidence 
 is clear and positive, and that throughout there are expres- 
 sions, the strongest that can be imagined, in order to prove to 
 your Lordships that Mr. Bristow thought these treasures were 
 the actual possession and the actual property of the Princess 
 to whom, in this charge, they arc alleged to have belonged. 
 
 My Lords, as I. shall have occasion, in the course of what 
 I have to state, to allude to several written documents, I 
 will detain your Lordships as little as possible with the parts 
 I am to read, convinced that what I have stated with regard 
 to Mr. Bristow's evidence will be in your Lordship's recol- 
 lection ; and it will be pointed out by the gentlemen when 
 that evidence shall come to be detailed. I shall not detain 
 your Lordships with reading it, but leave it upon thie asser- 
 tion, that always throughout, except when Mr. Bristow 
 stands in the character of negotiator, he gives opinions 
 favourable to the rights of the ladies and unfavourable to the 
 rights of the Nawab. Mr. Middleton, who was Resident at Mr. Middie- 
 Oude, and who had negotiations with these ladies in 1778, dence? Vl " 
 never states a circumstance, till after the transactions in 
 which he was the principal agent of Mr. Hastings in violating 
 the rights of these Princesses, he never states anything in 
 the year 1778, or previous to the year 1781, as far as I 
 have been able to find, adverse to the abstract rights of 
 these Princesses. My Lords, then I have established thus 
 far ; I have shown your Lordships that they were in pos- 
 session that there was nothing in the law of their country 
 against it that the treasure was in the zanana that 
 Mr. Bristow and Mr. Middleton, whose duty it was to inves- 
 tigate the matter upon the spot, except when they stood in 
 the character in which I have placed them, individually 
 and reciprocally, were clearly of opinion that the property 
 belonged to the Princesses of Oude. 
 
 My Lords, the next witness I shall call in support of Opinions of 
 . -r T , . . , <-, ! the Supreme 
 
 this matter to your Lordships is the Supreme Council at council in 
 
 Calcutta, who, in consequence of the negotiation in 1775 '"" 
 
 treasures.
 
 382 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude ; 
 
 1.1788. and 1776, had occasion to investigate this matter upon the 
 representation of Mr. Bristow. Your Lordships will find in 
 the minutes of the Council and in the consultations of that 
 time considerable difference of opinion upon some points ; 
 but you will find that all the Council agree that whatever 
 is in the zanana belongs to the ladies. This treasure then 
 will appear to your Lordships to be in the zanana, and, being 
 in the zanana, you have the opinion of the Council that it 
 belongs to the ladies. But this is not all. In the course of 
 the transactions between Mr. Bristow and the younger 
 !1 ' Princess of Oude, your Lordships will find that a sum of 
 questions of money was to be paid by the Princesses to the Nawab, in 
 
 dispute re- .-i J , 
 
 spooling consideration that we were to guarantee to her all the rest. 
 This sum of money was to be paid in this way she had 
 already advanced to the Nawab twenty-six lacs or 260,0007.; 
 she was to advance thirty lacs more, in all 560,()00/. The 
 thirty lacs which she was to advance she was to pay in this 
 manner nineteen lacs in money and the rest in movables, 
 in jewels and property. A question arose about the property 
 of those movables : the Wazir said they belonged to him ; 
 the Princess insisted that they belonged to her. The question 
 was with regard to the balance of about two lacs and a half 
 of the property. Whether those two lacs and a half belonged 
 to the Wazir, or whether they belonged to the Princess? 
 This matter was investigated by Mr. Bristow upon the spot ; 
 [the result of his investigation] transmitted to the Board at 
 Calcutta, and discussed : and the Board at Calcutta deter- 
 mined respecting these two lacs. It is not in my memory 
 at present in which way they determined that matter; but 
 it makes no difference to the argument I mean to use, because 
 if they determined it in favour of the Wazir, then all above 
 that belonged to the Princess ; if they did not determine it in 
 favour of the Wazir, then, a fortiori, all that the Princess 
 retained besides belonged to her. 
 
 There was another question with respect to this property. 
 The Wazir said he was intitled to nine lacs, the Princess 
 said he was intitled to three lacs only. That dispute which 
 subsisted for some time was likewise referred to the Council 
 at Calcutta : and, upon all the evidence stated on one side 
 and the other by Mr. Bristow in his letter, the Council deter- 
 mined that the Wazir should take five lacs ; which the 
 Princess was willing to give him, and which he took. Then, 
 upon the payment of the thirty lacs in this way and upon a 
 release for the twenty-six lacs, your Lordships will find no
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 383 
 
 further demand was to be made upon the Princess : and in is Am.1788. 
 consequence of that the Board, having considered all these 
 matters, write in their letter from Bengal on the 12th of 
 September, 1776, thus: 
 
 "The Nabob has at length agreed to sign a full acquittal for the 
 thirty lacs of rupees which his mother had engaged to advance him, on 
 her promising to pay him in ready money five lacs instead of nine which 
 lie claimed as the balance due on that account. He has assigned these 
 five lacs to the Company in part payment of his debts." 
 
 Your Lordships find then that they had agreed to the 
 acceptance of those five lacs. I therefore contend that they 
 were of opinion that all above the five lacs belonged to the 
 Princess ; but it is perfectly clear that all above the nine 
 lacs belonged to the Princess. 
 
 The next witness I call to your Lordships upon this part 
 of the subject is Mr. Hastings himself. And I confess I feel 
 so much impressed with the importance of this part I am 
 now going to state, towards finding the criminality of all 
 that followed, that it is impossible for me not to introduce 
 it to your Lordships in the solemn manner in which it 
 originated. 
 
 My Lords, the dispute which I have stated made the Letter of 
 Princess of Oude extremely uneasy. She wrote a letter to appealing^ 
 Mr. Hastings individually and not to the Council : she sent ttoVofMr" 
 it by one of her most confidential servants to Calcutta. Hastings. 
 In that letter she expressed all her feelings, all her thoughts 
 and all her arguments, upon the subject ; and when your 
 Lordships come to hear the letter from beginning to end 
 I will venture to affirm that it would not disgrace the spirit 
 of Elizabeth nor the talents of Cecil ; that it might have 
 done honour to the most elevated Princess in point of 
 character and talent that ever existed in the world ; and 
 that it might have done honour to the ablest adviser that 
 the ablest Princess ever had, at any period or in any country 
 on the globe. 
 
 Among other paragraphs in that letter your Lordships 
 will find this most remarkable sentence : " I went to the 
 Nabob when the hour of his death approached, and asked 
 him to whose charge he left me. He replied, ' Apply to 
 Mr. Hastings whenever you have occasion for assistance ; he 
 will befriend you when I am no more.' " I hope that 
 sentence will be engraven deep in the memories of your 
 Lordship?. I hope that through the medium of your Lord- 
 ships' memories it will find the way to your Lordships' hearts.
 
 384 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APE. 1788. 1 hope that that sentence will never be absent from your 
 minds during the whole investigation of this important 
 charge. I trust that you will call upon him to befriend that 
 Princess in the manner in which he befriended her then to 
 the last period of his government, or, if not, that you will 
 cnli him to a .strict and accurate account that you will call 
 upon him to lay such clear evidence of her guilt before you, 
 as it is impossible for the most stupid to doubt or the most 
 ignorant not to see. He was bound by every tie of friendship, 
 he was bound by every tie of gratitude, by every sentiment 
 that could make its way to the heart of man. He was bound 
 by more than that. Mr. Hastings had the Rohilla contract 
 green in his recollection. He remembered, as your Lord- 
 ships will find, that contract, the morning of which rose in 
 avarice, the noon of which shone forth in extermination, 
 and the evening of which went down red in blood. He 
 remembered the gratitude he owed Suja-ud-Dowla for 
 having been a participator with him in those acts of guilt. 
 He recollected that he was bound by every tie of guilt, 
 upon those principles which seemed to form stronger bands 
 upon his mind than those pure principles of humanity and 
 justice which dictate the conduct of other men ; and there- 
 fore your Lordships will see how he did befriend in that 
 period, 1775, this unfortunate Princess. lie communicated 
 this to the Council. He desired their opinion upon it, The 
 Council desired his opinion in the first instance He writes 
 to the following purport : 
 
 Mr Hast- " All my present wish is that the orders of the Board may be such as 
 
 ings in re- may obviate or remove the discredit which the English name may suffer 
 
 icivncc to |,y ti, e exercise, or even the public appearance, of oppression on a person 
 
 cem' letter, of the Begum's rank, character and sex." 
 
 He then states our right to interfere, the Nawab having 
 called for the assistance of our Government ; and then 
 he adds : 
 
 " I am therefore of opinion, and I recommend, that a letter be written 
 by the Board to Mr. Bristow commanding him to remonstrate to the 
 Nabob Vizier against the seizure of the goods as his own original pro- 
 perty, which he received from his mother in payment of the eleven lacs 
 stipulated to be so made ; to insist upon the Nabob's receiving them in 
 payment ; and that he either admit of the valuation which he has put 
 upon them, or that he allow them to be appraised by persons appointed 
 for that purpose by both parties ; and that Mr. Bristow be further 
 ordered to request and if necessary to insist in the name of this govern- 
 ment that the Nabob do grant permission to the Begum to repair to
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam, 3S.5 
 
 and reside within any part which she may choose of the Company's 16 APE. I7s. 
 territories."* 
 
 Your Lordships see then the extraordinary production of 
 an extraordinary soil. Your Lordships may be astonished 
 to think that sentiments so humane and virtuous senti- 
 ments so kind and protecting could spring from such a soil 
 as the Rohilla contract. It seems as if the order of nature 
 had been for a moment suspended. We know that ; 
 
 " Pard genders pard from tigers tigers spring ; 
 No dove is hatch'd beneath the vulture's wing." 
 
 That is not more beautiful in poetry than true in philo- 
 sophy. For a moment you find the laws of nature sus- 
 pended. But though suspended for a time, though nature 
 was driven from its course, your Lordships will find it 
 again return to its own channel, you will find the same 
 principle which dictated the conduct of the Rohilla war in 
 1773 again revive in such acts of atrocity as will make 
 your Lordships shudder. You will find it dictating the 
 destruction, ruin and pillaging, of these Princesses. My 
 Lords, I must pause in the course of my narrative before 
 I come to state how this man returned again to his ancient 
 course, and how nature was only expelled for a time to return 
 with greater force and violence to that course. 
 
 My Lords, I have now stated the opinion of Mr. Hastings 
 in addition to the other opinions which I gave to your Lord- 
 ships; but I have a further piece of evidence, perhaps 
 stronger than any of the rest, to lay before your Lordships, 
 I mean the opinion of AsofF-ud-Dowla himself, the person opinion of 
 interested. He says: "Having received these," viz., the 
 twenty-six lacs released and the thirty advanced, " I re- 
 nounce all further demands upon her." Then, upon the 18th 
 of December, 1775, Mr. Bristow, in writing to the Board, 
 says, " Respecting the treaty with the Begum, I have had 
 many letters from her complaining of its not being abided 
 by, and that the Nabob does her great injustice in disputing 
 her right to effects which she wants to deliver to him ; but 
 he asserts them to be his property, as they were under the 
 charge of his cousuma." f Therefore your Lordships observe 
 the only question here is under whose care they are ; if 
 under the care of his khansaman they are his ; if not, your 
 
 * Minute of Mr. Hastings, 3rd January, 1776. Printed in the Minutes of 
 the Evidence, p. 448. 
 
 t Khansaman, a house-steward, or butler.- -^ Wihon. 
 
 B B.
 
 386 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15 APH. 1788. Lordships will see presently he admits them to be hers, and 
 only deposited in one of the buildings adjoining to the 
 Begum's palace. He says " he acknowledges her right to 
 anything in trust with her own servants, but all other 
 effects belong to him." Then, my Lords, the only point to 
 ascertain is whether those things were in trust with her own 
 servants or no. Your Lordships will see throughout that 
 they were in trust with her own servants ; and, even if it 
 were not produced in evidence to your Lordships, the 
 necessary conclusion from the facts I have stated must be, 
 that they were in trust with her servants, or the Wazir 
 would never have yielded them. 
 
 Your Lordships will observe that there is but one other 
 
 species of evidence that can by any possibility enforce her 
 
 right to the treasures, and that is the evidence of the trans- 
 
 Evidencede- action itself. I have already stated that the Wnzir, before 
 
 th V e c w^?s the interference of the India Company, had borrowed 
 
 giving his twenty-six lacs from the Princess mother ; for which 
 
 bond for a J . . ., -, i i i -r -n 
 
 loan of a twenty-six lacs it will appear he gave his bond. It will 
 thetreasiire. appear to your Lordships that he not only gave his bond, 
 but also gave security in land. Now your Lordships need 
 not be told that no person borrows or gives security for 
 his own money, therefore the evidentia rei, as it is called 
 among lawyers that evidence which cannot lie that evi- 
 dence which no cross-examination can twist that evidence 
 which no possibility can defeat that evidence is so strong 
 and so clear that you must draw this conclusion in your 
 minds, that this property belonged to the Princess and not 
 to the Wazir. 
 
 My Lords, I have thus reasoned from the lowest species 
 of presumption, the possession of the property, to the highest 
 species of evidence that the nature of the transaction admits 
 of, in a regular climax, and am sure your Lordships will be 
 of opinion that this climax of reasoning in evidence is not 
 less sound and less conclusive to the mind and understanding 
 than a climax is beautiful and conclusive in rhetoric. With 
 these observations I leave the title of the younger Princess, 
 perfectly certain that there is not a better title among any 
 of your Lordships to your hereditary estates than the title 
 she had to those treasures. 
 
 Property of My Lords, the next question is with regard to the pro- 
 perty of the elder Princess. The property of the elder 
 Princess has not been so often disputed ; and, although it has 
 been pillaged and taken away, yet there has never been a
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 387 
 
 doubt raised with regard to the authenticity of her property : ^ APE.ITSS. 
 therefore all I shall trouble your Lordships with upon that 
 head is an extract from Mr. Hastings' answer in the House 
 of Commons, which speaks in the following words : 
 
 " She (the Nabob's mother), was suffered to demand, and actually to 
 exact, upon the Nabob an increase of jaghires to ten times the amount of 
 the income which had been settled upon the old Begum by her deceased 
 son Suja-ud-Dowla, for the maintenance of herself and the numerous 
 family and dependents of her late husband Sufda Jung." 
 
 So that your Lordships see, by the acknowledgment of 
 Mr. Hastings himself, that Suffdar Jung had settled a jagir 
 upon the elder Princess, for the maintenance of his family 
 and dependants. 
 
 My Lords, this brings me to the beginning of the third Paragraphs 
 paragraph ; and from the third to the seventh paragraph I The suarau- 
 stated to your Lordships were contained all the allegations younger* 5 
 respecting the guarantees to the younger Princess. It will ^ rincess - 
 be necessary that I should state to your Lordships, for the 
 purpose of your clearly understanding it, and for the purpose 
 of seeing at the same time the solemnity of it, the nature of 
 these guarantees. On the 15th of October, 1775, the East 
 India Company entered into a guarantee, confirming tho 
 younger Princess in all her property : 
 
 " I, Azoff-ul-Dowla Bahadre, engage and give this written agreement, Agreement 
 viz., I have now taken from my mother 30 lacs of rupees on account of ?\ ' 
 the present, and 26 lacs on account of former debts, in specie, goods, 
 jewels, elephants, camels, &c., from the patrimony of my father, and have 
 no further claim on her. Having received this through the English 
 chiefs, I renounce all further demands on her. I also engage that I 
 will never molest my mother in the enjoyment of the jaghires, gunges, 
 culladarrils, gardens, or the mints of Oude, Fyzabad, &c., conferred on 
 her by the late blessed Nabob ; but will leave her in the full possession 
 of them during her lifetime. As long as my mother lives I will give 
 her no trouble on account of them'; she shall collect whatever appears to 
 l)e due from the said jaghires by her own people : I will not obstruct it. 
 When my mother goes on her pilgrimage, she is at liberty to leave the 
 jaghires, &c. under the charge of whomsoever she pleases : it is entirely 
 at her option : I will not oppose it. Whether she resides here or goes 
 on her pilgrimage, the jaghires, &c. shall remain in her possession, and 
 no person shall on any occasion obstruct or molest her therein. To 
 whomsoever my mother shall give charge of the jaghires, &c., I will on 
 every occasion protect and assist him; and when she goes on her pilgri- 
 mage she is at liberty to take with her such of her slaves, women and 
 goods, as she thinks proper. I will not molest her nor will I give 
 any trouble to Jewar Ally Khan, Bahadre Ally Khan, Nuhaut Ally 
 Khan, Shegoon Ally Khan, or to the taveldarries, by any demand on 
 them. My mother is at liberty to act as she pleases therein : she is the 
 mistress. For the observance of these Articles I give God and his 
 Prophet, the twelve Imaums, the fourteen Maussoons : and the English 
 
 B B 2
 
 388 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude ; 
 
 Guarantee 
 of the Com- 
 pany. 
 
 15 APE. 1788. chiefs are joined in this engagement. Further, I will not in future 
 demand any loan from my mother. 1 have no claim on her, nor will 
 I ever deviate from this engagement. Should I act contrary thereto, 
 jt nla y be supposed that I am estranged from the English chiefs and the 
 Company. I have, accordingly, given this as a coulnamma to remain as a 
 voucher." 
 
 Accordingly, my Lords, the English chiefs became guaran- 
 tees to this kaulnama, under all the ceremonies and all the 
 solemnities of the Mohammedan religion, imposed upon him- 
 self by Asoff-ud-Dowla : " The English chiefs are guaran- 
 tees for the observance of these articles no one shall 
 molest her."* Your Lordships will see in the sequel who 
 did molest her. 
 
 My Lords., I have concluded everything that is necessary 
 respecting the guarantee, and have now got to the eighth 
 paragraph of the Article, where your Lordships will find the 
 allegations respecting Mr. Hastings' conduct upon this busi- 
 ness. In the year 1778, Asoff-ud-Dowla molested his grand- 
 mother, the elder Princess, in the possession of her property. 
 In consequence of which it became necessary, as Mr. Middle-- 
 ton thought, that he should make a journey to Fyzabad. 
 Your Lordships will find that, after his journey to Fyzabad, 
 he had occasion to change his opinion, and, instead of acting 
 in a manner the Wazir approved of, to inforce the demands 
 that the Wazir had represented to him as legal, he found, 
 upon the representation of the Princess, that the demands 
 the Wazir was making were unreasonable. The consequence 
 of the journey then was this that Mr. Middle ton began a 
 correspondence with the Board, and that in that correspon- 
 dence with the Board at Calcutta, he set forth the rights of 
 the elder Princess in such a manner as to convince the Board 
 that they ought to interfere in favour of her rights. What 
 respects her rights comes in the subsequent paragraph ; but 
 it is impossible for me to make your Lordships understand the 
 reasons of this interference of Mr. Hastings, without stating 
 now the cause of Mr. Middleton's visit to the court of Fyza- 
 bad. In consequence of those letters Mr. Hastings and the 
 Board express themselves thus there was likewise a discus- 
 sion about the property of the younger Princess at the same 
 time : 
 
 Paragraph 
 VIII.-Mr. 
 Hastings' 
 conduct. 
 
 Visit of Mr. 
 Middletoii 
 to Fyzabad. 
 
 His corre- 
 spondence 
 with the 
 Council. 
 
 " With res P ect to the Bow Begum (that is the younger Princess), her 
 ings that grievances come before us on a very different footing. She is entitled to 
 the younger 
 Princess was 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 442.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 389 
 
 our protection by an act not sought by us, but solicited by the Nabob 15 APE. 1783. 
 himself; and granted in compliance with his and her request. We there- 
 fore empower and direct you to afford your support and protection to her, < ;lltitl ed to 
 in the due maintenance of all the rights she possesses in virtue of the treaty tec of'fho 11 " 
 executed between her and her son, under the guarantee of the Company, Company. 
 and against every attempt that may be directly or indirectly made to 
 infringe them."* 
 
 This part of Mr. Middleton's proceeding regards the 
 mother of Asoft-ud-Dowla; and your Lordships see that 
 Mr. Hastings, at this time a member of the Board at Cal- 
 cutta, delivered it as his opinion that she was clearly intitled 
 to the fulfilment of the guarantee upon the part of the Com- 
 pany. At this time, it is necessary to observe, that the Council 
 consisted of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Bar well, Mr. Francis and 
 Mr. \\hcler. Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell drew together: 
 
 o o * 
 
 and, therefore, even if there had been any dispute in the 
 Council upon the subject, Mr. Hastings' casting vote carried 
 the question in the way that he thought fit. Mr. Hastings 
 is not contented with the transactions that appear upon the 
 public records respecting this matter ; but he thinks it essen- 
 tial that his name and authority should stand particularly 
 forth to the Nawab in support of the rights, both of the 
 younger and elder Princess. Accordingly, in a letter, the 
 date of which I have stated to your Lordships before a 
 letter of the 3d of April, 1778 which, when your Lord- 
 ships hear it stated, you will consider as a monument of 
 something the most extraordinary, when you compare it with 
 the rest of the transactions which I have to lay before you, 
 that it is possible for the human imagination to conceive it 
 is a letter which I beg may be deeply engraven upon your 
 Lordships' memories ; as well as that other letter which I 
 have stated to your Lordships throughout the whole of this 
 business Mr. Hastings writes as follows : 
 
 " I have received information through a variety of channels of several His letter to 
 measures adopted by your Excellency respecting the two Begums and jJ^Ji"^ 
 others." behalf of the 
 
 rights of the 
 
 Your Lordships will observe here, that Mr. Hastings thinks 
 the family of the late Nawab is worthy his peculiar interfe- 
 rence and protection ; and I beg, when your Lordships come 
 to read this, with what you have upon your table delivered as 
 
 * See the entire letter, printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., 
 p. 460.
 
 390 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude: 
 
 15APH.1788. a record and answered by Mr. Hastings, that you will con- 
 trast it with the foul aspersions in that record. 
 
 " It is not without the deepest regret that I find myself under the neces- 
 sity of interfering in matters of so delicate a nature ; yet the friendship I 
 hear to your Excellency, and the honour of my employers, whose con- 
 nexion with you is such that every act of your government that either 
 increases or diminishes your reputation affects theirs in the same way, 
 obliges me to point them out to you, and to give my sentiments thereon 
 without the least reserve. 1 n the first place, the Begum your grandmother 
 complains that your Excellency has deprived her of the allowance esta- 
 blished by the late Nabob for the maintenance of the family he left 
 behind him, and you have resumed the jaghires and emoluments of all 
 her sen-ants and immediate dependants ; that you have made no suitable 
 provision for the late Nabob's women and children/and entirely neglected 
 their education ; that you suffer your favourites to infringe her rights and 
 to insult your relations ; and, instead of giving her and them any redress, 
 that you appear to connive at and secretly encourage them in such 
 conduct, by which means she is subjected to the greatest mortifications 
 and indignities. These are the grievances complained of by the Allea 
 Begum, your grandmother. Those alleged by Bow Begum, your mother, 
 are of a similar nature, of unkind treatment from you, and of your with- 
 holding from her certain jaghires and rights which she is entitled to by 
 the gift of the late Nabob. The duty of children towards parents is 
 enjoined by all laws, and the breach of it condemned by all nations. This 
 is a general obligation which is binding on all mankind."* 
 
 .^'; iiast- My Lords, there cannot be a truer principle of morality, 
 mcntspn there cannot be a principle expressed more clearly and better 
 iai piety. ^ o goto your Lordships' hearts and understandings, it is 
 impossible for the greatest philosopher of antiquity to have 
 had a ray of perspicuity shot into his mind more clear than 
 Mr. Hastings expresses himself with upon this occasion. It 
 seems to me as if some providence had shot into his mind 
 this transient gleam of virtue, for the purpose of enabling 
 your Lordships to contrast it with all that went before ana 
 all that follows after. Contrast the beauty of virtue with 
 the deformity of vice ; contrast the perspicuity of a man 
 when speaking the language of virtue with the tortuous, 
 serpentine, unintelligible, obscure, defence made for the liohilla 
 contract ; or with the more ridiculous, contemptible, falsi- 
 fying, exaggerated, colluding, inconclusive, justification, he 
 made of the injuries he did to Cheyt Sing. If your Lord- 
 ships contrast these, you will only be roused to additional 
 vengeance against the man who can express sentiments of 
 virtue with such purity, and yet conduct, himself throughout 
 life in so extraordinary a manner. This, however, is the 
 
 * The entire letter, written on the 3d of April, 1778, is printed in the 
 Appendix to the " Minutes of Evidence," Article II., No. V.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 391 
 
 last production of Mr. Hastings in the line of virtue. Your 
 Lordships saw his sentiments before, in 1775, with regard 
 to the younger Princess; you see his sentiments now in 
 1778, with regard to both the Princesses. You will find, 
 however, that this is the last mild progeny of the vulture's 
 nest. 
 
 Your Lordships will find " pard again genders pard from 
 tigers tigers spring ;" that cause and effect return to their 
 order ; that the system of philosophy which guides the uni- 
 verse is once more restored ; and that that man who could 
 contrive such things expresses himself in the only language 
 that the contriver of such things is capable of expressing him- 
 self in. I leave that upon this ground, that I am sure when 
 your Lordships contrast the purity of those sentiments with the 
 obscurity, the wickedness, the malignity, the perfidy, the vio- 
 lence, the want of faith, the want of humanity and morality, 
 which belong to almost every other part of the composition of 
 that man, that your Lordships will agree with me, that he who 
 knew so well how to act right, could only act wrong from 
 the most scandalous, wicked and malicious, motives. 
 
 My Lords, I now come to that part of the charge which Paragraph 
 respects the guarantee to the elder Princess, and your Lord- Guarantee 
 ships will find that there is almost as much nicety in the dis- i?,*^^ 161 ' 
 cussion of this part of her guarantee as there was nicety in the 
 discussion of that part of the absolute right of the property 
 of the younger Princess. It is necessary, however, as it has 
 been disputed, that I state it to your Lordships with some 
 degree of particularity. I have stated already the object of 
 Mr. Middlcton's journey to Oude, in the year 1778, and I 
 shall be able, I think, in a very few words, to state the 
 conclusion of that journey, and to establish the rights of 
 the elder Princess upon the same clear foundation of the 
 guarantee of the India Company that I have established 
 those of the younger Princess. Mr. Middleton writes to 
 the Board, upon the 27th of January, 1778: 
 
 " I hope to be favoured with their permission to sanctify the agreement, Letter of 
 
 in the manner the Begum requires, in my public character. I have M* Middle- 
 
 i> i J.L i j. x i-i AT i i n i i .1- i ton to the 
 
 referred the subject to the Nabob for his consideration and approval, council re- 
 but I have little expectation that he will of his own accord acquiesce in commend- 
 the Begum's propositions, however moderate and reasonable they may toe fm-'i'l'i^" 
 appear ; and if he should, his assent alone, without the ratification and elder Prin- 
 guarantee of the English, will not be accepted as any kind of security cess - 
 by the Begum. If, however, his Excellency approves of these proposi- 
 tions, and gives them the sanction of his signature, I apprehend there 
 will be no impropriety in my becoming a surety for their performance : in
 
 392 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APR. 1788. which case the direct interposition of the Honourable Board will not 
 be necessary."* 
 
 Your Lordships observe, then, that the proposition Mr. 
 Middleton makes is this: "If, however, his Excellency 
 approves of these propositions, and gives them the sanc- 
 tion of his signature (that is the condition), I apprehend 
 there will be no impropriety in my becoming a surety 
 for their performance, in which case the direct interposi- 
 tion of the Honourable Board will not be necessary." 
 
 Your Lordships observe, then, that the signature of the 
 Nawab is the condition. If the Nawab gives his signature, 
 Mr. Middleton gives it as his opinion that there will be no 
 necessity for their interference, but his security alone will do. 
 The Board, upon the 23d of March, 1778, writes in the 
 following terms : t( We approve of the means you have 
 taken to conciliate the differences that have arisen with 
 the former (that is the elder Begum). "f The question 
 therefore is, Avhat are the means ? The means that I 
 have stated to your Lordships are, that the East India Com- 
 pany should become security or guarantee, through the Resi- 
 dent, for the purpose of maintaining her in her rights, and 
 that that should depend upon the signature of the Nawab. 
 The only question then is, whether the condition prece- 
 dent whether the Nawab who is to enter into that condition 
 fulfilled the conditions or no ; now the best evidence of the 
 fulfilment of that condition is, what the Nawab himself does 
 upon the subject. 
 
 Your Lordships will find, in the Consultation of the 3d 
 of April, 1780, proceedings relative to this matter, which, 
 though falling at a period of two years later than the time the 
 treaty was entered into, I must necessarily explain to your 
 Lordships. It does not appear that Mr. Middleton, whose 
 duty it was to transmit, this caulnama or agreement to the 
 Board, did transmit it to the Board. If he did, it has not 
 come to our knowledge at the period of time it was entered 
 into. But a variety of transactions had taken place on the 
 part of the Wazir with regard to his jagirdars, or the 
 Councii'to* 10 P ersons wno held landed estates of him, which the Board 
 Mr. Puriinp, thought it necessary to interfere in. Accordingly, in the 
 
 Residentat -i*,o/> i -it/r T- T i * 
 
 Oude, to year 1780, they wrote to Mr. 1 urhng, who was at that 
 
 inquire. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 500. 
 f Printed as above, p. 501.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 393 
 
 time Resident at Oude, to inquire into the state of that i5Arn.i7S8. 
 matter, and to transmit to them everything that appeared 
 as documents in the office at Lucknow relative to these 
 subjects. Among others, he transmits those with respect 
 to the elder Princess ; and your Lordships will find, in a 
 letter of the 3d of April, 1780, the following words : 
 
 "With respect to the jaghires, we are not competent to judge of the 
 propriety of retaining or yielding them back to their proprietors, not 
 knowing who they are; and we desire that you will afford us every 
 information in your power relative to this point." 
 
 In consequence of that, Mr. Purling, on the 30th of April, 
 1780, sends a letter to the Board at Calcutta, stating an 
 account of the jagirs belonging to the elder Princess ; and 
 M r. Purling's rcmajks are upon it.* He sends at the same Agreement 
 time a translation of a copy of an agreement, under the dfcton for 
 seal and signature of Mr. Middleton, to all the particulars of treaty *toV 
 which he engages to procure a treaty from the Nawab Asoff- ${" P ;S" 1 , by 
 ud-Dowla after his arrival, and that he will sign it. Then fol- 
 lows the treat y.f Upon one side there is a demand made; upon 
 the other side there is the demand answered. This treaty is 
 not only material on account of establishing the rights of the 
 elder Princess, but it is excessively material to that most im- 
 portant part of the charge, namely, with regard to the widow 
 and children of the deceased Prince Suffdar Jung, and 
 the women and children of Suja-ud-Dowla, against whom 
 such things were committed as will make your Lordships 
 shudder when you hear them. The second article is, 
 that " when the Nabob shall arrive, I (Mr. Middleton) will 
 procure suitable allowances to be made to the ladies of the 
 zenana and the children of the late Nabob Sujah-ul-Dowlah, 
 and take care that they are paid." The sixth is that " I 
 (Mr. Middleton) will endeavour to obtain from the Nabob 
 the sum of 115,000 rupees, on account of the purchase of 
 Metchee Bonhau and the house of Sahebjee, and the fort 
 of the Gossein, with the land and garden, and the baradery 
 on the banks of the Goomy, and bazaar and garden of the 
 house of Mahnarain, and the house of Beny Persaud at 
 Lucknow ; all of which the Nabob Asoph-ul-Dowlah has 
 assumed possession of." To which the Wazir answered 
 " I have passed a bond, payable in six months, for 115,000 
 rupees, for the price of the houses ; and, God willing, I will 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 480, and in the Appendix, 
 p. 28. 
 
 f Printed, as above, pp. 461-471, and Appendix, p. 37.
 
 394 Opening of the Second Ckarye Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APR. 1788. 
 
 Treaty 
 ufe n Nawab, 
 
 English. 
 
 Mr. Hast : 
 
 of Mr? Mia-*' 
 
 ortiie treaty 
 priortohis 
 
 loumey to 
 
 be?eiLe? 
 
 treaty f thc 
 
 pay the amount when it shall become due." The preceding 
 article is, that " I (Mr. Middleton) will, upon the arrival of 
 the Nabob, procure Vizier Gunge and the garden of Sepoy 
 Daud Khaun, or their equivalent, for the Begum." To 
 which the Wazir likewise agrees on the other side. The 
 third article is " That the festivals (Shaddee) and the 
 marriages of the children of the late Nabob Sujah-ul-Dowlah," 
 
 these were persons of such rank that the question was, 
 whether the son of Suja-ud-Dowla, the Prince of the king- 
 dom, or the mother and grandmother of the Prince of the king- 
 dom, should have the care, and the education and the dis- 
 position in marriage, of these families of children, " shall be 
 at the disposal of the Begum. Whenever she thinks proper, 
 she shall marry them ; and, if the Begum shall go on a 
 pilgrimage, she shall have the authority to appoint and 
 settle their marriages. And whatever money shall be 
 necessary for these expenses shall be paid by the Nabob." 
 To which the Nawab likewise agrees on the other side. The 
 seventh article is " That I will settle with the Nabob the 
 allowances to be made in ready money to the ladies of the 
 zcmina ana< others specified in the following account." That 
 likewise is agreed to by the Nawab. And then it concludes 
 thus " The English are guarantees to the above engage- 
 ments as long as the Begums shall exist." Your Lordships 
 then see that all that was requisite to prove that this 
 guarantee was complete is now proved, namely, the assent of 
 the Nawab, whose assent and signature was the only condition 
 upon which it rested. 
 
 I have read to your Lordships the kaulnama, rcgu- 
 larly transmitted I have read the date of that kaulnama 
 
 I have read the period into which it came into Mr. Hastings' 
 possession if it did not come before namely, in the begin- 
 n i n g o f the year 1780. I therefore put Mr. Hastings 
 
 , , , . PHI i*- * i 11 T-I 
 
 completely in possession or all that Mr. Middleton did at 
 Fyzabad in 1778, previous to his journey to Lucknow. I 
 vest him, therefore, with all the responsibility of the know- 
 ledge of that treaty being made and existing, the only con- 
 dition on which that rested having been fulfilled. Whether 
 ^ r - Hastings had any communication of this treaty or no, at 
 an C!ir ^ er period, it is impossible for me to say. All that I 
 can say is, that, in the course of this charge, as well as in the 
 former charge, and in the course of every charge that is to 
 succeed this, your Lordships will find such strong reason to 
 suppose that Mr. Hastings did at different times suppress
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 395 
 
 every tiling which he thought material to be suppressed and is APE. 1788. 
 kept from the eyes of the Company and the Board that 
 he was acting with that your Lordships will doubt ex- 
 tremely whether, when we do not produce a paper at the 
 time when it should have been executed and produced, 
 Mr. Hastings may not nevertheless have been in possession 
 of that paper. 
 
 My Lords, I have now gone through the first part of the 
 constituent parts of the crime. I have established the rights 
 of the Princesses of Oude. I have established the guarantees 
 of the English Company in support of these rights, to both 
 the one and the other. I therefore now leave both these 
 Princesses in complete and absolute possession of their pro- 
 perty, guaranteed by the India Company. 
 
 The next part that I am to state to your Lordships are Duties of 
 the duties of Mr. Hastings. It is unnecessary for me to jojp M 
 waste much of your Lordships' time upon those duties which Q^^^ 
 attached upon him as Governor General. Your Lordships Manner or 
 know the manner in which he was invested with that great 
 authority, a circumstance which I confess makes his crimes 
 in the view I take of them bear much harder upon him. 
 lie was not the choice of an individual; he was not the 
 person who was brought forth from particular private favour ; 
 it could not be said that court intrigue put Mr. Hastings 
 at the head of India. Mr. Hastings was appointed to his 
 situation of Governor by the King, Lords and Commons, 
 of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, in the highest 
 functions of their legislative capacity, uniting all their legis- 
 lative wisdom ; the two branches of the legislature uniting 
 with the executive power the third branch of the legisla- 
 ture to confer upon that man the greatest power and 
 authority that was ever vested in the hands of any British 
 subject. Has not then that legislature which now stands 
 present either in reality or in idea, which I now address 
 in different parts of this House, and which I address even 
 upon the throne in my mind's eye has it not a right to Hisre 
 call to a strict account that man who was so honourably parliament. 
 appointed? If a man is appointed by court intrigue if 
 a man is appointed by personal favour if by the particular 
 friendship of a minister if the particular friendship of 
 the King should select this or that man to the discharge 
 of a public duty and he should ill discharge it, he is 
 responsible, and gravely responsible, to his country for the 
 trust which he has so ill discharged. But if an individual
 
 396 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APK.1788. should bo appointed so honourably as this man was, by the 
 solemn decision of Parliament, discussing his name and contem- 
 plating his character vesting in him such a trust as I have 
 described your Lordships will think that that man ought 
 to be peculiarly wary. And if he has misconducted him- 
 self, your Lordships will, no doubt, when you shall pro- 
 nounce sentence upon him, view him in the exalted light I 
 have stated, and view the dignity and honour in which he 
 was placed, with the disgrace into Avhich he has fallen, and 
 the misery he has made others suffer. With regard to 
 Mr. Hastings, as Governor General, he was bound to do 
 everything for the interest of the India Company consistent 
 with the interests of others ; he was bound to maintain the 
 guarantees of the India Company ; he was bound to keep 
 faith with the allies of the India Company ; he was bound, 
 as far as regards this charge, to take care that no person, 
 and particularly that Asoff-ud-Dowla, should infringe the 
 rarajtrapbs rights of these Princesses. This is not all ; for Mr. Hastings 
 has contrived to heap upon himself other responsibilities, 
 which are set forth in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth, 
 illegal dele- paragraphs. In the first place, your Lordships have heard 
 power by of the illegal delegation to go to Benares and Oude. It Avill 
 ings. a be unnecessary for me to enter at large into that subject 
 again. I will merely state one or two arguments which 
 occur to me, why this delegation must necessarily be illegal. 
 In the first place, it is contrary to the instructions of the 
 East India Company, which your Lordships have heard 
 read. In the next place, the act gives no such power ; but 
 vests the Governor General and Council, as a body politic to 
 transact their business, altogether incapable of separating 
 themselves or going to different parts of the Company's 
 possessions in India. And if any proof Avere necessary to 
 support that, the late acts of Parliament, empowering the 
 Governor General, now in India, to go to distant settlements, 
 is another strong proof that the act gave no such power. 
 But, besides that, there is another reason which shows that 
 this delegation could not possibly be legal. There were four 
 persons appointed of the Council at Bengal over Bengal, 
 Behar and Orissa, with a superintending power over the 
 other settlements, but with no power of going thither They 
 Avere bound to do it altogether. If any Avere absent, the 
 remaining persons were to do it ; but one person could not 
 execute the duty at one place and another at another place. 
 Far less could they do this upon any principles of reason,
 
 Speech of Mr, Adam. 397 
 
 They could not possibly come into an agreement to yield up ISAPR.IVSS. 
 their opinion to one another. Suppose any of the learned 
 persons who preside over the laws of this country, in any of 
 the courts of justice which surround this hall, were to come 
 to an agreement with any of their brethren, or all of the 
 court, that whatever they determined upon such a case they 
 would agree to, whether absent or present, giving their 
 conscience and opinion in the discharge of their sacred trust 
 into the hands of another, would not that be a crime upon 
 the face of it, and such as must in the nature of it be 
 illegal? There is no earthly difference between the constitu- 
 tion of the Supreme Council at Calcutta and the courts of 
 justice in Westminster Hall, in that respect. Therefore, in 
 the first place, by doing this illegal act, and in the next 
 place, if it had been legal, Mr. Hastings vested himself with 
 additional responsibility, putting himself out. of his place. 
 And therefore for whatever he did, in that situation, he is to 
 be called upon to answer on a stricter and more minute 
 investigation. 
 
 The next thing Mr. Hastings did, which clothes him with Responsi- 
 additional responsibility, was the appointment of his own curredby 
 agent to the court of Lucknow professedly his own agent fngs^ap- 
 and the withdrawing the agent or Resident of the India pointing his 
 
 ^ o own fu 
 
 Company. Your Lordships have already heard of a similar at Luc 
 transaction with regard to the affairs of Benares. The same 
 transaction took place with regard to the affairs of Glide ; and 
 it took place upon a very extraordinary and singular occasion, 
 at a singular time, and in a very singular manner. Your 
 Lordships will observe that, on the 21st of May, 1781, 
 Mr. Hastings determined to go to Lucknow, and the minute 
 vesting him with the power, and the credentials, followed 
 soon after. It happened upon that very clay he sets forth, 
 in consultation, his reasons (which I shall have occasion 
 to allude to hereafter) for going to Lncknow; upon that 
 very day he determines to recall Mr. Bristow. Now it is ^ 
 here necessary for the understanding the subject that 1 
 should state to your Lordships the history of the appoint- 
 ment of Residents to Oude. Your Lordships will find that 
 Mr. Middleton was Resident at Oude in the year 1774 ; 
 that Mr. Bristow, by the special appointment of the court 
 of Directors, was appointed in December of that year to be 
 Resident at Oude ; that he was recalled upon the 2d of 
 December, 1776, and Mr. Middleton was appointed again 
 to succeed him in December, 1776; that Mr. Middleton
 
 398 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APR. i78. resigned the Residency in 1779; that Mr. Purling was 
 appointed in 1779, and recalled in September, 1780 ; that 
 Mr. Bristow was again appointed in September, 1780. And 
 it is necessary that I should state the transaction of this 
 appointment. There is a long debate in the Council whether 
 Mr. Bristow should not be appointed, in consequence of an 
 order, which he himself carried with him from England, of 
 the court of Directors, to be Resident at the court of Oudc. 
 This was suspended for some time. Mr. Francis brought the 
 matter forward. Mr. Hastings made a violent, hostile and 
 adverse, minute to Mr. Francis, stating the time to be impro- 
 per. The Council then consisted of Mr. Francis, Mr. "Wheler, 
 Sir Eyre Coote, Mr. Barwell and Mr. Hastings The con- 
 sequence then of this was that Sir Eyre Coote, who had been 
 in the upper provinces with the army, retired while this 
 question was under consideration. He required time to 
 deliberate on it ; he took a day for deliberation, and then 
 came into the opinion of Mr. Francis ; and accordingly they 
 appointed Mr. Bristow to repair to Oude as Resident, in 
 conformity with the order of the court of Directors. But 
 Mr. Hastings thought it necessary that he should have a 
 spy, not only upon the transactions of Oude, but upon the 
 Resident placed there by the court of Directors. He pre- 
 tended that, as that country depended immediately through 
 him upon the Council, he should have a person there for 
 
 His appoint- the management of the finances, at least. Accordingly he 
 onf' made a proposition that Mr. Middleton should be appointed 
 to the finances in Oude, and that Mr. Bristow should be con- 
 fined to the management of the political concerns. The 
 consequence of this was, that Mr. Bristow and Mr. Middleton 
 both repaired to Oude. And your Lordships will see, through- 
 out the evidence, that Mr. Middleton was at Oude merely as 
 a spy upon Mr. BristoAv ; that he was contriving and concerting 
 letters for the Wazir ; that he was putting words in his 
 mouth, calling upon him to make demands and propositions. 
 The whole face of the correspondence bears the appearance 
 that he was there for that purpose, and that purpose 
 only. After this had gone on for some time ; after it ap- 
 peared that that trick which took place in almost every part 
 of the government of Mr. Hastings was practised with the 
 Nawab of Oude ; that he was always in the habit of dictating 
 the requisitions and propositions which were to be made 
 to Mr. Hastings himself ; your Lordships will find that, after 
 a great deal of that, in the year 1781, upon the 21st of
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 399 
 
 May, Mr. Bristow is recalled from Oucle and brought back 
 to Calcutta, and Mr. Middleton left in complete and full 
 possession of both political and financial authority in the 
 country of Oude. When I state that Mr. Middleton is 
 described by Mr. Hastings to be his own personal agent ; 
 that he put him there because he was his own agent ; that he 
 treats him throughout as his agent ; that from that time down 
 to his defence in the House of Commons he says he was 
 intitled to have a peculiarly confidential agent there ; then 
 your Lordships will view the conduct of Mr. Hastings through 
 Mr. Middleton with a peculiar degree of jealousy, and will 
 apply to it the strictest and nicest scrutiny you are capable 
 of giving it. Not only this, but, at the time Mr. Hastings Hisoi.joct 
 recalls Mr. Bristow, he does not state upon the record or any- M^Bristow. 
 where else a single fault that he found with Mr. Bristow, so 
 that it must appear to your Lordships most clearly, from the 
 evidence I am about to state and from passages I shall read, 
 that there could be but one motive, as my learned friend 
 stated the other day, much better than I can state it, namely, 
 that he wished to withdraw that screen for the purpose of 
 preventing his machinations, crimes and misdeeds, being dis- 
 covered, and that he might have a conspirator like himself 
 in order to perpetrate these acts which his wicked imagination 
 had devised. 
 
 Your Lordships will find that, on the 22d of August, 
 1782, a person who resided at Calcutta, and had constant 
 communication with Mr. Hastings on the part of the Nawab 
 of Oude, whose vakil he was, Govind Ram, writes [to the 
 Wazir] in this way it is inserted in the Consultations and 
 never anywhere contradicted: " When Mr. Bristow formerly 
 held the office of Resident/' at Lucknow " he was not ap- 
 ponted by him " Mr. Hastings " and notwithstanding he 
 had not shown any instances of disobedience, yet he had 
 deemed it necessary to recall him, because he had been 
 patronized and appointed by gentlemen who were in oppo- 
 sition to him, and had counteracted and thwarted all his 
 measures that this had been his reason for recalling 
 Mr. Bristow." Mr. Hastings appointed Mr. Bristow again 
 in consequence of the orders of the court of Directors ; and 
 Mr. Hastings accompanied his appointment of Mr. Bristow 
 with a letter of instructions.* In that letter of instruc- 
 
 * Printed in the Appendix to the " Minutes of the Evidence," Art. II. 
 No. LIX.
 
 400 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15 APE. 1788. 
 
 Responsi- 
 bility in- 
 curred by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings in as- 
 suming the 
 entire go- 
 vernment of 
 Oude. 
 
 Proof of his 
 assumption 
 of the go- 
 vernment, 
 from his 
 letter of in- 
 structions 
 toMr.Mid- 
 dleton. 
 
 tions there is the following paragraph : " I do justice 
 to my sense of your character in declaring my entire 
 reliance on your prudence and integrity." Therefore, my 
 Lords, he removed a man whom he not only did not 
 charge at the time with any species of misconduct, but 
 whom he has since praised and spoken of in this manner, 
 without any exaction of that praise, but the mere spon- 
 taneous flowinga of his own opinion. Then I have got 
 two points of additional responsibility. First, the illegal 
 delegation, and next, the withdrawing the Resident at Oude 
 and appointing his own Resident there, under the gross and 
 singular circumstances which I have stated. There is still 
 another responsibility of a mixed and different kind ; a 
 responsibility which extends at the same time to the sub- 
 jects of the India Company and the subjects of Oude. 
 Mr. Hastings did, through the medium of Mr. Middleton, 
 and by him as his proxy and creature, take upon himself the 
 complete and absolute government of the country of Oude ; 
 and he did it, not in one only, but in every department of 
 the government. And the proof of his having so assumed 
 the government of Oude is from his own authority. For 
 on the 23d of September, 1781, he writes thus : 
 
 " My chief object in my negotiations with the Nabob has been to 
 induce and assist him to bring his government and finances into such 
 regularity as to prevent his alliance from being a clog instead of an aid 
 to the Company, and to enable him to discharge his debt in the shortest 
 time possible. To this end, the most essential point is to limit and 
 separate his personal disbursements from the public accounts. They 
 must not in their total amount exceed what he has received in any of 
 the last three years." 
 
 Then your Lordships see that there he has invested him- 
 self with the charge of the civil list. [He then goes on] : 
 
 " After settling the amount of the personal disbursements of the 
 Nabob Vizier and his household, the next point that will require your 
 exertions towards the general arrangement of the public charges is to 
 reform the established Muttaiena troops, reducing them to one established 
 corps for the whole service. If this corps should be brought to consist 
 wholly of cavalry it would best answer mutual benefit, leaving no infantry 
 in the Nabob's service but what may be necessary for his body guard ; 
 and to supply the deficiency, should any occur from such arrangement, 
 our infantry may be employed where infantry are wanted. The corps 
 reformed and established, their pay must be issued from the public 
 treasury. No assignments to be in future granted them; and those 
 already issued to be recalled. To complete this, all numbers above 
 what the real service may require or the actual nett receipt may 
 be adequate to the full payment of, must be disbanded as fast as 
 their arrears can be paid off. The Nabob will select and appoint hia
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 401 
 
 own commanders; but if he should nominate improper persons, such ij API-. i;s 
 as men commonly known by the name of orderlies, or others deriving 
 their influence from them, or of known disaffection to our government, 
 you are in such case to remonstrate against it; and, if the Vizier shall 
 persist in his choice, you are peremptorily and in my name to oppose it 
 as a breach of his agreement. For the management of the collections, the 
 ministers, with your concurrence, are to choose all aumeels and collectors, 
 and in their choice to be guided by the responsibility, good reputation 
 and known ability, of the persons they elect, that charges may as 
 much as possible be avoided." 
 
 Here then he has taken the government of the army. 
 He is not, however, contented with the civil list and with 
 the army ; but he goes next to the distribution of justice. 
 " Much is to be said, though little may now suit " when it 
 is compared with what he did, your Lordships will find 
 indeed that little that respected the distribution of justice 
 did suit Mr. Hastings to state 
 
 " Much may be said, though little may now suit, upon the subject of 
 the distribution of justice in the Nabob's dominions. For the present, I 
 limit myself to direct you to urge the Nabob to endeavour, gradually, if 
 it cannot be done at once, to establish courts of adaulut throughout his 
 districts ; the darogahs, moulavies and other officers of which must be 
 selected, as in the case of the aumeels, by the ministers, with your concur- 
 rence. The want of these courts is equally hurtful to the revenue, 
 government and reputation, of the Nabob."* 
 
 Therefore he is not only to regulate the courts of justice, 
 by desiring the Resident to represent to the Nawab the 
 necessity of it, but the officers who are to distribute justice. 
 The judges, who are to discharge their duty in the distri- 
 bution of justice in those parts, were to be named and 
 appointed by Mr. Middleton. 
 
 Then I have him in possession of the civil list ; then I 
 have him in the control of the army ; then I have him in 
 the distribution of justice; then let us see how he managed 
 them all three ; but let us be particularly cautious that he 
 has not done anything as a judge, that can either injure the 
 individuals of Oude, disgrace the public character of Eng- 
 land, or bring any infamy or calumny upon any of those 
 individuals who so nobly and honourably appointed him. 
 His crimes seem to me, like all the other evidence in this 
 cause, and his responsibilities, to rise in climax. It seems 
 the perfect, clear, regular, progress of vice from a small 
 beginning to a great ending ; from the pettiest fraud to the 
 greatest crime ; from a bare prevarication up to the foulest 
 
 * Printed in ihe ''Minutes of the Evidence," p. 581. 
 C C
 
 402 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude. ; 
 
 is A PR. 1788. robbery ; from a simple lie up to the foulest murder. I 
 shall trace it through all these steps ; and your Lordships 
 will sec the most perfect picture of an improper, irregular 
 and scandalous, conduct; at the same time that you see 
 there was understanding and sense of virtue sufficient to 
 express virtue feelingly, and no man could express it feel- 
 ingly if he did not feel it and power enough, if he had not 
 been influenced by some foul motive to perpetrate the 
 things which I shall prove to your Lordships he did per- 
 petrate. Then he was bound, not only to act in Oude in 
 such a manner as not to disgrace the interests of England, 
 but he was bound to act in such manner as should be for 
 the benefit and not the detriment of the subjects of Oude. 
 Dependence In this situation I leave his responsibilities, and proceed 
 now shortly to state to your Lordships the dependence 
 wn i cu the province of Oude had upon the government of 
 the East India Company, and particularly upon the Governor 
 General, and his vesting Mr. Middleton with that power 
 and authority. 
 
 There is a very singular circumstance attends this part of 
 the case, .1 circumstance which some of your Lordships 
 from your professional situation are acquainted with, and 
 which all our constitutional advisers are perfectly well ac- 
 Verdictofa qiiainted with I mean a verdict of a special jury in this 
 mTngiami, country, respecting the dependency of the province of Oude 
 RafaeiT 88 u P on the Governor General or President and Council of 
 Vereist. Calcutta. Your Lordships know that there was a cause 
 which very much interested the public some years ago the 
 cause of Rafael v. Vereist in which, after a variety of 
 terms, it at last came to this : the jury found a special 
 verdict. The question was, whether or no the Governor, 
 Mr. Vereist, had been guilty of a trespass upon the plain- 
 tiff. His justification was, that it was not he that did the 
 act, but that it was Suja-ud-Dowla. The special verdict 
 found in terms that Suja-ud-Dowla was so completely 
 dependent upon the President and Council that the act of 
 Suja-ud-Dowla must be supposed to be the act of Mr. Ve- 
 reist. When this is applied to Suja-ud-Dowla, who was a 
 Prince of considerable power and great authority; who, 
 although he had been beaten by the India Company's forces, 
 yet still maintained a considerable rank among the Princes 
 of India ; it applies independent of any additional evidence. 
 Dependence But, my Lords, there is much additional evidence still 
 lff " ud ~ stronger in the case of Asoff-ud-Dowla, and your Lordships
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 4-03 
 
 will find a great deal of evidence to show the complete and ISAPB.TTSS. 
 absolute dependence of Asoff-nd-Dowla upon Mr. Hastings. 
 In a letter of the 3d of October, 1782, he says, " he 
 exists by his dependence upon our government." Thus his 
 government was, as will appear to your Lordships, without 
 the necessity of detailing that part of the evidence, put by 
 Mr. Hastings completely and absolutely in the hands of 
 Mr. Middleton. 
 
 And this brings me to the most important fact. All the Paragraphs 
 other part, although it has been prolix, is rather preliminary, xxx. ' 
 but this brings me to those important facts of criminality with ^ 
 which I arn to charge Warren Hastings. Your Lordships j 
 have heard of Mr. Hastings' journey to the provinces of H i s . journey 
 Benares and Oude ; your Lordships have heard of the trans- 
 actions in Benares : it will only be necessary for me to re- 
 capitulate some dates which are of very considerable im- 
 portance. Previous to Mr. Hastings' setting out for the 
 provinces of Oude and Benares, he entered that minute upon 
 the Consultations Avhich I have already had occasion to 
 state, and which it is excessively important in this place that 
 I should read an extract from : 
 
 " The province of Oude having fallen into a great state of disorder and Minute 
 confusion, its resources being in an extraordinary degree diminished, and the^cc 
 the Nabob Asoff-ul-Dowlah having earnestly intreated the presence of sity of the 
 the Governor General, and declared that, unless some effectual measures visit to the 
 are taken for his relief, he must be under the necessity of leaving his pl 
 country and coming down to Calcutta to represent his situation to this 
 government ; the Governor General, therefore, proposes, with the concur- 
 rence of Mr. Whcler, to visit the province of Oude as speedily as the affairs 
 of the Presidency will admit, in hopes that from a minute and personal 
 observation of the circumstances of that country, the system of manage- 
 ment which has been adopted, and the characters and conduct of the persons 
 employed, he may possibly be able to concert and establish some plan by 
 which the province of Oude may in time be restored to its former state of 
 affluence, good order and propriety."* 
 
 Your Lordships see. that, upon the acknowledgment of 
 Mr. Hastings, the province of Oude is not in a state of 
 affluence, good order and propriety ; because by the decla- 
 ration of Mr. Hastings he is to go there to put it in a state 
 of affluence, good order and propriety, by a minute examina- 
 tion into its circumstances, and by an attention to the cha- 
 racters who govern it. Now, my Lords, let us watch well 
 in what manner he discharges this trust he imposes upon 
 himself. Let us see that, instead of examining into the 
 character of the persons, he does not receive bribes from 
 
 * Minute of Hastings, 21st May, 178). Printed in the "Minutes of the 
 Evidence," p. 536. 
 
 C C 2
 
 401 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude 
 
 . ti lose persons. Let us see that, instead of looking into the 
 circumstances of the province, he does not, blindfold, con- 
 clude a treaty, which he had no information to enable him to 
 conclude. Let us see that, instead of affluence, good order 
 and prosperity, he does not ransack every part of the pro- 
 vince, and leave no person in possession of any possessions 
 or wealth in that country unpillaged and unrobbed. Your 
 Lordships will examine him by the purposes he stated before 
 he set out. You will call upon him to account to you, not 
 only for the situation in which he stood, as the situation of 
 additional responsibility which he laid upon himself, but for 
 the principles upon which he declared he went to Oude. 
 He further says, " In remedying evils which have grown to 
 so great a height, exertions will be required more powerful 
 and immediate in their application than can be made through 
 the delegated authority of the servants of the Company now 
 in that province." These are the objects of his journey ; 
 accordingly he goes to Oude. 
 
 Your Lordships have heard the transactions at Benares ; 
 of his defeat there ; of his necessarily retiring to Chunar. 
 And it is now my duty to state to your Lordships that, 
 while he was at Chunar, upon the llth of September, 1781, 
 the Wazir [arrived there. The Wazir] remained at Chunar 
 till the 23d or 24th of September not a fortnight. Mr. Hast- 
 ings never left Chunar. The treaty of Chunar, the article 
 of which relating to the Princesses of Oude I shall have 
 occasion to read, was signed on the 19th of September, eight 
 days after the arrival of the Wazir. A great part of the 
 evidence respecting the treaty of Chunar arises out of the 
 Benares' Narrative, which is now in evidence. 
 
 tionTonthe Before I proceed to state the treaty itself, it is therefore 
 date of incumbent upon me, in order that your Lordships should 
 
 Mr. Hast- , , ,vf .,' , ., . t7 ! r 
 
 ings' Nar- understand the evidence when it is given, to make some lew 
 insurrec f . lhe general observations upon that Narrative. Your Lordships 
 Benares w ^ observe that the Narrative, on the top of it, is dated 
 Chunar, the 1st of September, 1781 , at the bottom it is 
 dated 31st [1st] of December, 1781 ; the letter which in- 
 closes it is dated 1st of January, 1782 [31st of December, 
 1781]* ; so that there are exactly four months between the 
 first date and the date that incloses it. Therefore Mr. Hast- 
 ings had all that time to manufacture his Narrative. He had 
 every transaction which happened in that time to put toge- 
 
 * These are the dates, as they appear in the copy of the Narrative priuled 
 iu the " Minutes of the Evidence." p. 109.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 405 
 
 ther. Every circumstance that occurred that he could turn isApE.1788. 
 to his favour, every misrepresentation of date, or every 
 sinking of date, it was in his povvert o practise, according as 
 the events of these four months should make it necessary 
 for him to do ; and four more eventful months never existed 
 in the history of any country. 
 
 .My Lords, I shall make no further observation upon the 
 Narrative at present but this, that I can point out to your 
 Lordships good reasons from other evidence to prove that 
 those facts which Mr. Hastings states, in certain points of 
 view, are not truly represented ; that, instead of writing that 
 Narrative under the sanctions which he pretends he wrote it 
 under, your Lordships will find that it was manufactured ; 
 that instead of being written on the 1st of September, and 
 onward that it was in point of fact all made up and manu 
 factored to answer the particular purpose* he had in view. 
 
 My Lords, I come now to the treaty of Chunar itself; for The treaty 
 1 take it at present only upon the simple consequence of the of 
 infraction of that treaty, without any of the circumstances 
 which aggravated that infraction. Your Lordships will find 
 in the Appendix to the Benares Narrative a letter, dated the 
 29th of November, 1781, with a copy of the treaty of Chimar 
 enclosed, the second article of which runs in the following 
 words : " That, as great distress has arisen to the Nabob's Article cm- 
 go vernment from the military power and dominion assumed 
 
 by the jageardars, he, the Nabob, be permitted to resume j^^^th 
 such jaghires as he may find necessary." Your Lordships reservation 
 will observe in the sequel, that in Mr. Hastings' vocabulary the Com- 
 permission means compulsion, and that, instead of being 
 permitted to do what he thought was right, he was com- 
 pelled to do what he knew was wrong. The article of the 
 treaty further says, that this is to be " Avith a reserve, that all 
 such for the amount of whose jaghires the Company are 
 guarantees shall, in the case of the resumption of their lands, 
 be paid to the amount of their nett collections, through 
 the Resident, in ready money." Now, my Lords, this is the 
 article, and this article is signed upon the 19th of September, 
 1781. 
 
 The paper that I have next to read to your Lordships 
 is called an Explanation of that article. But it is essentially 
 necessary, before I read that paper, that I should show 
 your Lordships the questionable shape in which that paper 
 is here tacked to this article. Mr. Hastings pretends that
 
 406 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 1SAPB.1788. h Cj on the 29th of November, 1781, transmitted to the 
 iMcof ins at Calcutta an account of these articles ; consequently that all 
 t ion of the' that was then done was transmitted. Whether he did trans- 
 the a councii. m it it oh the 29th of November on no is a matter of very 
 little consequence to me, because all that I mean to show 
 is this, that, one way or other, Mr. Hastings must have 
 prevaricated with regard to this inclosure ; and by that 
 means I shall establish to your Lordships that nothing that 
 false rea- proceeds from it is to be taken as truth. He sets forth vari- 
 signedfar ous pretences, in this letter of the 29th of November, why he 
 cpmmuuica- did not write before. One pretence is, that he had not time. 
 tiiTcouucii. -^ w fr m ^ ie arr> i va l f tne Nawab at Clmnar, on the llth of 
 September, 1781, down to the 13th of October, Mr. Hastings, 
 in point of bulk of mere writing, writes more to Mr. Wheler 
 than all that is in this letter and in the paper accompanying 
 this letter, if he had written them with his own hand. But 
 one half and more of the papers accompanying this letter 
 is business that could have been done by an amanuensis, and 
 therefore an excuse of want of time is of no weight. When 
 exalting himself to the situation of a demi-god, and making 
 himself, instead of the civil Governor, a conquering Marl- 
 borough in the field, then he has full time to employ his 
 pen. But when he is to do that which regards the rights 
 of others, when doing that which regards the rights of those 
 whom by the dying words of Suja-ud-Dowla he was bound 
 to defend, when it was necessary to do anything to prevent 
 an infraction of those rights he has no time for that, 
 pretence of There is a pretence of a still more extraordinary nature ; 
 authetio f *^at * s > tna * ne coll ld not have done it sooner, because 
 papers re- Mr. Middleton had carried the necessary papers with him 
 treaty. 18 to Lucknow. The first evidence I can find of his asking 
 for those papers is upon the 1 9th of December, before the 
 date of the letter which incloses the Narrative ; and there- 
 fore this 29th of November, for aught I know, is a mere 
 fabrication. Upon the 22d of December, 1781, Mr. Middle- 
 ton writes from Lucknow to Mr. Hastings : " I have been 
 honoured with the receipt of your letter of the 19th instant, 
 and in obedience to y*our commands shall forward to you by 
 the first safe opportunity your agreement with the Nabob 
 Vizier, the treaty of Chunar, together with such other 
 authentic papers as are connected with it." This was 
 written upon the 22d of December, acknowledging the re- 
 ceipt of Mr. Hastings' letter of the 19th of December. Three
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 407 
 
 days being the time it took to go from Benares to Lucknow. 
 Then one of these two things must be true, either that 
 Mr. Hastings was in possession of the papers at the time he 
 wrote the letter on the 29th of November, or the letter of 
 the 29th of November has a false date. 
 
 It is perfectly the same to me which of the two posi- 
 tions he assumes. The conclusion I draw from it is this 
 and it is a conclusion which must strike home upon your 
 Lordships' minds that the whole of this business is a fabri- 
 cation ; that what I am going to read, namely, this explana- Mr. Hast- 
 tion of the treaty of Chunar, this marginal note of Mr. Mid- e"|knatfon 
 dleton upon it, written subsequent to a very remarkable 
 period, namely, the determination to seize the treasures, was 
 an after-thought a contrivance an imposition. It sets 
 forth facts he did not know at the time. And when I 
 come to examine this marginal note, and check it by the 
 evidence, your Lordships will see that it is absolutely im- 
 possible that, consistently with what he knew, consistently 
 with what existed, and consistently with what he declared 
 it is absolutely and clearly impossible and impracticable that 
 that which he asserts for truth in that marginal note could 
 have existed at the time of the execution of the treaty of 
 Chunar. The note is this : 
 
 " The jaghires possessed by the Begums have enabled them to give Terms of 
 frequent disturbances to tbe Nabob's government, and it can be well j^ffy^L 
 attested that they principally excited and supported the late commotions the resump- 
 in Gorruckpoor, &c., in concert with Cheyt Sing, and that they carried their ti? of the 
 inveteracy to the Nabob and the English nation so far as to aim at our 
 utter extirpation. By a disposition so malignant, and a conduct so 
 offensive and even dangerous , to our existence, as have been manifested 
 by the Begums, without the smallest injury or provocation on our 
 parts, they have forfeited all claim to the protection which we afforded 
 them, in exacting from the Nabob, at the time Mr. Bristow assisted 
 him in obtaining thirty lacs of rupees from them, a promise to our 
 government that those ladies should enjoy full possession of their jaghires 
 unmolested. We have a right to withdraw this protection when they 
 are no longer worthy of it, and to provide against their machinations by 
 a concession of that pledge which afforded them the means of injuring 
 and distressing us. The Begums mil suffer no actual loss by the 
 resumption of their jaghires, except of an influence which they have 
 invariably employed to the most pernicious purposes against one state 
 which has conferred and another which has secured and protected them, 
 since it is stipulated that they should receive the amount of the nett 
 collections of them in money."* 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 580.
 
 408 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oudc 
 
 15APK.17SS I will show your Lordships they never had the annual 
 amount in money ; to say they will suffer no actual loss is 
 absurd. Will any of your Lordships say that you would be 
 as respectable in this country if you were deprived of your 
 - l all( l c d estates, by having a pension from the Crown to the 
 session of same amount ? In all countries in the world, but particularly 
 utcs. ts in eastern countries, property in land necessarily gives a 
 great degree of rank and consequence ; and it is an insult 
 to common sense to say the Begums are in the same situa- 
 tion as before. They are persons of high rank, possessing 
 great landed property, which property is guaranteed by us ; 
 and then Mr. Hastings says, they will suffer no loss because 
 they will have an annual pension equal to those jagirs 
 depending upon his pleasure, which pleasure was never 
 executed. 
 
 The char -cs ^ u ^ ^ G S ravc an( ^ material part of these marginal notes 
 of crimi- i,s the charge of criminality against the Begums. There is a 
 !ferre<i pl character whom I shall be under the necessity of introducing 
 j^mvsscs to your Lordships more particularly hereafter, whom it is 
 bysirEJ?ja h necessary I should now mention. I mean Sir Elijah Impey, 
 Chief Justice of India. Between the 10th of November and 
 the 29th of November, Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Hastings 
 had had various interviews. He consulted Sir Elijah Impey 
 as the keeper of his conscience he consulted him as skilled 
 in law he consulted him as a sensible adviser I wish, my 
 Lords, I could say that the advice he gave him was such 
 as he ought to have given, or such as Mr. Hastings ought to 
 have received. That excuse and that reason, Avhich is stated 
 in the end of this note, is almost in the direct words of 
 Sir Elijah Impey himself. It is fabricated therefore after the 
 interview with Sir Elijah Impey. The fact did not exist 
 before. He did not know the law till Sir Elijah Impey came. 
 The fact never existed at all, for it is fabricated. Sir Elijah 
 Impey applied bad law to a fabricated fact, and to that 
 Mr. Hastings applied a false date. He writes to Mr. Wheler 
 letters of the llth, 18th, 22d, 27th, and 29th of September, 
 and the 7th and 14th of October, many of them long, all of 
 them important, many mentioning troubles in Oude, none of 
 them stating at all at any one period the names of the 
 Princesses of Oude as at all concerned in these troubles, but 
 stating the troubles in this way, " The province of Oudc 
 has caught the contagion, but I shall dismiss the Nabob in a 
 few days. I doubt not that these troubles will be soon
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 409 
 
 quelled." Thus he writes on the 18th of September, and ISAPK.IT 
 the Nawab quitted Chunar a short period after. 
 
 Then I have established, from the best evidence the Mr. Hast- 
 evidence of the thing itself that the explanation he gives pjanatfo 
 of his own treaty was an after-thought : that your Lord- *^ e a ^* y 
 ships are to pay no credit to it ; and that your Lordships thought, 
 must necessarily conclude that this extraordinary, this won- 
 derful production, the Narrative of Benares, was written 
 to serve a particular purpose, notwithstanding the solemn 
 asseveration with which it begins. Mr. Hastings, says : 
 
 " May the God of truth so judge me as my own conscience shall 
 condemn or acquit me of intentional deception !" 
 
 My Lords, the God of truth must judge that man accord- 
 ing to the sentiments and according to the opinions that I 
 delivered to your Lordships upon these dates. 
 
 \_Mr. Hastings, in a kind of whisper, said, " It is false."] J i nt 1 ^T up ~ 
 
 Mr. Adam. I say it is impossible, from what I have ?ng S Hai 
 stated ; and if the insolence of the prisoner dare to whisper 
 across the court to me that what I have stated, as Manager 
 for the House of Commons, is false, I shall, if that is again 
 repeated, call for your Lordships' protection. I will not put 
 myself upon an equality with him. I stand here his superior. 
 1 heard the word " false." My Lords, I assert the truth ; 
 I enforce it Avith those arguments and those reasons that 
 must stand against the assertion of that man. My Lords, 
 this is a deviation from propriety, this is a deviation from 
 discretion, but I Avill not interrupt the thread of this important 
 story with any further observations upon it. I say that those 
 dates prove to me, and the observations I have made will, 
 I trust, satisfy your Lordships, that this Narrative was a 
 scandalous manufacture for the purpo?e of imposing upon 
 the English nation, and making it believed that that man 
 did right in bringing an injured, innocent, high-born, high- 
 minded, highly-possessed set of people into a situation of 
 such degradation and misery as will make your Lordships' 
 hair stand on end when you hear it stated. 
 
 My Lords, I now proceed with the narrative of this busi- 
 ness, begging pardon of your Lordships if I have deviated 
 (by accidentally hearing a very extraordinary expression) 
 from any of those proprieties which I should certainly wish 
 always to observe. I have now to state to your Lordships The PHH- 
 that these jagirs were taken away, and that the annual pHyed'of 
 amount of these jagirs was not paid to the Princesses, nor a n?j r t j 1 f )
 
 410 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15APE.1788. to the persons to whom they ought to have been paid. First 
 annual of all I state to your Lordships a letter of Mr. Hastings, 
 returned* to i 11 answer to one of the 20th of January, 1782, from 
 Mr. Middleton, which your Lordships will find to be subse- 
 quent to the period at which the jagirs were ordered to be 
 seized and the treasures were ordered to be taken possession 
 of. He says in that letter of the 27th of January, 1782 : 
 
 " I desire that you will endeavour to dissuade the Nabob from con- 
 cluding any settlement with the Begums, till the Board or myself have 
 been advised of the amount of the treasure recovered from them, and of 
 the balance due at the latest period from the Nabob to the Company."* 
 
 Your Lordships therefore see from this letter that 
 Mr. Hastings' determination was not to do anything with 
 respect to those jagirs till he had consulted the Council. 
 Upon the 23d of October, 1782, your Lordships will observe 
 he says as follows : 
 
 " The severities which have been exercised towards the Begums were most 
 justly deserved by the advantage which they took of the troubles, in which 
 I myself was personally involved the last year, to excite a rebellion in the 
 Nabob's government, and to complete the ruin which they thought was 
 impending on ovirs. If it is the Nabob's desire to forget and forgive their 
 past offences, I have no objection to his allowing them in pension the 
 nominal amount of their jaghires ; but if he should offer to restore their 
 jaghires to them, or to give them any property in land, after the warning 
 which they have given him by the dangerous abuse they made of his 
 indulgence, you must remonstrate in the strongest terms against it. 
 You must not permit such an act to take place until this government 
 shall have received information of it, and shall have had time to interpose 
 its influence for the prevention of it." 
 
 Your Lordships will observe that this letter contains an 
 acknowledgment that, according to Mr. Hastings' know- 
 ledge, the annual amount had not been paid ; for it says, 
 " you may pay them the annual amount, but must not give 
 them back their landed property." 
 
 Upon the 25th of September, 1783, near two years alter 
 the treaty, Mr. Bristow writes to the Board : 
 
 " I transmit you a list (at the head of which stands the Begum's) of 
 the jaghires resumed since the agreement at Chunar in 1781. I have 
 only to observe, in regard to the jaghirdars, that very few of them have 
 received any part of their allowances, and they are all in great distress." 
 
 Then, on the 6th of November, 1783, there is a letter from 
 the Wazir to the Board, saying: 
 
 " The distresses which they (the Princesses) have individually suffered 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 871.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 411 
 
 are beyond description : and on this account it is now my wish to put 15 APR. 1788. 
 
 my grandmother, and my mother and other relations, again in possession 
 
 of their jaghires." 
 
 This is accompanied with a list, and at the beginning of 
 that list are the two Princesses' names. This, then, proves to 
 your Lordships that that proposition which made a part of the 
 treaty of Chunar was not fulfilled, and they were not put in 
 possession of the annual amount ; otherwise they could not 
 have been in that state of distress which is here described. 
 This concludes the determination, and in point of fact the 
 actual resumption of the jagirs. 
 
 My Lords, I now come to the statement of the seizure seizure of 
 of the treasures. And here I shall at present detain your sures'ofthe 
 Lordships but for a moment, because I shall content myself Princcsses - 
 merely with stating dates. Your Lordships recollect that 
 Cheyt Sing was arrested upon the 16th of August, 1781. 
 The commotions in Oude will be proved to be about the 
 8th of September, 1781. These commotions I shall prove 
 were of this nature. Several of the distant provinces of 
 Oude had been extremely oppressed, particularly by the 
 English government. And whenever the English troops 
 retired, which they necessarily did, in order to give assist- 
 ance to Mr. Hastings at Benares, the consequence was that 
 these people, having been oppressed, rose in a manner 
 which they naturally would do when the power that op- 
 pressed them was removed. Your Lordships will find by a 
 letter of Mr. Hastings to Mr. TVhelcr, that on the llth of 
 September the TV'azir was with him at Chunar. Upon the 
 19th of September, the treaty of Chunar is dated. Upon 
 the 24th or 25th (I am not able to ascertain which), the 
 Wazir left Chunar to return to his capital : but your Lord- 
 ships will find that, instead of returning to his capital, he 
 went by way of Fyzabad, which lies ninety miles west of 
 Lucknow, and consecpaently he was obliged to go ninety 
 miles about. On the 29th of September, 1781, Mr. Hastings 
 writes to Mr. Wheler as follows : 
 
 " The same spirit animated every officer of every corps, and infused 
 itself into the men under their command, with an effect so far exceeding 
 the common occurrences of human affairs that in the complete space of 
 one month this great and valuable province " that is, the province 
 of Benares " which had been suddenly and wholly lost, was in sub- 
 stance wholly recovered to the British empire."* 
 
 Then on the 29th of September, by the declaration of 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 586.
 
 412 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APR. 1788. Mr. Hastings himself, all the troubles of Benares were at an 
 end. The country was restored in a manner to peace, and 
 the government consequently could take its natural course. 
 On the 10th of November, 1781, your Lordships already 
 know that Bidjey Ghur was taken ; Cheyt Sing had been 
 driven out of the country some time, before. Therefore the 
 10th of November, 1781, is an extremely material date. On 
 
 Proceedings or about that time Mr. Hastings met Sir Elijah Impcy at 
 Chunar. Between that period and the 19th or 20th of No- 
 vember, 1781, Sir Elijah Impcy set off for Oudc to take 
 the affidavits which I shall have occasion to mention here- 
 after. On the 23d of November, 1781, he arrived at 
 Lucknow. On the 29th of November, 1781, he left Luek- 
 now ; and 1 find a letter, dated the 1st of December, 1781, 
 from Sir Elijah Impey to Mr. Middleton, which letter con- 
 tains an account of an interview between Sir Elijah Impey 
 and Mr. Hastings respecting the matters which had been 
 transacted between Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton at 
 Lucknow, in consequence of Mr. Hastings' instructions ; 
 therefore he must have been back at Chunar on the 1st of 
 December. In that letter he says : 
 
 " What we talked of respecting the Begums he (Mr. Hastings) highly 
 approves ; he wished it to be done immediately. I need not mention 
 the necessity of taking care that the money be applied to the Company's 
 use." 
 
 Your Lordships see from this letter it is extremely diffi- 
 cult to conceive what it was they talked of with respect to 
 the Begums. The affair of the jagirs was [contained in] a 
 written treaty, sealed with the seal and signed with the name 
 of Mr. Hastings ; therefore it could not be a matter which 
 which was necessary to be kept secret. But he says in 
 the latter part, " you must take care that the money be 
 applied to the Company's use." Therefore it necessarily 
 appears that it was about money they were talking. This 
 will be a clue to what follows, and show the dark and am- 
 biguous way in which Mr. Hastings, Sir Elijah Impey, and 
 Mr. Middleton, dealt with each other with respect to seizing 
 these treasures ; that this dark, ambiguous, unintelligible 
 sentence is clearly applicable to money. And therefore your 
 Lordships will find hereafter that it is applicable to the 
 seizure of the treasures. This is all I find necessary at 
 present to state with regard to the determination to seize 
 the treasures and resume the jagirs. 
 
 I now come to that part of the Article which respects the
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 413 
 
 means by which the treasures were to be seized and the 
 jagirs to be resumed. In the first place, the reluctance of Reluctance 
 the Nawab is a matter of very considerable importance in w^to^fie 
 this case. Your Lordships will find throughout the whole of t^suresf 
 the evidence that the permission which he gave the Nawab to and the 
 
 ,, . . , * 1 . ! , V , . resumption 
 
 resume the jagirs he arbitrarily construed into a compulsion, ofthejagirs 
 and that he compelled the Nawab to do that which he only 
 permitted him to do by the treaty. 
 
 It is unnecessary to waste your Lordships' time at present 
 with reading the various letters which prove that. I shall 
 only assert, depending upon the letters proving it, that 
 throughout the whole of that business your Lordships will 
 find the Nawab expressing the most unconquerable reluc- 
 tance that could bo imagined ; and that this unconquerable 
 aversion to the measure is communicated by the agent 
 (Mr. Middleton) of Mr. Hastings. Mr. Middleton says, " he 
 had issued his own perwunnas to the aumils." Therefore 
 your Lordships will see that the Nawab's acquiescence at 
 last was only nominal ; that the cause of it was this : 
 Mr. Middleton having issued his orders in his own name to 
 the servants of the Nawab was a complete and absolute 
 assumption, in the eyes of the country and all the inhabitants, 
 of the government. The Nawab had submitted to those His re- 
 hidden modes by which Mr. Hastings carried on the govern- the^urm?- 
 ment of Oude. Tfc had submitted to those letters of requi- derofins 
 
 -, .. , . -i i i authority. 
 
 sition and propositions which he had required him to make, 
 He submitted to all that ; but it was impossible for him 
 to submit to degradation in the eyes of his subjects; to 
 permit it to be believed that that family which had raised 
 itself to the throne by the activity of Sufdar Jung, should 
 be so degraded in the eyes of all Hindustan, so ruined in 
 reputation in the eyes of all the Indian powers, so ruined 
 in reputation even in the eyes of his own subjects, as to 
 have the whole authority and magistracy of the country 
 openly and professedly taken out of his hands. Mr. Mid- 
 dleton has stated, and cannot deny it, at your Lordships' 
 bar ; and, if new information has got into his mind since 
 your Lordships will compare it with that which Avas recent 
 in his memory; it is impossible for Mr. Middleton to deny, 
 that he submitted to do that last act of degradation ; that 
 is, after having lost the power, to lose the reputation of 
 that authority which is frequently dearer to men than power 
 itself.
 
 414 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 so strong, that no words of mine 
 
 Manner of 
 seizure of 
 the jagirs. 
 
 15APE.1788. This is the situation in which these jagirs and in which 
 these treasures were compelled to be taken. This was the 
 sentiment of the Nawab's mind upon the subject. The lan- 
 guage of Mr. Middleton is 
 can add anything to it. 
 
 I shall proceed now to state shortly some matters of very 
 considerable importance with regard to the manner and 
 origin of seizing these treasures and these jagir/s. My 
 Lords, it was determined to seize the jagirs, upon the 19th 
 of December, 1781. Mr. Middleton writes Mr. Hastings a 
 letter, stating to him that the Begums had determined to 
 resist the resumption of the jagirs ; and he incloses in that 
 letter several letters from the younger Princess expressive 
 of her great disgust. Mr. Middleton was impressed with 
 the representations made by the Wazir, and the resistance 
 expected from the Princess ; and, being impressed with 
 this, he was, perhaps, rather more tardy than Mr. Hastings 
 wished him. Accordingly Mr. Hastings, upon the 26th of 
 December, 1781, writes to him a letter of a very extraordi- 
 nary nature, a letter upon which a great part of this cause 
 hinges, by which Mr. Hastings makes himself completely 
 responsible for all the consequences that followed, even if 
 he had not done anything afterwards to approve them 
 a letter which T flatter myself your Lordships will pay par- 
 ticular attention to, and store in your memories, which 
 letter I shall beg leave to read in detail to your Lord- 
 ships : 
 
 " My mind has been for some days suspended between two opposite 
 impulses ; one arising from the necessity for my return to Calcutta, the 
 other from the apprehension of my presence being more necessary and 
 more urgently wanted at Lucknow. Your answer to this shall decide my 
 choice. 
 
 " I have waited thus long in hopes of hearing that some progress has 
 been made in the execution of the plan which I concluded with the 
 Nabob in September last. I do not find that any step towards it has 
 been yet taken, though three months are elapsed, and little more than 
 that period did appear to me requisite to have accomplished the most 
 essential parts of it, and to have brought the whole into train. This 
 tardiness, and the opposition prepared to the only decided act yet under- 
 taken, have a bad appearance. I approve the Nabob's resolutions to 
 deprive the Begums of their ill-employed treasures. In both services it 
 must l>e your care to prevent an abuse of the powers given to those that 
 are employed in them. You yourself ought to be personally present. 
 You must not allow any negociations or forbearance, but must prosecute 
 both services, until the Begums arc at the entire mercy of the Nabob, 
 their jaghires in the quiet possession of his aumils, and their wealth in 
 
 Letter of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings to 
 Mr. Middle- 
 ton urging 
 the seizure 
 of the jagirs 
 and trea- 
 sures.
 
 Speech of Mr, Adam, 415 
 
 such charge as may secure it against private embezzlement. You will 15 APR. 1788. 
 have a force more than sufficient to effect both these purposes." 
 
 Then your Lordships will observe that, according to this 
 letter of Mr. Hastings, Mr. Middleton is to take the Nawab 
 with him. But Mr. Middleton is to do the business, that 
 is under the order of Mr. Hastings. Mr. Middleton is 
 to execute this atrocious act with the power of England, 
 but in the name of the Nawab, against the parents of that 
 Prince. [He then goes on :] 
 
 " The reformation of his army anil the new settlement of his 
 revenues are also points of immediate concern, and ought imme- 
 diately to be concluded. Has anything been done in either ? I 
 now demand, and require you most solemnly to answer me, are you 
 confident in your ability to accomplish all these purposes and the other 
 points of my instructions ? If you reply tha,t you are, I will depart with 
 a quiet and assured mind to the Presidency, but leave you a dreadful 
 responsibility. If you disappoint me, if you tell me you cannot rely 
 on your power and the other means which you possess for performing 
 these services, I will free you from the charge ; I will proceed myself to 
 Lucknow, and I will myself undertake them. In that case, I desire that 
 you will immediately order bearers to be stationed for myself and two 
 other gentlemen between Lucknow and Illahabad. I will set out from 
 hence in three days after the receipt of your letter. I am sorry that I 
 am under the necessity of writing in this pressing manner. I trust im- 
 plicitly to your integrity. I am certain of your attachment to myself, 
 and I know that your capacity is equal to any service ; but I must 
 express my doubts of your firmness and activity, and above all of your 
 recollection of my instructions and of their importance. My conduct in 
 the late arrangements will be arraigned with the rancour of disappointed 
 rapacity ;" 
 
 this is a charge directly at his masters, the India Com- 
 pany-- 
 
 " and my reputation and influence will suffer a mortal wound from 
 the failure of them. They have already failed in a degree, since no part 
 of them has as yet taken place, but the removal of our forces from the 
 Dual) and the Rohilcund, and of the British officers and pensioners from 
 the service of the Nabob, and the expenses of the former thrown without 
 any compensation on the Company. I expect a supply of money equal 
 to the discharge of all the Nabob's arrears, and am much disappointed 
 and mortified that I am not now able to return with it. Give me an 
 immediate answer to the question which I have herein proposed, that I 
 may lose no more time in fruitless inaction." * 
 
 My Lords, I am sure that to your Lordships' minds, 
 which are endowed in early life with all the stores of clas- 
 sical knowledge, with everything which the refinement of 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence." p. 807.
 
 416 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15 APE. 1788. the ancient Latin poets could say that it must have oc- 
 curred to your Lordships' minds that this letter is the 
 exact counterpart of the letter described by the Roman 
 satirist, when he says : 
 
 " Sed quo cecidit sub crimine ? Quisnam 
 Dilator ? Quibus indiciis quo teste probavit ? 
 Nil horum. Verbosa et grandis epistola venit 
 A Capreis. Bene habet : nil plus interrogo." 
 
 This, my Lords, is the true spirit of the letter from 
 Chunar. Tinder what crime have they fallen ? Who are 
 their accusers ? What are the witnesses? Where is the in- 
 R nfh Cti ns f rma tion ? What are the articles exhibited against them ? 
 purity of There is nothing of all this; but a letter of dreadful re- 
 justice, sponsibility comes from Chunar. And then says Mr. Mid- 
 dleton : " It is well. I march to-morrow to Fyzabad. I 
 ransack the palace of the Princesses. Take them by storm. 
 I will not treat with them even for an hour." 
 
 It will not be so with your Lordships. The same poet 
 has, with the same satire and truth, described the situation 
 of the Roman governors after they had lost their liberties 
 
 " Atque duas tantum res anxius optat ; 
 Panem et circenses." 
 
 My Lords, it is not so, thank God ! with the people and 
 the constitution of Great Britain. We stand peculiarly 
 and singularly indebted to Providence. Our governors are 
 in a more responsible situation than ever existed in any 
 country in the world. The highest improvement in the arts 
 of luxury, which have arisen to a species which have almost 
 ruined the rest of mankind, everything that can make them 
 feel, that can cultivate human nature, that can adorn their 
 understanding or gratify their tastes, everything that it is 
 possible for a man to enjoy in this state, is enjoyed by this 
 blessed country. My Lords, it has a blessing beyond all 
 that a blessing which your Lordships, in your consti- 
 tutional hearts, must feel a blessing which the King, Lords 
 and Commons, of this country have preserved to this 
 country beyond any other nation upon the earth that, with 
 all that luxury and refinement, and all those circumstances 
 I have described, we have preserved entirely our British 
 liberties. Your Lordships are not only pleased with those 
 delightful entertainments which, when innocent, improve 
 the mind and soften the heart; but your Lordships have 
 vigorous and sturdy minds, like Britons ; are capable still of
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 417 
 
 feeling like your ancestors; are capable of extending your 15 APK. 1733. 
 minds across that trackless and barren ocean which has 
 become, by the industry of man, a highroad of wealth to 
 the inhabitants of the earth. Your Lordships will not feel, 
 with debased Middleton, "bene habet." Your Lordships 
 will interrogate to the quick sound it to the bottom. 
 Your Lordships will see that there is nothing improper there. 
 Your Lordships will call upon him to bring forth such a de- 
 fence with regard to these innocent Princesses as will con- 
 vince you that he was not a man injuring the nearest and 
 dearest rights of society, and violating those rights which he 
 was appointed by the King, Lords and Commons, in their 
 great legislative imperial capacity, to protect that he did 
 protect those Princesses, who, by the dying voice of Suja- 
 ud-Dowla, he was to befriend when Suja-ud-Dowla was no 
 more. Good God, Avhat are the friendships of this man ? 
 
 I told your Lordships I should be able to bring you back 
 again to the impure soil of the Rohilla war. Your Lord- 
 ships will find in the sequel that there is nothing in the 
 Kohilla compact, which disgraces the records of Parliament, 
 which disgraces the records of the India Company, which 
 contaminates this nation there is nothing worse in that 
 Kohilla contract than in those circumstances which I am about 
 to state. Your Lordships will find that, in consequence 
 of this dreadful letter of the 26th of December, 1781, 
 Mr. Middleton marched to Fyzabad ; that he stormed the Fyzabad 
 town ; that he was blamed by Mr. Hastings for treating Mr. MiddiV- 
 only for two days, and in so singular a manner that it is ton * 
 impossible for me not to read that part of the correspon- 
 dence to your Lordships. On the 25th of January, 1782, 
 Mr. Hastings says : 
 
 "I have received your letters of the 31st ultimo, the 8th, 10th, and Letter of 
 18th instant. The satisfaction I received on the first advice of your j,^' s biam!np 
 success at Fyzabad has been greatly allayed by my disappointment of its Mr. Middle- 
 effects. I am compelled to remind you of my instructions contained in *?i n ^ r ,, 
 my letter of the 26th of December. They were the most positive that timctcrilio 
 
 you were not to allow any negociation or forbearance" Princesses 
 
 to treat. 
 
 Your Lordships see, that if even the letter of dreadful 
 responsibility had not been so sufficient to charge that man 
 with everything which I charge him with, this is a com- 
 plete acquiescence in the propriety of that letter, after the 
 fact is committed. 
 
 " but to prosecute both services until the Begums were at the entire 
 mercy of the Nabob, their jaghires in quiet possession of his aumils, 
 
 D D
 
 418 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude ; 
 
 15 APR. 1788. and their wealth in such charge as might secure it against private emf 
 bezzlement. You began by negociation, which had the natural effect o 
 exciting resistance ; and you now tell me that, without hesitating a 
 moment, you have given your concurrence to a temporary forbearance. 
 It is possible that in this repeated opposition to my orders you have 
 been actuated by some necessity; but this I can hardly suppose, as you 
 have not even alluded to them or assigned reasons for having deviated 
 from them. I shall wait anxiously for the result of your proceedings. 
 After having, at the earnest solicitation of the Nabob, in the first instance, 
 and his application to me for my concurrence in the second, agren I 1<> 
 his resumption of the jaghires held by the Begums and to the confis- 
 cation of their treasures, and thereby involved my own name and the 
 credit of the Company in the participation in both measures, I have a 
 right to require and insist on the complete execution of them, and I 
 look to you for their execution ; declaring that I shall hold you account- 
 able for it if they shall fail of the ends proposed, after the attainment of 
 the means which the dismission and dispersion of their forces and the 
 possession of the kellah have afforded you for accomplishing them, beyond 
 the apparent possibility of a disappointment." * 
 
 Answer of Mr. Middleton answers to this letter upon the 5th of 
 ton. ' B ~ February, 1782, in which lie acknowledges the receipt of 
 the letter, and goes on to say : 
 
 " In the present instance it was more in appearance and expression 
 than in fact that any deviation was made from your orders of the 
 26th of December. For although I was constrained, from my strict 
 regard to the accomplishment of what 1 considered the first object of 
 this undertaking, to admit of a temporary forbearance, for the reasons 
 assigned in my address of the 18th ultimo, the Begums were at that 
 time to be considered as entirely at the mercy of the Nabob, their 
 jaghires were in possession of his aumils, their troops dispersed, and the 
 kellah of Fyzabad, which included also the Bow Begum's own habita- 
 tion, under the guard of his Excellency's and our troops."! 
 
 The minis- It remained only to get possession of her wealth, and to 
 
 Princesses effect this he informs him he has put her ministers in irons ; 
 
 put m irons. an j j ie gj ves a description of that. Your Lordships then see 
 that, after the transaction at Fyzabad, and after Fyzabad had 
 been taken, which happened upon the 12th of January, 1782, 
 Mr. Hastings disapproved of that temporary delay of two days 
 for negotiation ; he was enraged because Mr. Middleton had 
 not immediately stormed the town ; and that he was, by the 
 letter of the 15th of February, 1782, put in complete pos- 
 session of the cruelties that were practised, and of the fetters 
 that were imposed upon the ministers of the Princess. 
 
 Reasons for My Lords, I shall leave that part respecting these cruelties 
 to the evidence, being perfectly sensible that it is much 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 821. 
 f Printed as above, p. 825.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam, 419 
 
 better that any matter of that kind should appear in evi- 15AT>R - 1783 - 
 dence for the observations of those who will hereafter, with of cruelties 
 much more ability than I am capable of, recapitulate the on the 
 circumstances of the evidence, and point them out as they "' 
 apply to particular parts of the cause, it will be better 
 that I should leave them to such talents than detain your 
 Lordships in this stage of the cause with an enumeration of 
 them. It is sufficient for me to state the fact, and inform 
 your Lordships that the facts will be proved. 
 
 The next part of the case to which I allude is of very Treatment 
 considerable consequence, and to which I alluded formerly, of the fat" 
 It regards the women and family of Suffdar Jung and Suja- Nawab - 
 tid-Dowla. There is a dispute between those who prefer 
 these charges and Mr. Hastings with respect to who had 
 the charge of that family. Mr. Hastings says, the Nawab 
 was compelled to maintain that family. Those that maintain 
 these charges say, that may be, but, besides that, the 
 Princesses not only had their jagirs granted to them for that 
 purpose, but they did in fact maintain the family. And here 
 again we have the evidence of the thing itself ; that from 
 the very moment these unhappy women were deprived of 
 their jagirs and of their treasures, the family of the deceased 
 Prince fell into want and misery, to such a degree that I 
 am sure it must shock your Lordships to hear. I will state 
 very shortly indeed one or two of the representations of 
 persons upon the spot, with regard to the situation of these 
 unhappy and unfortunate women. Major Gilpin, upon the 
 30th of October, 1782, writes to Mr. Bristow, then, again, 
 Resident at the court of Oude : 
 
 " Last night, about 8 o'clock, the women in the Khourd Mhal Letter of 
 zenana," MajorGilpin 
 
 describing: 
 
 that is, the lesser palace, that was appropriated for their ff r J ant 
 residence 
 
 " under the care of Lettafut Ali Khan, assembled on the top of the build- 
 ings, crying in a most lamentable manner for food ; that for the last four 
 days they had got but a very scanty allowance, and that yesterday they 
 had got none. The melancholy cries of famine are more easily imagined 
 than described, and from their representations I fear the Nabob's agents 
 for that business are very inattentive. I therefore think it necessary to 
 make you acquainted with the circumstance, that his Excellency the 
 Nabob may cause his agents to be more circumspect in their conduct 
 towards these poor unhappy women." * 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 897. 
 D D 2
 
 420 Opening of the Second C I targe Begums of Oude: 
 
 15APB.1788. From this latter part it seems as if it was the Nawab's 
 
 Their dc- agents who had the charge of them ; but your Lordships 
 
 thePrin- " will see throughout that the Begums had a particular charge 
 
 of them, and that in fact they suffered from the moment 
 
 the Begums were deprived of their property. He [Major] 
 
 Gilpin writes in a letter of the 15th of November : 
 
 Second let- " The repeated cries of the women in the Khourd Mali! zenana for 
 of Major subsistence has been truly melancholy. They beg most piteously for 
 liberty that they may earn their daily bread by laborious servitude, or 
 be relieved from their misery by immediate death." * 
 
 Those persons who in thekaulnama of 1778 to which 
 the British East India Company was a party, of which 
 Mr. Hastings was in possession, at least, in the year 1780 
 were treated with so much respect and so much defe- 
 rence that they Avere thought fit to be the subject of a 
 public treaty between two such powers as the India Com- 
 pany and the Nawab of Oude, to be secured in their 
 education and marriages their rights are particularly 
 guaranteed and protected these are the people who 
 were willing to earn their bread by laborious servitude, or 
 Letter of to put an end to their miseries by death. Upon the 29th of 
 retjfto w January, 1784, Mr. Bristow transmits to Calcutta another 
 inls^fthe l^er, containing a relation of the hardships endured by the 
 ladies. ladies in the Khurd Mahal : 
 
 " The ladies, their attendants and servants, were still as clamorous as 
 last night. Lataffit, the daroga, 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, how- 
 ever, consented to this proposal, but were still intent upon making their 
 escape through the bazar, and in consequence formed themselves in the 
 following order : the children in the front ; behind them the ladies in 
 the seraglio ; and behind them again their attendants. But their inten- 
 tions were frustrated by the opposition they met with from Lataffit's 
 sepoys. The next day Lataffit went twice to the women, and used his 
 endeavours to make them return into the zenana, promising to advance 
 them 10,000 mpees ; which, upon the money being paid down, they 
 agreed to comply with ; but night coming on, nothing transpired. On 
 the day following their clamours were more violent than usual. Lataffit 
 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. Lataffit then went to 
 Hoshmund Alley Cawn, to consult with him about what means they 
 should take. They came to a resolution of driving them in by force, 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 898.
 
 Speech of Mr, Adam. 421 
 
 and gave orders to their sepoys to beat any one of the women who 15 APE. 1788. 
 
 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 zenana. The women, seeing the treachery of Lataffit, 
 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 12 o'clock, when, finding their 
 situation desperate, they returned into the rung mahl, and found 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 meantime Lataffit and Hosh- 
 mund Alley Cawn posted sentries to secure the gate of the lesser 
 mahl. During the whole of this conflict the ladies and women re- 
 mained exposed to the view of the sepoys. The Begum then sent for 
 Lataffit and Hoshmund Alley Cawn, whom she severely reprimanded, and 
 insisted upon knowing the cause of this infamous behaviour. They 
 pleaded in their defence the impossibility of helping it, as the treat- 
 ment the women had met with had only been conformable to his 
 Excellency the Wazir's orders. The Begum alleged that, even admit- 
 ting that the Nawab had given these orders, they were by no means 
 authorized to disgrace the family of Sujah-ul-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 what- 
 ever he directed she would implicitly comply with. The Begum then 
 sent for two of the children who were wounded in the affray of last 
 night, and after endeavouring to sooth them she sent them again to 
 Lataffit and Hoshmund Alley Cawn, and in the presence of the children 
 again expressed her disapprobation of their conduct, and the improba- 
 bility of Azoph-ul-Dowlah's suffering the ladies and children of Sujah- 
 ul-Dowlah to be disgraced by being exposed to the view of the sepoys. 
 Upon which, Lataffit produced the letter from the Nabob, representing 
 that he was amenable only to the order of his Excellency, and whatever 
 he ordered it was his duty to obey ; and that, had the ladies thought 
 proper to have retired quietly into 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 400 rupees and dismissed them, and sent word by Sumrud and 
 the other eunuchs, that, if the ladies would peaceably retire to their 
 apartments, Lataffit would supply them with three or four thousand 
 rupees for their present expenses, and recommended to 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 1C) at night went back into the zenana. The next 
 morning the Begum waited upon the mother of Sujah-ul-Dowlah, and 
 related to her all the circumstances of the disturbance. The mother of 
 Sujah-ul-Dowlah returned for answer that, after there being no accounts 
 kept of the crores of revenue, she was not suprised that the family of 
 Sujah-ul-Dowlah in their endeavours to procure subsistence should be 
 obliged to expose themselves to the meanest of people. After bewail- 
 ing their misfortunes, and shedding many tears, the Begum took her 
 leave, and returned home." * 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 900.
 
 422 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 SS. My Lords, it is impossible for imagination to add any- 
 thing to this description. You see the situation into which 
 Their ex- these poor unfortunate women are thrown ; you see, in 
 pubucvicw. addition to all the miseries of famine, that they had that 
 greatest distress that can happen to Indian women, the 
 being exposed to the public view of men. It is not there 
 as here, that every public place is adorned with that sex. 
 The first court of justice in the country could not possibly 
 be filled with the persons of that description, as it is here. 
 No ; they are confined to the zanana ; they are incapable of 
 enlivening the face of joy, although they may contrive at 
 particular times and on particular occasions to smooth the 
 brow of sorrow. But the real state of the case is, that 
 women in that part of the globe are immediately disgraced 
 upon exposure. And, although the circumstances in which 
 they stand and the sphere in which they move is more cir- 
 cumscribed and more limited than that of European ladies, 
 yet it is not less sacred, "it is not less august. There are 
 many instances in which women who have been exposed in 
 India to the view of men other than that of their immediate 
 family, have devoted themselves to destruction on the funeral 
 pile, in order to expiate the disgrace they had suffered by 
 that exposure. These are the women whom Suja-ud-Dowla 
 left to the care of the India Company. I don't charge this 
 as an act of Mr. Hastings' own hands with being in conse- 
 quence of his own orders ; but as the effect of that " dreadful 
 responsibility " and all the circumstances attending it. And I 
 charge more I charge him with having been informed of all 
 these things, and never having made any inquiry into them, 
 to check, to control, or to punish the offenders ; and there- 
 fore having acquiesced in these miseries, w r hich, by his scan- 
 dalous, arbitrary and tyrannical, orders, he was the immediate 
 cause of inflicting. 
 
 Aggravating My Lords, I have now travelled through all the parts of 
 stances. this charge, with the single exception of what is stated as 
 aggravating matter in the Article. There are two circum- 
 stances stated as aggravating matter ; one is the employ of 
 improper persons ; the other is the total falsehood and im- 
 propriety of the justification that it is not only false in 
 point of fact, but that, even if it were true, it is illegal in 
 Employ- point of conclusion. With regard to the first, your Lord- 
 Aso(f-ud- ships have already heard all that is necessary upon the 
 thTtran!-. cu ' cums tance of AsofF-ud-Dowla. Sir Elijah Impey, the 
 action. Chief Justice in India, has likewise been introduced to your
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 423 
 
 Lordships' acquaintance in this business. Sir Elijah Inipey, 15ArK - 1788 - 
 as Mr. Hastings states in his Narrative, advised him to have sir Elijah 
 the affidavits taken, in his own justification, in his trans- advice to 
 actions in Oude and Benares, and Sir Elijah Impey states, or ^ s tofvave 
 Mr. Hastings I forget which, but I know it is in the tSft!? 
 evidence that Sir Elijah Impey, like a correct and accurate justify MS 
 lawyer in a business of this kind, settled what is in West- 
 minster Hall called the caption part of the affidavits ; 
 namely, the introduction to the affidavit. When I shall Reflections 
 have proved that all ideas of investigating truth were totally f theMws 80 
 absent from the minds of all the parties concerned in this of En 8 laild - 
 atrocious business, it is impossible for me not for a moment 
 to desert the character in which I stand, and to resort to a 
 character which I hold in another part of this hall ; because 
 I feel that profession degraded by what I am going to state 
 a profession Avhich the more a man studies it liberally and 
 applies to it scientifically, the more he investigates it upon 
 principles of strict justice and jurisprudence, he will find 
 that the laws not only inculcate the strictest justice, but the 
 soundest principles of jurisprudence. I am anxious to rescue 
 that profession from the infamy which has been cast upon it 
 by one who has not only deserted his situation, but has 
 become Avorse than a common commissioner taking affidavits 
 in the lowest case that can be in Westminster Hall. From 
 the matter in the affidavits, and the manner in which they 
 were obtained, it is necessary I should describe these 
 affidavits in justification. 
 
 They were all taken at Lucknow. Sir Elijah Impey arrived Description 
 there on the 23d of November ; he quitted it upon the 29th. davits taken 
 Sir Elijah Impey was therefore just six days at Lucknow. 1 
 
 During that period of time he took a number of affidavits 
 that would astonish your Lordships; many of them from 
 Indians ; many likewise from Englishmen. These affi- 
 davits, without troubling your Lordships with the particulars 
 of them, bear this upon the face of them they are affidavits 
 to accuse the Begums of rebellion. They are affidavits to 
 make good their assisting Cheyt Sing. They are affidavits 
 of insurrection at Goruckpore. They are affidavits to make 
 good their discontent to the English government, and their 
 determination to throw off the English yoke. And all these 
 affidavits, going to the very issue of the cause between the 
 parties, are taken surreptitiously in Mr. Middleton's house 
 at Lucknow, without the parties having any notice of it 
 all done in six days. People brought from everywhere no
 
 424 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 i APE. 1788. cross- examination admitted all ex parte: and, from begin- 
 ning to end, almost without exception, every word deposed 
 to is on hearsay : they are all a representation, with a very 
 few exceptions, of something that somebody else had done. 
 I venture to ascribe to these affidavits that character without 
 the possibility of its being disproved. 
 
 My Lords, there is something so extremely singular in 
 the conduct of Mr. Hastings sbout this business that I cannot 
 help thinking that, if he thought at all, he must be con- 
 vinced in his own mind that these affidavits, at the time 
 they were made, could not speak the truth In the first 
 place, there is a person who is introduced to your Lord- 
 
 davits am ships' notice in the Benares charge, called Mirza Saadat 
 Ali, who is the brother of Asoff-ud-Dowla, and who had 
 his sole existence by a pension from our Company upon the 
 province of Benares. Almost all of the country affidavits, 
 and almost all the English affidavits, state the bad intent of 
 Mirza Saadat Ali as strongly and much more so than they 
 do with respect to the Begums. Your Lordships would 
 suppose then that Mirza Saadat Ali had been a person 
 Mr. Hastings would have doubted of, and would not have 
 employed ; and his rank and situation in the country were 
 such that it would have induced him to have deprived the 
 country of the influence of a man who was discontented 
 with the English government. Your Lordships will be per- 
 fectly astonished when you find Mr. Hastings' declaration 
 upon the subject: 
 
 Sentiments " It is proper to mention," says Mr. Hastings in his Narrative, " that 
 jn ins favour a s soon as I had formed my resolution to leave Benares I sent my 
 Mr. Hast- moonshy to the Nabob Saadat N Aly Khan, to inform him, and to 
 ings. recommend the wounded sepoys to his care, believing that the Rajah, 
 
 from considerations of policy would not choose to molest them, espe- 
 cially as he could have no motive or object to it but revenge, if he would 
 show a determined resolution to protect them. The same request I 
 made to him in writing after my arrival at Chunar. I owe him the 
 justice to attest that he faithfully and liberally complied with my request. 
 He visited them himself, and furnished them with provisions and with 
 money, and appointed native surgeons to attend them ; and, as they were 
 able to bear it, he caused them all to be removed to his own quarters. 
 Many reports and suspicions have prevailed of his being concerned in 
 some of the designs which were formed against us. I can neither credit 
 nor refute them : the evil imputed to him is at best doubtful, the good 
 which he did is certain, and he is entitled to the full merit of it."* 
 
 These are the sentiments of Mr. Hastings upon the sub- 
 ject of Mirza Saadat Ali, who throughout these affidavits 
 
 * " Narrative of the Insurrection in Benares," p. 32.
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 425 
 
 is stated precisely in the same degree, and frequently in a is APR. was. 
 greater degree, of doubt with regard to attachment to the 
 English than the Begums themselves are. It seems extra- 
 ordinary that the attention of Mirza Saadat AH, and his 
 giving a few rupees to a few wounded soldiers and attending 
 them with a small force a few days, should have such merit 
 with Mr. Hastings as to make the evil that was said of 
 him doubtful, as he knew the good he had done. When 
 the fifty-six lacs were paid into the treasury of Oude 
 great part of which was to go into the treasury of the 
 Company by the Princesses of Oude, in 1776, it was 
 not reckoned any merit at all ; but these doubtful affidavits 
 this ex-parte swearing these hearsays these despicable 
 things, taken in the corner of Mr. Middleton's house, as bad 
 as any depositions taken in any alehouse in any possible 
 case were enough to convince him that those women, sacred 
 from their rank, more so from their sex, and still more so 
 being Indian women, were deserving of this treatment. It 
 seems to me most extraordinary that this should be the case. 
 But the thing is accounted for. Mirza Saadat Ali uas a 
 stipendiary of Great Britain ; he had nothing else. The 
 conduct of Mr. Hastings throughout the country of India 
 had bereft every individual, except these two unfortunate 
 Princesses, of all they possessed ; and they were permitted 
 to be in possession of their property longer in order to be 
 bereft of it with the greater violence. 
 
 Mr. Hastings had bereft every individual in India, 
 When he saw that the treasures of Bidjey Gur were given M 
 to the army, who would neither return the prize money 
 nor grant it as a loan, he had nothing to do but to look treasures of 
 round him to see where he should rob and plunder. He cesses. 
 found that there was not a single person in India left who 
 had anything to take, but those .persons whom he was, by 
 the dying voice of Suja-ud-Dowla, bound to befriend. 
 Then, with the legal advice of Sir Elijah Impey, given 
 illegally upon bad facts, given illegally upon inconclusive 
 evidence, he determines that those people in the language 
 of his marginal note upon the Chunar treaty were not 
 intitlcd any longer to the protection of the India Company. 
 That brings me to that part of the case. And that is a part 
 of the case, I will venture to say, that if your Lordships even 
 take these affidavits to be true, you cannot upon any ground 
 whatever justify, sitting in your judicial capacity. The dis- 
 tribution of justice in England and in India differs. The
 
 426 Opening of the Second Cltarge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15APR. 1788. distribution of justice in a free country and in an arbitrary 
 country is of a different kind, and founded upon different 
 principles. But courts of justice exist in India. India is a 
 country highly civilised. He calls upon Mr. Middleton 
 through the medium of the Nawab to appoint proper officers 
 to distribute justice (I desired your Lordships to keep that 
 letter well in mind). Mr. Hastings has rendered himself 
 responsible for the distribution of justice in India. He has 
 acknowledged that persons, sacred for their character and 
 dignified by their robes, distribute justice in India. What 
 Theprc- then is the situation of it. On the 10th of November, 1781, 
 hemonin" Bidgey Ghur was taken, and the rebellion was at an end on 
 Oude. tnc 8t h O f October, 1781. The disturbances in Baraitch 
 and Goruckpore subsided upon the 25th of September, 1781 ; 
 which proves that these disturbances never existed to any 
 extent at all. The AVazir departed to.Fyzabad, the supposed 
 seat of rebellion against his government. It might be said 
 he went to join the rebels. He met with no disturbance, 
 although he travelled so quick that none of his attendants 
 but a small guard could keep up with him. But, what is 
 more, Mr. Middleton went to Lmcknow at a' time when it is 
 stated by Mr. Hastings the province was all in commotion 
 against the English Government. Mr. Middleton was the 
 hand by which Mr. Hastings perpetrated his wicked deeds. 
 Mr. Middleton states that the disturbances had existed even 
 at Lucknow. He himself returned in perfect peace and 
 tranquillity with the same peace and tranquillity to Luck- 
 now that the Wazir returned into Fyzabad; although 
 Mr. Middleton had not the protection of the sovereign of 
 the country, and had all the odium that English exaction by 
 the hand of Mr. Middletou himself, and the orders of 
 Mr. Hastings, could possibly rouse an injured people to feel 
 against him. If this is not the evidentia rei it never existed 
 in any cause in the world. If those persons who are accus- 
 tomed to scrutinise those minute circumstances upon which 
 the rights of men depend, if they ever knew in their lives in 
 any one period if your Lordships' constitutional advisers ever 
 heard of a case in which the evidentia rei appeared strong 
 and palpable, this is that case ; and a thousand ex-parte hear- 
 say oaths must be light as air before such evidence as that. 
 Various pro- Your Lordships observe the situation of things. There 
 
 tonccsput T/V> r i*? 
 
 forward by are several different pretences set up, all of which cannot 
 n far the be true only one of which can be true. On the llth of 
 February, 1 782, Mr. Hastings writes one representation to
 
 of Mr. Adam. 427 
 
 the Directors; in his Defence to the House of Commons 15 APR. ms. 
 he gives another representation ; in a Defence which he 
 delivered, signed Warren Hastings, in the lobby of the 
 House of Commons, he gives a different account of it; 
 and, last of all, he gives a different account of it in the 
 record on your Lordships' table. Here are four different 
 accounts which he gives of his reasons for having taken 
 these treasures. I shall consider only two of them. One is, 
 the resistance to the resumption of the jagirs ; the other is, 
 the rebellion at Cheyt Sing's time and in Baraitch and Go- 
 ruckpore. Your Lordships will observe in the evidence Resistance 
 that it is stated in a letter of the 19th of December (which "esses 
 
 I have read) that Mr. Middleton communicates to Mr. Hast- , 
 
 ings the intention of the Begums to resist the resumption of audencou- 
 
 i i -i i / -TV i i* i ragemcnt of 
 
 the jagirs, and on the 26th or December is that famous letter rebellion. 
 of Mr. Hastings that I have read. After which, and not 
 before, Mr. Middleton marches to Fyzabad ; and then the 
 whole business is transacted, and by the 12th of January, 
 1782, we are in complete possession of Fyzabad, of the 
 kcllah, and everything belonging to it. Then your Lord- 
 ships will observe that Sir Elijah Impcy was at Chunar 
 between the 10th and 20th of November ; that in that in- 
 termediate space of time, exactly between the quelling one 
 rebellion and the intention to resist at another, iu that inter- 
 mediate space of time, your Lordships will observe, he 
 took that legal advice to seize the treasures in consequence 
 of the rebellion. 
 
 Why, the courts of justice in Oude were open. In the Regular 
 last impeachment preferred by the Commons at your Lord- to com'iet^ 
 ships' bar, when Lord Lovat was tried for high treason, it rebellion 
 would not have been a more atrocious act to have forcibly " t t c *j lsti ' 
 taken from that person his property, his estate and his life, _ 
 
 ... L . . . ~ L , L ,i.. . U1 'Comparison 
 
 than this transaction is in Uucte. It it were possible to sup- with pro- 
 pose that, in the year 1745, the gallant Prince who 
 commanded the army of tins country against the rebels, 
 after the rebellion was over and completely quelled, in- 
 stead of bringing your Lordships' peer* to be tried at your 
 Lordships' bar, had taken a strong band with him, and by 
 force of arms bereft him of his property, plundered him of 
 his treasures, and deprived him of his life, great and respcc- 
 
 * The reference is to the impeachment of Lord Lovat for high treason in 
 December, 1740, after the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion in the north, 
 by the Duke of Cumberland.
 
 428 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15 APR. 1738. table as that character was, highly as it was allied, much 
 as its memory is respected in this country for bravery and 
 constitutional virtue, splendid and transcendent as was his 
 connexion with that person who is in imagination supposed 
 to be here present, and for his connexion with those who 
 have been actually present here, to their own great honour 
 and to the comfort and satisfaction of an admiring people 
 who admire them more, if possible, for the close attention 
 which they have given to this cause of justice notwith- 
 standing all this, it would have been impossible to have kept 
 that great person from the situation which the prisoner at 
 the bar is in now. 
 
 My Lords, I beg pardon for such an allusion. But, if 
 your Lordships will examine into the constitution of the 
 country of India and the constitution of justice there, you 
 will find, in a time of peace, their courts of justice are open 
 to try persons for every offence, and that it is a scandalous 
 dereliction from the principles you ought to observe in the 
 government of that country if you do not follow that mode. 
 Mr. Hastings heaped additional responsibility upon him- 
 self; for he restored the courts of justice, or pretended to 
 restore them. Your Lordships have heard the manner in 
 which that Avas done. The kellah at Fyzabad was stormed, 
 the ministers of the Princess were put in irons, their whole 
 property taken from them ; and, as to the treatment of the 
 family of Suja-ud-Dowla and Suffdar Jung, I have already 
 stated it at large. This is the situation of that justification, 
 take it either way. I say it is false in fact : I say, if it 
 were true, in fact, it is inconclusive in point of law ; and he 
 has only added one misdemeanor to another by attempting 
 this mode of proceeding, when the situation of the country 
 admitted of a different kind of conduct. 
 
 Aggravation There is one aggravation more besides ; that is, a dis- 
 obedience obedience to the orders of the court of Directors. The 
 of thc rdcrs court of Directors, upon hearing all this, with very great 
 Directors, propriety sent a letter to Bengal, of which the following is 
 a paragraph: 
 
 Letter of " If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums did not take the 
 
 OTderinxthe h st ' le l )art against the Company which has been represented, as well in 
 restoration the Governor General's Narrative as in several documents therein 
 of thcjagirs. referred to ; and as it nowhere appears from the papers at present in our 
 possession that they have excited any commotion previous to the 
 imprisonment of Raja Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves in con- 
 sequence of that transaction ; arid as it is probable that such a conduct 
 proceeded entirely from motives of self-defence, under an apprehension
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 429 
 
 that they themselves might likewise be had under unwarrantable con- 15 APE. 1788. 
 tributions ; we direct that you use your influence with the Vizier that 
 that these jagirs may be restored to them." * 
 
 Those jagirs which had been taken away by the second 
 article of the treaty Mr. Hastings pretended that this was no 
 order to inquire. Now I submit it to your Lordships, upon 
 the simple state of the fact, that it was impossible for the 
 Board at Calcutta to know what to do unless they inquired. 
 Mr. Hastings thinks it is better not to inquire into this 
 business ; and accordingly he makes a minute of a very 
 extraordinary nature indeed. 
 
 " If we cannot heal," says he, " let us not inflame, the wounds that Minute of 
 have been inflicted. If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to such ^' s ^ ast ~ 
 a degree as to justify them in an appeal to a foreign jurisdiction to posing in- 
 appeal to it against a man standing in the relation of son and grandson f i"iry into 
 to them to appeal to the justice of those who have been the abettors ment^ the 
 and instruments of their imputed wrongs," Princesses. 
 
 your Lordships observe, he thought it nothing to impel a 
 son or grandson to rob a mother or grandmother. He goes 
 on, 
 
 " let us at least permit them to be judges of their own feelings, and 
 prefer their complaints before we offer to redress them ; they will not 
 need to be prompted. I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity 
 of the official language in saying, that the majesty of justice ought to be 
 approached with solicitation, that it ought not to descend to provoke 
 or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and 
 the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before 
 trial and even before accusation." 
 
 My Lords, I have studied this sentence very much ; and Reflections 
 if it is possible to make anything of this strange, unintel- wto? 
 ligible species of high-flown language, it means that one 
 person shall not call upon another person in a high situation 
 to be judged before them or to have his cause investigated, 
 for the purpose of relieving him from an accusation. It 
 would be a strange thing indeed if persons, judges of pro- 
 perty, were to call upon all mankind to come in and show 
 caine why such a thing shall not be decided; but in a matter 
 of the nature of this it seems the duty of government that 
 it should investigate it according to the order, which is 
 clear. But the majesty of justice was not present to his 
 
 * Letter from the Court of Directors to the Board at Calcutta, dated the 
 14th of February, 1783, Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 920.
 
 430 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 15 APR. 1788. mind when he had it in view to disgrace the justice of Great 
 Britain, when he ordered the Chief Justice of India, sent 
 out by the King, Lords and Commons, to India, by unani- 
 mous choice, as he himself was. He did not think the 
 justice of India would be disgraced by sending him to 
 Lucknow to take these affidavits ; and, when ordered to 
 inquire into the truth of the case, to restore to them their 
 property if the truth should not be found as they, the 
 Directors, suspect it is not when called upon to do that, 
 they find the majesty of justice cannot descend that those 
 English robes be tarnished and sullied that the pure 
 ermine of justice is a thing which may be defiled with im- 
 punity, when it is the case of a son taking from his mother 
 and grandmother the property bequeathed to them, and 
 which he guaranteed to them himself ; but when it is the 
 cause of English justice distributed in India, and the cause 
 of a Governor and Council calling those who are accused to 
 stand forth to acquit themselves ; he has forgot all those 
 fine things he said, he has forgot that virtuous sentiment I 
 formerly mentioned, that the duty of children to parents 
 belongs to all nations and is equally embraced by all laws ; 
 he has forgot that at this period of time, and thinks of 
 nothing but screening himself from that inquiry which, 
 thank God ! he has at length met with, and which will issue 
 in that judgment which I am sure your Lordships will in 
 your justice denounce against him, in those sentiments 
 which your Lordships' pure minds must be impressed with, 
 and can be impressed with no other, when you hear such a 
 case as I have stated proved against him. 
 
 My Lords, I have now gone through all, to the last 
 article, and I am afraid I have extremely distressed your 
 Lordships by the length of time I have occupied ; but, con- 
 sistent with perspicuity, I did not feel it possible to do other- 
 wise. From all I have stated I might call upon your Lord- 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 
 n'au'y crimi " ships, after you have heard the evidence, in great confidence, 
 proved by to draw a conclusion of criminality from the facts I have 
 stated, from your own reasoning and understanding. A 
 conclusion of criminality, or a criminal motive, is a deduc- 
 tion almost always arising from circumstances of malice. 
 Even the corruption which excites a person to a particular 
 act is a conclusion of argument and reason which the judges 
 who investigate the whole matter are the proper persons to 
 draw. But it does not rest here on the present occasion
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 431 
 
 There is a treaty of Chunar and many other parts of 15 APE. ms. 
 Mr. Hastings' conduct which, in the manner I have stated, 
 may be found a little unaccountable. What I am now 
 going to state will fill up every chasm, will close every 
 chink, and will make this the most complete crime and mis- 
 demeanor that was ever brought to the bar of any court of 
 judicature, in any country, at any time. 
 
 I charge him with having received for his own use, between 
 the llth and 19th of November, a sum of money amounting 
 to an hundred thousand pounds from the exhausted AVazir ! s 
 of Oude, from the person who represents himself [as being from the 
 in a state of distress whereby] the knife had penetrated to w 
 the bone, whom Mr. Hastings represents as having an ex- 
 hausted treasury, who Mr. Hastings knew could produce 
 him nothing. And, when your Lordships shall have that 
 in proof before you and it will be proved from Mr. Hast- 
 ings' own letters that he took the money that he meant 
 for a time to apply it to his own use, but when he found it 
 would be discovered he applied it to the use of the Com- 
 pany when I prove these things to your Lordships I shall 
 leave your Lordships without a ray of doubt that there is 
 a great deal of malice, perfidy, breach of faith, hardly any 
 crime of which a governor in a great situation can be accused, 
 which does not involve itself in this charge. In addition to 
 that, there is foul corruption, which blackens and disgraces 
 everything. A man may be supposed to be perfidious for the 
 purpose of ambition to be warlike and cruel for the pur- 
 pose of extending his fame to break treaties for the purpose 
 of increasing his power all these things may be, and the 
 human mind is so constituted that the splendour of the act 
 sometimes destroys the appearance of the viciousness of it. 
 But upon the present occasion you have that which blackens 
 everything added to it. Where you find money received 
 you can never look upon that man as a character of any 
 consequence in point of animation, in point of greatness of 
 mind, in point of any of those principles which, while 
 they ought to excite the disgust, sometimes excite the 
 admiration, of mankind. I will prove that to your Lord- 
 ships, and then I shall ask your Lordships solemnly and 
 gravely whether, if this matter with regard to the seizing 
 the treasures of the Princesses of Oude were a question 
 between two individuals in the common affairs of society, 
 instead of being between a person in a great situation
 
 432 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APR. 1788. and women of high rank, whose rights were supported 
 by guarantees do I say too much to your Lordships, if 
 that were the state of the case, if I say this that, between 
 such private parties as I have described, it would have been 
 nothing but a foul robbery, perpetrated with cruelty, sup- 
 ported by forgery, justified by prevarication, and excited to 
 by a bribe ? 
 
 Circum- My Lords, it is the situation of the parties which takes it 
 
 stances con- ' . . T . . . r ,, c 
 
 stitutingthe out of this case. It is not a crime against the peace ot our 
 high crime Lord the King, his crown and dignity ; it is committed 
 demearor. ll P on foreigners, and it is committed in the exercise of a trust. 
 These two circumstances take it out of that situation, and 
 bring it to the state of a high crime and misdemeanor, to be 
 tried at your Lordships' bar, at the prosecution of all the 
 Commons of Great Britain, instead of being that which 
 would have been tried at the bar of an inferior court, and 
 punished in a more severe manner in every respect but 
 this ; namely, the disgrace which attends conviction by so 
 high a tribunal, which must be more severe upon a man of 
 feeling (if the man who has done such acts can have any 
 feeling at all) than any punishment that can be inflicted upon 
 any criminal for a crime tried in a subordinate jurisdiction, 
 that they were competent to inflict. 
 A jiegation My Lords, I shall leave this matter with only one single 
 
 of Mr. Hast- , J ATI i 
 
 ings that observation more. And that observation relates not to the 
 iiliVit'hy" 1 particular parts of the answer, because a Right Honourable 
 bajoitifi* friend of mine, who is to follow me on this Article, will go 
 cation of his through that part of the case which relates to the answer 
 
 acts. o . r m i ' . i -r TT 
 
 Mr. Hastings has given to this charge. Mr. Hastings lias 
 stated in the answer to the Articles exhibited by the Com- 
 mons, that his appointment by the King, Lords and Com- 
 mons, at different times is a justification. I deny the truth 
 of the argument. But, admitting for a moment that it 
 were conclusive, apply it to this case Mr. Hastings' last 
 appointment was in 1781, and all the acts with which I have 
 charged him are subsequent to that appointment, There- 
 fore, with regard to this Article, that appointment certainly 
 can be no justification. 
 His attempt The next circumstance which Mr. Hastings observes is, 
 
 to justify , , , 
 
 his acts by he begs leave to represent: 
 
 peculiarity 
 
 of customs 
 
 and man- That the general nature and quality of many measures, now the 
 
 country. & subject of charge against him, considerably depend upon the manners,
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 433 
 
 customs, principles and laws, peculiar to the countries in which such 15 APE. 7788. 
 
 measures were adopted, and cannot therefore, as he conceives, properly be 
 
 judged of by the same rules and principles as would determine the 
 quality of like actions in the country where he is now called upon to 
 answer for the same." 
 
 I submit it to your Lordships whether there is anything 
 peculiar in these facts I have stated ? Whether they are not 
 founded on the immutable nature of right and wrong? 
 Whether what we charge him with is not founded on a de- 
 viation from that system of morals which must pervade the 
 universe, which must embrace every creature, which, like 
 the principle of gravitation, pervades the universe through- 
 out, which cannot vary in Hindustan and in England, the 
 same in the Cape of Good Hope and Sweden the same 
 throughout the world ? For a breach of a treaty improperly 
 executed and unjustifiably supported these are the things 
 with which I charge Warren Hastings. There is one other 
 observation, and then I shall conclude the very long address 
 I have unfortunately been under the necessity of making to 
 your Lordships. Mr. Hastings, from what accident I don't His plea of 
 know, has adopted the very idea, nay, almost the very ^tructioiUn 
 words, of Lord Strafford in his [answer to"] the impeachment of|overu 
 of the House of Commons. " He begs of your Lordships merit bor- 
 
 .j ,, , , 1 J , D l rowed from 
 
 to consider that he was separated at a very early age trom Lord straf- 
 his native country, from every advantage of that instruction or ' 
 which might have better qualified him for the high offices 
 and difficult situations which it has been his lot to fill, and 
 left him to form the rule of his conduct in a great degree on 
 his own practice and by the light of his own understand- 
 ing." My Lords, as Mr. Hastings has thought fit to adopt 
 the answer of my Lord StrafFord to the impeachment of the 
 Commons, I will take the liberty of adopting the reply to 
 that answer made by a person of the highest abilities this 
 country ever knew, a person to whom this country looks 
 up with gratitude for the pure constitutional principles which 
 he constantly espoused, for his being one of the founders 
 of that Declaration of Rights which established our con- 
 stitution, in despite of the infringements of the family of the 
 Stuarts. I will reply to Mr. Hastings in the emphatical 
 words of Mr. Pym, better words than it is possible for 
 me to suggest, better words than perhaps ever have been used 
 from that period to the present time, from the pure sim- 
 plicity and forcible manner with which they are expressed. 
 Mr. Pym says, " Lord Strafford considers that we should 
 

 
 434 Opening of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 ,not charge him with errors of his understanding, or with 
 the weakness to which human nature is subject. Truly/' 
 says Mr. Pym, " it would be far from us to charge him with 
 such mistakes. No, my Lords, we charge him with nothing 
 but what the law in every man's breast condemns the light 
 of nature the light of common reason the light of common 
 society." 
 
 conclusion. My Lords, in the name of all the Commons of Great 
 Britain, deputed by them to maintain this charge at your 
 Lordships' bar, I accuse Warren Hastings of nothing but 
 what the law in every man's breast condemns, what the 
 light of nature condemns the light of common reason and 
 the light of common society, those principles that pervade 
 the globe those principles that must influence the actions 
 of all created beings those principles that never can vary 
 in any clime or in any latitude. It is upon that ground I 
 charge him ; and upon that ground I do adjure your Lord- 
 ships, in every capacity in which you can possibly feel your- 
 selves to stand. I adjure your Lordships as judges to lay 
 this matter home to your minds, to investigate it with your 
 own understandings, and to pronounce upon it with your con- 
 victions. I address your Lordships as Peers of Parliament, 
 as branches of the Legislature, sitting as it were in the 
 legislature mixed with the judicial capacity, to sustain the 
 dignity of that Peerage, which has elevated this country, 
 together with the other free parts of the constitution, to a 
 situation among the nations of the earth far beyond what 
 its natural power intitles it to. I call upon your Lordships 
 as Englishmen to vindicate and maintain the character of 
 your country to vindicate it by inflicting an exemplary 
 punishment upon this man, when your Lordships shall be 
 convinced in your own good understandings that he is guilty 
 of the crimes with which we charge him. I call upon your 
 Lordships in the character of parents and of children. I call 
 upon you as parents to avenge those crimes which he has 
 made a son commit against his mother, for the purpose of 
 exemplifying filial duty and subordination. I call upon your 
 Lordships as sons to vindicate these sentiments which he 
 has debased and disgraced in the character of a British 
 subject, in making a son disgrace his mother and grand- 
 mother. I call upon you as Christians to vindicate the 
 rights of Christianity to redress the injuries our religion 
 has suffered by those vile acts committed upon persons
 
 Speech of Mr. Adam. 435 
 
 who, though not professing the same religion, are intitledi5ApB.i788. 
 to your Lordships' protection and regard. I call upon you 
 as men to vindicate the rights of humanity. And with that 
 sentiment I do, with fresh zeal and ardour, impeach Warren 
 Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. 
 
 E E 2
 
 436 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Ou.de : 
 
 SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS PELHAM, 
 MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN 
 SUPPORT OF THE SECOND ARTICLE OF THE 
 CHARGE, RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF 
 OUDE ; 16 APRIL, 1788. 
 
 MY LOKDS, I am commanded by the Commons to assist 
 in support of the second Article of charge against Warren 
 Hastings, and to show to your Lordships the insufficiency of 
 the answer which he has offered to it. 
 
 I shall, my Lords, confine myself chiefly to the latter part 
 of my duty, feeling it equally impossible to add anything to 
 the very able, perspicuous and eloquent, opening that has 
 been made by the honourable Manager preceding me, and 
 feeling that, by any attempt on my part to trespass further 
 upon your Lordships' patience, I should only risk the possi- 
 bility of taking off from the effect which I am sure his speech 
 must have produced upon your minds. 
 
 My Lords, I lament, in common with the other Managers, 
 your Lordships' too strict adherence to the practice and form 
 of the inferior courts, by compelling the Commons to pro- 
 ceed through the whole of their charges before the defendant 
 is permitted to make his answer. I lament it more peculiarly 
 as it has imposed upon me the arduous and difficult task of 
 applying a remedy to that defect of commenting upon his 
 answer at this early period of endeavouring to supply the 
 defect by bringing forward as early as possible all the facts 
 relating to this charge ; satisfied and convinced that nothing 
 more is necessary to obtain your Lordships' judgment upon 
 this occasion than to produce the facts upon which the Com- 
 mons have founded their charge, and have^ ordered me to 
 appear before your Lordships. 
 
 Present This charge, my Lords, may be said fairly to have been 
 
 the basis of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. It has 
 been owing greatly, undoubtedly, to the transcendent abili- 
 ties of the honourable gentleman who brought forward this
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 437 
 
 charge in the House of Commons:* but, my Lords, I will ?Apn.ms 
 not pay him such gross flattery as to attribute it merely to 
 his abilities. I will not offer such an insult to the judgment 
 and the wisdom of the Commons as to suppose that they 
 could have been betrayed into an acquiescence in this charge, 
 if the facts had not carried conviction to their minds. 
 
 My Lords, the Commons were peculiarly anxious to have 
 heard the defence of the prisoner at your bar ; for they have 
 felt and they know the effects of national prejudice against 
 Indian inquiries. They have felt the effects of his friends influence of 
 and of his connexions. They know too, my Lords, that he, ins' friends 
 in common with all persons accused, not only has the pre- 
 sumption in his favour until he is heard that he may be favour - 
 acquitted, but they know also that his accusers stand here 
 open to a suspicion and a jealousy which seldom has happened 
 when the Commons have appeared at your Lordships' bar. 
 
 My Lords, I do not object it to Mr. Hastings that he has 
 friends. God forbid that I should accuse a man of having 
 honourable connexions. Nothing adds more to the honour 
 of a private character than many friends. Nothing gives 
 greater lustre to a public character than honourable connex- 
 ions. But, my Lords, the friends of Mr. Hastings, the con- 
 nexions that he has formed in India, the connexions that his 
 Indian power has given him here, stand perhaps in a different 
 situation. It is an invidious task, perhaps, to canvas the 
 causes of friendship ; it is invidious, perhaps, to attribute 
 the effects of gratitude to mere sinister motives. Yet, if ever 
 there was an occasion where one might suspect that con- 
 spiracy appeared under the cloak of friendship if ever there 
 was an occasion where one might suppose that they appeared 
 rather as accomplices than friends it is in the present in- 
 stance. My Lords, it is a melancholy truth that, ever since Their mo-' 
 
 .,, T j. i AT. 1. , lives of self- 
 
 our connexion Avith India has given the governors in that interest in 
 country an opportunity to afford an asylum to the distressed hin^ ndlng 
 of this country, the friends and connexions of those who, 
 from their imprudence, can no longer remain in this country, or 
 who, from their ignorance or from their characters, are pre- 
 cluded from any prospects of rise in this country, have looked 
 to India as a means of acquiring for them that consequence and 
 that respect at home, from their wealth and opulence, which 
 their characters and their honour, in the common road to 
 preferment in England, could never have obtained them. 
 
 * Reference is here made to the famous speech of Mr. Sheridan, delivered 
 on the 7th of February, 1787.
 
 438 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16APK.1789. Under these circumstances, I must, in support of the cause I 
 appear in before your Lordships, express my doubts, and 
 suggest to your Lordships reasons why you should entertain 
 the same doubts, of the honour of the connexions of 
 Mr. Hastings, and the fair and well-grounded suspicion of 
 conspiracy appearing under the character of friendship. 
 
 My Lords, it has so happened that Mr. Hastings' friends 
 have endeavoured always to represent his character the very 
 reverse of that which it will be the business of the Commons 
 to prove it to be. Well knowing his power well knowing 
 the means that he had of acquiring wealth seeing daily the 
 numbers that return from that country, after a short resi- 
 dence, with Avealth and with treasures which the most 
 laborious services in this country can never attain it was 
 natural to suspect that the Governor of the East Indies, as 
 he had greater power and as he had larger means, should 
 be possessed of greater wealth. Their defence of him in 
 this case has not been less absurd than in other parts. In 
 endeavouring to prove him innocent of peculation, they 
 have attempted to palm upon the public that he is a poor, 
 miserable, distressed, man. In endeavouring to prove his 
 innocence they have involved him perhaps in other guilt. 
 Mr. Hastings' friends have endeavoured to prove that his 
 riches do not exceed a sum which in two years he might 
 have acquired as Governor General. By descending so low 
 into particulars they have raised a suspicion of the truth of 
 their own account and of his integrity, which not only bears 
 the character and the face of suspicion, but, in the course 
 of this inquiry [will be so impugned that it] will be proved 
 [by] incontrovertible facts to your Lordships that he not only 
 was the greatest oppressor, that he was not only the greatest 
 tyrant, that ever appeared upon the Eastern coast, but that 
 he was also the greatest peculator; that he was the most 
 corrupt as well as the most cruel ; that he never stirred from 
 Calcutta that he never undertook any great political plan 
 but with the view either of covering his OAvn iniquities by 
 filling the treasures of the Company, or of filling his own 
 pocket. 
 
 The charge that is immediately under your Lordships' 
 consideration is one which certainly in itself is so simple a 
 transaction so divested, if fairly considered, of any of those 
 principles upon which state necessity can ever warrant any 
 infraction of the laws that I should think it would require 
 only to state the facts and to tell the story in the simplest
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 439 
 
 manner to prove to your Lordships' satisfaction the guilt of i6Apn.i788. 
 Warren Hastings. 
 
 The honourable Manager who opened this charge has 
 gone so fully and amply into the whole of this question that 
 I shall have occasion only just to remind your Lordships of 
 the striking and peculiar circumstances relating to it, and to 
 point out in what manner and under what shape this matter 
 has appeared at different times to the persons immediately 
 interested, I mean the manner in which it first appeared to 
 the court of Directors, the immediate employers of Mr. Hast- 
 ings; how it afterwards came to the knowledge of the 
 Commons, who in their wisdom have thought fit to come 
 to your Lordships' bar and to ground this charge against 
 Mr. Hastings upon it; and the defences and answers 
 Mr. Hastings, at different times and under different cir- 
 cumstances, has thought proper to give this charge. 
 
 By the public despatches it appears that, on the 29th of Communi- 
 November, 1781, Mr. Hastings communicated to Mr. Wheler, Mr!Ha&t- 
 the Governor General,* and the Council at Calcutta, t^ty"? 
 the treaty of Chunar, purporting to be dated the 19th of c , hu " art0 ., 
 
 u -^ L- ? - .. the Council. 
 
 September, with his reasons tor signing the same, with 
 supposed objections, and the answers to those supposed 
 objections. 
 
 By the second article it appears that permission was given Article ai- 
 to the Nawab to resume the jagirs of his dominions, stipu- y&^ to 
 latiiig, for those particular jagirs which were guaranteed or j^^ e the 
 protected by the India Company, that an equivalent equal 
 to the greatest annual amount of the revenues arising from 
 them should be secured to the original proprietors. 
 
 On the 25th of December, he acquaints the Board that he ! r ? s t ? r ' 
 had ordered troops to assist the Wazir in completing this assist the 
 measure of resuming the jagirs ; in which communication he * ; 
 encloses a letter from Mr. Middleton, informing him that an 
 opposition to this measure was expected from the Begums 
 or Princesses of Oude.f 
 
 In a letter of the 23d of January he seems to resume the jJr U Ha!st- 
 bubject, and, as it were, to give the Board an account of the ingsexpiaiu- 
 whole transaction from its origin. He refers to the treaty of tefference 
 Chunar, and tells them that, contrary to his expectation, and troops, and 
 for reasons he was not at that time able to explain, the 
 
 * Mr. Wheler was invested with the powers of Governor General by Mr. 
 Hastings, on his departure from the seat of government for the province of 
 Benares. 
 
 f Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 598. 
 
 of the trea- 
 sures of the
 
 440 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 1GAPB.17S8. Nawab at first seemed to show some reluctance and indis- 
 position to carry the treaty into execution ; that, when he 
 did determine to carry it into execution, an opposition had 
 been threatened to it by the Princesses of Oude and his 
 own family ; that, upon this opposition, Mr. Middleton had 
 applied to him for the assistance of troops, which he ordered ; 
 that those troops supporting the Nawab had carried the 
 measure into execution ; and that the treasures seized in 
 consequence of the Navvab's going to Fyzabad had been 
 applied to the uses of the Company.* 
 
 I shall only observe upon this letter, as it now arises, that 
 Mr. Hastings for the first time communicates to the Board 
 the proposition of seizing the treasure, and he introduces it 
 with this very remarkable expression : 
 
 " It may be necessary, perhaps, to inform you, in this place, that the 
 measure of seizing the treasures had been already determined upon and 
 strongly recommended and supported by me." 
 
 He encloses in this letter the letter from Mr. Middleton, 
 of January the 1 3th, giving an account of the seizing of the 
 treasures, and likewise a letter from the Wazir, acquainting 
 Mr. Hastings with his success at Fyzabad, in which letter 
 the Wazir makes use of this extraordinary expression : 
 
 " I have, to confirm and increase our friendship, done that which was 
 never thought of or determined." 
 
 Letter to On the llth of February, the communication is made to 
 torVon the the Directors at home of the resumption of the jagirs ; 
 of s the pti n " a measure of the Wazir's, founded on the suspicions of the 
 Begums, has been carried into execution;" and then he gives 
 a detailed account of what your Lordships will see in the 
 evidence is given in his own letter of the 23d of January. 
 Second On the 8th of April another letter is written to the 
 
 Directors. Board. It seems rather to be a duplicate, or at least to bear 
 a reference to, the letter of the 1 1th of February, acquainting 
 the Board with these transactions, but it speaks of these as 
 mere arrangements. Resuming the jagirs and taking his 
 father's treasures from his mother are called mere arrange- 
 ments for the better government of the Wazir's dominions, 
 and for the more speedy liquidation of the Company's debt. 
 Theorigin My Lords, from this communication to the court of 
 transaction Directors it appears that the whole of this transaction 
 originated with the Wazir ; that it was a measure of state 
 
 * Printed in the " Appendix to the Second Article of the Charge," p. 337.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 441 
 
 policy ; that it was a measure occasioned by the disaffection i6Apn.i788. 
 of the jagirdars in general, with the suspicions that he enter- 
 tained of his own family in particular ; and the necessity of 
 his making some arrangements for the more speedy liquida- 
 tion of the pressing debt of the Company was the cause of 
 all the fatal consequences which were delineated to your 
 Lordships by the honourable Manager who spoke yester- 
 day. The opinion of the court of Directors upon this Opinion of 
 subject, after the receipt of these letters Avhich have been tors, 
 alluded to by me and by the honourable Manager who 
 spoke yesterday, is this : 
 
 " By the second article of the treaty," meaning the treaty of Chunar, 
 " the Nabob is permitted to resume such jaghires as he shall think proper, 
 with a reserve that all such jaghirdars for the amount of whose jaghires 
 the Company are guaranteed shall, in case of a resumption of their 
 lands, be paid the amount of the net collections through the Resident. 
 We do not see how the Governor General could consent to the resump- 
 tion of such lands as the Company had engaged should remain in the 
 hands of those who possessed them previous to the execution of the late 
 treaty, without stronger proofs of the Begum's defection than have been 
 laid before us ; neither can we allow it to be good policy to reduce the 
 several jaghirdars, and thus unite the territory and the troops maintained 
 for the protection of that territory under one head, who may by that 
 means, at some future period, become a very powerful enemy to the 
 Company. 
 
 "With respect to the resumption of the jaghires possessed by the 
 Begums in particular, and the subsequent seizure of the treasure de- 
 posited with the Vizier's mother, which the Governor General in his 
 letter to the Board, 23d of January, 1782, has declared he strenuously 
 encouraged and supported, we hope and trust, for the honour of the 
 British nation, that the measure appeared to be fully justified in the eyes 
 of all Hindoostan. 
 
 " The Governor General has informed us that it can be well attested 
 that the Begums principally excited and supported the late commotions, 
 and that they carried their inveteracy to the English nation so far as to 
 aim at our utter extirpation. 
 
 " It must have been publicly known that, in 1//5, the Resident at the 
 Vizier's Court not only obtained from the Begum, widow of the late 
 Sujah-ul-Dowlah, on the Nabob's account, thirty lacs of rupees, half of 
 which was to be paid to the Company, but also the forbearance of twenty- 
 six lacs, for the repayment of which she had security in land, on the 
 Nabob's agreeing to renounce all further claims upon her; and that to 
 this agreement the Company were guarantees. 
 
 " We find that on the 21st of December, 17/5, the Begum complained 
 of a breach of engagements on the part of the Nabob, soliciting your protec- 
 tion for herself, her mother, and for all the women belonging to the serag- 
 lio of the late Nabob, from the distresses to which they were reduced ; in 
 consequence whereof it was agreed in consultation, 2d of January, 1/76, 
 to remonstrate with the Vizier, the Governor General remarking, that, 
 as the representative of our government has become an agent in this 
 business, and has pledged the honour and faith of the Company for the
 
 442 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16 APB.1788. punctual observance of the conditions under which the treaty was con- 
 - eluded, you had a right to interfere, and justice demanded it, if it should 
 appear that those engagements have been violated. And the Board at the 
 same time resolved that, as soon as the Begum's engagements with the 
 Nabob, to which Mr. Bristow is a party, shall be fulfilled on her part, 
 this government will think themselves bound to protect her against any 
 further demand or molestation. 
 
 " If therefore the disaffection of the Begums was not a matter of public 
 notoriety, we cannot but be alarmed for the effects which these subsequent 
 transactions must have had in the minds of the natives of India. The 
 only consolation we feel upon this occasion is, that the amount of those 
 jaghires for which the Company were guarantees is to be paid through our 
 Resident at the court of the Vizier ; and it very materially concerns the 
 credit of your government on no account to suffer such payments to be 
 evaded. 
 
 " If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums did not take that 
 hostile part against the Company which has been represented, as well in 
 the Governor General's Narrative as in several documents therein referred 
 to, and as it nowhere appears from the papers at present in our posses- 
 sion that they excited any commotion previous to the imprisonment of 
 Rajah Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves in consequence of that 
 transaction ; and as it is probable that such conduct proceeded entirely 
 from motives of self-defence, under an apprehension that they themselves 
 likewise might be laid under unwarrantable contributions, we direct that 
 you use your influence with the Vizier that their jaghires may be restored 
 to them. But if they should be under apprehensions respecting the 
 future conduct of the Vizier, and wish our further protection, it is our 
 pleasure that you afford these ladies an asylum within the Company's 
 territories." * 
 
 My Lords, it appears then from this letter that the court 
 of Directors were apprised of all the circumstances related to 
 your Lordships yesterday ; that the Company were aware 
 of the guarantee. They were aware of British faith being 
 pledged to these Princesses. They were aware of all the 
 transactions that had passed in the years 1775 and 1776. 
 Mr. Hastings, their covenanted servant, was bound to com- 
 municate to them everything relating to their affairs. He 
 was bound to communicate to them every transaction he 
 undertook, either in his public capacity, sitting at the Board, 
 or in his correspondence as Governor General. With all 
 this information, with all these papers before them, your 
 Lordships see what was the opinion of the court of Di- 
 rectors. The court in their opinion confirm and ratify the 
 guarantees ; they confirm the pledge of the British faith to 
 the Princesses of Oude ; and they do as I trust your Lord- 
 ships will do strongly express their disapprobation of 
 
 * Letter from the Court of Directors to the Council at Calcutta, dated 14th 
 February, 1783. Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 920.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham, 443 
 
 this breach of faith. They express as the Commons have i APE. im 
 done their dissatisfaction at the account given by the 
 Governor General of the disaffection, the rebellion and the 
 hostile disposition, of these Princesses. 
 
 In consequence of this letter, it might have been expected An inquiry 
 that an inquiry into their conduct would have been instituted. Mr. P stabies^ 
 I shall only in this place observe that the inquiry was 
 proposed by one of the Council at Calcutta, whose name can 
 never be mentioned but with respect. I will only mention 
 his name to remind your Lordships of all those feelings of 
 respect, honour and gratitude, which are due to him for 
 having, on all occasions in which he has acted, supported the 
 British character, first as an officer and afterwards in the 
 Council I mean a gentleman who has appeared at your 
 Lordships' bar, and I trust will frequently appear in the 
 course of this business, for I am sure his evidence will on all 
 occasions make the strongest impression upon your Lord- 
 ships' mind, I mean Mr. Stables. 
 
 My Lords, we know from fatal experience that the court Disinciina- 
 of Directors the representatives of the East India Com- Directors*^ 
 pany express in the strongest terms their disapprobation Hastings? 1 "' 
 of most, I believe I might say all, the enormities committed 
 by their servants in India ; but they have rested satisfied 
 with expressions of disapprobation. Mr. Hastings himself 
 complains that, during almost the whole course of his ad- 
 ministration, every letter that he received from home teemed 
 with invective and abuse. Yet they never ventured I 
 believe they never wished to remove him. They exculpate 
 themselves by criminating his conduct. But the Governor 
 General who is guilty of all those crimes who oppressed, 
 who tyrannised in the country never forgot to remit 
 sufficient means to England to protect himself and to gratify 
 his employers. 
 
 But, my Lords, the restless character of Mr. Hastings has 
 been one main instrument in our hand. Mr. Middleton charges 
 and Mr. Johnson, his confidential agents at the court of Mr U Hast- y 
 Oude, had no sooner executed his dreadful orders respecting ^fagf^sf 
 the Princesses, than a quarrel ensued, and Mr. Hastings ^ j^"" 
 brings forward against Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson son. 
 charges in his opinion of the highest nature charges of 
 disobedience to the Governor General, of want of attention 
 not to the spirit only but to the letter of his commands. To 
 this quarrel we are indebted for the evidence that we bring 
 before your Lordships. To this dispute between the principal
 
 444 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16 APR. 1788. and the agent to this dispute between the accomplices we 
 are indebted for evidence that will prove to your Lordships 
 the real state of this question, and will support the opinion 
 that has been given, and which I have read to your Lord- 
 ships, by the court of Directors of the iniquity of this trans- 
 action. 
 
 Reasons for My Lords, I have no doubt that at first sight your Lord- 
 theCTidence ships will receive evidence of this description with extreme 
 tonag^nst jealousy and suspicion. You will imagine that the evidence 
 ill's Hast " ^ ^ r ' Middleton under an accusation will be an evidence 
 partial to himself will be an evidence exaggerating Mr. Hast- 
 ings' crimes. You will receive it with jealousy ; you will 
 think it admissible, but in many cases you will perhaps 
 not think it credible. These arguments and these observa- 
 tions would well apply if Mr. Hastings' charge against them 
 was for cruelty if it was for oppression if it was for 
 exceeding his orders ; no doubt ; if Middleton and Johnson 
 in their defence were to point out Mr. Hastings' orders to 
 say, " Your wish was that we should oppress them ; your wish 
 was that we should plunder them of their property. We 
 did it. If we have exceeded the letter of your orders, we 
 have not exceeded the spirit and the intention of them." 
 But, my Lords, Mr. Hastings' accusation of Mr. Middleton 
 and Mr. Johnson was not for excess of cruelty ; it was not 
 for exceeding the spirit of his orders in oppressing where he 
 meant only to support authority. He impeached Mr. Mid- 
 dleton he impeached Mr. Johnson for not enforcing his 
 orders. Delay and forbearance were their crimes. Negotia- 
 tion was the foundation of their impeachment. That he 
 suffered a son to hesitate at the moment that he was plund- 
 ering his mother to hold his hand even for two days was 
 a crime for which Mr. Hastings brought down Mr. Johnson 
 to Calcutta under the escort of a guard, and ordered 
 Mr. Middleton immediately to be removed from the seat of 
 government. 
 
 My Lords, the article drawn up by the secretary of the 
 Board of Calcutta, upon Mr. Hastings accusing Mr. Middle- 
 ton, is this 
 
 " For disobedience to the Governor General's peremptory orders on 
 the 26th of November, 1/81, containing the following words: 
 ' You yourself ought to be personally present in both services. It 
 must be your care to be personally present. You must not allow any 
 negociation or forbearance. You must prosecute both services until the 
 Begums^are at the entire mercy of the Nabob.' Whereas, by a letter
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 445 
 
 from Major Naylor to the Governor General it is declared as follows : 16 APE.17S8. 
 ' After my arrival a couple of days passed in negotiation, but without - 
 effect.' 
 
 " Your letter of the 5th of February is not a sufficient exculpation 
 of this charge, as the forbearance alluded to was before the attack of the 
 kella, and not after the Begums were to be considered as entirely at the 
 mercy of the Nabob, which is the time it alludes to. It might be good 
 policy after they were so reduced to observe a temporizing conduct, 
 because the treasure was then concealed, and none but the accessories 
 to its concealment were acquainted with the places where it was 
 deposited." * 
 
 My Lords, under these circumstances, I trust that your 
 Lordships will not receive any evidence that will be offered 
 upon this occasion with that suspicion which I suggested 
 would naturally arise upon evidence offered by accomplices 
 who had quarelled that will be offered by a defendant 
 against the accusation of his superior. 
 
 The evidence produced in consequence of this quarrel is Evidence 
 Mr. Hastings' secret and private orders to Mr. Middleton Mr. n Hast n 
 his orders to Mr. Middleton to seize these treasures his o 
 orders to him not to admit of forbearance or delay not to J 
 suffer the Nawab to admit of any negotiation not to suffer 
 the Nawab to have any personal interview with his mother 
 his orders not to suffer the Nawab, even after the treasures 
 were taken, to visit his mother or to come into any sort of 
 negotiation or arrangement of her property before the 
 Governor General is apprised of it. 
 
 My Lords, upon these letters so produced the Commons 
 have founded their accusation. These letters will be pro- 
 duced to your Lordships, and I am confident that they will 
 not come before you with any suspicion. If they come with 
 any character at all, they will come doubly enforced ; con- 
 sidering that it was the duty of Mr. Hastings to have 
 published these letters, it was the duty of Mr. Hastings to 
 have done no act of government without communicating it 
 to his employers at home, and that these letters, which are 
 the letters that will convict him, were the letters which he 
 suppressed, and which never would have been produced but 
 in the defence of the person he employed and whom he had 
 accused. 
 
 This evidence having laid the foundation of the charges 
 against Mr. Hastings, Mr. Hastings thinks proper to .apply 
 by petition to the House of Commons, desiring to be heard. 
 
 Printed in the " Appendix to the Second Charge," p. 73.
 
 446 Support of the Second Charge- Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APE. 1738. My Lords, I need not observe to you that the moment 
 pubiicTeei- Mr. Hastings thought proper to appear at the bar of the 
 lour^nvir House of Commons was a moment, of all times in the world, 
 Hastings at to him the most auspicious. It was the hour, I may say. of 
 
 the time of , . . , T , . 1,1 , f ,1 
 
 his offering his insolence. It was at a time when the reports of the 
 Committees of the House of Commons, conveying censure 
 upon his conduct, were by the highest authorities in this 
 
 4 1 1 1 1* 
 
 country treated with every insult and indignity ; at a time 
 when the liberty of the press, so jealously guarded as a 
 powerful instrument against the wicked designs of vicious 
 and corrupt ministers, was perverted to the purposes of 
 protecting criminality and traducing a character whose 
 virtues, whose philanthropy, whose merits alone, would be 
 sufficient to rescue the character which our conduct in India 
 does but too justly impute to us the want of humanity, 
 honour and good faith. My Lords, the character of that 
 person was made the sport of every libel. It was well 
 known his virtues had made him enemies. It was well 
 known that his attachment to mankind made bad men his 
 enemies. Mr. Hastings came, my Lords, to the bar of the 
 House of Commons, boasting that he had received the 
 thanks of his employers ; that he was intitled to the thanks 
 of the whole country ; that he had received the thanks of the 
 whole court of Directors not such a court of Directors 
 as thanked Lord Clive not such a court of Directors as 
 formerly condemned his conduct and uniformly approved of 
 the conduct of General Clavering, Colonel Monson and 
 Mr. Francis not a court of Directors representing merchants 
 whose views might be confined and narrowed, who might 
 not be such competent judges of the great transactions of 
 state, but a court of Directors acting under immediate 
 influence ; who, as it appears now, never expressed their own 
 sentiments; who could never undertake any one act but 
 under the immediate direction and the immediate auspices of 
 the government of this country. 
 
 My Lords, with such thanks and with such a sanction, 
 Mr. Hastings did in his answer say, that he doubted whether 
 there was a power on earth that could presume to impeach 
 him. However, the indefatigable industry and the abilities 
 of the right honourable gentleman who opened this business 
 were not to be deterred by such vain exultation ; and those 
 who, in their private capacity, who at the table of their Board 
 could thank Mr. Hastings, did not dare to acquit him. 
 
 At your Lordships' bar, Mr. Hastings has thought proper
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 447 
 
 to bring forward another Defence. At your Lordships' bar ie APE. was. 
 things bore a more serious aspect. There was no more character of 
 room here for his expectation of any improper influence. He ^L?^" 
 
 1 1 1 TTI***I* - i m?y* -*-' 
 
 Knew that, whatever your Lordships partialities to him fe ce in the 
 
 T-J. I- 'J..L' * .il f f ,1 HoUSe Of 
 
 might be as men, sitting in the face of your country as the Lords. 
 supreme Court of Justice of the land, you must determine 
 according to facts. Here, my Lords, Mr. Hastings found it 
 necessary to take, what he complained so often of the want 
 of in India, professional aid. His answer is cautious ; it is 
 careful ; it is more humble ; it is more respectful ; it admits His plea of 
 little; it does not deny much ; and it justifies [his acts] si t a y. e neces " 
 upon that plea upon which his friends out of doors have always 
 justified him, but upon which I trust I shall show your Lord- 
 ships that he has as little ground to stand as any other his 
 plea is state necessity ; that these cruelties, that these oppres- 
 sions, were nothing in India ; it was the common practice 
 of the country ; that the distresses of the Nawab required 
 it ; if he had been left to himself he would have done it 
 without our assistance ; and that the pressing necessities of 
 the Company were such that we were warranted and justified 
 in taking advantage of the practices of that country, and in 
 enforcing those measures and those means which in Europe 
 or in this country we should have been ashamed to have 
 acknowledged. 
 
 Your Lordships will admit this plea of state necessity 
 with extreme jealousy. You will recollect that it is not only 
 the plea of the tyrant, but it is the plea of a robber. It is 
 a plea that may be used in the highest and in the lowest 
 situation. It certainly is a plea that, under certain circum- 
 stances, in very peculiar situations, may be admitted. Your 
 Lordships would forgive the general who was to seize on 
 private property to save his army from famine. You would 
 not impeach the admiral who might arrest the trade of his 
 country lest it should fall into the hands of the enemy.* But 
 you will never admit, even in those cases, the plea of 
 necessity without examining with the severest scrutiny 
 whether the occasion might not have been avoided whether 
 the advantage might not have been attained by means less 
 offensive than those resorted to. You will examine also 
 whether the object that was attained was large enough to 
 justify the means whether the danger was so imminent, or 
 whether the advantage was so prominent, that the means 
 
 * Allusion is here made to a speech in justification of Hastings, delivered 
 by Lord Hood in the House of Commons, on the 2nd of March, 1787. Par- 
 liamentary History, sub anno.
 
 448 Support of the Second Charge Beyums of Oude : 
 
 ic APR. 1788. that were used were such as in cool and deliberate moments 
 might have been used. 
 
 It is often a fatal alternative which men in high situations 
 and undertaking great responsibilities are brought into, to 
 determine at the instant between immediate and partial 
 injury or great and lasting ruin. But, my Lords, who is the 
 person that in this case uses the plea of necessity ? Warren 
 Hastings the Governor General of India the very man 
 by whose misgovernment the Company, if it were in distress 
 at this time, was brought into it the very man by whose 
 influence and assumed control over the affairs of the "Wazir 
 he was brought to that state of necessity to that distress 
 which makes him presume now to offer those distresses as a 
 plea in justification of the cruelties that he afterwards 
 exercised. My Lords, the dependence of the Wazir upon 
 Mr. Hastings will appear so strongly in every letter that is 
 written upon this subject, that I would rather refer to the 
 evidence that will be adduced than point it out to your 
 Lordships and detain you upon that subject at present. I 
 will confine myself merely to Mr. Hastings' own assertions, 
 in the Defence that he has given to the Commons. 
 
 In the first place he says, 
 
 Assertions " ^ is certainly not true that the Nabob of Oucle was ever under the 
 of Mr. Hast- control of the Bengal Government in the extent stated in this charge. 
 Dcfence'in r ^^ a * *he Resident who represented the Governor General and Council 
 theHouseof had an influence at his court cannot be disputed, but it is notorious that 
 Commons, the acts of the Nabob's government were on various occasions remon- 
 strated against and ineffectually opposed by the Resident, as may be 
 seen by the public correspondence of Messrs. Middleton and Bristow. 
 It cannot therefore be admitted that ' the English name and character 
 were concerned in every act of his government or in any not authorized 
 by them.' 
 
 " Allowing it to be true that the country of Oude was in a flourishing 
 state before our interference, surely I cannot be chargeable with the evils 
 resulting from the system we established, since I gave all the opposition 
 I could to the first introduction of it. The system was undoubtedly 
 very defective and generally prejudicial to the Nabob's affairs, inasmuch 
 as it necessarily established a degree of interference in his government 
 undefined by any precise rule which, however discreetly used, would not 
 fail to weaken his authority and in many cases to be productive of all the 
 evils consequent on a divided government. The Resident, for instance, 
 though officially competent to no positive act of his own, found himself 
 on some occasions driven to the necessity even of opposing the execution 
 of the Nabob's orders to the officers of his own government, as the only 
 means of defending the securities made over to him for the public claims 
 of the Company. For, however willing his Excellency may have been 
 to grant assignments for the liquidation of his debt, he was never scru- 
 pulous of infringing them when pressed by other importunate creditors, 
 but has frequently granted tuncaws upon aumils whose revenue, to its 
 utmost amount, he well knew had been previously assigned over to the 
 Company. In such cases the Resident, though invested with no osten-
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 449 
 
 sible authority, would have failed in his duty had he not resisted, and 1G APE. 1783. 
 exerted every means in his power to maintain his priority of claim, ~~" v 
 however conscious he might be that in so doing he weakened the autho- 
 rity of the Nabob in the eyes of his aumils and subjects in general. This 
 conduct of the Nabob forced the Resident into a competition with his 
 authority, and exhausted the revenues of the assigned lands, by giving 
 new draughts with new powers on what was already pledged to its 
 utmost extent ; which may have been one source of the decline of the 
 Nabob's country since our connexion with it." 
 
 In this part, Mr. Hastings admits of an influence which 
 extended to an absolute opposition, and a justifiable opposi- 
 tion, to many of the measures of the Nawab. He palliates it 
 by saying that there were indeed some instances when this 
 influence this control of the Resident was effectually op- 
 posed by the Wazir ; and he says also that the system that 
 was established in that country was a defective one. I am 
 at a loss indeed to understand what he means by the system ; 
 nor is it very material, for, although Mr. Hastings, as a 
 member of the Council bound by the majority of the Council, 
 obliged to give his reasons and to give his opinion upon 
 every transaction, and transmit it home, does in part of his 
 Defence say " I am neither bound by the acts that I ap- Responsi- 
 proved nor by the acts that I disapproved, during the time 
 that I was an inefficient member of the Board " that is 
 during the time that General Clavering, Colonel Monson and a s ents - 
 Mr. Francis, formed the majority ; implying a party distinc- 
 tion ; implying a formed systematic opposition ; implying 
 that it was impossible for him ever to agree with those three 
 gentlemen ever to agree with those whom his employers at 
 home uniformly supported, whom his employers at home 
 uniformly commended, whom his employers at home uni- 
 formly declared to have followed their instructions and 
 directions, whose principles of government they always 
 supported, at the time they were universally condemning 
 those of Mr. Hastings in the year 1777, Mr. Hastings 
 says, "I re-appointed my own agent to the Nabob of Oude ;" 
 and in his former defence of the transactions that passed 
 during the time of General Clavering's, Colonel Monson'a 
 and Mr. Francis', government, he says, "But neither I 
 nor the Resident of my own choice should be chargeable with 
 any evils antecedent to that time." Undoubtedly he does 
 not directly say that from the time that he appointed a Resi- 
 dent of his own choice he is responsible ; but in his dis- 
 claiming resonsibility prior to that time, his acknowledging 
 that at that time the Resident was the appointment of his 
 
 F F
 
 450 Support of the Second Charc/c Begums of Oudc : 
 
 16 APR. 1788 
 
 Successive 
 mentsVf 
 
 and Bris. n 
 tow. 
 
 True cause 
 removal"^ 
 
 fiesidp 
 Oiuie. 
 
 menuo tiie 
 
 own choice that the Resident was his own agent he does 
 clearly and indisputably affirm that from that time he is 
 peculiarly responsible. He is responsible even upon his own 
 principles of government. He is responsible, not only as 
 having the majority in Council, but as having also the Resi- 
 dent of his own choice. 
 
 The honourable Manager who opened this business to your 
 Lordships yesterday, mentioned the various changes in the 
 Residency at Oude, similar to the changes in the Residency at 
 Benares ; that Mr. Middleton had been originally appointed 
 by Mr. Hastings ; that by the orders of the Board he was 
 removed and Mr. Bristow appointed ; that Mr. Bristow was 
 again recalled and Mr. Middleton re-appointed. 
 
 My Lords, he omitted, I think, one circumstance which should 
 be mentioned to your Lordships, which is the real and avowed 
 cause for the first removal of Mr. Middleton. Upon the arrival 
 of General Clavering, Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, in 
 India, there was an immediate inquiry instituted into the 
 Rohilla war. Mr. Hastings positively refused to produce the 
 papers relating to that transaction, upon the ground and the plea 
 that it was a correspondence of a private nature that it was 
 a correspondence carried on between him and his own 
 agent, the Resident at the court of Oude. Upon this re- 
 fusal, by a vote of the majority of the Board, Mr. Middleton 
 was recalled ; and it was not until Mr. Hastings recovered his 
 power in the Council at Calcutta, by the death of General 
 Clavering and Colonel Monson, that Mr. Middleton was re- 
 appointed. He further says that " The revenue never was 
 equal to the enormous burthen of the two English brigades, with 
 the progressive liquidation of the accumulated heavy balance ; 
 and the ineffectual endeavour to realize such claim from the 
 common resources of the country was ever a source of the 
 greatest embarassment and distress to the Nabob's affairs." 
 
 Now one should suppose, from his offering this in his 
 Defence, that the measure of the two brigades was not a 
 measure of Mr. Hastings, but that it was a measure origin- 
 ating in the period when he was an inefficient member of 
 the Board, when Colonel Monson, General Clavering and 
 Mr. Francis, were united in a league against him : when his 
 hands were tied ; when he was no longer responsible for any 
 of the transactions in India. The history of the two brigades 
 is this. By the treaty of Allahabad, a brigade under English 
 officers, in short, an English brigade was to be paid by the
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 451 
 
 Wazir, for the common defence of his territories and those ie APR. ms. 
 of Great Britain, in consequence of the alliance between 
 Suja-ud-Dowla and the English Company. The Wazir had 
 an opportunity of observing the discipline of our troops. 
 He was so much pleased with it that he desired of Colonel 
 Monson to have a certain number of English officers for the 
 command and discipline of his troops. Mr. Hastings, in the 
 year 1777, subsequent to the death of Colonel Monson and 
 of General Clavering, proposed that, instead of those officers 
 continuing under the command of the Wazir, instead of the 
 troops being the Wazir's, reducible at his pleasure, these 
 troops should be considered as British troops, and that the 
 Nawab should be obliged to take these troops as a second 
 brigade. Your Lordships will see how totally different this 
 plan of Mr. Hastings was from that of Colonel Monson's. 
 Colonel Monson complied only with the request of the 
 Wazir in lending him a certain number of officers, for the 
 purposes of discipline. Mr. Hastings, under colour of giving 
 him officers to discipline his troops, takes his troops into 
 English pay, and bargains with the Wazir to subsidise those 
 troops ; and from hence originated indeed all the embarass- 
 ments of the Wazir's country. This brigade was the constant 
 source of vexation to him. The expense of this brigade The brigade 
 
 X "ft BTH'VIinf'O 
 
 reduced his finances; it exhausted his treasury ; and it gave to the 
 the English such an influence in his country that he never 
 could stir, he never could move afterwards, and his very 
 existence as a prince in that country depended upon us. 
 The Nawab's sentiments with regard to this brigade were 
 soon communicated to the Council at Calcutta. In 1779 the 
 Wazir, complaining of the distress that he was in, remon- 
 strated against Mr. Purling's earnest, solicitations with him 
 to provide for the payment of the Company. He states that 
 his family were reduced to the greatest distress ; that he had 
 been obliged to lower all his household expenses ; and he 
 attributes (as he justly might do) all those distresses to 
 the brigade, which he says he cannot maintain ; that it is 
 useless, and that it is the source of constant disgust and 
 discontent in his country. 
 
 But, my Lords, I should further have told you that ^.^JI'J 
 Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with saddling upon the Wazir poswi upon 
 this temporary brigade, but he established another corps a by' Mr' 1 
 corps under the command of Colonel Hannay, Major Hustin = s - 
 Osborne and others who the Nawab says, not only were 
 
 F r 2
 
 452 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 ic APR. 1788. useless, but were the constant sources of vexation to him. 
 These letters being communicated to the Board, Mr. Hast- 
 ings in his minute proposed a letter to be written to 
 Mr. Purling, remonstrating against this proposal of the Wazir's 
 to withdraw that brigade, and says, " It is our part, not his, 
 to determine in what manner and at what time these troops 
 should be reduced." Your Lordships see then that, so 
 early as the year 1779, the temporary brigade the corps 
 under the command of Colonel Hannay and Major Osborne 
 were not only the source of discontent and disquiet to the 
 Wazir of Oude, but that they so distressed him that he 
 was not able to keep down the debt due to the Company 
 that his country would not furnish resources for the 
 payment of this brigade. But Mr. Hastings, notwithstanding 
 this, wishing to reduce the Nawab by accumulating him 
 with debt, objects to the reduction of these troops, saying it 
 was not for him but for them to determine the time of their 
 reduction. 
 
 But Mr. Hastings' influence, his power in the subah 
 of Oude, was not merely by the temporary brigade it was 
 not merely by having a Kesident who was his own immediate 
 agent, but the minister himself of the Nawab was a 
 dependant of Mr. Hastings. His elevation to that situation 
 he acknowledges to be owing to him. He never ventured to 
 dispute his authority ; and, in a case in which he had 
 a dispute with Mr. Bristow, he acknowledges to Mr. Hast- 
 ings though Mr. Bristow's claims, though Mr. Bristow's 
 demands, were unreasonable that he was ready upon all 
 occasions to obey his orders. A dispute arose concerning 
 the appointment of a treasurer and comptroller for the 
 Nawab's household. The minister, Hyder Beg, says : 
 
 " I represented to the Nabob that, as Mr. Bristow proposed these 
 appointments in consequence of orders from the Governor General and 
 Council, it was necessary and proper that he should comply with the 
 pleasure of the Governor. His Highness replied, ' In this case, I should 
 be deprived absolutely of all power and respectability. I cannot believe 
 the Governor has given such directions with respect to me.' I repre- 
 sented to the Vizier that, as Mr. Bristow declared them to be the 
 Governor's orders, he should consent that information should afterwards 
 l)e transmitted to the Governor General, with whose pleasure, if it should 
 prove to have been so, he would of course cheerfully comply." 
 
 Your Lordships see, the minister in this case urges as 
 an argument against his master urges as a reason for his 
 
 The 
 
 Nawab's 
 minister a 
 dependant 
 of Mr. 
 Hastings.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 453 
 
 compliance with a measure which the Wazir himself repre- 
 sents to be attended with a diminution of his power and 
 respectability in India that the demand is supported by 
 the order and the desire of the Governor General in India. 
 That this minister would upon all occasions obey the orders 
 of Mr. Hastings in preference to those of his master that 
 he was ready at any time to obey him, if he should receive 
 private instructions from Mr. Hastings appears from the 
 defence he made to the complaints of Mr. Bristow of the 
 want of compliance on the part of Hyder Beg. 
 
 "Now," says he, "that from motives of kindness and favour you have 
 directed me to follow this business, and added declarations respecting 
 support and assistance, I am, as I have always declared myself to be, 
 ready to obey. To whatever you shall please to command I shall never 
 object, and I am every way ready to obey your orders in the execution of 
 affairs independent of the inclinations of the Nabob Vizier, if you will 
 assure me only of support and protection in case of his displeasure." 
 
 From these papers, then, my Lords, it appears that 
 Mr. Hastings had the minister of the Nawab completely in 
 his power; that the minister avows not only his readiness 
 to obey Mr. Hastings' orders, to comply with every wish of 
 his, to follow his inclinations by recommendations to the 
 Nawab, but even where the Nawab's opinion may be adverse, 
 even in opposition to the will of his Sovereign, provided he 
 is sure of support and countenance from Mr. Hastings. 
 
 If, then, my Lords, you should be satisfied that, the troops Responsi- 
 of the Wazir being all English, not only the two brigades jjjl^ast- 
 but the corps of Colonel Hannay and Major Osborne for ings for the 
 collecting the revenue were commanded by English officers, tions m 
 subject to English control and English command that the 
 minister, the adviser and counsellor of the Wazir, was at 
 the command and disposal of Mr. Hastings that the 
 Resident at the Wazir's court, watching over the transactions 
 of the Wazir, was not merely the representative of the 
 English government, not in the character of an ambassador 
 of this country, bearing indeed the insignia of his office but 
 being, as Mr. Hastings acknowledges, his immediate agent 
 and the appointment of his own choice that Mr. Hastings 
 disclaims responsibility for any act, done by a Resident in a 
 different character shall Mr. Hastings then be permitted 
 to urge as a plea of necessity, shall he urge as his excuse for 
 any acts of cruelty, for any infringement of laws, for any 
 perversion of justice, that the distresses of the Nawab were
 
 454 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Glide: 
 
 16 APE. 1788. the real cause of it ? If the distresses exist, is he not responsible 
 
 for everything relating to that country ? 
 
 Resump- But, in his Defence to yoar Lordships, he says, that the 
 jagh-s! thc measure of resuming the jagirs was a just, necessary and 
 Resolution expedient, measure, in the then situation of affairs. It 
 i > nfe^to\ I isft" a PP ears tnat > ear ly m 1781, in consequence of frequent 
 Oude representations of the Wazir of the distresses of his country, 
 
 founded on -.*,-... T , /^, -i ^i i 
 
 complaints Mr. Hastings proposed to the Council at Calcutta to pay a 
 of tne tre! )S personal visit to the province of Oude ; that he proposed that 
 country. extravagant and most preposterous of all measures, the dividing 
 the Council at Calcutta, when reduced to two to leave, 
 as it were, a Governor General and Council for the home 
 department at Calcutta, assuming to himself all the power 
 of the Governor General and Council in the foreign depart- 
 ment ; ordering all the officers and all the servants, both 
 military and civil, to obey his orders and instructions, as if 
 they had been delivered at Fort William, with all the 
 authority of a Council not a Council consisting of one man, 
 but a Council consisting of many ; where the collective 
 wisdom, arising from deliberation and debate, would give 
 effect to their orders. But, in those proposals, it appears 
 that Mr. Hastings' object was not the resumption of jagirs ; 
 it was not the punishment of delinquency ; it was not the 
 seizing the treasures; it was, by a personal view, by a. 
 personal acquaintance with the situation of the Nawab's 
 country, by conversation with the inhabitants, by communi- 
 cation with the servants employed there, by a personal 
 interview with the Nawab himself, by his advice and by his 
 recommendation, to afford means, not only for the better 
 government of his country, but for the liquidation of his 
 debt. 
 
 NO defies- ^ ne distress of the Company is not urged at that time. I 
 ency in the think Mr. Hastings could hardly have urged it. He stated 
 
 Company s . . i c i ' i 
 
 treasury at m the year 1778 that the surplus or the revenue was above 
 me ' two millions. The revenue itself is but three ; the surplus 
 was above two thirds of it. But I have still better authority 
 than that ; for Mr. Hastings says, that of all times the most 
 favourable for such a journey was that when the business of 
 the finance was so well arranged, when such an universal 
 calm prevailed over the affairs of Fort William, that, with- 
 out inconvenience, without risk of any event arising that 
 could make his presence necessary, he proposed to visit 
 Oude. But in his journey to Oude you have heard that 
 dreadful and fatal catastrophe at Benares. The revolution
 
 Speech of Mr. Pel/turn. 455 
 
 at Benares, the expulsion of Cheyt Sing, did indeed permit ie APE. ms. 
 his going to Oude ; but it will not justify his conduct con- 
 cerning Oude : it will not warrant his misdemeanors there : 
 it will not warrant the seizing the jagirs of the Begums : it 
 will not warrant the plundering of the Princesses of Oude. 
 
 On the 23d of August, seven days after the expulsion of 
 Cheyt Sing, Mr. Hastings writes to the Wazir, expressing 
 his disappointment in not being able to pay him that visit in 
 Oude which he had intended. On the 6th of September he Unwilling, 
 writes again to the Wazir, by which it appears that, contrary 
 to Mr. Hastings' wish contrary to his expectations the 
 Wazir had actually set out with a disposition to pay him a 
 visit. Mr. Hastings, in this letter, as he does in his Narrative, 
 expresses the greatest apprehension of meeting the Wazir. 
 So far from thinking it necessary to have a personal interview 
 at that time with the Wazir for the purpose of arranging 
 his affairs, there was nothing he so much dreaded. He 
 thought at that time his [he was ?] exposing himself to a 
 foreign enemy his [he was ?] exposing himself, as he says 
 there, to the Wazir : not indicating strong confidence in the 
 Wazir himself; not indicating that confidence which he 
 afterwards urges as a reason for not involving the Wazir in 
 the same supposed guilt with the Princesses, his mother and 
 grandmother. At that time he did everything in his power 
 to prevent the Wazir' s coming. He thought the necessities 
 of the Nawab were such as would bear delay , he thought 
 that the disturbances and disquietude of his government 
 were such as would sink of themselves, or at least that it 
 was not necessary for him to administer immediate relief. 
 
 He writes to Mr. Wheler on the 27th and 29th of August, xo mention 
 the 4th, llth, 18th, 20th, 22d and 29th, of September, ong^Sfe 
 the 7th and 13th of October, on the 1st, 21st and 25th, of g*^* 11 
 November. By which it will appear that he was in constant snondencc 
 correspondence with Mr. Wheler ; that notwithstanding that ' 
 
 Narrative which he offers that affected journal of all the 
 transactions that passed during his journey still he was in 
 constant correspondence with Mr. Wheler, affecting to com- 
 municate to Mr. Wheler everything that passed. Not a 
 syllable of disaffection in the Begums ; not a syllable of 
 suspicion entertained of any design in them, either to disturb 
 the government of the Nawab, or, as he falsely says, upon 
 the 29th of November, to extirpate the English. He is 
 silent as to any accusation ; but he is not silent altogether. 
 He does mention, on the 18th of September, that Oude had
 
 456 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 is APR. 1788. caught the contagion. He does express by these words that 
 the effect of the expulsion of Cheyt Sing had been felt in 
 the neighbouring province of Oude : but in that letter he 
 says : f< The Nawab, who is with me, will soon return to 
 his country. Upon his return I am confident that all will 
 be quiet," On the 25th of September he says : " I shall 
 immediately dismiss the Nawab : his return will produce 
 universal quiet in his country." 
 
 Expression But, my Lords, it may be said by Mr. Hastings though 
 deuce in the I think he will hardly presume to offer such an excuse it 
 country in mav ^ e suggested, however, by some of his friends, that 
 MS letters ]\f r Hastings at that time was apprehensive of his situation. 
 
 to Sir Elijah , . n >? . , MI- 
 
 felt himself in danger, but was unwilling to alarm the 
 Council at Calcutta : he was afraid to spread alarm in the 
 provinces of India ; he would not therefore communicate to 
 Mr. Wheler the full extent of the disturbances that prevailed 
 in Oude. But if that should be urged as an excuse and a 
 bold excuse it would be the same cannot be said of his 
 private and confidential letter to Sir Elijah Impey. To. 
 Sir Elijah Impey he writes with the greatest confidence. 
 There are no apprehensions there of disturbing the peace of 
 the country no apprehensions there of drawing censure 
 upon himself. To Sir Elijah Impey he opens himself fully. 
 Sir Elijah Impey is his bosom friend. Sir Elijah Impey 
 was coming to pay him a personal visit of attention and 
 respect. To him all things, he says, bear a favourable aspect : 
 
 " The seizing of Bidjey Ghur and the peace with Mahdajee Scindia are 
 the only objects which give me the least concern. The Nabob's return 
 to his country his return to Fyzabad " 
 
 Fyzabad, the residence of the two Princesses supposed to 
 be in rebellion 
 
 " has removed all uneasiness from my mind. His country is quiet. I 
 am only anxious for the plunder of Bidjey Ghur. I am only apprehen- 
 sive of Cheyt Sing's joining Mahdajee Scindia. I am only apprehensive 
 of his telling his story to that Prince, with whom I am making peace, in 
 a manner that shall alarm the feelings of the Mahrattas ; that should 
 prevent the negociations of Colonel Muir : and by joining that formidable 
 force to theirs, with that strong and additional incentive of the insult 
 that has been offered to an independent Prince, the story of the expulsion 
 of Cheyt Sing, if it should reach the Mahratta camp before we have con- 
 cluded peace, a war more furious than ever will break out. The English 
 name will be detested. The Mahrattas will then make a common cause 
 with the Princes of India." 
 
 Then indeed he might be afraid of the disaffection of the 
 Begums ; then he might be afraid of a conspiracy with the
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelkam. 457 
 
 Wazir. Then indeed, with Mahdajee Sc'mdia at their head, ieApE.1788. 
 with Cheyt Sing in their camp, putting Cheyt Sing as an 
 encouragement to the troops of India, no armies, no superior 
 discipline, no confidence in the British arms, would be able 
 to resist such a force, so commanded and in such a cause. 
 
 But, my Lords, as to the fact, it appears further that Evidence of 
 Mr. Middleton, in his defence to these charges brought on the ante 
 against him by Mr. Hastings, one of which was that he did country. the 
 not communicate to him all the intelligence that he received, 
 says: 
 
 " I communicated everything to you that passed after the 2d October, 
 when the Nabob returned from his visit to you. There was no appear- 
 ance of any disturbance no disquiet in the country. There was nothing 
 for me to communicate to you." 
 
 If I have been fortunate enough to impress upon your {;jtM Sion 
 Lordships' minds anything at all like the conviction that Hastings 
 there is upon my own, and which I am sure when you come a V pprehen- 
 to the evidence will be made out and, if it is not made out, bdHoniT 
 
 it can only arise from my defects and from my not explaining Oude 
 the matter so fully to your Lordships as I ought to do [you 
 will be satisfied] that, at the time Mr. Hastings entered into 
 the treaty of Chunar, and subsequently, even down to the 
 25th of November, Mr. Hastings never did consider the 
 Begums as in rebellion ; that he was never under any appre- 
 hension from an insurrection on their part ; never was under 
 any apprehension of the junction of Cheyt Sing with them ; 
 that he never did at any time, until a fatal time which will 
 be mentioned hereafter, entertain the least doubts of their 
 constant and uniform affection to the British. 
 
 But, my Lords, on the 19th of September, Mr. Hastings 
 si<nis a treaty, commonly called the treaty of Chunar, with 
 the Wazir ; and, as upon this treaty he founds his subsequent 
 claims upon the Wazir, and makes it the means of enforcing 
 his cruel demands afterwards upon him, I will first state to Report of 
 your Lordships the treaty of Chunar, as far as it affects this of cinmar 
 point. This treaty was to resume the jagirs. By the very * v S i n 
 words of it it implies a measure of arrangement : it implies a 
 measure that is prospective, as far as the Begums are con- 
 cerned, by the letter of it : and all this under the protection 
 of the English. It was not to have in view the immediate 
 object of his journey, namely, the increase of the Nawab's 
 revenue ; for they were to receive the full amount of the 
 produce of their jagirs. And, my Lords, it will appear that 
 the jagirs possessed by the Begums and by the family of the
 
 458 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16 APR. 1788. Nawab, most of whom claimed the protection of the English, 
 were at least one third, if not two thirds, of the whole of the 
 jagirs [which] were possessed. 
 
 But, my Lords, the object of his journey of affording 
 real relief to the Wazir was provided for by this treaty. 
 By the first article of that treaty, Mr. Hastings engages to 
 the Nawab to reduce that fatal brigade to dismiss those 
 troops which the Nawab himself has uniformly said had been 
 the cause of his ruin and distress. Two months and ten 
 days, which expired on the 30th of November, was the time 
 fixed for the reducing these troops. This afforded to the 
 Nawab all the relief that he desired. This afforded him 
 effectually that relief which was the purport of his journey, 
 which was the object which he professed to have in view in 
 his minute of the 1st of July, 1781. 
 
 But, my Lords, as Mr. Hastings has quoted this treaty 
 in his defence, and as he grounds his subsequent conduct in 
 a great measure upon it, it will be necessary that your Lord- 
 ships should hear the account that he gives of his manner 
 of conducting this treaty. Unnecessary, I am sure, it 
 served would be in this place, [before a tribunal] composed of 
 imk?ng g thc statesmen, composed of men who must have been in the 
 situation not only of negotiating treaties but of ratifying them, 
 of examining them, and of instructing those who have nego- 
 tiated them, [to insist] that the real and genuine sense and 
 understanding of both parties is to be the true interpretation 
 of every treaty that what was the understanding of the 
 person to whom you made the promise is Avhat you are com- 
 pelled to do. You are not under a promise to act upon a 
 reserved meaning you are to understand what is the object 
 and what, according to the understanding of the person to 
 whom you make the promise, you are to convey to him. 
 But Mr. Hastings, who in his address to the House of Com- 
 mons says that he was obliged to form his rule of conduct 
 upon his own practice, certainly thought very differently. 
 He did not think it was necessary to consult the wishes of 
 those with whom he treated. He thought himself justified 
 in a reserved interpretation of a treaty foreign, not only 
 to the meaning of the person with whom he contracted, but, 
 I think I can show your Lordships, foreign to the plain and 
 fair interpretation of the words. 
 
 . When the Nabob so anxiously desired my sanction for the resump- 
 to the^a- 00 ti on * th e j a ghires he certainly had in view only the Begum's, and a few 
 wab to make others of magnitude which he considered protected either by the gua-
 
 Speech of Mr. Pclham. 459 
 
 rantee or favour of the Company. He could not be supposed to ask my 16 APE. 1788. 
 sanction to the resumption of grants in which the Company's faith was ., 
 no ways concerned. But, being aware that his Excellency intended a tion'of the 
 partial resumption, reserving the jaghires of his particular favourites, who jagirs 
 from their characters and conduct ought to be the first proscribed, I ge 
 determined to defeat the design by advising him to make the resumption 
 general, and he engaged to follow my advice.''* 
 
 He states here that he knew the object of the Wazir to 
 be to make a partial resumption ; that he advised him to 
 make the resumption general. " He could not," says he, 
 " ask me for power to resume those with whom we were 
 not concerned ; the consequence of this his Excellency did 
 not at the time advert to." 
 
 Here then a Governor General, treating with an inde- 
 pendent Prince in India, dares, in the face of the Commons 
 of England, in excuse of the grossest violation of public 
 faith dares, in excuse of the grossest violation of truth, 
 avow, as a ground and pretence for executing the greatest 
 cruelties, that he entered into a treaty with the Nawab, 
 the Nawab having a different understanding and a different 
 meaning to him ; that he, by recommending a measure to the 
 Nawab, by recommending words to him which seemed, so 
 far from counteracting the wishes of the Nawab, to give him 
 still greater latitude, was hereafter to make a pretence for 
 overturning every principle of this treaty, and for making 
 the Nawab not only resume all the jagirs, when he wished, 
 but to resume the jagirs of his family, which Mr. Hastings 
 falsely pretends he wished in this treaty to resume, but 
 which afterwards he imdoubtedly objected to and resisted : 
 the treaty can at most be considered as a permission. 
 Mr. Hastings, under these false colours, under the pretence 
 of giving the Nawab greater latitude, under pretence of 
 giving him more power, perverts the meaning of the words, 
 and says, " Because I have given you power over those with 
 whom I had no sort of concern, you, I suppose, by taking 
 that power from me, admit that I had some sort of authority 
 over them/' 
 
 I trust that your Lordships will not suffer the British 
 character to be so degraded in India ; that you, who with 
 us have always been so jealous of a strict adherence to trea- 
 ties of preserving the national character for public faith 
 
 * See the Minutes of Mr. Hastings' Defence at the Bar of the House of 
 Commons. Answer to the Fourth Charge.
 
 460 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16APB.1788. will not suffer a criminal at your bar to argue as his defence 
 that he went to treat with the Nawab with an avowed 
 intention of palpably cheating him. 
 
 Assertion of But, my Lords, he says that this was the earnest desire 
 ings that of the Nawab. We have undoubtedly only Mr. Hastings' 
 (ioYwasuhe assertion for this desire ; but, if we may judge from the 
 ^STre bs Nawab's conduct prior to this treaty if we may judge from 
 his conduct subsequent to this treaty if we may judge from 
 his conduct at the moment that Mr. Hastings' interpretation 
 of the treaty was being carried into execution if we may 
 judge from the Nawab's conduct subsequent to the time of 
 its being carried Into execution we may at least I think 
 confute Mr. Hastings' assertion in the year 1780, in a letter 
 to Mr. Purling. Your Lordships will have this letter in 
 Letter of evidence. In the year 1780, the Nawab, in the most pathetic 
 manner, writes to Mr. Purling, the Eesident at his court, 
 wno nac ^ mac ^ e remonstrances to him upon the accumulation 
 of his debt : 
 
 " I have received your letter. 
 
 " You write that you informed the Council in the month of Maug, that 
 I had not sources in my country, and my expenses were very great, and 
 that you have received an answer from the Council that whatever 
 balance was due at the end of the year I should pay, and that the sum 
 1,06,62,000 rupees, which were granted as assets, should suffer no dimi- 
 nution, nor will the gentlemen of the Council allow one rupee but that, 
 agreeable to the account particulars, the balance of 1,36,62,188 : 12 must 
 be assigned. 
 
 " I have in no respect failed in my compliance with the pleasure of 
 the Council or my friendship for the Company as far as I have had 
 ability, and I have acquainted you very fully with the state of my 
 country and the sources of the revenue : and I have even put a stop to 
 the expenses of my table, and the animals I ought to keep, and the 
 jaghires of my servants and attendants, and there are assets of 98,98,375. 
 After this I wrote the jaghires of my grandmother and my mother, 
 and of the Nabob Sallar Jung, and of my family and the sons of my 
 uncle, Mirza Ally Khan, which were granted them for their livelihood, 
 and they amounted to the sum of 7,63,625 rupees. By this means has 
 the business been done, but they all possess engagements. And I have 
 made over in assignment the expenses of my table, which I have put a 
 stop to with this view, that the gentlemen of the Council understanding 
 my distressed situation would show me their friendship. I at first 
 opposed the assigning the jaghires of my grandmother and mother and 
 uncle. Now that the Council have, upon such a representation of my 
 distress, written that there shall not be less assignments than 1,06,62,000 
 rupees, and that the balance of 1,36,62,188 must be given, I am 
 acquainted with the particulars of the 1,36,62,188. If the gentlemen of 
 the Council, or you, Sir, will inform yourselves from the accounts, you 
 will find it is not to be obtained. Whatever in justice can be obtained 
 from the accounts have been granted, but at this time assignments are
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 46 1 
 
 demanded of me. The business of the world is easy and passes away, 
 
 and the gentlemen of the Council should in everything that is just be 
 
 my guardians and my friends. I do not put my life in competition with 
 friendship. Whatever assets were in the country, with even my table, 
 my animals, the jaghires of my grandmother, mother, and my uncles, the 
 Nabobs Mirza Alice and Sallar Jung, which were granted them for 
 their maintenance, are at your disposal. If the Council have directed 
 you to attach them, do it. In the country no further sources remain, 
 and I have no means, for I have not a subsistence."* 
 
 In this letter, the Wazir, driven to the extremities of 
 distress having reduced even his table expenses having 
 granted assignments upon all the jagirs and property of his 
 family and dependants does mention his mother, his grand- 
 mother and his family, but he says, " Over them I have no 
 power. They possess engagements. If it be your pleasure 
 to do this if it is the order of the Council that you do it 
 do it. It is your business not mine." Under these circum- 
 stances is it to be supposed that the Wazir, at the treaty of 
 Chunar of the 19th of September, having obtained, by the 
 first article, of Mr. Hastings, a release from that brigade 
 which had borne him down, from that expense which had 
 accumulated his debt, should at that moment choose to 
 propose to Mr. Hastings to resume those jagirs, which at 
 the time that he was reducing even his table expenses he did 
 not presume to touch ? 
 
 But, my Lords, it appears that, when this measure was to Evidence of 
 
 i T i x i* -\r \f i n * fj. xi. ii,- Mr. Middle- 
 
 be carried into execution, Mr. Middleton, even after the thing ton that the 
 
 was determined upon, even when he was carrying it into exe- j^ecUhT 
 cution, in all his private letters- those letters which, as I measure - 
 mentioned before, were suppressed by Mr. Hastings, but 
 which the accusation of Mr. Middleton and his necessary 
 defence have bought out Mr. Middleton tells you that the 
 Nawab uniformly opposed the measure. He complained of 
 treachery in his ministers, for having given any reason to 
 expect that he would deprive his family of their jagirs. But 
 this is not all ; for, at the time that Mr. Middleton was at 
 Fyzabad, when he was within two days of completing this 
 dreadful act, he represents that the Nawab was still waver- 
 ing. He calls it a puerile reluctance, insulting the Prince 
 at whose court he was insulting the Prince who had been 
 formerly oppressed insulting a Prince who wished to nego- 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p, 479.
 
 462 Support of t lie Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 Letter of 
 the Nawab 
 desiring to 
 restore the 
 jagirs. 
 
 icApu.1788. tiate with his mother who hesitated, standing at her door, 
 this Mr. Middleton, with a hardness peculiar to those 
 attached to Mr. Hastings, calls a puerile reluctance. But, 
 whether puerile or whether well founded or not, it was an 
 objection to the resumption of the jngirs. 
 
 In the course of the month of January a great part of the 
 treasures of the Begums were seized. The Wazir had re- 
 turned to Lucknow without seeing his mother, by the 
 express order of Mr. Hastings. No sooner does he return 
 to Lucknow than he writes to Mr. Hastings, desiring that 
 he may be permitted to restore these jagirs which he had 
 reluctantly taken. 
 
 It is, then, upon the bare assertion of Mr. Hastings 
 Mr. Hastings accused Mr. Hastings defending himself 
 against an accusation of having forced the Nawab that we 
 are told upon the records of the Company that it was at the 
 Nawab's express desire. \Ve have evidence that, when the 
 Nawab was in the greatest distress reduced to mere beggary 
 he was unwilling to touch the property of his mother. 
 We have him, at the moment of his going to plunder her of her 
 treasures, supported by the English, under no apprehensions 
 of any consequence of breach of faith with them or violation 
 of the guarantee, strongly expressing his disapprobation of 
 the measure. We have evidence upon the records of his 
 expressing the same disposition the moment that he returned 
 to his court : 
 
 " Having appointed my own aumils to the jaghire of the lady mother, 
 I have engaged to pay her cash ; she has complied with my views. Her 
 pleasure is that, after receiving an engagement, he should deliver up the 
 jaghires. What is your pleasure in this matter ? If you command, it 
 will comfort the lady mother, giving her back the jaghire after I have 
 obtained my views ; or I will have it under my own aumils. I am 
 obedient to your pleasure." 
 
 Here again is this poor miserable Wazir praying to 
 Mr. Hastings for permission to restore that property to his 
 mother which he had so unjustly taken from her, trusting 
 that by restoration he might make his peace with her. 
 
 But, my Lords, added to these circumstances, the moment 
 of Mr. Hastings giving his reasons for signing this treaty of 
 Chunar is perhaps of all others the most suspicious. 
 Mr. Hastings signs this treaty on the 19th of September. 
 Your Lordships have heard of the letter he wrote on the 18th 
 of September. You have heard of various letters he wrote 
 
 Inference 
 from the 
 date of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' assign- 
 ment of his 
 reasons for 
 signing the 
 treaty.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. r 463 
 
 previous to that time. You have heard the disposition of the IB APE. 1739. 
 Nawab prior to entering into that treaty. You have heard 
 his disposition since. From none of these circumstances 
 does it appear that there was any disposition in the Nawab 
 to resume these jagirs, or does it appear that, either in the 
 mind of the Wazir or Mr. Hastings, was there any appre- 
 hension of any danger from the Begums holding these. 
 Indeed, during the whole transaction, it is clear the Wazir 
 never did once conceive that his mother was in a state of 
 rebellion. It is not urged as a ground and a reason for the 
 facts that were imposed and forced upon him. The Wazir 
 never once mentions their rebellion : he never speaks, either 
 in justification or as a reason for any part of his conduct, of 
 considering them as disaffected to his government. 
 
 My Lords, you have heard in the last charge what was the His 
 effect of the loss of Bidjey Ghur. You have heard in this, 
 in his letter to Sir Elijah Impey, that Bidjey Ghur was one o h ^ I r dj 
 of the objects that gave him the most concern. Bidjey Ghur 
 he looked upon as a resource. Bidjey Ghur was the place 
 from which he expected to get means for covering all the 
 enormities of his former transactions. From Bidjey Ghur 
 lie expected to gratify his employers at home. Being disap- 
 pointed of that, he was obliged to have recourse to other 
 means : failing in his object there, he was to look round. 
 This modern Alexander was then reduced to the situation 
 to which his great predecessor has been compared. He was 
 then in the situation, perhaps, more of a Bagshot than of a 
 tyrant. He was not then in a situation of a great em- 
 peror ; he was not then in the situation of a man whose 
 conduct is regulated by justice, who feels any degree of 
 responsibility, but of a man who is determined at the time 
 to gratify his passion and supply his immediate necessity by 
 any means that are offered to him. Mr. Hastings at that 
 time indeed was disappointed of his object. 
 
 On the 12th of November he receives intelligence that 
 Bidjey Ghur was taken ; but not that Bidjey Ghur had 
 produced what he expected ; for his letter encouraging the 
 troops to seize it, and promising them the plunder, which 
 he thought was the best means of securing it, had failed in 
 the object. Distrusting Mr. Hastings, or eager for the prize, 
 it is immaterial which, no sooner had they taken it than 
 they divided it : they divided it even before they communi- 
 cated it to Mr. Hastings. Then was Mr. Hastings indeed in
 
 464 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Otidc: 
 
 16APR.1788. a deplorable situation. Sir Elijah Impey says he found him 
 
 The"pe7- in a distress that he had never seen his great mind reduced 
 
 omilumed to before. Then he thought that the check and the control 
 
 him - of Colonel Monson, General Clavering and Mr. Francis, 
 
 were more tolerable that the subsequent opposition of 
 
 Mr. Francis was more friendly than the fatal compliance 
 
 of Mr. Wheler, who consented to divide the government 
 
 with him, who placed him in such a situation of responsibility 
 
 that he could not move a step or take an act without 
 
 involving himself in all the consequences. He then felt it. 
 
 " How," says he, " shall I screen my character from all the invectives 
 
 that will be suggested by the rancour of disappointed rapacity ? How 
 
 shall I answer my employers with empty treasuries? How shall I 
 
 return to Calcutta without an immediate supply of money ? I shall be 
 
 suspected, though God forgive those who know me and entertain the 
 
 suspicion that I was influenced by mercenary interest, it will be 
 
 suspected that I was influenced by private resentment in the expulsion 
 
 of Cheyt Sing. God knows implacability to my inferiors is no part of 
 
 my character; yet I shall be suspected of gratifying personal revenge, 
 
 and, in obtaining satisfaction for a personal injury, to have risked the 
 
 fate of this country, to have expelled Cheyt Sing from his dominions, 
 
 and to have lost that profit and that emolument which, if I had listened 
 
 Is tempted to him at an earlier period, I might have taken and applied to the 
 
 the kiss'bY r 680111 ' 068 f *^ e Company. Bidjey Ghur is lost : the treasures of 
 
 the trca- the Begums are secured to them by treaty; but they must be taken. I 
 
 suresof the mus t have them ; for without them I cannot return." 
 Begums. 
 
 MV Lords, Bagshot would have reasoned in the same man- 
 
 .. .,, . .. ,. . .... 
 
 ner, meeting with a similar disappointment or a similar mis- 
 fortune. " Cruelty is not my nature. I only meant to make 
 the gentleman contribute to my necessities, which God knows 
 he could well afford. He resisted. It became then a point 
 of honour. If I had given way my courage might have been 
 disputed. The consequences indeed were fatal to me : the 
 report of my fire occasioned such an alarm that I was obliged 
 to fly. The person from whom I expected so much booty 
 fell unfortunately into other hands ; they have plundered 
 him ; and here am I left, the night half-spent, and no means 
 of returning home. My honesty and my courage will be 
 suspected by my party. The gang will immediately betray 
 me. If I have no money, how can I expect to be screened 
 from my former delinquencies ? Is there no house in the 
 neighbourhood ? Are there no widows, are there no women, 
 helpless and defenceless, who may perhaps be in possession of 
 the wealth of their departed husbands ? I must break open 
 their doors, or I can never return to the capital." 
 
 Comparison 
 
 with a high 
 
 "
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelliam. 465 
 
 Indeed this is a true description of Mr. Hastings' conduct; icApR.ms. 
 though, considering the greatness of the persons concerned, 
 considering the greatness of the object, considering the great- 
 ness of the interest, both in this country and in the world in 
 general, considering that it is the cause of humanity, that it 
 is the cause of parental and filial affection, we must use 
 different terms. We talk of treaties we talk of good 
 faith ; but in truth it is neither more nor less than a vile, 
 sordid, dirty, robbery. 
 
 But, my Lords, after all, Mr. Hastings himself does not statement 
 pretend to call these more than suspicions. He says, in his \ ngs ti ia t ast 
 justification of the breach of the guarantee, that suspicions gus^i c ^, e n r s e f 
 were entertained of their rebellion. Good God, my Lords, rebellion. 
 upon suspicion will you break a treaty ? But this was sus- 
 picion of a circumstance of which he could have had compe- 
 tent knowledge, with the Wazir, the Sovereign of the country, 
 in his camp, and his own representative, the Resident, with him. 
 In those circumstances it was impossible that Mr. Hastings 
 should not have known for certain whether those suspicions, 
 if ever he did entertain them, were well founded. The suspi- suspicions 
 cions were that the Princesses of Oude had encouraged the re- ^ l e at u t ^ 1)a<1 
 bellion of Cheyt Sing ; that it had been a measure concerted encouia^-d 
 between them previous to Mr. Hastings going there, and of cheyt. 
 that Colonel Hannay and Captain Gordon, and other officers Sm *- 
 who were ordered to join Mr. Hastings, upon the alarm that 
 was given by the revolution at Benares, had been obstructed 
 in their passage ; and that their troops had been drawn from 
 them by the agents of these Princesses. That Mr. Hast- 
 ings had no suspicions at the time of making the treaty 
 is clear. He endeavoured to confirm these treaties after- 
 wards. He endeavoured to confirm them by employing 
 persons in taking affidavits, to prove upon oath what 
 they had heard as public rumour. I trust, then, that, as far 
 as necessity as far as state necessity as far as expediency 
 [are concerned] considering it as a measure to be imme- 
 diately taken Mr. Hastings, neither in his own Defence 
 nor in any account that is given of this transaction, can 
 possibly urge that plea. From this time, from the 29th 
 of November, which is the time when he first commu- 
 nicates the treaty and he first communicates his reasons 
 for making it, it must bear rather the aspect of a measure of 
 justice. I suppose, when Mr. Hastings says it was a just 
 measure as well as a necessary and expedient one, that he 
 means to prove that, when he had time for examining 
 when he had time for considering whether those suspicions 
 
 Q G
 
 466 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16APE.J1788. which warranted the first steps were well grounded, upon 
 further investigation, they were so authenticated and so 
 proved that they warranted his advice to the Nawab, if 
 not his orders, which warranted the Nawab himself in 
 violating his duties as a son in plundering his mother. 
 
 Mr. Hastings has frequently stated that he was removed 
 ^ rom ^ s country at so early a period of life that it was not 
 owing to his possible for him to entertain those accurate notions of justice 
 movaifrom those accurate notions of the modes of administering jus- 
 Engiand. ^ ce j n ^ s country which we or others may possess. He 
 was, he says, not like the ministers of this country, who 
 have all the wisdom of the law, who have all the ablest 
 statesmen, who have all the experience of the ablest 
 generals and the first military characters, in the country 
 to consult with. He had no professional aid ; he had 
 only the resources of his own mind, and minds equally 
 ill-instructed with his own. But the resources of his 
 own mind were certainly at his own command. The re- 
 sources of his own mind were fertile enough when it 
 was necessary to urge arguments, either to the Nawab 
 or to others, against a measure which he thought would be 
 detrimental to himself. The resources of his own mind 
 were fertile enough for carrying measures into execution 
 which were to be attended with advantages to himself. If 
 inlavour^f he had had recourse to the resources of his own mind at this 
 the Begums. m0 ment, it might have suggested itself to him, as it did at 
 the time when he refused to admit of any inquiry, when he 
 rejected the motion of Mr. Stables for an inquiry into the 
 conduct of the Begums he might have applied the same 
 principles, he might have applied the same arguments in 
 objection to his own conduct, that he did to the motion 
 which was made by Mr. Stables. The Nawab had returned 
 from Mr. Hastings by Fyzabad. If the Nawab had desired 
 to be permitted to resume the jagirs from any apprehension 
 of danger or suspicion of disaffection in his mother, he re- 
 turned by Fyzabad ; he had been eye-witness of the quiet 
 and calm there was at that place ; he had visited his mother, 
 and had been satisfied, from a personal interview with her, 
 that, whatever rumour might have been spread, the same 
 affection subsisted. He might have said, " It would ill 
 become this government to interpose its influence by any 
 act which may tend to revive the animosities between the 
 Nawab and his mother ; and a very slight occasion will be 
 sufficient for it." We know how that mother had been 
 pressed by that son. We know how the pressing debt of
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 467 
 
 the Company had obliged him, time after time, to apply to 
 his mother for treasures. We know how the application for 
 these continual aids had occasioned discontent on the part 
 of the Begum. Not that she suspected her son ; she always 
 attributed those applications to the mismanagement of his 
 ministers. Said she, "In the time of Suja-ud-Dowla, 
 with less revenues, with less dominion, his affairs were in a 
 state of prosperity ; but now, my son, with larger revenues 
 and more extended territory, is reduced to this necessity. 
 I am continually oppressed. We poor women are con- 
 tinually applied to to answer for the distresses of the 
 country, which are occasioned by the mismanagement of his 
 ministers." The Nawab, who had endeavoured or at least 
 who wished once to have taken the treasures of his mother, 
 not from any desire of depriving her of them, but as a 
 means of satisfying the rapacity of the English, would in- 
 stantly have taken fire on a declaration that they were his 
 right. He would proclaim that the judgment of the Com- 
 pany, which had formerly restrained him, was now in his 
 favour ; and he would demand a restitution of those rights, 
 and a surrender of those treasures, which Mr. Hastings even 
 now pretends to say, though falsely, were unjustly with- 
 held from him. " If we cannot heal let us not inflame the 
 wounds that have been inflicted. If the Nabob thinks 
 himself aggrieved to such a degree as to justify him in an 
 appeal to a foreign jurisdiction to appeal to us to assist 
 him in gaining the treasures from his mother and to resume 
 her jaghires appeal against women standing in the relation 
 of mother and grandmother to appeal to the justice of 
 those who have been the instruments and the means of 
 withholding from him his just rights let him at least be 
 permitted to be the judge of his own feelings, and prefer his 
 complaints before we offer to redress them. The majesty 
 of justice" Mr. Hastings, assuming the majesty of justice, 
 says, " ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend 
 to provoke and invite it ; much less to debase itself by the 
 suggestion of wrongs and the promise of redress, with the 
 denunciations of punishment before trial and even before 
 accusation."* 
 
 My Lords, if Mr. Hastings' mind had not been perverted 
 by avarice ; if money alone had not been his object ; if the 
 justice of the case had been the ruling principle of his 
 
 * Minute of Mr. Hastings. See "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 923. 
 
 G G 2
 
 468 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16 A ^L 1788< conduct, lie would indeed have had recourse to the resources 
 of his own mind, and he would have found those principles 
 which I have read to your Lordships. He would have 
 found that, in acting in the character of a judge, he was 
 not to suggest wrongs. He was not to take the head of 
 justice in that country to take the protector of India and 
 send him, as a mean agent, to take affidavits to prove those 
 facts which he falsely said that he entertained suspicions of. 
 But, after all, what do those affidavits, founded upon those 
 vits taken suspicions, amount to ? Mere rumours reports. Reports 
 impey. from whom ? Reports from Colonel Hannay and Captain 
 Gordon, and those officers whom the Nawab, in the year 
 1780, complained of; officers commanding those corps that 
 collected his revenues those corps which had occasioned 
 the discontent and disturbances in the provinces of Baraitch 
 and Goruckpore, of which your Lordships will hear a more 
 detailed account in a subsequent charge. But, without enter- 
 ing into a detail of them, these reports go no further than 
 that, withdrawing those troops from a country where disorder 
 had reigned, disorder revived ; that those troops, upon not 
 being regularly paid, threatened to desert their commanders; 
 and some of them say they were going to the Begums who 
 Ayould pay them. But there is not the least tittle in all 
 these affidavits, which were taken with so much assiduity 
 and with so much authority being taken by a chief justice 
 there is not a direct proof of a rebellion ; which indeed 
 would not require any formal and legal investigation. To 
 prove the notoriety of it might have been necessary upon 
 trial ; but I don't believe that it was ever thought necessary 
 for a statesman to send round a chief justice to take affi- 
 davits as a justification for a great political measure. These 
 affidavits, however, were taken at Lucknow. 
 
 doiceof Those whom one would suppose the first to give intelligence 
 
 Middieton upon the subject those most competent to give information 
 
 and Hyder .1 T> i i zi. I u j.1 n v i i 
 
 Beg silent were the Resident and the minister; both well disposed and 
 to rebofffon. inclined to favour any project of Mr. Hastings ; but upon their 
 oaths they did not dare say that they were in rebellion. Mr. 
 Middleton, in his affidavit, talks of rumours : he has heard of 
 things that have been reported : but, though his affidavit was 
 on the 25th of November, and the rebellion is supposed to 
 have existed early in September, he is not able even then 
 positively to assert that any such thing existed. The affi- 
 davit of Hyder Beg, the minister, says not a syllable about 
 it. His affidavit goes only to prove the rebellion of Cheyt
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 469 
 
 Sing, bis indisposition to the English, and his desire, if he 
 could, to extirpate them ; not, I think, a very unnatural 
 desire, but well founded, I think, upon the evidence you 
 have heard with regard to Chey t Sing ; but no evidence 
 does Hyder Beg, the minister of the sovereign against whom 
 this rebellion is supposed to have existed, give of a rebellion 
 having existed. 
 
 But, my Lords, if a rebellion had existed, the Wazir was NO com- 
 
 ,, \ ., TT i plaint made 
 
 the man to repress it. He was the man whose country, byMr.Hast- 
 Mr. Hastings says, was disturbed. It was for him to quiet wither 10 
 it : it was for him to institute the inquiry that he thought t^EngiSii 
 necessary, if the effects of this rebellion disturbed the quiet ^om^hp 
 and the peace of the English. If we were endangered, if our rcbeiiicm. 
 troops were insulted or harassed, Mr. Hastings, in the cha- 
 racter of an ally, had undoubted right to complain to the 
 Wazir. He might by remonstrance represent to the Nawab 
 the conduct of his mother and grandmother; he might 
 represent to him the conduct of their servants and his 
 subjects. No such representation did Mr. Hastings ever 
 make to the Wazir. Cautiously and anxiously does it appear 
 that he kept all idea of rebellion from the sight and know- 
 ledge of the Wazir. The Wazir was to be tempted into a 
 consent to this execution by holding up to him the justice 
 and propriety of applying useless treasures in the hands of his 
 mother and grandmother, for the purpose of discharging a 
 debt which oppressed him. They were arguments used by 
 an unrelenting and oppressive creditor, not the arguments 
 of an ally applying to a sovereign prince for redress against 
 the conduct of a subject. But, acting in this judicial cha- 
 racter, one should suppose at least that some intimation, that 
 some knowledge, of this would have been communicated to 
 the mother and grandmother of the Nawab, who are supposed 
 to be the first and leading delinquents. 
 
 Mr. Middleton writes to Mr. Hastings, on the 27th o^Sa 
 December, giving him, as he professes here to do, an 1^**' 
 account of everything that had been done relating to this lating the 
 measure of resuming the jagirs. And, my Lords, I must ob- stances of 
 serve upon this letter, what certainly will occur to your Lord- ^not thT 
 ships upon reading it in the evidence, and will be more forcibly J a irs - 
 observed upon in the summing up, that this letter, professing 
 to give a full and accurate account of all that has passed a 
 letter upon Avhich the Council abroad founded their letters, 
 giving the information to their employers at home is ac- P anied~by a 
 companied by a remarkable private letter from Mr. Mid- f^fr offer-
 
 470 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude 
 
 i5Ai>E.i788. dleton to Mr. Hastings, of the same date as the public letter; 
 that is, the 27th of December. This is the private 
 
 ] p f * pr . 
 letter. 
 
 ingto 
 
 represent 
 the trans- 
 action in a 
 manner 
 gleasmg to 
 
 " My dear Sir, I have this day answered your public letter in the 
 f orm vou seeme d to expect. I hope there is nothing in it that may 
 tt) you appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to lie otherwise 
 understood than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say that I 
 shall be ready to conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to take 
 upon myself any share in the blame of non-performed stipulations on 
 the part of the Nabob." * 
 
 In reading these private letters, perhaps your Lordships 
 will think that, before I have given the evidence of the 
 others, I have totally destroyed all possible credibility 
 in it. Here is a public letter of the 27th of December, pur- 
 porting to give an account of transactions of two months 
 preceding, accompanied by a private letter, saying : 
 
 " You know, my dear Sir, how ready I shall be to represent this 
 matter in the manner that shall be the most agreeable to you. Say it 
 only, and I shall do it." 
 
 This private letter is written in the same style with 
 all those letters which Mr. Middleton has produced in his 
 defence, and which we shall produce to show the real 
 criminality of Mr. Hastings. He writes to him in the sub- 
 missive tone of an agent acknowledging that he does not 
 presume, not only to do anything, but even to give an account 
 of the act when it is done, but agreeably to the wishes and 
 pleasure of Mr. Hastings. 
 
 But this letter, whether the facts contained in it will be 
 credited by your Lordships or no, does profess to be 
 Mr. Middleton's account of this transaction ; and, notwith- 
 standing his letter of the 1st of December notwithstanding 
 kj s j etter o f t j ie 2 d, the 7th, and various other letters of 
 December, expressing the Nawab's reluctance, his disin- 
 clination, to resume the jagirs, he here says the resumption 
 o f the jagirs is a measure of the NawaVs. He says, the 
 with re- * unwarrantable resistance of the Begums to this justifiable 
 theactof measure of the Nawab's has determined him to go himself 
 resumption. to F vza b ac ] an( j se ize the treasures. The Begum's rebellion, 
 your Lordships observe, at this moment assumes a different 
 character riot a rebellion against the Nawab in consequence 
 of the revolution of Cheyt Sing, but a rebellion in con- 
 
 The letter 
 
 resumption 
 Nawab. 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 513 ; -where the date is given 
 as the 30th of December, 1781.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelham. 47 1 
 
 sequence of opposition to lawful and justifiable orders issued 
 by the Nawab, to carry into execution a measure of state 
 policy the resuming her jagirs. 
 
 The first letter from the Begum to the Resident states 
 her surprise at finding that her jagirs had been seized by an 
 amil of the Nawab ; to which Mr. Middleton makes this 
 answer: 
 
 " I have received your letter. The Nahob has thought proper, on Reasons 
 account of the inconveniences, loss and indignities, he sustains from the 
 authority exercised by the jaghiredars throughout the country, to resume to'the^ESe- 1 
 all the jaghires in his dominions ; in which yours is necessarily included." gum for 
 
 the resump- 
 tion. 
 
 In this letter, your Lordships observe, Mr. Hastings* 
 never accuses them of rebellion ; he never justifies the 
 measure of resuming the jagirs upon any peculiar miscon- 
 duct of theirs. He states only that their authority is in- 
 compatible with the necessary authority of the Wazir for 
 preserving the peace and good order of his country ; but, 
 says he 
 
 " As the amount of your jaghire is confirmed to you by a written 
 agreement between you and the Nabob, and guaranteed by Mr. Bristow 
 on behalf of the Governor General and Council, it will be made good to 
 you in ready money." f 
 
 He never intimates that there is any discontent towards 
 them on the part of the Nawab; but the resuming the 
 jagirs of those who had misbehaved and who had given him 
 uneasiness necessarily involved them. 
 
 There is a reply of hers, in which she says : the BegSm 
 
 to Midole- 
 
 " I find that Meer Nazier Ally has been invested with the charge o 
 my jaghire ; which to me is unaccountable. The jaghire is not his tection. 
 grant" meaning the Wazir' s "that he should resume it. What his 
 intentions may be I am at a loss to form an idea of."J 
 
 In another letter she says : 
 
 " The particulars I have written to you respecting my jaghire having 
 arrived, will be read by you " that is, alluding to the former letter. 
 " The Nabob has sent aumils to take charge of them. The coulnama 
 under your seal is in my possession, in which all interference in my 
 jaghire is disclaimed, as well as all demands on me for money. Now 
 the engagements of the Nabob are disregarded, although the English are 
 at hand." 
 
 * Read Middleton ? 
 
 f Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 815. 
 
 j Printed as above.
 
 472 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oudc : 
 
 i6ApHa788. My Lords, here, to the disgrace of the British character 
 in India, the Begum calls upon the English for a fulfilment 
 of their treaty, and is obliged, from what she says, to in- 
 sinuate that, though the English are at hand though they 
 are guarantees though they are present though the 
 Nawab is in their hands and in their power still he is 
 infringing upon her property. 
 
 " I shall in ten days proceed to Lucknow; where, having fully 
 explained and adjusted affairs, I shall repair to wherever my will may 
 direct." 
 
 In a subsequent letter she says : 
 
 " You are acquainted with the purport of the coulnama disclaiming all 
 interference with my jaghires, and by the blessing of God are at hand for 
 my benefit." 
 
 In all these letters she shows her constant and uniform 
 confidence in the English ; never expressing the least appre- 
 hension, the least fear, from any conduct of her own, that 
 it was possible the English could withdraw that guarantee 
 and that protection which they had afforded her before. To 
 this third letter Mr. Middleton replies : 
 
 Reply of j had the nonour to reply to your former letter yesterday : to the 
 
 Miduleton. * t_- i_ T D c J i . 
 
 contents of which I must beg leave to refer you, as far as relates to 
 
 securing to you the actual income of your jaghires, gunges, bazars, &c., 
 set forth in the coulnama subsisting between you and his Excellency 
 the Nabob. I certainly am bound in duty to interfere ; because the 
 faith of the Governor General and Coiincil, my masters, has been 
 pledged to you for it; and I am ready, as I before informed you, to 
 settle that point to your satisfaction. But as to continuing the lands, 
 &c. in the form you have hitherto held them, his Excellency the Nabob 
 is the master, and I cannot oppose his pleasure. It behoves you to 
 reflect well on this matter. I am equally the friend of you and your 
 son the Nabob, and can have no prejudices in favour of the one or the 
 other. His Excellency declares and I myself have seen too many 
 proofs to doubt it that the authority and dominion exercised by the 
 jaghiredars is extremely prejudicial to his revenue and government." * 
 
 Then there is a subsequent letter from the Begum, in 
 which she still continues to rest her confidence upon the 
 kaulnama and guarantee of the English. 
 
 Middietou's In no part of this correspondence does Mr. Middleton 
 presume to impute to her the least disaffection to the 
 Nawab. He represents it uniformly as a measure of 
 . state policy. He admits the guarantee ; but he says the 
 
 disaffection , , . i i , i J 
 
 totheNa- measure is such an one as is provided for without any con- 
 tradiction to the spirit of the treaty to which the English are 
 guarantees. 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 815.
 
 gum's 
 
 Speedi of Mr. Pclham. 473 
 
 The Princess mother still continues to remonstrate 16ApB - 1788 - 
 against this conduct of Mr. Middleton : when Mr Middleton, insolent 
 assuming the character of his master, and following the Middietou 
 example that he had set him in the revolution at Benares, Bc " 
 considering any remonstrance considering any objection 
 or opposition to his will as an insult that is not to 
 be borne by an Englishman, says, " A person assum- 
 ing your name has just arrived here with a letter under 
 your seal, addressed to me." He does not think it possible 
 that she could have had the presumption or the insolence to 
 oppose his will. " But, as I cannot believe, either from 
 the subject-matter or the stile, that it can have been 
 dictated by you or written with your knowledge, I enclose 
 a copy of it, that you may detect the forgery and inflict 
 a proper exemplary punishment on the person who shall 
 have dared thus to abuse your confidence and insult me." 
 A man acting, as he is called by his employer, as Mr. Hast- 
 ings' own immediate agent, in that servile capacity 
 wearing the insignia of an ambassador, but acting as a mean 
 agent to one member of the Council only, presumes to say 
 to one of the first Princesses of India, that, because she 
 remonstrates against this measure because she remon- 
 strates against the breach of British faith plighted to her 
 because she threatens to leave the country (though she writes 
 in a manner that would do honour to the pen of any sove- 
 reign in this part of the world or any other), he supposes 
 that it must have been a mean forgery that it cannot be 
 her production. 
 
 These were the grounds upon which he founds this rebel- The re- 
 
 ,. , . ... i MI rni monstrances 
 
 lion this opposition to his will. Ihese remonstrances, oftheBe- 
 supported upon treaties and upon agreeme.its to which the ft 
 English were guarantees, were considered as a rebellion that 
 
 justified, not only depriving the mother and grandmother of Mr. Hast- 
 the Nawab Wazir of the property that belonged to them, 
 but enforcing the discovery of these treasures by acts of the 
 greatest cruelty, by acts of the greatest ignominy taking 
 their ministers and confining them in fetters, not so much as 
 a punishment, but as a means of forcing them to betray their 
 mistresses. As Mr. Hastings says, " It appearing that these 
 two eunuchs were capable of affording the Nawab the most 
 effectual assistance in the recovery of his claims on the 
 Begums, and that in fact there was very little probability of 
 succeeding without their aid, it was deemed good policy 
 to tempt them with assurances of a mitigation of their 
 punishment in proportion as they might exert themselves
 
 474 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Oude : 
 
 16 APE. 1788. in the business." So that even the least mitigation of their 
 punishment the suffering their fetters to be taken off but 
 for an hour was done merely, as is stated by Mr. Hastings 
 in his Defence, as the most effectual means of inducing them 
 to betray that trust which their sufferings could not force 
 from them. 
 
 Mr. Middleton, in pursuance of this measure, went to 
 Fyzabad ; and, by his own account, on the 13th of January 
 they first took possession of the Kella. Two days were spent 
 in " idle and puerile negotiations/' However, the Begum 
 mother and the Begum grandmother rested in confidence 
 upon the English. Notwithstanding Mr. Middleton was in 
 the Nawab's army, notwithstanding the representative of the 
 English government at his court was present, the Begum 
 still had that confidence in the British nation, she still gave 
 so much credit to British faith pledged to her, that she 
 resisted and refused a compliance with his desire of giving 
 StaSSfto" U P the treasures. And Mr. Middleton himself says, that 
 submit by if s he had not received a letter from Mr. Hastings two days 
 
 the with- . < i TT 11 i i n t TT r- 
 
 drawai of after the seizure of the Kella, in which Mr. Hastings for 
 rantoeby the first time communicates to the Princess that he had 
 the English. w jthdrawn the guarantee, they never would have complied. 
 This, says Mr. Hastings, had the desired effect. This threw 
 the Princesses into despair. Their whole trust had been in 
 English faith. No opposition to the Nawab no military 
 force no compulsion nothing but the surrender of them 
 by the withdrawing of the British faith, could have induced 
 them to have given their treasures, and could have insured 
 the success of this wicked measure of Mr. Hastings. 
 Siims^takcn Before the end of January, 500,0007. out of 600,0007. 
 Begums. that was to be taken from these Princesses was paid. The 
 cruelties that were exercised upon the ministers afterwards 
 was for default of the balance : more was claimed than they 
 could immediately pay. Within the month of January 
 500,0007. was paid by the Princesses. Not that I mean to 
 say that the whole of the debt was paid, but that that debt 
 which was claimed, which was made the pretence t for all 
 these measures, was paid by these Princesses in that month. 
 The subsequent cruelties were for an accumulation of a 
 debt, subsequent, as Mr. Hastings pretends, to the time that 
 the design originated. The jagirs that were resumed as a 
 measure of state policy, and for which the Begums were to 
 have received an equivalent, were taken and kept by the 
 Resident and his assistant. The pension stipulated for was
 
 Speech of Mr. Pclham. 475 
 
 never paid. In consequence of not paying this, not the 16APB.1788. 
 Princesses only were distressed, but the whole family of the ions never 
 late Nawab were distressed. The Khiird Mahal, or lesser them! 
 palace, the place in which the younger part of the family Sufferings 
 of the Nawab were confined, was reduced to the utmost of the iate y 
 distress. Mr. Hastings says he is not answerable for that. Nawab - 
 He says they were not included in any of those treaties ; bmt^of 1 " 
 that there was an express provision made for them by the ?ngX flast ~ 
 Wazir ; that he had no right to interfere. He might have 
 recommended, as a matter of propriety, that the Wazir 
 should provide for them, but he had no right to compel it. 
 
 Your Lordships have seen how effectual Mr. Hastings' 
 recommendations were when he thought proper to make 
 them. You have seen that the Wazir, though an unwilling 
 instrument against his mother, was so far under the awe and 
 directions of Mr. Hastings that he did not dare to oppose 
 his will, though he presumed to remonstrate against it. 
 Whether therefore the Khurd Mahal, or palace of the 
 younger part of the family, were or not by right to be 
 maintained by the Wazir is not so important to the ques- 
 tion in point of fact. As long as the Begums remained in 
 possession of their jagirs, these women and children were 
 provided for. From the moment that the Princesses were 
 deprived of the means of maintaining themselves and that 
 their treasures were confiscated, all the scenes of distress, of 
 famine and of ruin, fell upon the younger part of the family 
 as well as the others. To describe those distresses would 
 require a presence at the scene ; I will therefore read to 
 your Lordships the accounts of it which are given by those 
 unfortunate officers who were compelled by Mr. Hastings 
 to be guards over these women, and to enforce orders dis- 
 graceful to the character of a British soldier, who, eager in 
 the field of battle, is not inattentive to the calls of humanity, 
 and is as ready to assist his conquered enemy, when he sees 
 him at his feet, as he is to oppose him when he meets him 
 in the field. 
 
 The first account is from Captain Jacques, on the 6th of Account by 
 
 r , , IP Captain 
 
 March, l/o2, a very early period alter the seizure, but a Jacques of 
 period subsequent to the payment of 500,0007. assigned and LgV'ofthe 
 applied to the uses of the Company : ti^Khuni 
 
 Mahal.' 
 
 " The women belonging to the Khourcl Mhal, or lesser palace, complain 
 of their being in want of every necessary of life, and are at last drove to 
 that desperation that they at night get on the top of the zenana, make 
 a great disturbance, and last night not only abused the sentinels posted
 
 476 Support of the Second Charge Begums of Qu.de: 
 
 16APB^1788. j n ^ ie g arf | enS) i )u t threw dirt at them. They threaten to throw them- 
 selves from the walls of the zenana, and also to break out of it. Hu- 
 manity obliges me to acquaint you of this matter, and to request to 
 know if you have any direction to give me concerning it. I also beg 
 leave to acquaint you, I went to Letaffit Ally Cawn, the Cojah, who has 
 the charge of them, who informs me their complaint is well founded, 
 that they have sold everything they had, even to the clothes from their 
 backs, and now have no means of existing."* 
 
 He writes again the next day : 
 
 " I beg leave to address you again concerning the women in the Khourd 
 Mhal. Their behaviour last night was so furious that there seemed the 
 greatest probability of their proceeding to the utmost extremities, and 
 that they would either throw themselves from the walls or force the doors 
 of the zenana."f 
 
 t V hcsamo f O the 30th of October Major Gilpin writes another 
 iiy Major account of this to Mr. Bristow : 
 
 Gilpin. 
 
 " Last night, about eight o'clock, the women in the Khourd Mhal 
 zenana, under the charge of Letaffit Ally Cawn, assembled on the tops of 
 the buildings, crying in a most lamentable manner for food that for 
 the last four days they had got but a very scanty allowance, and that 
 yesterday they had got none. The melancholy cries of famine are more 
 easily imagined than described ; and, from their representations, I fear the 
 Nabob's agents for that business are very inattentive. I therefore think 
 it necessary to make you acquainted with the circumstance, that his 
 Excellency the Nabob may cause his agents to be more circumspect in 
 their conduct towards these unhappy women."J 
 
 In the year 1783, when the Nawab had released the 
 ministers of his mother and grandmother, after a confine- 
 ment of near a twelvemonth, still the Resident kept the 
 jagirs in his own hands still Avithheld the pensions that 
 were stipulated to be given them ; and thereby continued 
 these miseries to the Khurd Mahal which the Begums, who 
 had formerly relieved them, were now rendered totally unable 
 to redress. 
 
 " The ladies, their attendants and servants, were still as clamorous as 
 last night. Lataffit, the daroga, 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 a 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 bazar ; and in consequence formed themselves 
 in the following order, the children in front ; behind them the ladies 
 of the seraglio ; and behind them again their attendants. But their 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence,'' p. 851. 
 f Printed as above, p. 391. J Printed as above, p. 397.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pelliam. 4*77 
 
 intentions were frustrated by the opposition which they met with from 16 A PH. 1788. 
 Lataffit's sepoys. The next day Lataffit went twice to the women, and 
 used his endeavours to make them return into the zenana ; promising to 
 advance them 10,000 rupees ; which, upon the money being paid down, 
 they agreed to comply with ; but night coming on nothing transpired. 
 On the day following their clamours were more violent than usual. 
 Lataffit went to confer with them on the business of yesterday, offering 
 the same terms. Depending upon the fidelity of his promises they con- 
 sented to return to their apartments ; which they accordingly did, except 
 two or three of the ladies and most of their attendants. Lataffit then 
 went to Hoshmund Ally Cawn, 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 zenana. The women, seeing the treachery of Lataffit, 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 Mhal, and forced their 
 way 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 apprized of their intentions, ordered the 
 doors to be shut. Lataffit and Hoshmund Ally Cawn posted justices to 
 secure the gates of the lesser mhal. During the whole of this conflict 
 the ladies and women remained exposed to the view of the sepoys.''* 
 
 This observation of the women, dnrino- the whole of this Reflections 
 
 n . . . i -i ^? i ..on the ex- 
 
 connict remaining exposed to the view ot the sepoys; their posure of 
 being driven to such extremity of distress and famine as to to the m< 
 make them so far forget the sanctity of their female ^yf the 
 character as, not only to expose themselves to the view of 
 men, but to make a direct opposition, [is of the greatest 
 significance ?]. In a country like this such sanctity of character 
 may appear trivial it may appear ridiculous. Fortunately 
 for the happiness of us, women in this country are not less 
 the objects of our esteem than of our desire. In this country, 
 there is never wanting either a husband, a father, a brother 
 or a friend, to avenge any insult that may be offered to female 
 delicacy. In both countries the female character is pro- 
 tected ; in that, compassion should be their shield, as respect 
 and reverence is their guard in this. And difficult, perhaps, 
 as it may be to conceive the cause, yet I may venture to 
 say, that if there were any form however trivial, however 
 ridiculous, the idea may appear now to which, in the opinion 
 of this country, the female character was inseparably attached, 
 I may venture to say that the women of this country would 
 
 * Paper of Intelligence from Fyzabad. Printed in the " Minutes of the 
 Evidence," p. 899.
 
 478 Support of the Second Charge Beyums of Oude : 
 
 Cruelty of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings in 
 working on 
 such scru- 
 ples in 
 order to 
 extort 
 money. 
 
 16 APE. 1788. as willingly risk their existence in the preservance of that 
 form, and undergo all the sufferings and all the distresses 
 that are described here, and risk their very existence in the 
 maintenance of it, with as much cheerfulness as the Hindu 
 lays herself unhappily upon the pile of her departed 
 husband. 
 
 My Lords, these are great aggravations of Mr. Hastings' 
 conduct. The prejudices of that country are not such as 
 can ever be made the objects of offence. Ignorant, unfeeling, 
 men may treat them with contempt : they may consider 
 them as ridiculous ; but they never can make them offensive. 
 They all tend to make them more submissive. None of 
 them suffer them to become objects of our contest. But 
 Mr. Hastings has taken advantage of those prejudices : lie 
 has taken advantage of those superstitions. Knowing they 
 would risk everything sooner than appear in the sight of 
 men knowing that the Wazir would risk everything sooner 
 than suffer his mother and grandmother to be exposed to the 
 sight of men he used these ineffectual means as there 
 were no treasures, no property, for them to give up he there- 
 fore cruelly and unfeelingly made use of these as instru- 
 ments of extorting further sums of money, which on further 
 examination he found they could not produce. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured, though perhaps imperfectly, to 
 convince your Lordships that this measure could not possibly 
 originate in any political or state necessity : that this 
 measure was, as all Mr. Hastings' measures are, either 
 founded in personal avarice or with a view of gaining money, 
 that should secure his own retreat and screen him from 
 the punishment of his employers, whom for so many 
 years he has baffled. But now, my Lords, we don't depend 
 upon the Directors of the East India Company for the 
 security and for the preservation of the British character. 
 The indefatigability of the Commons, the virtue of the 
 honourable gentleman who opened this charge, have brought 
 Mr. Hastings to your Lordships' bar. You have now an 
 opportunity of inquiring whether the reports of East Indian 
 delinquency whether the reports of East Indian cruelties 
 are true or false. You can equally by his acquittal or 
 by his condemnation vindicate the British character ; for 
 your Lordships will not your Lordships cannot acquit 
 him if these facts are proved. Your own character the 
 character of the nation is too deeply interested. No set- 
 off no merits in other respects can excuse him for this. 
 
 Conclusion.
 
 Speech of Mr. Pel/tarn. 479 
 
 You never will admit, what he professes to be his principle, ICAPB.1788. 
 that the probable acquisition of wealth is one of the justi- 
 fiable grounds of going to war. You will never allow your 
 Governors to consider the delinquency of their servants and 
 dependencies as one of the sources of wealth. 
 
 If, upon the conviction of Mr. Hastings, you should 
 impose a heavy fine upon him, you will do it as a just 
 retribution for his past delinquency. You will not do it as 
 a means of liquidating the national debt ; you will impose a 
 penalty, not proportioned to the national distresses, but to 
 his crimes. 
 
 An honourable Manager has told you that, in this case, if Comparison 
 
 1/ITT l>~1 1111 1 1 * t " C CaSO 
 
 Mr. Hastings is not rairly tried, we shall be considered as with that of 
 accomplices in his guilt. He reminded us of the pointed practised 
 example of the Spaniards. The cruelties of their Governors Governors 1 
 in India are always imputed to their government at home in Mexico - 
 not for want of laws ; for, without any reflection upon the 
 laws of this country or upon the regulations that this and 
 the other member of the legislature has produced, I will 
 venture to say that in the statute books of this country we 
 have no laws more provident, more attentive to the interests 
 of individuals, than there are in that country to the interests 
 of inhabitants of the Spanish West Indies. There are not 
 provisions more attentive to their prejudices, more attentive 
 to their situation and to those customs that may be either 
 the effect of disposition or the eifect of climate. But, in 
 that country as in this, the means of getting money is so 
 easy, the temptation to corruption has been so great, that 
 the Governors there have, as the Governor at your bar here 
 has, oppressed the country to gratify their avarice. There, 
 unfortunately for the people of that country at least, the 
 country at home is despotic ; the government is in the hands 
 of a few ; the ministers, from a degradation of the nobility 
 of that country, are either foreigners or persons of low extrac- 
 tion. The person next to the minister, sometimes before 
 him, that has the command of the ear of the sovereign, is an 
 officer taken from the lowest orders of the people. With 
 such a government, that the delinquency of that country 
 should have passed unnoticed, should have passed unpunished, 
 is not surprising. 
 
 I remember a circumstance, well attested in that country, 
 which shows the effects of despotic power* and the advan- 
 tages of our free constitution. An Italian singer became the 
 favourite of the late sovereign of Spain, and he was the only
 
 480 Support of the Second Cliarge Begums nf Oude. 
 
 16APE.1788. channel to preferment. An offer of 20,0007. was made to 
 him for his recommendation and interest to the government 
 of Mexico. To the honour of a man, who certainly from 
 his situation was not much intitled to respect, he rejected 
 the offer, from attachment to his master. That country had 
 in fact only the honesty and integrity of such a man as I 
 have described as their security. We, I trust, have more 
 and better security than the integrity of any individual. 
 While this House stands while this court preserves the 
 character that it has long maintained there is not a man, 
 either foreign or of this country, that can presume or 
 venture to stain the hand of a minister of this country with 
 a bribe to protect him from a delinquency such as that of 
 Mr. Hastings, affecting our characters, not only as Britons 
 and as men, but as Christians. 
 
 My Lords, in perfect confidence that your Lordships will 
 make up by your attention to the evidence for any defect in 
 the manner in which I have attempted to open it to you 
 and I feel the subject is greater than I am able to manage 
 in confidence that that attention which you have hitherto 
 paid to me, though unworthy of it, you will continue to give 
 to the evidence, more necessary for your information and for 
 your judgments, I shall now call the evidence.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 481 
 
 SPEECH OF RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, ESQ., 
 MANAGER FOR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN 
 SUMMING UP THE EVIDENCE ON THE SECOND 
 ARTICLE OF CHARGE, RELATING TO THE 
 BEGUMS OF OUDE ; 3 JUNE, 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, It is wholly unnecessary for me to make a 
 single preliminary observation upon the general matter, or 
 upon the importance of the accusation which the Commons of 
 Great Britain are now maintaining at your Lordships' bar. 
 It is not only unnecessary, my Lords, but it would be an 
 unwarranted intrusion in me to attempt it. 
 
 My Lords, the great illustration necessary to your Lord- 
 ships' information was given to you, at the commencement of 
 this business, by him who alone was equal to that task by 
 him to whom the world owes the obligation of causing this 
 embodied stand in favour of the rights of man against man's 
 oppression. 
 
 My Lords, it would be equally superfluous, if not pre- 
 sumptuous, in me to endeavour to exhort your Lordships 
 to a vigilant and persevering attention to that laborious 
 duty which justice and the constitution exact from every 
 court of British judicature. 
 
 My Lords, your Lordships' conduct in this business if I 
 may be allowed to say so and more especially in the course 
 of this long, embarrassed and complicated, examination, hath 
 sufficiently declared to the world the sense you entertain 
 of the magnitude of the cause, as well as the respect you 
 bear to the character of your own great tribunal. 
 
 My Lords, my plainer task will be, without deviating into 
 any general matter, without entering into any matter of 
 argument or aggravation not strictly connected with the 
 facts before you, to sum up and to observe upon that 
 evidence which your Lordships now hold in your hands, and 
 upon which you have already bestowed so great a portion 
 of your time and attention. And yet, my Lords, if I might 
 be tempted to make any observation upon any previous 
 matter, not strictly connected with the evidence before you, 
 
 H H
 
 482 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 s JUITE nss. but strictly and intimately connected with the credit and 
 character of the prosecution, I should take the liberty of 
 saying a few words upon certain observations, not regularly 
 here to be alluded to, but which may be supposed to have 
 been made in the world certain observations, I mean, 
 respecting the temper and spirit with which some persons 
 have thought it decent and candid to presume this prosecu- 
 tion is conducted. 
 
 The prose- My Lords, I do take upon me confidently to say, that, if 
 influenced ever there was a prosecution in any form, public or private, 
 *f ever there was a prosecution in any age or country since 
 the name of justice was reverenced in the world, to which 
 there could not upon any principle or any pretence be im- 
 puted any base motive of personal malice, or any mean view 
 of personal interest, it is that prosecution which is now 
 supported at your bar. And I do take the liberty, my 
 Lords, confidently to add, that, if ever there were prose- 
 cutors who have a claim to this credit, at least with the 
 public, who, managing a cause not their own, but executing 
 a great public trust, however they might err in judgment, 
 yet did act upon a firm, decided and peremptory, con- 
 viction of the guilt of the man they accused the Managers 
 now before you, my Lords, are the men who have a title 
 to that credit from your Lordships and from their country. 
 I say, my Lords, we have a title to the credit of acting 
 upon that conviction, and upon a conviction not lightly or 
 rashly taken up, not born in prejudice and nursed in error, 
 but upon a conviction the result of a laborious and diligent 
 inquiry, upon a conviction founded upon a due deliberation 
 of all the facts and all the evidence on both sides upon which 
 the charge is supported, and, above all, upon a due examina- 
 tion of the defence opposed to that accusation. 
 
 My Lords, the Commons of Great Britain have decided, 
 upon deep experience, that some example is necessary to 
 retrieve the character of the British nation in India. They 
 have decided this, speaking for themselves and for their 
 constituents, that this remedy is the only one to which they 
 look. But, my Lords, personal malice or inveteracy is no 
 more to be imputed to the Managers, whom they depute to 
 conduct the prosecution, than it is to the people of England 
 in whose name we claim to be heard. Personal malices ! 
 No, my Lords ; I can search my own heart and speak for 
 myself- -and, speaking so, I am sure I speak the feelings of 
 every gentleman joined with me in this business, and of the
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 483 
 
 Commons of England in Avhose presence I speak I can 3 JUNE nss. 
 
 say that I discharge my mind of any tendency even to such 
 
 a feeling. So far from it, that the unfortunate gentleman at 
 
 your bar is scarcely in my contemplation when my mind is 
 
 most engaged in this business ; that it then holds but two 
 
 ideas a sincere abhorrence of the crimes and a sanguine 
 
 hope of the remedy. 
 
 Having said thus much, my Lords, I think it right also Justification 
 at the same time to say, on the part of the Managers, that t 
 they do not understand upon what ground it is claimed or dJ- 
 expected that they should depart from the ancient and 
 established practice of the Commons in speaking at your 
 Lordships' bar, especially upon impeachments of this nature 
 to deliver their sentiments in plain words, and to express in 
 unqualified terms their abhorrence of the crimes they 
 arraign. My Lords, the Commons, or the Managers speaking 
 for them, cannot trifle with their great duty to stand on 
 frivolous punctilios, picking nice terms and circuitous 
 phrases. They cannot understand how they can support 
 charges of deliberate falsehood; of black, premeditated, 
 treachery; of rank oppression; of merciless cruelty; how 
 they can support these charges, my Lords, and use words 
 that can be grateful to the ears of those who are not equally 
 convinced of their truth. The Managers are not either 
 instructed upon what principle it is expected that that guilt 
 should claim peculiar respect, because the wide shame of its 
 effects reach those who arraign it, those who judge and 
 every man who hears the accusation ; nor upon what prin- 
 ciple any culprit is to expect peculiar and unprecedented 
 tenderness only because he is accused of unparalleled crimes. 
 
 My Lords, the Commons are also led to these reflections Distinction 
 by adverting to the distinctions between impeachments for pe^n^nt" 
 misdemeanors and for capital crimes. They are aware that, ^^jit 6 " 
 
 l/ 1 / 1 1 
 
 in the former case, in impeachments for misdemeanors, it has and for ca- 
 been, and ever must be, often the hard duty of those who 
 are to support the prosecution to search for matter of bitterest 
 aggravation in the general conduct, in the principles and in 
 the views, of the person whom they accuse. 
 
 My Lords, this is not the case in an impeachment for a 
 capital offence ; and, if it were, I trust the generous tender- 
 ness of man's nature would revolt and reject it. But here, 
 my Lords, the Managers in this case do not find themselves 
 justified in encouraging that tenderness; nor do they find 
 themselves more led to it by considering what they think the 
 
 H H 2
 
 484 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. great disproportion between crimes which they think certain 
 and the eventual punishment. They know, rny Lords and 
 knowing they do not regret looking to example only and 
 to the condemnation of certain detested, pernicious and in-- 
 tolerable, principles looking to the condemnation of these 
 from your Lordships' court, they know and do not regret that 
 the utmost penalty the law can inflict, even upon conviction, 
 would be no more than a splendid seclusion from the society 
 the culprit would then have been proved to have dishonoured, 
 and a limited deduction from the spoils of immoderate 
 rapine. 
 
 Exhortation My Lords, having said thus much, the Managers are also 
 ImpressKms aware that it is your Lordships' duty and, when I have said 
 warmth of y om * d u ty> I know r I have said what will be your Lordships' 
 language, conduct to separate and lay aside any impression that can 
 arise from harsh words or warm expressions used in feeling 
 that indignation, which if we did not feel we should be unfit to 
 manage this great business. We know it is your Lordships' 
 duty ; and, if it were decent or if it were necessary in us, which 
 Ave know it is not, we should be among the first to exhort, not 
 only your Lordships, but the public and every person who 
 hears us, to make that distinction, claiming the effect of no 
 impression from any mode of conducting this business, from 
 any expressions or from any arguments but what are founded 
 on plain fact, truth and evidence, and upon that mature and 
 fair aggravation which, upon an impeachmentof misdemeanors, 
 it is just and proper to go into respecting the general prin- 
 ciples, the views and conduct, of the person accused. 
 Necessity of My Lords, I have said this much respecting the spirit and 
 for temper of this prosecution. I have also stated to your Lord- 
 ships that the Commons still consider some remedy by 
 example necessary ; that, notwithstanding the various reme- 
 dial acts which they have passed and in which your Lord- 
 ships have joined, notwithstanding the solemn addresses to 
 the Throne, in which also your Lordships have joined, the 
 Commons, expressing their regret and pity for the miseries 
 of India, and their abhorrence of the crimes that have caused 
 them that they still, my Lords, are every day more con- 
 firmed in that judgment. They think that the people of 
 India do not believe the people of this country in earnest ; 
 they feel that there is a despair of British justice in India, 
 
 My Lords, I will not even make that assertion without 
 recurring to proof in evidence ; and I shall first, as a pre- 
 liminary matter in evidence, submit to your Lordships'
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 485 
 
 consideration the impression which the state of the country 3 JUNE ITSS. 
 seems to have made upon Lord Cornwallis in his last 
 despatches. 
 
 My Lords, Lord Cornwallis, writing on the 16th of Letter of 
 November, 1787, from this very country of Oude, of which waiiis on" 
 your Lordships have heard so much, and of whose miseries olfae!^ f 
 and calamities you have heard so much, expresses himself 
 thus : 
 
 " I was received at Allahabad and attended to Lucknow by the Nabob 
 and his Ministers, with every mark of friendship and respect. I cannot, 
 however, express how much I was concerned, during my short residence 
 at his capital and my progress through his dominions, to be witness of 
 the disordered state of his finances and government, and of the desolate 
 appearance of his country. The evils were too alarming to admit of 
 palliation ; and I thought it my duty to exhort him in the most friendly 
 manner to endeavour to apply effectual remedies to them. He began 
 with urging as apologies "* 
 
 Here, my Lords, is the truth ; that, whilst he was not 
 certain of the extent of our demands upon him, he had no 
 real interest in being economical in his expenses ; and that, 
 while we interfered in the internal management of his 
 affairs, his own authority and that of his ministers were 
 despised by his own subjects. 
 
 My Lords, the next short passage I shall read to you is an Evidence of 
 extract of a paper intitled, " A Succinct View of the state pat P rickoii" 
 of the Political Connections subsisting between Madajee ft. 
 Scindia and the British Government of India, enclosed in 
 Captain Kirkpatrick's letter to Lord Cornwallis, dated the 
 20th of July, 1787":- 
 
 " Such is the impression which our former character and policy have 
 left on the minds of the natives that, notwithstanding the many proofs 
 which our more recent conduct has furnished of our being at present 
 directed by a very different spirit, I am persuaded that neither he (Scindia) 
 nor any other Hindostan potentate gives me credit for sincerity in the 
 declarations which we have latterly made on the subject. Time no doubt 
 might subdue this obstinate incredulity ; but who can certainly say that 
 we shall adhere long enough to our present moderate system for the 
 purpose of enforcing this belief?"* 
 
 Now, my Lords, it is to persuade your Lordships to give Proof of the 
 an answer to this letter enclosed to Lord Cornwallis an ou^Govern- 
 answer, not by words, but by actions ; to remove this ^he^ro" 
 obstinate incredulity ; to convince them that this moderate secution. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 661, and in the "Appendix 
 to the Second Article of Charge," p. 257. 
 \ Printed, as above.
 
 486 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. system will be persevered in ; to convince the people of that 
 country that they need not dread the prosperity of their 
 sovereign ; to convince the sovereign that he may nourish 
 and love his subjects with safety, that he need not depre- 
 cate the growing prosperity of the people whom he reigns 
 over, that he need not fear the accomplishment of the toils 
 of humble and of laborious industry, that he need not 
 sicken at the sight of the fertility of his own land, 
 imagining that he sees in all these circumstances only baits 
 and lures to the increasing progress of British rapacity ; it 
 is to give this assurance that the Commons pursue this 
 matter. It is to convince the people of that country that 
 we are really in earnest ; that your Lordships join us in 
 being in earnest ; that you are determined to check the pro- 
 gress of that audacious spirit of corruption and rapacity 
 which has desolated those provinces and oppressed this 
 wretched people ; that you are determined to check it by 
 the only means by which oppression or tyranny can be 
 checked or awed the example of punishment for past 
 delincpaency. 
 
 Couviction However, when I have said this, I trust your Lordships 
 
 riot sought ., r r i i 
 
 without full will not believe that, because something is necessary to 
 guilt. retrieve the British character, we call for an example 
 to be made without due and solid proof of the guilt of the 
 person whom we pursue. No, my Lords ; we know well 
 that it is the glory of this constitution that not the general 
 fame or character of any man not the weight or power of 
 any prosecutors 110 plea of moral or political expediency 
 not even the secret consciousness of guilt Avhich may live in 
 the bosom of the judge can justify any British court in 
 passing any sentence, to touch a hair of the head or an atom 
 in any respect of the property, of the fame, of the liberty, 
 of the poorest or meanest subject that breathes the air of 
 this just and free land. We know, my Lords, that there 
 can be no legal guilt without legal proof; that the rule which 
 defines the evidence is as much the law of the laud as that 
 which creates the crime. It is upon that ground we mean 
 to stand. 
 
 Nature of I come now, my Lords, to speak of the evidence which 
 produced" 00 the Managers are to bring before you in this cause. What 
 are the persons, or what is the nature of the testimony, upon 
 which we depend ? Have we, my Lords, any of the injured 
 parties themselves, complaining and calling for redress at 
 your Lordships' bar ? My Lords, we have not But,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 487 
 
 besides the natural and insurmountable obstacles to such a 3 JUNE me. 
 claim, we trust that your Lordships will not think it just 
 cause to withhold justice or mercy to the injured, because 
 their subdued hearts have not the courage even to hope for 
 redress. 
 
 My Lords, have we any persons who are themselves 
 witnesses of those transactions, and Avho, provoked with a 
 generous indignation, have offered their services to conviction, 
 and have called for the prosecution ? My Lords, I wish, for 
 the credit of the British character, that we had : we have 
 none such. Have we any persons who are accomplices in 
 the crimes, but who, stung with a late remorse, which often 
 atones and expiates guilt, have endeavoured to bring to 
 justice those by whom they Avere misled? I wish, my 
 Lords, for the credit of conscience, that we had : we have 
 none such. Have we, in our written evidence, any docu- 
 ments or papers which chance or fortune has thrown in our 
 way ? My Lords, excepting in a single instance, I believe 
 we have nothing of the sort. We know of much which craft 
 has suppressed, and little that carelessness has revealed. 
 My Lords, our witnesses, with exception only of some gen- 
 tlemen whom I shall distinguish at the proper time of the 
 witnesses on whom we principally rely are persons whom 
 we must plainly rank as unrepenting accomplices in the 
 crimes of the man we accuse as the bosom partners of all 
 his foul mysteries : and, with respect to our Avritten evidence, 
 it consists of the recorded accounts of his own transactions, 
 such letters as he has thought fit himself to produce, and 
 his own written defences against our accusations. Having 
 said this, I think it extremely possible that your Lordships 
 may imagine that I am begging indulgence and allowance 
 for weak and incompetent evidence. No, my Lords ; I will 
 be bold to say that there is now before you, upon this charge, 
 a mass of full, complete, competent, evidence strong as 
 ever abashed the confidence of courageous guilt, or brought 
 conviction home to the hearts of conscientious judges. My 
 Lords, without further preface, I shall proceed to the test of 
 that assertion. 
 
 My Lords, the first matter of evidence which the Mana- Evidence 
 gers naturally produced at your Lordships' bar was the i 
 Defences given to the House of Commons by Mr. Hastings ^ve^ 
 himself. My Lords, the Managers know that, according to House, 
 strict law and established practice, there was not any better
 
 488 Summing af Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1/88. human testimony than the evidence of a person accused 
 against himself, where it is not draAvn forth by any induce- 
 ment, any threats, or any ill-founded hope held out to him 
 in order to induce him so to deliver it. For there the 
 merciful jealousy of the law interferes, and will suffer no 
 man to be deluded unto his own hurt, or allured into a 
 confession he did not otherwise intend to make. Under 
 this principle, the Managers were aware that the best of 
 all possible evidence was this ; for the best of all possible 
 reasons, because it is that which is the most likely to be 
 true and the least likely to be fallacious. If this evidence 
 is written if it be given upon deliberation if it be given 
 voluntarily if it be given before some court of competent 
 authority to receive it -it is of still additional weight. 
 Attempt of My Lords, under these circumstances, the Managers 
 to invalidate certainly never did conceive that, when they produced these 
 of theDc- lce Defences at your Lordships' bar, that extraordinary attempt 
 fences. which I must iiOAV take notice of should have been made but, 
 to my surprise, it was made by the Counsel ; I mean to 
 endeavour to invalidate it, and to distinguish between this 
 testimony, and to show that there were many parts of it 
 Avhich were not worthy your Lordships' attention. I say 
 I was surprised that the Counsel should make that attempt; 
 for I own I did expect that, when this unfortunate gentle- 
 man had escaped from his own rash guidance, he would have 
 been better advised than, at the outset of this business, to 
 give your Lordships' at once, as it were, a clue into the 
 nature of his mind, and into the nature, as it Avere, and 
 means of understanding those sorts of tricks and shifts 
 Avhich, in long habits of successful imposition, he had re- 
 sorted to to stifle inquiry or to avoid detection. The 
 attempt, liOAvever, Avas made. I shall shoAV your Lordships 
 the character given by Mr. Hastings himself of this Defence 
 to the Commons, Avhen it was delivered in. Mr. Hastings 
 says : 
 
 " Of the discouragements to which I allude, I shall mention but two 
 points ; and those it is incumbent on me to mention, because they relate 
 to effects which the justice of this Honourable House may, and I trust 
 will, avert. The first is an objection to my being at all personally com- 
 mitted in my Defence, since, in so wide a field of discussion, it would be 
 impossible not to admit some things of which an advantage might be 
 taken to turn them into evidence against myself: whereas another 
 might as well use, as I could, or better, the same materials of my 
 Defence, without involving me in the same consequences."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 489 
 
 He shows here that he was aware of every possible diffi- 3 JuyE 1788 - 
 culty under which he then laboured, and of every objection 
 Avhich could be made to him : 
 
 " But I am sure that this Honourable House will yield me its protection 
 against the cavils of unwarranted inference ; and, if the truth can tend 
 to convict me, I am content to be myself the channel to convey it."* 
 
 Undoubtedly your Lordships will protect him from the cavils 
 of unwarranted inference from unwarranted inference from 
 your Lordships I presume he does not need protection but 
 with this condition : he states that he is aware of the diffi- 
 culties ; that, if the truth can tend to convict him, he is con- 
 tent to be himself the channel to convey it. 
 
 " The other objection (he says) lay in my own breast. It was not till 
 Monday last that I formed the resolution, and I knew not then whether I 
 might not in consequence be laid under the obligation of preparing and 
 completing in five days (and in effect so it has proved) the refutation of 
 charges which it has been the labour of my accuser, armed with all the 
 powers of Parliament, and at one time greater, to compile during as many 
 years of almost undisturbed leisure. But I knew myself equal to the 
 undertaking, and I now only revert to my difficulties that the considera- 
 tion of them may bespeak the candid allowance of this Honourable 
 House," for what my Lords? "for any inaccuracy or anything defec- 
 tive which may appear in my Defence ; but I claim no other indulgence 
 on that account." 
 
 These words are, my Lords, admitted by Major Scott, 
 and proved to have been entirely written by Mr. Hastings 
 himself. And what are we to think of the man, my 
 Lords, who shall call upon his Counsel, when he finds 
 this Defence has failed when he finds that it has not 
 answered the purpose which he brought it for to the 
 Commons; who shall call upon them to deny that he is 
 to be bound by it; who shall call upon them to prove 
 that he was not equal to the undertaking that he does 
 call for more indulgence than for inaccuracy, and denies 
 that he is bound by the truths that are contained in that 
 Defence? that the Counsel should have thought they 
 gave your Lordships a good specimen of the plain dealing 
 of their client by this conduct so early in the business 
 to give your Lordships a pledge of the proof of his respect 
 for one House of Parliament by an avowed contempt of 
 
 * " Minutes of -what was offered by Warren Hastings, Esq., at the Bar of the 
 House of Commons," &c. Printed by Debrett, p. 8.
 
 490 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. the other. But as the attempt was singular so was the attempt 
 we heard at your Lordships' bar. There was something 
 ludicrous in the nature of it ; though the operation, if such 
 a defence could be countenanced, would be serious indeed. 
 Major Scott comes to your bar describes the shortness of 
 time represents Mr. Hastings, as it were, contracting for a 
 character putting his memory into commission making 
 departments for his conscience. A number of friends meet 
 together ; and he, knowing, no doubt, the accusation of the 
 Commons had been drawn up by a committee, thought it 
 necessary, in point of punctilio, to answer it by a committee. 
 One furnishes the raw material of fact ; the second spins the 
 argument ; and the third twines up the conclusion. While 
 Mr. Hastings, with a master's eye, is cheering and looking 
 over this loom, he says to one, " You have got my good 
 faith in your hand you my veracity to manage. Mr. Shore, 
 I hope you will make me a good financier. Mr. Middleton, 
 you have my humanity in commission/' When it is done, 
 he brings it to the House of Commons, and says, " I was 
 equal to the task. I knew the difficulties, but I scorned them. 
 Here is the truth ; and, if the truth will convict me, I am 
 content myself to be the channel of it." His friends hold up 
 their hands, and say, What noble magnanimity ! This must 
 be the effect of conscious innocence. It is so received : it is 
 so argued upon : it fails of its effect. 
 
 Then says Mr. Hastings, " That my Defence ! No, mere 
 journeyman's work : good enough for the Commons, but not 
 fit for your Lordships' consideration." He then calls upon his 
 Counsel to save him : " I fear none of my accusers' evidence. 
 I know some of them well. I know the weaknes of their 
 memory, and the strength of their attachment. I fear no 
 testimony but my own. Save me from the peril of my own 
 panegyric : rescue me from that, and I shall be safe." Then 
 this is brought to your Lordships' bar ; and Major Scott 
 gravely answers that Mr. Hastings did, at the bar of the 
 House of Commons, vouch for facts of which he was ignorant 
 and for arguments which he had never read. 
 
 After such an attempt, stating the evidence (as un- 
 doubtedly it is) to the full as extraordinary as the Defence 
 itself, we certainly are left in doubt to decide to which set 
 of his friends Mr. Hastings is the least obliged those who 
 assisted him in making his Defence, or those who advised him 
 to deny it.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 491 
 
 But, when we have established this Defence, we then press & JUNE 1788. 
 to your Lordships' consideration what is called a second Mr. Hast- 
 Defence of Mr. Hastings before the House of Commons.* v 
 And here, my Lords, the Managers did conceive that, what- ^ 
 ever other distinction might have been taken upon this Commons 
 second Defence, as it was written twelve months after the a evidence. 
 first, at least AVC should not hear the plea of its having been 
 written in a hurry. But, however, Major Scott, upon being 
 asked the question, says, " Undoubtedly the second Defence 
 was written in a very great hurry. Mr. Hastings began it 
 very early one day, and it was done by four or five o'clock 
 in the afternoon of the next day." But we did argue this 
 Defence, and do insist upon its standing on the same ground, 
 and do maintain that it was written for the same purpose, as 
 the first Defence namely, that it was addressed to the House 
 of Commons, and meant to influence their judgment. Al- 
 though the Counsel have attempted a distinction in the 
 second Defence, yet Major Scott is distinct in his evidence 
 upon this that it was the intention of Mr. Hastings to give 
 information to such members of the House of Commons as 
 wanted information ; which at first ^he said were about fifty, 
 but afterwards he limited them to six or seven, whom alone 
 he thought worthy of the information this Defence contained. 
 This being the effect of deliberation, and being, as it styles 
 itself, a real state of the transaction in Oude as if in contra- 
 distinction to the other Defence, which it rather sneers at, as 
 it were, as a false Defence I take for granted the fact is so. 
 But what is the purpose of establishing that fact I am at a 
 loss to determine. For I do not suppose it to be taken for 
 granted, that, when Mr. Hastings speaks in a hurry, he 
 necessarily speaks falsehood ; as if the truth lay deep, but the 
 falsehood came of course ; as if to shape a truth required 
 labour, pain and caution, but, when he is off his. guard, the 
 falsehoods float on the surface and come of themselves all at 
 once. I don't suppose that is the doctrine with respect to 
 Mr. Hastings' writing or speaking which they mean to 
 maintain. Therefore I do, on the part of the Commons, 
 claim the advantage of all the matter contained in these two 
 Defences ; which your Lordships will observe were not con- 
 fessions of guilt, upon which some argument of appeal to 
 
 * The Second Defence, entitled " The Real State of the Facts contained in 
 the Fourth Article of Mr. Burke's Charge," &c., is printed in the " Minutes of 
 the Evidence," &c., p. 362. It is there followed by the examination of Major 
 Scott as to the composition of both Defences, referred to by Mr. Sheridan.
 
 492 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. generosity might be founded, but were denials of the charge, 
 and, in fact, claims to merit and applause, for these very acts 
 we were arraigning. We say we claim the right of referring 
 to both those Defences, upon the ground upon which all 
 evidence of that sort is referred to that we claim the advan- 
 tage of all the wicked admissions in either of them, and of 
 all the foolish contradictions between the two. 
 
 My Lords, having said thus much, which I thought it 
 necessary to say to your Lordships, with respect to these 
 two papers, which the Managers will often be obliged to have 
 recourse to in the course of this business, I come now to 
 the evidence which relates more directly to the matter of the 
 charge. 
 
 My Lords, the general subject of this charge was so ably 
 and so amply opened to your Lordships by the Managers 
 who went before me in this business, that it will save me 
 much time and much necessity of intruding upon your Lord- 
 ships' patience with respect to many of the preliminary 
 Prejudices matters. My Lords, the Managers did think it necessary to 
 indfa with lay before your Lordships, in as authentic a manner as possi- 
 therrwo- ^le, the subject which relates to the peculiar prejudices 
 men. o f Indian persons of rank with respect to their women. 
 
 They thought this particularly necessary, because it was 
 scarcely possible for an European mind to imagine the weight 
 and consequence of the prejudices of the people upon this 
 subject. They have brought before your Lordships besides 
 Sir Elijah Impey's testimony, and other written documents 
 the evidence of Mr. Hastings himself upon this subject; 
 which is all that I shall think it necessary to read to your 
 Lordships, in order to revive in your Lordships' minds and 
 to remind you of the great weight that is due to, and the 
 absolute necessity of having in your Lordships' contempla- 
 tion, the prejudices of the country upon this subject their 
 sacred respect to women. 
 
 Mr. Hastings says, in January, 1780 : 
 
 Extract " To those who are acquainted with this country and the character of 
 
 ofMr C Hast- ^ s na *i ves ^ is weu known that, among the stubborn and immutable 
 
 ings oil the usages of a people who by an unheard-of policy are thus attempted to 
 
 subject. be dragged within the pale of our laws, there are not any that are so 
 
 intimately blended with their natures so interwoven with their very 
 
 existence and a force upon which were therefore so likely to drive them 
 
 to desperation, as those which regard their women a reason for which, 
 
 we presume, you will think with us that policy and humanity should in 
 
 all situations respect them. And yet, with equal wonder and alarm, we 
 
 have recently seen the mandatory process of the court directed to a
 
 Speech of Mr. Slier idan. 493 
 
 woman of the highest cast and rank (the Rannee of Rajeshahee), who 3 J UNE \- t ^ 
 
 possesses in her own right the first great zemindary in these provinces. 
 
 You will permit us to draw your attention for a moment to the certain 
 consequences of this proceeding, if that management had not been 
 employed to avoid them which we cannot hope will always succeed. 
 
 " Secluded as women of her superior rank are, and equally ignorant of 
 the language and purpose of the process, it were to a certainty disobeyed. 
 The court adhering to its rules, a capias follows ; the execution of which 
 is probably committed (as in the case that occasions this representation) 
 to a band of armed ruffians. Her house is pillaged ; her temples 
 polluted ; the most secret recesses of her family violated ; and that 
 sanctity of character trampled upon, which throughout the east, even in 
 times of fiercest hostility, the most barbarous nations revere in woman. 
 Happily in this case these things have not all occurred. But, as the 
 indelible dishonour of a public exposure, and that inexpiable pollution 
 from the insufferable sense of which, according to their mode of thinking, 
 there is no refuge but in death, would have followed if the plaintiff had 
 not been persuaded to withdraw his action, we state this as another of 
 those cases to which we are confident that a feeling and enlightened 
 nation could never have intended to stretch the authority of its laws." 
 
 After this testimony, it would be unnecessary to remind Sacredness 
 your Lordships of the manner in which it is corroborated by 
 Sir Elijah Impey, by other persons and by other written 
 documents, who all expressly stated that a threat to expose 
 or to draw from a zanana by force, or by any means indeed, 
 a woman of high rank, is a species of the most cruel and 
 severe torture, and in fact adequate to a sentence of death. 
 Your Lordships will perceive hereafter the occasion I shall 
 have to remind you of these preliminary observations. 
 
 It is too much, I am afraid, the case that persons used to 
 European manners do not take up this sort of considera- 
 tions at first with the seriousness that is necessary. For 
 your Lordships cannot even learn the right feeling of the 
 prejudices on those subjects from any history of other 
 Mohammedan countries, or the Turks., who are a mean and 
 degradedrace in comparison with many of these great families, 
 who, inheriting from their Persian ancestors, preserve a 
 purer style of prejudices and a loftier superstition. Women 
 there are not as in Turkey. They neither go to the mosque 
 nor to the bath. It is not the thin veil alone that hides 
 them ; but, in the inmost recesses of their zanana, they are 
 kept from public view by those reverenced and protected 
 walls which, as Mr. Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey admit, 
 are held sacred even by the ruffian hand of war or by the 
 more uncourteous hand of the law. But, in this situation, 
 they are not confined from a mean and selfish policy of man 
 not from a coarse and sensual jealousy. Enshrined rather
 
 494 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge~-the Begums : 
 
 3 JUWE 1788. than immured, their habitation and retreat is a sanctuary, 
 not a prison. Their jealousy is their own jealousy a jea- 
 lousy of their own honour, that leads them to regard liberty 
 as degradation, and the gaze even of admiring eyes as inex- 
 piable pollution to the purity of their fame and of their 
 honour. 
 
 Treasures Such being the general opinion -or prejudices let them 
 the Bamma be called of this country, your Lordships will find that, 
 beyomPtlic whatever treasures were given or lodged in a zanaua of this 
 resumption description, must, upon the evidence of the thing itself, have 
 been placed beyond the reach of resumption. To dispute 
 with the Counsel about the original rights to these trea- 
 sures ! to talk of a title to them by the Mohammedan 
 law ! Their title to them is the title of a saint to the relics 
 upon an altar, placed there by piety, guarded by holy super- 
 stition, and to be snatched thence only by sacrilege. 
 hiimV d re- y -^y -Lords, if such was the general respect due to women 
 gardedin and your Lordships will also perceive, mixed with this 
 
 India. . , * i i T j.i i 'i. 
 
 evidence, matter, winch I think it is unnecessary now to 
 dwell upon, respecting the peculiar homage and feelings of 
 filial duty which are eminent in that country from sons 
 towards their parents your Lordships will also find strong 
 distinctions and particular motives by which the mother of 
 the present reigning Nawab had peculiar claims for every- 
 thing that gratitude, duty and filial aifection, could bestow, 
 from that son. 
 
 My Lords, I shall for ever quote Mr. Hastings wherever 
 I can. There is a passage in a letter of Mr. Hastings, of 
 the 3d of April, 1778, in which there is this paragraph: 
 
 "The duty of children towards parents is enjoined by all laws, and the 
 breach of it condemned by all nations. This is a general obligation, 
 which is binding on all mankind ; and the Bow Begum, exclusive of her 
 maternal right, has a particular claim to your Excellency's affection and 
 kindness, as you owe to her intercessions with the late Nabob, not only 
 your elevation to your present greatness, but a still more valuable 
 blessing."* 
 
 The Na- My Lords, the two allusions made here by Mr. Hastings 
 
 lion dueto r have been explained by evidence at your Lordships' bar. 
 
 s!o e nof" My Lords, it is a known fact, and recognised by Mr. Mid- 
 
 BowBe'gum. dleton himself 3 tnat at tn e battle of Buxar, when Suja-ud- 
 
 Dowla, the father of the present Nawab, was defeated by 
 
 the English arms, and afterwards driven from that kingdom 
 
 * Letter to the Wazir. Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 422, 
 and in the " Appendix to the Second Article of Charge," p. 7.
 
 Speech of Mr. Slieridan. 495 
 
 which their politic generosity afterwards restored to him, a JUNE ms. 
 
 this woman, the present Princess, the mother of Asoff-ud- 
 
 Dowla, flew instantly to his relief with all the treasures 
 
 hoarded in this zanana. I said indeed with the treasures ; 
 
 Mr. Middleton corrected me. He said she brought jewels 
 
 and valuables to him, which were converted into treasure 
 
 that is, she brought the former pledges of his affection, the 
 
 baubles, the things he had given her in the early hour of his 
 
 fondness and attachment. Snja-ud-Dowla, though a man of 
 
 a fierce and savage nature, was struck with this obligation 
 
 in the way in which I believe the heart of every man but 
 
 one would have been struck with obligation in distress 
 
 that from that hour he reverenced her and paid her peculiar 
 
 attention and affection. The use she made of this influence 
 
 was, as Mr. Hastings admits, to procure the succession 
 
 for her son, the present Nawab. The expression which 
 
 Mr. Hastings makes use of tf You owe to her intercession, 
 
 not only your elevation to your present greatness, but a still 
 
 more valuable blessing" alludes to another circumstance, his mother, 
 also recognised by the witness at your Lordships' bar. Once, Begum. 
 in a fit of savage rage, Suja-ud-Dowla struck with a scymitar 
 at his son, the present Nawab. The mother threw herself 
 between them, and, receiving the wound and bathing her 
 trembling son with her blood, saved him from the fury of 
 his savage father. This is the obligation Mr. Hastings 
 alludes to. Thus circumstanced, I think I may say if I 
 may be pardoned even for thinking it possible that nature 
 can borrow any obligation or claim from fortune to the 
 affections of a son that this woman had every claim from 
 this son. She had given him life ; she had raised him to a 
 throne ; she had enriched the crown she had bestowed ; she 
 had preserved the life she had given. Such was the relation 
 betAveen this mother and this son. 
 
 Your Lordships will shortly also see the situation in which, The Bow 
 previous to the treaty of 1775, thi.s Princess stood with 
 respect to Mr. Hastings. She writes to him : 
 
 " I went to the Nabob when the hour of his death approached, and Hastings/' 
 asked him to whose charge he left me. He replied ' Apply to Mr. 
 Hastings whenever you have occasion for assistance; he will befriend 
 you when I am no more, and will comply with whatever you may desire 
 of him."* 
 
 She shows her sense and her confidence of this protection by, 
 a short time afterwards, appealing to him, saying (s I swear, 
 
 * Printed in the "Appendix to the Second Article of Charge," p. 5.
 
 496 Summiny of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 JUNE 1788. 
 
 Every claim 
 of the Bow 
 Beguin to 
 protection 
 broken 
 through 
 by Mr. 
 Hastings. 
 
 The treaties 
 of 1775. 
 
 Letter of 
 Mr. Bristow 
 on the dis- 
 putes be- 
 tween the 
 Bow Begum 
 and her son, 
 Asoff-ud- 
 Dowla. 
 
 by all the saints, that I have no hopes of obtaining the 
 accomplishment of my wishes but in you. The world affords 
 me no other protector." These were the situations, my 
 Lords, in which, previous to any pledging of the public 
 faith, this Princess stood with respect to the Nawab and 
 with respect to her protector, Mr. Hastings. There cer- 
 tainly was every claim to protection, to justice and to pity ; 
 her age her rank her sex the death-bed recommenda- 
 tion of a man he called his brother her implicit confidence 
 in the protection of the English, which is in itself a claim 
 and title to that protection. Yet it is my hard duty to 
 show your Lordships that every one of these claims, without 
 one single just ground, were broken through ; with circum- 
 stances of the most atrocious conduct, with the most bare- 
 faced deliberate falsehood, with the vilest frauds, with 
 cruelty the most unmanly and unmerciful; that, as the 
 action itself was shocking, they took the only way they 
 could take to make it blacker than in its nature it was by 
 making this son the instrument of oppression against this 
 mother. That they did it against his will I shall prove to 
 your Lordships, in a way that I think will abash the Counsel 
 for ever having maintained the contrary that they usurped 
 upon the rights of a prince, to force him to violate the laws 
 of nature. They made him a slave, to compel him to become 
 a monster ; they forced a dagger into his clenched hand and 
 pointed it to the bosom of his mother. My Lords, these 
 are the facts, this is the high crime and misdemeanor, which 
 the Commons now prosecute, and hope they shall receive 
 your Lordships' judgment upon, against this great offender. 
 
 My Lords, it will not be necessary for me to detain your 
 Lordships long upon the subject of the treaties of 1775. 
 They are in some respect so much admitted in the Defence 
 put in before your Lordships by the prisoner, that, excepting 
 for some circumstances where he has drawn most unwar- 
 ranted inferences, I shall pass them almost by, after the 
 manner in which they were opened and referred to by the 
 gentleman who first opened this business. 
 
 On the 8th of November, 1775, Mr. Bristow writes word 
 to the Council that there are great disputes between the 
 Bow Begum, the mother of Azoff-ud-Dowla, and her son, 
 the Nawab. The English are then pressing the Nawab for 
 the payment of large sums of money : and your Lordships 
 will be so good as to bear in your mind, through the whole 
 of this, that the money which is pressed and demanded from
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 497 
 
 the Nawab, whether from the jagirs or from the treasures, 3 JUNE ifss. 
 is always for the purpose of the English. Mr. Bristow, in 
 order to gain merit with the government, by the only way 
 in Avhich any of their servants ever did or seem ever to have 
 thought to gain credit witli them the procuring consider- 
 able booty for them writes word that he had left no means 
 untried to persuade the Begum to consent to lend her son a 
 considerable sum of money. It will here appear as it does Loan of 
 not before ; because there was no transaction upon the tiie^egm 
 subject before between the Begum and the Council that th^Nawab. 
 she had, upon her son's coming to the throne, lent him 
 considerable sums of money, for which the Nawab had given 
 her landed security, and that she was in possession of that 
 security at the time of the commencement of the treaty of 
 1775. In the course of this, Mr. Bristow says that he 
 argued so and so with her "and I further insinuated to her s "?P es . n 
 
 11 1 T 1 n 1 * "I r - Briti- 
 
 tnat the treasures she possessed were the treasures of the tow to the 
 state, as she had not succeeded to them by any legal right, hef trea- a 
 and that they had been hoarded up to provide against any sta 
 emergency." Your Lordships will perceive, from the cir- P crt - v - 
 cumstances I have just related, that there was at least a 
 great probability that Suja-ud-Dowla would have been 
 munificent to this woman, who had once shown him the 
 good purpose to which she could apply her treasures ; that 
 he left her an immense family, to the amount of two thou- 
 sand Avomen and children, under her care or connected with 
 her. And also your Lordships will recollect that to the 
 present Nawab, whom he would not have raised to the 
 throne, and whose life even he would not have spared, it is 
 not extremely probable that he would be very liberal, if he 
 had made a will, in bequeathing treasures to him. However, 
 Mr. Bristow says he suggested that the treasures she possessed 
 were the treasures of the state : and I beg your Lordships to 
 observe that, through the whole course of this business, this 
 is the only and single passage upon which Mr. Hastings or 
 any other person has ever built an argument or supposition 
 that these treasures were the treasures of the state. It is 
 garbled in the quotation in his Defence in the House of 
 Commons, leaving out " I insinuated ;" and he states that 
 Mr. Bristow asserted them to be the treasures of the state, 
 when he is stating only that he insinuated that they were 
 the treasures of the state ; and, upon this single expression, 
 Mr. Hastings, contrary to his own opinion contrary to the 
 opinion of the whole Council contrary to the opinion of 
 
 I I
 
 3 JUNE 1788. 
 
 The Be- 
 gum's con- 
 sent to a 
 further loan 
 to the 
 Nawab. 
 
 Renuncia- 
 tion by the 
 Nawab of 
 all claim on 
 the trea- 
 sures. 
 
 The treaty 
 confirmed 
 by the 
 Council. 
 
 498 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Bcyums ; 
 
 the Nawab himself has ventured to persevere in maintain- 
 ing that those treasures are the treasures of the state : and, 
 to my utter surprise too, the Counsel seem to adopt the 
 same notion, and to fancy that they shall be able to make 
 out that as part of their argument before your Lordships. 
 
 After much difficulty, Mr. Bristow brought this negotia- 
 tion to bear. He says, " The Begum not only grants the 
 Nabob this sum, but gives up to him twenty-six lacks ; for 
 the repayment of which she had security in laud." This 
 matter being settled, the money, or the greater part thereof, 
 was to go to the Company. It is concluded, in a treaty signed 
 by Mr. Bristow as guarantee on the part of the English 
 Company* it comes nearly to 600,0007. altogether that 
 the Nawab, upon receiving above 300,0007, at that time, and 
 26,0007. of the former loan which the securities were returned 
 to him for. should renounce all claim: it not appearing 
 indeed that he ever had claimed them as the treasures of his 
 father ; but, whatever his pretended title or disputed claim 
 was, that it should be silenced extinguished for ever. And 
 that treaty is, as your Lordships have observed, settled in 
 words as strong as can be used, and confirmed by an attesta- 
 tion as sacred as can possibly be given under any human 
 sanction whatever. The Board write, upon the 8th of Novem- 
 ber, that they approve and confirm the treaty. The treaty 
 accordingly is executed. I will not trouble your Lordships 
 with reading it. It recapitulates the former sums, and ends 
 with saying " My mother is at liberty to act as she plea ; c 
 therein. She is the master/' He gives in a schedule a list 
 of all her jagirs guaranteed by Mr. Bristow: 
 
 " For the observance of all these articles I give God and his prophet, 
 the twelve imauns, the fourteen maussooms. And the English chiefs 
 are joined in this engagement. Further, I will not in future demand 
 any loan from my mother. I have no claim on her. Nor will I ever 
 deviate from this engagement. Should I act contrary thereto, it may be 
 supposed that I am estranged fron the English chiefs and the Company. 
 I have accordingly given this coulnamma to remain as a voucher." 
 
 Mr. Bristow's guarantee is in as forcible words, recapitu- 
 lating the transaction, and ending with saying, 
 
 " The English chiefs are guarantees for the observance of these 
 articles. No one shall molest her when the Begum goes on a pilgrimage ; 
 no person shall obstruct or hinder her : and the Begum is sole mistress of 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 442.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 499 
 
 her own people. No one shall make any demand on her eunuchs or 3 JUNE 1788. 
 women : she is at liberty to act as she pleases with respect to them. 
 When the Begum goes on her pilgrimage, she may leave the charge of her 
 jagirs, &c. to whomsoever she pleases. The English chiefs are guarantees 
 of this." 
 
 My Lords, this was the treaty that was then executed' Part of the 
 It was a part of the stipulation in this treaty that the thirty- received in 
 four lacs should not all be paid in money, but that the goods< 
 Nawab should be obliged to receive ten lacs of that sum in 
 goods. And this, though it does not seem a material 
 circumstance, is so far material that it is upon this dispute 
 alone that Mr. Hastings afterwards grounds an argument 
 and an assertion that the Council Mr. Francis, General 
 Clavering and Colonel Monson considered the whole of the 
 treasures as the treasures of the state. In the course of 
 delivering those goods which the Begum stipulates the 
 Nawab should take and not, as Mr. Hastings falsely states, 
 in his Defence before the House of Commons, that Mr. Bris- 
 tow and the Nawab had seized her goods : for he quotes it 
 there as if he had found a precedent in point for his own 
 conduct in 1781 she stipulates that she should have 
 the indulgence of making part of the payment in goods 
 Mr. Hastings quotes that transaction as an exact precedent 
 for forcibly seizing the whole of her goods and treasures in 
 1781. A dispute arises upon the delivery of those goods. 
 Part of the articles the Nawab alleges are not her property; Part of the 
 for he says, some of them were military stores elephants offered 
 and camels, and things which he states not to have been in ti^Nawab 
 the custody of her steward or consuma, nor to have been ^ llis ^ n 
 found or kept in the zanana. These he therefore claims as 1>r 
 his property : not the treasures not a word of it ; " But 
 these particular articles," he says, " I will not take in 
 payment, because they are my goods, not yours." Upon 
 this a dispute arises. Mr. Bristow writes to the Board ; he 
 says, 
 
 " Respecting the treaty with the Begum, I have had many letters from 
 her, complaining of its not heing abided by, and that the Nabob does 
 her great injustice in disputing her rights to effects which she wants to 
 deliver to him. But he asserts them to be his property, as they were 
 under the charge of his consuma, and only deposited in one of the 
 buildings adjoining to the Begum's palace. IJe says he acknowledges 
 her right to anything in trust with her own servants ; but all the other 
 effects belong to him."* 
 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 443. 
 I i 2
 
 500 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. This dispute continues ; and at last the Begum writes a 
 very strong and pathetic remonstrance to her protector, 
 Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will perceive, 
 
 Hastings on was a ^ fa[ s | mle a strenuous advocate for the rights of the 
 
 the SUDJCCt . IT- PI -XT i IT 
 
 of the goods. Begum against the claims of the JNawab ; and 1 am sure 
 your Lordships will hear with astonishment that Mr. Hast- 
 ings afterwards, in his Defence before the House of Commons, 
 asserts that he was always a friend to the Nawab's claim, 
 and always thought that he had a just title to the whole of 
 the treasures. Mr. Hastings, however, lays this letter before 
 the Board. She says, if she cannot get redress that she 
 cannot remain at Fyzabad ; that she wishes him to send a 
 person there, 
 
 "To remove the mother of the late Nabob, the elder Begum, and 
 myself, and 2,000 of the women and children of the late blessed Nabob, 
 together with the women of the Nabob Burhan-ul-Mulck, and those of 
 Sufdar Jung from this city, that we may reside with honour and reputa- 
 tion in some other place." 
 
 She states too with simplicity, but certainly with truth : 
 
 " In the Nabob's lifetime (Suja-ud-Dowla) he was possessed of no 
 more than a single soubah, and the dues of the English chiefs were paid 
 out of the revenues of it, as also the expenses of his army and his own. 
 At present that the soubah is increased to three times its former extent 
 what becomes of the revenue ? No one thinks of making this inquiry, 
 but sums are continually taken from us helpless women." 
 
 She then recapitulates the dispute, and says it respects 
 goods, elephants and camels, and that all she possesses is 
 from the bounty of the late blessed Nawab; and complains 
 that the Nawab should doubt her right to these goods.* 
 Mr. Hastings at this time, mindful of the dying recommen- 
 dation of his former friend and of the protection which he 
 owed to this helpless Princess, asserts her right, and lays this 
 letter before the Board. The other members of the Council 
 desire that he will give his opinion first. And now your 
 Lordships will learn here what that opinion was : 
 
 " I should have been better pleased on such a subject to have concurred 
 in the resolution which the other members of the Board might have 
 thought it proper to pass, in consequence of the present remonstrance, 
 than to offer my separate opinion upon it in the uncertainty whether it 
 would be adopted. All my present wish is that the orders of the Board 
 may be such as may obviate or remove the discredit which the English 
 name may suffer by the exercise, or even the public appearance, of oppres- 
 sion on a person of the Begum's rank, character and sex. Had the 
 
 The right 
 of the 
 Begum ad- 
 vocated by 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings at the 
 Board. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minuses of the Evidence," p. 445.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 501 
 
 Nabob chosen to have made use of the means with which his own power 3 JUNE 1788. 
 alone supplied him to exact money from the Begum, his mother, this 
 government would have wanted a pretext to interfere in her behalf; but 
 as the representative of our government has become an agent in this 
 business, and has pledged the honour and faith of the Company for the 
 punctual observance of the conditions under which it was concluded, we 
 have a right to interfere, and justice demands it, if it shall appear that 
 these engagements have been violated, and an injury offered to the 
 Begum under the cover of the authority by which they were contracted."' 
 
 He then proposes that a letter shall be written to Mr. 
 Bristow, commanding him to remonstrate with the Nawab 
 against the seizure of the goods as his own original property. 
 These goods not the treasures lodged in the zanana not 
 the treasures in the custody of her own consuma but 
 goods admitted by Mr. Bristow to have been out of her 
 custody, out of the zanana, and certainly standing upon a 
 ground that might admit of an equivocal title, u Which," 
 continues Mr. Hastings, "he received from his mother in 
 payment of the eleven lacs stipulated to be so made to 
 insist on the Nabob's receiving them in payment,"* and so 
 on. Sir John Clavering gives his opinion upon this subject. Opinions of 
 He says, he thinks the Nawab should be informed of the 
 representation which had been made to this government, 
 and a copy of her letter sent to him ; but agrees with s uin> s right 
 Mr. Hastings that the Nawab should be obliged to receive 
 these goods as the goods of the Begum : 
 
 " I join with the Governor General in thinking that the goods which 
 the Begum has delivered should be appraised, and whatever their value 
 may appear to be under eleven lacs, which the Begum engaged to pay, 
 she ought to be made acquainted with the difference ; for it was on the 
 full accomplishment of her promise that Mr. Bristow's guarantee was 
 to have its effect." 
 
 Therefore here is Sir John Clavering perfectly agreeing 
 with Mr. Hastings in the principle that the treasures in the 
 zanana and possessed by the Begum were her own, and 
 that even the Nawab had not a just claim to these disputed 
 goods. Colonel Mouson's minute follows. He says, he 
 thinks that "as she succeeded to the Nabob's wealth, it is just 
 she should discharge the demands due for those services by 
 which she is the principal gainer," but, when he comes to 
 speak upon the present dispute, he says, "the Vizier's 
 estate has not been divided according to the usual custom of 
 Mohammedan Princes. The present dispute turns upon the 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 448.
 
 502 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 r. j UNFITS?, value of goods, elephants and camels. I do not conceive, 
 according to strict justice, these effects to be the Begum's 
 property ; as I understand women can claim a right only to 
 what is within the zauana." Mr. Francis follows, and he 
 seems to think, with Colonel Moiison, that the Nawab has 
 some claim to those effects in question. " I am inclined to 
 think, with Colonel Monson, that women can claim a right 
 only to what is within the zanana." 
 
 The Be- Here your Lordships see that, upon the general subject 
 
 t E u thc S right of the right to whatever there is within the zanana, there is 
 
 th^niaTil' 1 not the slightest difference of opinion ; that they never 
 
 notquos-' support in the smallest tittle the Nawab's claim, nor the 
 
 the dispute. Nawab himself, for he admits whatever is within the 
 
 zanana to be the property of the Begums. Mr. Hastings 
 
 asserts more, that even those goods out of the zanana were 
 
 also hers. Colonel Monson, Sir John Clavering and 
 
 Mr. Francis, all agree that whatever is lodged within the 
 
 zanana does of right belong to the Begum ; they accordingly 
 
 adopt the opinions of Mr. Hastings, or very nearly his opinions, 
 
 upon this subject, and upon his motion a letter is written. 
 
 coiitradic- Mr. Hastings, in his Defence before the House of Com- 
 
 i lasting, in mons, gives these two short accounts, which, in order to 
 
 oThteformei- S* VG your Lordships a sort of insight into the manner in 
 
 opinion. which this gentleman thinks himself authorised to contradict 
 
 his former recorded opinions and conduct, I shall read to 
 
 your Lordships. 
 
 " Mr. Bristow was right in his assertion that the treasures of which 
 the Begum was in possession were the property of the State " 
 
 Mr. Bristow, your Lordships observe, having never made 
 any such assertion 
 
 " The Nahob had a double right to reclaim them, both as his lawful 
 inheritance, and as a trust officially committed to her custody, for which 
 she was especially accountable to him as her sovereign, and the repre- 
 sentative of her former sovereign, from whom she had received them. 
 As .Mr. Bristow chose to interest himself in reclaiming the Nabob's 
 lights, he ought to have asserted them effectually, and, had he done so, 
 the magnitude of the sen-ice which he would have rendered by it to the 
 Nahob, his immediate employer, and to the Company, who would. have 
 been eventually benefited by it, would have largely overbalanced the 
 irregularity of the mode, and entitled him to applause instead of 
 censure." * 
 
 * The Second Defence of Mr. Hastings. Printed in the " Minutes of the 
 Evidence," &c., p. 363.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 503 
 
 My Lords, would you believe it possible that this can be 
 the sentiment or opinion of the same man ? or Avould you 
 believe it possible of any man ? This is one of those de- 
 testable and abominable doctrines Avhich, if your Lordships 
 do not stigmatise which if you tolerate there is an end to 
 any pretence of retrieving the character of this country, or 
 establishing any opinion of her faith or sincerity in India. 
 Mr. Bristow is a poor paltry plunderer : he took only a little ; 
 Avhereas, if he had seized the Avhole, the enormity of the 
 plunder Avould have been his justification. And this senti- 
 ment he utters with respect to Mr. Bristow's conduct at the 
 very moment that that conduct of Mr. Bristow was stigma- 
 tised by him on the records of the Council Board Avhich he 
 called an act of extortion and exaction against the rights 
 of the Begum ; and now he says the only fault was that 
 Mr. Bristow did not seize the whole. 
 
 In his other Defence before the House of Commons, Mr. Hast- 
 Mr. Hastings gives this curious account of this transac- comufof the 
 
 f JQJI transaction 
 
 in his second 
 Defence. 
 
 " The treasures she possessed Mr. Bristow said were the treasures of 
 
 the state " 
 
 observing again to your Lordships that Mr. Bristow never 
 said any such thing 
 
 " as she had not succeeded to them by any legal title. The Nabob 
 was therefore strictly justified in demanding them ; and if there was 
 anything in the whole proceeding which did not accord with the senti- 
 ments of people in general, it was the part we officiously took to prevent 
 the Nabob's recovering the whole of his patrimonial estate from those 
 who fradulently withheld it from him." 
 
 Here he states that the British name and character ^jf,^?^" 
 suffered by our not assisting the NaAvab to seize the Avhole right of tho 
 of the Begum's treasures, and to plunder her completely, trary 1 to ws" 
 This Avas at the very time that he resisted the NaAvab's option? 
 claim, even to these disputed goods Avhich Avere not Avithin 
 the Avails of the zanana. NOAV he declares that the British 
 character suffered by our affording any of that protection 
 Avhich he himself moved and brought over the Council to 
 adopt at the moment of the transaction. He then concludes 
 this account Avith the folloAving extract : - 
 
 " It is not true that the Begum was left in charge of the late Nabob's 
 treasures or other valuable effects. She became possessed of them in 
 capacity of trustee and treasurer of the deceased, who, for some time 
 before his death, deposited the surplus of his revenues with the Bow 
 Begum, to provide against emergencies."
 
 504 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 _. Your Lordships will recollect I. have just stated, upon 
 the authority of Mr. Hastings, that the part of the conduct 
 of the Council and of the English at Calcutta which he 
 thought scandalised the name of Britain was their affording 
 any protection to the Begum, and not assisting the Nawab 
 to recover the whole of his rights. He says, a sentence 
 below : 
 
 " Hence the whole of his property, of what sort soever, was in her 
 
 custody at the time of his death ; but still as a deposit, though from the 
 
 hands of his mother ; for they were the rights of the state which she had 
 
 Hisdisap- i n charge. But I must repeat that I disapprove and still condemn the 
 
 'Resident's 16 interference of our Resident ; because we had no concern in it, and our 
 
 inter- credit suffered in the opinions of mankind from the natural disgust 
 
 icrence. which would be excited by a contention between a son and his mother, 
 
 and by our appearance as incendiaries instead of conciliators in it." 
 
 Here we find the British name and character suffered in 
 a different way. Before we suffered for not assisting the son 
 to plunder his mother completely, and now we suffer for 
 having given any countenance to the transaction at all. 
 His plea of And here he concludes by saying, "The Board, I have 
 ofrespou" *M&, approved of it," a curious principle again "and I 
 bdng^the was a mem ber of the Board, but an inefficient member of 
 minority at it, the whole of this transaction having passed under the 
 order and guidance of the majority of the Board, which ex- 
 cluded me," I beg your Lordships to observe this, " which 
 excluded me from any share in their acts, equally in such as 
 I approved and in such as I disapproved/' Then he says, 
 " It will appear from the preceding reasoning that I up- 
 proved of the Nabob's assertion of his own right to reclaim 
 the possession of his inheritance." 
 
 Can anything be conceived so confident, so frontless, as 
 for a man to say it will appear from the preceding reasoning 
 that he approved of the Nawab's assertion of his own right 
 to reclaim the possession of his inheritance, when it is in our 
 power to say we will look to the record and there we find 
 that he himself was a strenuous opposer of the Nawab's 
 right, asserted the right of the Begum, convinced the 
 Council, and brought them over to support the rights of the 
 Begum ? He recollects this fact ; he does not say he did 
 not approve the ratification of the treaty, " but (says he) I 
 was in a minority," and that circumstance excluded him 
 from any share in their acts, equally in such as he approved 
 and such as he disapproved. I know that I am addressing 
 those who understand what the principles of law and of
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 505 
 
 justice are, but I believe I may take the liberty of saying, 3 JUKE 17 
 without any great irregularity, that 1 am also speaking in 
 the presence of those who understand a little what majo- 
 rities and minorities arc also ; but was ever such a doctrine 
 as this heard of, that the moment any man agrees to the 
 opinion Mr. Hastings maintains that it ceases to be his? 
 If he produces a sentiment or opinion upon any important 
 subject, if it is rejected he admits that he, remaining in a 
 minority, is responsible for it ; but, if the majority acquiesce 
 in it, that instant it not only ceases to be his, but he has a 
 right to maintain that he is of the contrary opinion ; that 
 the moment his sentiments and arguments bring conviction 
 to the mind of other people, that moment he is discharged 
 from all responsibility for his own sentiments and his own 
 conduct. I don't know how I should illustrate this better 
 than by supposing that if, at any future day, ten or twelve 
 years hence, the honourable Manager who first brought 
 forward this business if Mr. Burke, speaking of Mr. Hast- 
 ings, were to say, lt That great, worthy, character, so 
 basely, so maliciously, persecuted by those busy, meddling, 
 fellows (whom the Counsel thought, under the constitutional 
 authority of James the First, they were intitled to warn your 
 Lordships against at the commencement of this business), that 
 great man of prodigious character, pursued by vile, shocking 
 persecutors ;" and some person replied, " Why, this from 
 you ! Why, you was the man that moved the impeachment ; 
 you convinced me ; you brought me over to your opinion ; you 
 made me a Manager (supposing him to have acted with the 
 majority of the House), what can you mean by holding this 
 sort of argument now ? " Mr. Burke should reply, " Ah ! but 
 in those days I was in a constant minority, and therefore 
 not responsible for acts I moved myself any more than for 
 those I opposed ; and the instant you, the majority, take up 
 that opinion I have a right to say it is not my opinion ; I 
 am of sentiments directly the contrary." I maintain, this 
 would not be more bold, more confident, Mr. Burke would 
 not more prove himself to be a man lost to all sense of 
 shame, to be a man who had once for all banished the possi- 
 bility of expressing shame in his countenance and extin- 
 guished the seeds of it in his heart ; that he would not more 
 deserve that character, if he was to maintain that language 
 and this conduct, than the prisoner does for this frontless 
 assertion, that he was a friend to the rights of the Nawab 
 against the Begums, and that it will appear from his
 
 506 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 s JUNE 1788. reasoning that he was under no responsibility for the 
 measure he moved in Council and carried by moving it. 
 
 So stand the circumstances of the treaties in 1775 ; and 
 your Lordships will observe the concurring testimony upon 
 
 The Be- this subject of the right to the treasures. And here, my 
 
 gum's right T , J . , T _ T 
 
 to the trea- Lords, give me leave to say that 1 profess I am ashamed 
 wuhed & by almost to have dwelt so long upon this subject ; that, if it 
 rantee a t'o na( ^ n t ^> e 6n for the stress and importance which I per- 
 ofi775 aty ce ^ ve( ^ the Counsel seemed to think it deserved whose 
 original right or title these treasures were I should have 
 been ashamed, speaking in this court, to have taken up the 
 transaction from any other date than from the guarantee 
 to the treaty of 1775, which whatever the title was 
 whatever the disputed claim was settled the point, and 
 fixed what the conduct of the English ought to be ; which 
 extinguished all disputed claims, all doubts whatever, as to 
 the property. But I am obliged to refer to these, because 
 I see the stress that is meant to be laid upon them ; though 
 I think the argument, after this, will not be much counte- 
 nanced by your Lordships, if it should be urged by the 
 Pretended Counsel on the other side. I see, and the fact is, that 
 Nawabto 16 through all his Defences through all the various false sug- 
 suna'und r g es tions through all the various rebellions and disaffection 
 the Moham- and the whole of it Mr. Hastings never once lets go this 
 plea of inextinguishable right in the Naw T ab. He constantly 
 represents the seizing the treasures as the resumption of a 
 right which he could not part with ; as if there were literally 
 something in the kuran that made it criminal in a true 
 Mussulman to keep his engagements with his relations, and 
 impious in a son to abstain from plundering his mother. 1 
 do gravely assure your Lordships that there is no such 
 doctrine in the kuran, and no such principle makes a part 
 in the civil or municipal jurisprudence of that country. Even 
 after they had been endeavouring to dethrone the Nawab 
 and to extirpate the English, the only plea the Nawab ever 
 makes is his right under the Mohammedan law ; and, the 
 truth is, he appears never to have heard any other reason. 
 And I pledge myself to make it appear to your Lordships, 
 hoAvever extraordinary it may be, that, till the moment of 
 The Na- seizing the palace, the Nawab not only does not appear then 
 ranccofthc to have heard of the rebellion, but it appears he never heard 
 rchoHknf 1 ^ ^ at all ; that this extraordinary rebellion, which was 
 against him. as notorious as the rebellion of 1745 in London, was care- 
 fully concealed from these two persons from the Begums
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 507 
 
 who plotted it and the Nawab who was to be the victim 3 JUNE 1788. 
 of it. 
 
 The existence of this was not the secret, but the notoriety 
 of it was the secret. The Nawab never once heard of it. 
 It was a rebellion which had for its object the destruction of 
 no human creature but those who planned it. It was a 
 rebellion which, according to Mr. Middleton's expression, no 
 man, either horse or foot, ever marched to quell. The Chief 
 Justice was the only man who took the field against it. The 
 force around, against whom it was raised, instantly withdrew 
 to give it elbow room ; and then it was a rebellion which 
 perversely showed itself in acts of hospitality to the Nawab 
 whom it was to dethrone, and to the English whom it was 
 to extirpate. It was a rebellion plotted by two feeble old 
 Avomen, headed by two eunuchs and suppressed by an 
 affidavit. 
 
 Therefore, my Lords. I do trust that, however the Counsel 
 may support their case by accusation against these women, 
 I do trust (after repeating again that I regret to have taken 
 up any part of your Lordships' time upon the subject) that 
 Ave shall hear no more of the NaAvab's right under the 
 Mohammedan law ; because I am confident that, if that 
 argument is attempted to be maintained, your Lordships 
 Avill treat it Avith feelings of indignation, \vhich can be of no 
 other advantage to the defendant than perhaps their pre- 
 venting your listening to the arguments of the Counsel upon 
 such a subject. 
 
 There is one circumstance, hoAvever, Avhich it occurs to me Evidence of 
 I ought to mention to your Lordships, upon the subject of ton' respect- 
 this original property, which is a very curious evidence draught 
 given by Mr. Middleton : your Lordships will ahvays f^ 1 
 recollect, not given Avith any great decision or in a very ^ires by the 
 peremptory manner but still it is as strong testimony, I " ' 
 believe, as any we have got of that gentleman's. Mr. Mid- 
 dleton says that he Avas employed by the NaAyab Avhile he 
 attended him in the Rohilla country. He sent a Mr. Grady, 
 Avho is, I understand, a gentleman unfortunately in bad 
 health. And the purpose of that extraordinary and uncom- 
 mon measure Avhich Avas proposed, of examining Mr. Grady, 
 was to this important object to prove the property of these 
 treasures to have been in the NaAvab : for Mr. Grady Avas 
 the gentleman whom Mr. Middleton sent from the Rohilla 
 country with a draught upon these treasures. I Avould have 
 admitted to the Counsel at once that, Avhile Suja-ud-DoAvla
 
 508 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. was alive, for what I know he might have drawn for this 
 treasure. The affection the Begum had shown to him 
 that she considered them as his property whenever in dis- 
 tress is admitted : I should not have disputed that. But, 
 bringing Mr. Middleton instead of Mr. Grady for their 
 evidence, the Counsel unluckily destroyed their own argu- 
 ment?. For here I should suppose that Mr. Middleton's 
 [memory], in the course of those accidental calls which he 
 makes with Major Scott (not insinuating and seriously that 
 the learned Counsel have any concern in it), played him an 
 abominable trick. He remembered the conclusion that the 
 treasure was to be the Nawab's, but unfortunately he re- 
 membered the fact, too which is not a common case with 
 him ; for when he came to recite the transaction " The 
 Nabob," says he, " drew a draught for this treasure. He 
 sent it by Mr. Grady/' What was the consequence ? Why, 
 they would not pay the money. " Mr. Grady came back. 
 Then the Bow Begum, who was with them, she drew." What 
 then ?. " Then the money was paid/' And what was the 
 conclusion of Mr. Middleton's mind 1 Not only that the 
 treasures must be the property of the Nawab, but that 
 the Begum drew as if they were. Upon those facts he 
 draws that conclusion which no man but Mr. Middletou, I 
 believe, would have drawn : 
 
 " I take it for granted," says he, not having seen the Begum's draught, 
 but having seen the Nawab's draught, " that she drew upon the treasures 
 as if they were the property of the Nabob, who when he drew could not 
 obtain his draught to be answered."* 
 
 My Lords, I shall say nothing more upon the original 
 The treaties property of these treasures ; but come now to the treaties, 
 which I shall shortly run through, of 1778. 
 
 We hear no more of any transaction either between 
 the Begum and the Nawab, or between the Begums and 
 Mr. Hastings, till the year 1778. It appears that they have 
 gone on with the same credulity. There is the same implicit 
 confidence on the part of the Begum, and the same ready 
 protection on the part of our government, to this period. 
 And here we come to treat of another treaty, which was 
 executed under the sanction of Mr. Middleton; and there- 
 fore your Lordships, I believe, will be aware that we have 
 not, at the first glance of it, a very clear account of this 
 transaction. Mr. Middleton appears to have been employed 
 
 * " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 740.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 509 
 
 in four negotiations in his life-time to have been concerned 
 in four treaties and he forgets whether he ever signed 
 three of them or not. However, his memory mends upon 
 the occasion, and at last I think we have a pretty plain state 
 of the facts to lay before your Lordships. 
 
 I will read a passage from Mr. Hastings' Defence before Denial by 
 your Lordships. This I suppose Mr. Hastings will at least ings ofhis 
 admit to contain perfectly his own sentiments ; though, fc^"^ 6 ' 
 perhaps, I am a little wrong in that. He has set up four 
 Defences already, and denied them one after another ; 
 possibly, when the Counsel come to speak, they will deny 
 even this Defence before your Lordships. If propriety 
 would admit, I should be glad to know whether they are 
 now in the last trench, or whether they will set up a fifth ; 
 and whether, when Mr. Hastings comes to exercise that 
 privilege, which certainly will not be denied him, of speak- 
 ing for himself, he may not set up a sixth. But, taking for 
 granted that till denied it is to stand, I shall read this 
 passage from it ; he admits : 
 
 " That the elder Begum was in possession of certain jaghires and effects ; Denial by 
 and that she, in or about the year 1778, made such application to the fn^' s ^f a |n"y 
 Governor General and Council, through the then Resident, Nathaniel {guarantee 
 Middleton, Esquire, respecting the same, as in the said second Article is fr. her 
 set forth ; and that the Governor General and Council, the said Warren 'having been 
 Hastings being the Governor General, did thereupon direct the said made to the 
 Mi-. Middleton to make such representation to the Nabob as is stated ( 
 in the said Article. And the said Warren Hastings does not know or 
 believe that any other interferences, power or authorities, were made, 
 given, granted or confirmed, by the said Governor General and the said 
 Council, for the purpose aforesaid : and he denies that any guarantee of 
 the British nation, or any guarantee of any kind whatsoever, was by the 
 Resident, under the authority of the said Warren Hastings, ever pledged 
 to the said elder Begum for her protection."* 
 
 My Lords, I am at issue with the Counsel upon that fact. The fact of 
 I assert that a guarantee to the elder Begum under his tee asserted, 
 authority was given, and that the British faith was pledged 
 to her. I know why they fight this business. They are 
 aware that, when we establish this treaty, when we esta- 
 blish this guarantee, we establish a claim on the part of the 
 women in the Khurd Mahal to' the protection of the British 
 government, and that we do in fact make Mr. Hastings 
 personally responsible for all the cruelties, for all the famine, 
 for all the shocking misery, which these poor wretches 
 
 I* * " The Answer of W. Hastings, Esq., to the Articles, &c. Delivered at 
 the Bar of the House of Peers, 28 November. 1787." Second Article.
 
 510 Summing of Evidence on Second Cliarge the Begums ; 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. suffered : who, he tells you iu his second Defence, were 
 low creatures ; as if that was a good reason for a high-minded 
 man to starve them. We shall bring it home to him, that 
 he is as much responsible for them as if he had himself stood 
 sentinel at the gate, and torn the morsel of bread from the 
 children's mouths. We shall bring it home to him that he, 
 and he alone, on the account of this pledged faith, is and 
 must be responsible.- 
 
 My Lords, we find Mr. Middleton, on the 15th of January, 
 1778, writes to the Board, and informs them of the intention 
 of the mother of the late Wazir, that is, the elder Begum, 
 Efforts of to proceed on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He tells them that, in 
 to dissuade 1778 (?) he had promised the Nawab to use his endeavours to 
 ftonPapii" influence the Begum to relinquish a design which, from her 
 grimaKeto a g e an j infirmities, she cannot enter upon with any proba- 
 bility of accomplishing it. This is not a flattering speech to 
 the lady, but what he tells as his own judgment to the 
 Council. She was then, I believe, between eighty aacl 
 ninety ; and it was four years afterwards when that martial 
 spirit seized her which made her determine to extirpate the 
 English nation and dethrone her grandson. However, 
 Mr. Middleton did not see all these great qualities in her at 
 that time, for he thought she had no chance to live to the end 
 of a pilgrimage to Mecca. Then comes an account of his visit 
 to her. He represents her inability, from her age and infir- 
 mities (very true though not very polite perhaps) to en- 
 counter these difficulties, and, above all, 
 
 " the misfortune and irretrievable loss which her withdrawing herself 
 from these provinces would be to her deceased son's numerous family." 
 
 Though, your Lordships will recollect, Mr. Middleton lost 
 all recollection of any such, and Mr. Hastings in his first 
 Defence admits they were numerous ; in his second Defence 
 he says they were low born ; and in his third Defence he 
 melts them down, and doubts whether there were any 
 family or children at all. And Avell he might if he spoke of 
 the present time, after his transactions and behaviour to 
 them ; he might well doubt of their existence 
 
 " which in its present infant state required that tender care and attention 
 she alone, from her known wisdom and experience and concern for their 
 welfare, could be relied upon to give them. She observed that her 
 present purpose was not of modern invention, but had been her deter- 
 mined object for many years past, even before the death of the late 
 Vizier. She had it in contemplation and was irrevocably bent upon 
 putting it into execution three years ago, had she not been prevented by 
 the sickness and death of her son ; that, since that unfortunate event
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 511 
 
 her mind had heen constantly directed to the care and education of the 3 JUNE 1788. 
 
 young family, which she thought she could not with propriety leave, 
 
 until they were in some measure in a situation to make their own way in 
 the world." 
 
 Your Lordships will always bear in mind that it is a part 
 of the charge against these persecuted women, not merely 
 that they engaged in rebellious practices at the time of Chey t 
 Sing's insurrection, but that they were always actuated by 
 an uniform hatred to the English nation that they inva- 
 riably took advantage of our troubles, and had, by various 
 repeated instances of hostility, provoked that resentment 
 which afterwards fell upon them. Here your Lordships 
 find Mr. Middleton, under the authority of Mr. Hastings, 
 dissuading this woman, who is represented as the worst of 
 the two and who always influenced the conduct of her 
 daughter, you find Mr. Middleton dissuading her from 
 leaving the country. He then recapitulates her com- 
 plaints : 
 
 "That his Excellency had made no suitable provision for the late Complaints 
 Vizier's women and children, now at Fyzahad ; that the education of g U m 1( against 
 the children had heen totally neglected and their situation wholly theNawab. 
 unattended to ; that the Nabob suffered his favourites to infringe her 
 rights, to insult his relations and the ancient dependants of the family ; 
 and, so far from affording her any address in any of her complaints 
 against these people, she had reason to believe he had connived at and 
 secretly encouraged such conduct. 
 
 " These causes of complaint, although they were not the origin of her 
 present design, she confessed had induced her to fix an earlier period for 
 her departure than she should have otherwise done; but she woiild 
 consent, at my entreaty, to remain two or three months longer at 
 Fyzabad, if I would engage on my part that she should not be subject to 
 such insults and mortifications as she had heretofore experienced, and 
 that I would heartily unite with her and the young Begum in settling 
 the Nabob's domestic affairs in a firm and permanent manner, and fixing 
 a certain provision for the support of the women and children of her 
 deceased son and her own relations, so that the honour and credit of her 
 family might be preserved inviolate." 
 
 After stating these circumstances, Mr. Middleton con- 
 cludes with an observation of his own, by saying, 
 
 " I think it necessary to assure the Honourable Board that, as far as Recommen- 
 I have yet been able to learn, I think the Begum's claims are very mode- Middleton 
 rate and just, and such as it would be natural to suppose the Nabob of the re- 
 cannot in decency refuse."* t'he Begum' 
 
 He had an opportunity here of knowing personally the the Com- 
 neglect of this family ; that they had none of those regular pa 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 455.
 
 512 Summing of Evidence on Second Char ye the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE nss. assignments which the Counsel had been endeavouring to 
 establish from persons who could know nothing but from 
 report ; that they were obliged to the bounty of the Begum 
 for a maintenance ; and that, in order to satisfy her, it was 
 necessary to guarantee a provision for jthose women and 
 those children. This he writes upon the 25th of January. 
 Upon the 27th he writes again and the Counsel, if they 
 wish to be convinced, I was going to say but I would have 
 them attend literally to the purport of those two letters, I 
 mean the letters of the 25th and the 27th January. In the 
 letter of the 27th he says, 
 
 " I now do myself the pleasure to forward you a translation of a 
 writing she had presented to me, containing her several requisitions and 
 claims, which she expects shall be complied with and guaranteed to her 
 hy the Company ; so that it may not he in the power of the Nabob at 
 his pleasure to annul any of the conditions or deviate from any of the 
 provisions therein specified." 
 
 Then Mr. Middleton adds 
 
 "That the Honourable Board may be clearly informed of the nature 
 and propriety of the Begum's expectations, I have subjoined short ex- 
 planatory observations to each separate article ; and, if the Honourable 
 Board shall be pleased to consider them after in the light it appeal's to 
 me, I hope to be favoured with their permission to sanctify the agree- 
 ment in the manner the Begum requires in my public character. I have 
 referred the subject to the Nabob for his consideration and approval ; 
 but I have little expectation that he will of his own accord acquiesce in 
 the Begum's propositions, however moderate and reasonable they may 
 appear ; and if he should, his assent alone, without the ratification and 
 guarantee of the English, will not be accepted as any kind of security 
 by the Begum. If, however, his Excellency approves of these proposi- 
 tions, and gives them the sanction of his signature, I apprehend there 
 will be no impropriety in my becoming a surety for their performance ; 
 in which case the direct interposition of the Honourable Board will not 
 be necessary." 
 
 Now I beg your Lordships to observe here that Mr. Mid- 
 dleton transmits two propositions to the Board one that, 
 if he should find the Nawab inclined to agree to the rea- 
 'sonable terms proposed by the Begum, then he appre- 
 hends there can be no impropriety in Ins becoming guarantee ; 
 but, not having reason to believe that the Nawab would so 
 consent, then he applies for another kind of authority, which 
 follows 
 
 " But if on the contrary he should refuse his concurrence, I beg leave 
 with humble submission to suggest the necessity of an immediate 
 exertion of their influence, to secure the Begum whatever they may be 
 pleased to consider her undisputed rights, when I doubt not I should
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 513 
 
 be able to prevail upon her to relinquish her design of a pilgrimage to 3 JVXE 1788. 
 Korbulla altogether."* ~~~ 
 
 Mr. Middleton writes on the 27th of January, having 
 referred the propositions of the Begum to the NawaVs 
 consideration. And noAV I wish it to be attended to that, 
 before the Board answer this letter, they take into conside- 
 ration another letter of Mr. Middleton, in which it appears 
 that he had laid these propositions before the Board, and, as 
 he expected, he found the Nawab averse to enter into any 
 treaty. Mr. Middleton encloses in this letter of the 27th of 
 January a paper transmitted by the elder Begum, with his 
 remarks upon it.f One of the articles contained in that Demands of 
 paper is " That separate and sufficient Jaydads be given forprov iston 
 for the support of the Khourd Mhal" the Khurd MalwlJSfej'g 
 remember 
 
 " and my late son's children, suitable to their rank and situation ; and 
 that, when the children arrive at ages of maturity, I be permitted to 
 enter into treaties of marriage for them, agreeable to my own judg- 
 ment and discretion ; and that a suitable allowance be made for the 
 expenses which may be incurred on the occasion. That the daughters 
 who have been contracted may be sent to their intended husbands, or 
 the husbands sent for to receive them.'' 
 
 Mr. Middleton upon this remarks : 
 
 "An allowance of 12,800 rupees per month has been established for 
 the women of the Khourd Mhal and the late Nabob's children, which 
 will be adequate to the support of the children and such of the women 
 as from their connexion with the Nabob are entitled to a maintenance ; 
 the rest the Begum has consented to release from their confinement." 
 
 " Thirdly ; that for the support of the family and dependants of the 
 Nabob Sufder Jung, my late husband, who are all allied to me, the same 
 allowances be now made that were fixed in the lifetime of Shujah-ul- 
 Dowlah." 
 
 " Remark. The allowance made by the late Vizier for his father's S*?'} 1 f 1 rks ^ 
 connexions and dependants was about 17,000 rupees per month, exclu- Allowance"" 
 sive of the Begum's own jaghire." by the late 
 
 Naval) for 
 
 Here he admits that the Begum's own jagir was a part of J^f ^$.^3 
 the maintenance and a part of the dependence of the Khurd 
 Mahal : 
 
 " This allowance has been withheld from the period of Sujah-ul- 
 Dowlah's death, and been disbursed from the Begum's private purse." 
 
 After making other observations upon her request to 
 the moderation and justice of which he bears general testi- 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 456. 
 f Printed, as above, p. 457. 
 
 K K
 
 514 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 Refusal of 
 the Nawab 
 to make 
 conditions 
 with the 
 Begum. 
 
 3 JUSK 1788. mony he concludes, waiting for an answer to this letter 
 from the Board. However, upon a communication after- 
 wards with the Nawab, he writes again to the Board on 
 the 2d of February, before they could have received the 
 first letter : 
 
 " I am sorry to acquaint the Honourable Board that I have not been 
 successful in my applications to the Nabob in behalf of the Begum. 
 He has positively refused to come to any immediate determination upon 
 any one of the several points I have submitted to him, answering me 
 only, in general terms, that it is his intention to visit Fyzabad on his 
 return from his hunting party, when he will request my personal assist- 
 ance in accommodating all matters of dispute between him and the 
 Begums. In the meantime, he intreats me to take every means in my 
 power to prevail upon the old Begum to suspend the execution of her 
 purpose, until he shall have had an interview with her ; and, to accom- 
 plish this object, he even authorizes me to make her such assurances, on 
 his and my own behalf, as in my judgment shall seem reasonable and 
 just. It is needless for me to remark upon the ambiguity of this reply 
 or the indefinite terms in which his authority to me is conceived. The 
 Begum's requisitions were laid before him in the form I received them, 
 clearly and specifically noticed ; so that it required only that he should 
 have given his sentiments upon them and have informed me how far he 
 wished me to engage his confidence. But, instead of this, he contents 
 himself with desiring me to use every conciliating argument I can with 
 the Begum, to dissuade her from her purpose, while he denies me the 
 only means by which he knew it could be effected, and by his conduct in 
 fact strengthens and confirms her resolutions."* 
 
 Now here your Lordships will perceive that the Begum 
 determined to leave Fyzabad and go upon a pilgrimage, 
 unless she had the guarantee of the Company ; that 
 Mr. Middleton was aware of this and admitted it ; that she 
 includes in the proposition for her own treaty the care of the 
 Khurd Mahal ; that this was laid before the Nawab, and,, as 
 Mr. Middleton admits, the Nawab refused to enter into the 
 treaty. These papers, containing her propositions and 
 Mr. Middleton's remarks, the Board proceed to take into con- 
 sideration upon the 23d of March. And now comes the 
 letter which the Counsel have laid so much stress upon, 
 which was ordered to be written upon that day's consul- 
 Letter of the tation. They say "We have duly considered your letters 
 of the 25th and 27th of January, the 2d and 3d of Febru- 
 ary." The first letter states the complaints of the Begums. 
 The second letter contains Mr. Middleton's two propositions 
 your Lordships recollect. The first was a proposition 
 that lie should enter into a guarantee for the Begums ; the 
 
 Council on 
 the subject 
 of the He- 
 gum's de- 
 mands. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 459.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 515 
 
 second proposition was, that, if he found the Nawab disin- 3 Jura 1788. 
 clined to that, he should exert his influence and compel him 
 to grant a security to his grandmother. The letter of the 
 2d of February contains an account that the Nawab did 
 refuse to enter into this treaty, so that the Board had that 
 fact before them : 
 
 " We can have no right to interfere betweeen the Vizier and his 
 relations on subjects for the redress of any grievances which they may 
 sustain from him, except by remonstrance, or, in cases that we shall 
 deem of a nature so gross and enormous as to cast a reproach on the 
 Company and to involve and affect the dignity of the British name, by 
 withdrawing ourselves from such a dishonourable connexion. We must 
 therefore decline giving you authority at present" 
 
 authority for what ? to enter into the guarantee ? No, for 
 Mr. Middleton had told them that was nearly out of the 
 question, for that the Nawab had refused the treaty, 
 
 " We decline giving you authority to insist on the Nabob's immediate 
 restitution of the property claimed by the family of the old Begum and 
 by the family of Nabob Sheir Jung, deceased." 
 
 That is what they decline giving him authority to 
 do. Says Mr. Middleton "I see no objection to my 
 becoming guarantee" - afterwards informing them that 
 
 o o o 
 
 there was no chance of the treaty being entered into 
 " but, if he does refuse it, then suffer me to put in exe- 
 cution the second proposition." They say " No ; we 
 can have no right to do that ; 
 
 " but as we approve of the means you have taken to conciliate the 
 differences that have arisen from the former and dissuade the Nabob 
 from the act of oppression which he intended to commit on the estate of 
 the latter, we desire you will repeat your remonstrances to the Vizier on 
 both these points in the name of this government, representing to him 
 the consequences of such an arbitrary proceeding. If he shall persist in 
 his refusal " 
 
 that is, persist in a refusal to enter into this treaty which 
 Mr. Middleton had informed them he was applying for " if 
 he shall persist in his refusal after this, to agree to any 
 reasonable terms" are the words of the letter; admitting 
 clearly that, if he did not persist in it, they gave their 
 consent they made no objection whatever to Mr. Middleton, 
 and justified his supposition that there could be no objection 
 to his becoming guarantee for the Begums if the Nawab 
 could not be brought to do it, 
 
 " You are to take no further steps till you have advised us thereof and 
 of every circumstance attending it." 
 
 K K 2
 
 516 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 a JUNE 1788. That is, we will not give you that alternative you applied 
 for, upon the NaAvaVs refusing to enter into the treaty. 
 That we don't think ourselves justified in doing. We 
 approve the means you take to conciliate the differences 
 which means are stated by Mr. Middleton to be the 
 guarantee of the British government alone, without which 
 the Begum would not remain in the Nawab's territories. 
 Having stated that, they say and I will quote the passage 
 the Counsel wished to be added 
 
 " Having given the old Begum such a proof of our desire to assist her 
 and to obtain security for her in her present situation "- 
 
 if security could be obtained for her, when Mr. Middleton 
 expressly states she won't remain an hour in the Nawab's 
 dominions upon his word ; that it would not form anything like 
 security [without the faith and guarantee of the British govern- 
 ment being pledged upon this they say " We agree to the 
 measures you have taken ; we approve of them ; but, if the 
 Nabob refuses reasonable terms, we cannot agree to a forcible 
 interference;" and they say "We hope she will not leave 
 the Nabob's dominions." Then they add " With respect 
 to the Bow Begum, her grievance comes before us on a 
 very different footing." True, she had a guarantee (for 
 Mr. Hasting's argument in 1775 was that she had a guarantee). 
 Here he says, " We are pledged to her, she has our gua- 
 rantee." And here they say: 
 
 " We have a right to interfere ; we therefore empower and direct you 
 to afford your support and protection to her in the due maintenance of 
 all the rights she possesses, in virtue of the treaty executed between her 
 and her son, under the guarantee of the Company, and against every 
 attempt that may be directly or indirectly made to infringe them. At 
 the same time, we recommend the greatest delicacy to you in every case 
 of this nature. We desire you will act with firmness and resolution, 
 and as far as you can with effect.''* 
 
 sanction of Now will the Counsel pretend that that just and proper 
 
 inferred J distinction which was made enfeebles any part of the argu- 
 
 fetto-! he ment with respect to the authority given in the former part 
 
 of the letter? But when I establish this, which I think is 
 
 clearly made out, I say it is not necessary to the issue I have 
 
 joined with the Counsel upon the subject. For if this letter 
 
 was written with a frivolous and prevaricating spirit which 
 
 when I see the name at the bottom I am ready to admit 
 
 yet I will show to your Lordships that there is afterwards 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 460.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 517 
 
 distinct authority and sanction given to the treaty so exe- 3 JUKE im. 
 cuted. 
 
 Here is one circumstance which should seem a pretty pr 
 reasonable proof that Mr. Middleton did understand this 
 to be an authority, that is, that he did sign the treaty, 
 Mr. Middleton at first does not recollect at all his having ing the 
 executed this treaty, and he endeavoured to account for the treaty- 
 two papers that are shown to him in a very extraordinary 
 manner. However, afterwards, when he was suffered to 
 look at the books and to refresh his memory, he comes and 
 says "I think I must have signed it," He is still sure, 
 however, that he had no direct authority from the Board to 
 sign it ; but yet he is still equally sure that if he signed it 
 he would not have signed it without an authority ; for that 
 is the evidence also. Your Lordships will recollect a good 
 deal of puzzled examination upon this subject. When he is 
 first shown these two treaties he conceives that he did sign 
 that part of the treaty for which his name is put, which is 
 an engagement to procure a treaty from the Nawab " Copy 
 of an agreement, under the seal and signature of Mr. Mid- 
 dleton, to all the particulars of which he engages to procure 
 a treaty from the Nabob Asoph-ul-Dowlah after his arrival, 
 and that he will also sign it as follows."* Says Mr. Mid- 
 dleton " I think I signed that paper, but the Nabob never 
 signed his part." Why, we see the Nawab's part of the treaty 
 is delivered also to Mr. Purling, as a thing admitted by him, 
 and admitted to be executed. " Yes," says he, " but I think it 
 was only a draft or copy of that agreement which the Nabob 
 was to sign. I drew an engagement myself to procure for the 
 Begum a treaty upon certain articles, and then subjoined to 
 that engagement of mine a copy of the draught which the 
 Nabob was to sign as a fulfilment of that engagement." 
 That does not seern a probable circumstance, that Mr. Mid- 
 dleton is signing an engagement of his own in which he 
 specifies every article the Begum treats for. It is not very 
 probable, but it is possible. But, when we come to look 
 into it, it is not only not probable but absolutely impossible ; 
 because, when we come to look into the Nawab's part of the 
 treaty, there are great, essential, departures from the 
 conditions Mr. Middleton engaged to procure for the Bow 
 Begum less is given than he engaged to procure. There 
 was an engagement on the part of Mr. Middleton that the 
 
 * The agreement is printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 461.
 
 518 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 JUNE 1788. Nawab should pay 115,000 rupees on a certain account. 
 The Nawab's agreement is tf I have passed a bond payable 
 in six months for it." Now is it possible that Mr. Middle- 
 ton should write a draught, and at the top the manner in 
 which the agreement was to be executed, and then at the 
 bottom the manner in which it had been fulfilled by the 
 Nawab ? There are many other circumstances which show 
 clearly but it is tedious to go through them that it 
 could never be executed as a copy of a draught ; because, 
 conversant as we are with the extraordinary frauds which 
 appear in this business, I should think that no person, 
 however trained and educated in the school of Mr. Hastings 
 himself, could be guilty of so frontless a fraud as to write 
 down " I engage to procure the execution of this treaty" 
 and then to alter the treaty from the engagement, to procure 
 less than he covenanted at the top of the paper to procure 
 I think the thing itself does not require any further argu- 
 ment to prove it. 
 
 Articles in I will mention here the article which is the pinching 
 
 referring y to P ai *t of this whole business, and which has caused so much 
 
 gum'sfa- dispute upon the subject before your Lordships. Mr. Mid- 
 
 mil y- dleton engages that the festivals (shaddee) and marriages 
 
 of the children of the late Nawab, Suja-ud-Dowla, shall 
 
 be at the disposal of the Begum. Whenever she thinks 
 
 proper she shall marry them ; and, if the Begum shall go, 
 
 she shall have the authority to appoint and settle their 
 
 marriages ; and whatever money shall be necessary for these 
 
 expenses shall be paid by the Nawab. 
 
 The Nawab's engagement is as follows : 
 
 " The Begum, my grandmother, shall have the authority in all 
 festivals, and in the marriages of the children of the late Nabob, Sujah- 
 ul-Dowlah, and, with the consent of my mother and myself, shall 
 regulate them ; excepting in the festival (shaddee) the authority is 
 mine." 
 
 The seventh article in Mr. Middleton's engagement is : 
 
 " I will settle with the Nabob the allowances to be made in ready 
 money to the ladies of the zenana, and others specified in the following 
 account." 
 
 That is his undertaking and engagement. The Nawab 
 says : 
 
 " I do agree that the jagirs, and gunges, and monthly allowance of 
 
 the officers and servants, and of the ladies of the zenana, and of those 
 
 . specified in the account annexed, shall be at the disposal and under the 
 
 management and authority of the Begum ; and no one shall oppose or 
 
 prevent it. This I will punctually observe."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 519 
 
 In this agreement Mr. Middleton and the English are 3 JUNK im. 
 engaged ; therefore here the future protection and care of The 
 these ladies is specifically provided for. The English do zkTan 
 become solemn guarantees, and are pledged for the main- guaranteed 
 tenauce of that Khurd Mahal and of that zanana, provided English. 
 we can establish those treaties being signed. The treaty Date of sig- 
 having no date, we will not for a moment or two attempt t 
 to prove exactly the time of his signing it ; leaving it upon 
 Mr. Middleton's recollection that, after the receipt of that 
 letter from the Board, he must have signed that guarantee. 
 The date is wrong in the printed evidence ; but here is a 
 letter received from the Bow Begum by Mr. Hastings, by 
 which it appears that Mr. Middleton had returned a second 
 time to Fyzabad, and that here was another and a new treaty 
 which Mr. Middleton accurately recollects that he did 
 execute. Mr. Middleton writes word upon the 14th of 
 September, 1778 your Lordships' will recollect that at the 
 beginning of the year he had been in Fyzabad, and had 
 had this negotiation with the elder Begum : 
 
 " The growing differences between the Nabob and the two Begums, 
 which, if suffered to continue, might be productive of an irreparable 
 breach, and ultimately be attended with the most unhappy effects to 
 the late Nabob's family, I have thought it the duty of my station 
 to endeavour to avert these consequences by a timely mediation. The 
 Honourable Board have already been minutely informed of the several 
 claims of the two Begums, which, for the most part, appear to me to 
 be founded in equity ; and the Nabob, though formerly averse to com- 
 plying with them, has of late manifested so strong a desire to accommo- 
 date these differences, and restore the mutual good understanding which 
 ought to subsist between him and the two Begums, that I am inclined to 
 believe he would willingly give up many points which he has hitherto 
 refused, to effect this object. I have therefore, at his Excellency's urgent 
 solicitations, undertaken a visit to Fyzabad, in the hope that I may be 
 able to remove those ill impressions which have naturally arisen from 
 mutual injuries, and adjust the preliminaries of a personal interview, 
 which both parties appeal' equally desirous should take place. This 
 done, the Nabob has given me his solemn promise that he will imme- 
 diately join me at Fyzabad ; and I entertain the most sanguine expecta- 
 tions that it will prove the means of removing those violent prejudices 
 and disgusts which have so long prevailed, to the destruction of almost 
 every kind of intercourse and connexion between them. I shall duly 
 inform the Honourable Board of the result of my proceedings at 
 Fyzabad, and take no part officially in any accommodation or fresh 
 agreements which may take place between the Nabob and the Begums, 
 without their previous sanction and concurrence."* 
 
 This was on the 14th of September. Accordingly, we 
 find that Mr. Middleton did proceed to Fyzabad. We find, 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 515,
 
 520 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge --the Beynms : 
 
 Acknow- 
 ledgment 
 by Sliddle- 
 ton of his 
 having 
 signed the 
 treaty of 
 the 3d of 
 Oct. 1778. 
 
 Guarantee 
 in favour of 
 the elder 
 Begum con- 
 tained in 
 the treaty. 
 
 from a letter of the Begum's, that he did reconcile their 
 differences ; that a new treaty was entered into between the 
 Bow Begum, the mother, your Lordships recollect, now of 
 Asoff-ud-Dowla ; that there was some mistake in executing 
 this treaty ; that Mr. Middleton rode after the Nawab, and 
 procured the treaty to be altered as she pleased. Mr. Mid- 
 dleton is asked whether he recollects the signing this treaty : 
 and here comes a most extraordinary and almost incredible 
 answer of Mr. Middleton's ; for he is asked, " Did you sign 
 that treaty " ? he ansAvers directly, " I did ? " I am sure 
 every person shared in the astonishment to find a direct 
 recollection of a fact explicitly avowed by Mr. Middleton : 
 but he had consulted his books, and found this treaty clearly 
 admitted to be signed, and he explicitly admitted it to be 
 signed by him. We will look for a moment at the terms of 
 this treaty. This treaty is dated the 3d of October, 1778, 
 to which Mr. Middleton affixed his seal :* 
 
 " His Highness shall faithfully perform all the articles of the following 
 treaty, which he has entered into with her Highness the Begum. The 
 English Chiefs and myself are guarantees for the due performance of it. 
 His Highness shall " 
 
 observe this 
 
 '' without fail discharge the tuncaws of the small mhals (the lesser zanana 
 and the Khurd Mahal), and shall fix and pay a suitable allowance for 
 the support of the children of the late blessed Nabob." 
 
 Now, my Lords, you will perceive there are other articles 
 in this treaty which relate to the elder Begum, 
 
 " Her Highness the superior Begum" the Vizier's grandmother 
 " and her Highness the Vizier's mother shall, with the approbation of 
 his Highness, contract alliances for the marriages of the sons and 
 daughters of the late blessed Nabob, with whomsoever they judge 
 proper." 
 
 Your Lordships will perceive that there is as much 
 stipulated almost with respect to the superior Begum, 
 as she is called in this treaty, as there is with respect 
 to the Bow Begum. Therefore, when we are at issue as 
 to the fact of Mr. Hastings' denial that he ever pledged 
 the faith of the British nation to the elder Begum, we 
 need nothing more than to establish that this treaty 
 (letting go the other two) had the authority and the 
 sanction of Mr. Hastings. He denies that any guarantee of 
 the British nation, or any guarantee of any kind whatever, 
 had ever been pledged with respect to the elder Begum. 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. olG.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 521 
 
 Then here we are at issue upon this fact letting go the 3 JUNE ms. 
 
 other treaties for a moment. Here it is proved that 
 
 Mr. Middleton acknowledged that this treaty he did execute : 
 
 and now we shall see whether Mr. Hastings was ever 
 
 apprised of it, and whether he ever gave it a sanction or 
 
 not. 
 
 It was in February, 1779, when Mr. Hastings received an 
 expostulation from the Bow Begum, and a request that he 
 would add his signature to this treaty, which she had obtained 
 from Mr. Middleton. Mr. Hastings writes to Mr. Middleton :- 
 
 " This serves to introduce to you Akber Aly Khan, despatched to me P T ctt ?T [ 
 with letters by the Bahoo Begum, for whom I desire your civilities and j,,~ ^ ' 
 attention. From the Begum's letters and the papers of which he has sent Middleton 
 me copies- SSg, 
 
 and that is the way in which they came upon the recorded 
 correspondence at Calcutta ; Mr. Hastings not having received 
 from Mr. Middleton, but from the BOAV Begum, a copy of this 
 treaty, 
 
 " I am surprised to observe that, although the Nabob has repeatedly 
 entered into solemn engagements with her, and the name of the Com- 
 pany pledged for the performance of them, yet none of them have been 
 observed any longer than the Nabob thought proper. Such instances of 
 breach of faith bring our name as well as the Nabob's into discredit. 
 The Begum informs me that she shall rest satisfied with the last 
 engagement contracted with her by her son, to which you have set your 
 seal on the part of the Company as guarantee, provided she can be 
 assured it will be observed." 
 
 Now it is nothing to the purpose that Mr. Hastings a little 
 falsifies the matter in his communication to Mr. Middleton ; 
 because she had desired something more than an assurance 
 from Mr. Middleton that it should be well observed. But, 
 however, he confesses he had received the treaty, and he 
 sends it back by Akbar Ali Khan, who was the agent she 
 sent to Calcutta to Mr. Middleton, and adds : 
 
 " I must therefore desire that you will make use of your influence with 
 the Nabob to prevent his attempting any act contrary to these engage- 
 ments ; and that, if he should at any time so far forget himself as to 
 make it necessary, you declare to him peremptorily, in my name, and on 
 the part of the Council, that we will pay all due attention to the Begum, 
 and afford her assistance in all matters when she may have occasion to 
 require it, and which have a relation to these engagements."* 
 
 Now will any person say that this is not a complete His sanction 
 authority a sanction and approbation at least of that guarantee 
 
 inferred 
 from his 
 
 * Letter of Hastings to Middleton, dated 29th March, 1799. Printed in the letter - 
 1 Minutes of the Evidence," p. 520.
 
 522 Summiny of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNJ51788. treaty signed by Mr. Middleton on the 3d of October, 1778 ? 
 We asked Mr. Middleton the question at your Lordships' 
 bar, and he acknowledged that he did understand that it was, 
 as it is, obviously, upon the face of it, a complete, direct, 
 authority and sanction from the Governor General to a treaty 
 acknowledged to be signed and executed, and the guarantee 
 of the English pledged to it, by Mr. Middleton. Will the 
 Counsel now maintain this peremptory assertion in Mr. Hast- 
 ings' Defence that he positively denies that any guarantee 
 of any sort was ever pledged, in any respect, to the elder 
 Begum when we have proved to your Lordships that 
 almost the greater part of this treaty are stipulations on the 
 part of the elder Begum? when we have proved that 
 Mr. Middleton signed it; that it was communicated to 
 Mr. Hastings ; he approved of it, and directed Mr. Middleton 
 to conduct himself by this very treaty ? 
 
 My Lords, I am almost ashamed of making things that 
 are clear clearer than they may be ; but we come to a 
 circumstance which alone would have been sufficient to make 
 this clear to every one of your Lordships, I mean a trans- 
 action respecting Mr. Purling, in the year 1780 ; for then it 
 is, your Lordships will observe, that first the other two 
 treaties not the last treaty signed by Mr. Middleton, 
 but the engagement of Mr. Middleton to get a treaty and 
 the treaty executed by the Nawab first came to light. 
 Mr! Purling. Mr. Purling who gave a clear evidence, like a man who had 
 no foul secrets to fear disclosing, and dreaded no inquiry 
 Stfo'i ofthc Mr. Purling stated, that, in 1780, like other Residents, he was 
 treafesPror endeavouring to extort money from the Nawab. He had, 
 protection in consequence of his orders, fallen upon an expedient to tax 
 
 Of tllC , . - 1 rn . K , , r , . 1A/TTT 
 
 Begums. the jagirs. Ihe JNawab revolts at this; and Mr. Jrurlings 
 evidence is decisive as to the repugnance and reluctance the 
 Nawab showed, distinctly and particularly, to the idea of 
 taxing the jagirs of his mother and grandmother. But, 
 however, when Mr. Purling perseveres in the idea, the 
 Nawab says, as his letters prove: "You are my masters. 
 Other resources I have none. But they possess engage- 
 ments." And the agents from the Begums for Mr. Purling 
 in his last day's evidence recollects that fact the agents 
 from Fyzabad come down to Lucknow and remonstrate with 
 Mr. Purling, claiming their engagements, refusing to suffer 
 any money to be levied upon their jagirs; and the event is 
 that copies of those engagements are delivered up to 
 Mr. Purling by the Nawab's ministers. Mr. Purling acts
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 523 
 
 as an honest man must have acted upon the occasion : he 3 JUNE ms. 
 instantly dismissed all ideas from his mind of meddling with 
 that property which was to be held sacred under the faith 
 of the British guarantee. He answered immediately, that he 
 considered the treaties as binding. They were claimed as 
 binding by the Begums, admitted to be binding by the 
 Nawab, who was a party at the time^ and Mr. Purling The treaties 
 accordingly transmitted those treaties to the Council at tTthc mtted 
 Calcutta.* Council - 
 
 And now comes the fact I defy the Counsel to get over, And ac- 
 or show their face a moment in any argument against, if themfami 
 they attempt it. Mr. Hastings receives the engagement of Hastings. 
 Mr. Middleton to procure the treaty; he receives the copy 
 of the Nawab's treaty, granting all the rights to the ladies 
 and the children, never to be forgotten. What does he do ? 
 Does he write to Mr. Purling, and say, " I never heard of 
 this treaty ?" Does he deny it in his Defence " I never 
 gave any authority for it "? No ; they write word not to med- 
 dle with the jagirs ; without another comment. They don't 
 express surprise upon the subject ; but they write expressly, 
 " Restore the jagirs : there are engagements for the 
 purpose." Mr. Purling is asked where Mr. Middleten was 
 at this time. He said, " At Calcutta." Mr. Middleton is Middietou 
 asked himself. He admits it ; he could not deny it ; for AVC at uptime 
 have better evidence that he was at Calcutta at the time, ^^Jf^ 
 Does Mr. Hastings apply for any explanation of this treaty ? treaties. 
 Does he say, " How came you to execute this without my 
 authority or sanction? I am astonished to find such a 
 guarantee claimed." Not one word ! Mr. Middleton 's answer 
 is decisive that he never heard a tittle of disavowal or 
 disapproval of any part of these treaties. Nay, the very 
 day when these treaties were entered upon the records of 
 the Council, their evidence proves that Mr. Hastings was 
 consulting Mr. Middleton upon the affairs of Oude at that 
 very moment : therefore there is not the evasion that he was 
 out of the way, or it did not occur to him to make any 
 inquiry with respect to these treaties. Here it is evident 
 that it was well known to Mr. Hastings, and he would have 
 disavowed it if he had not given a sanction to it. I say this 
 proof is decisive and convincing ; and I do believe that if, 
 
 * See evidence of Charles Purling, in the " Minutes of the Evidence," &c. 
 pp. 488, et 6eqq., 827.
 
 524 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Beyums : 
 
 s JcNEj788. after this, any attempt is made to establish this doctrine 
 that, when Mr. Hastings left Calcutta in 1781, he had a 
 right to consider himself as not shackled and bound by this 
 treaty to the elder Begum, having never given notice that 
 it was not his, having never given notice to the agent who 
 executed it, or disclaimed any one part of it, it would be 
 the grossest fallacy, the wildest sort of subterfuge, that ever 
 was attempted to be maintained that, when he left Calcutta 
 the year but one after that, he did not leave it as completely 
 bound, tied and shackled, by the terms of that guarantee to 
 the elder Begum, as he was bound by the guarantee executed 
 by Mr. Middleton or Mr. Bristow to the younger Begum. 
 
 My Lords, I have now done with the subject of the 
 treaties. I thought it extremely necessary to ascertain the 
 circumstances of those treaties, in which the character of 
 British faith was so connected, before we proceeded to discuss 
 any part of the circumstances relating to the violation of 
 those engagements, Your Lordships perceive that there is 
 one treaty admitted ; and I do take the liberty of confidently 
 saying that the other is proved. 
 
 Departure I come now to the period of June or July, 1781, when 
 ings for the Mr. Hastings was about to take his departure from Calcutta, 
 Provinces, in order to proceed to the upper provinces. And here, my 
 Lords, we come to the commencement to the beginning 
 and opening of that fertile field of iniquity which followed 
 him through his progress in that course. Your Lordships 
 well know that, at this time, to the loss of the British name 
 to the disaster of the suffering people of India those 
 worthy, great and honourable men, General Clavering and 
 Colonel Monson, were no more ; that Mr. Francis, the last 
 check upon the conduct and views of Mr. Hastings, had 
 taken his departure for England ; and now, as if there was 
 a hoard and an arrear of evil in his mind which had been 
 checked and suppressed for a considerable time past, he 
 bursts forth, and proceeds to almost the whole of those 
 actions which form the matter of accusation now pending at 
 your Lordships' bar. 
 
 His meeting I pass by the business of Benares. That is already before 
 Nawab'at your Lordships, and has made that impression which I have 
 Chunar. no doubt causes the whole of that transaction to live in your 
 His accept- Lordships' memories. I come directly to his meeting; with 
 
 ance of a tr ATI T i -i * i i 
 
 gift of the IS awab at Chunar. And here your Lordships find the 
 
 1 f\i\ (\f\f\7 v 
 
 from the proper foundation laid for those actions which followed ; for 
 you find that the first act he did was to take a monstrous,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 525 
 
 corrupt, bribe from this miserable, distressed, Nawab. My 3 JUNE 17*8 
 Lords, Mr. Hastings calls this, in his Answer, a supposed prooivThat 
 bribe : but I will undertake to prove to your Lordships that {jru^.* 
 it was a bribe of the foulest sort, of the worst nature ; that 
 it was a price taken by him to sacrifice certain rights, 
 interests and advantages, of his masters, the East India 
 Company, in return to the Nawab. I conceive that the 
 circumstances which constitute the fact of receiving a bribe 
 will generally be these that there should be a mystery and 
 concealment pervading the transactions ; that there should 
 be probably some act of hypocritical purity, in order to 
 mislead inquiry and to do away any suspicion that may 
 arise respecting the transaction. If, in addition to these, 
 we consider the inability of the person who gives the 
 supposed bribe, and if we find it utterly improbable that a 
 person in his circumstances could have sacrificed any con- 
 siderable sum of money but with a view to some corrupt 
 advantage, we find additional reason to call this a corrupt 
 act either of bribery or extortion : and in that case the latter 
 case the act of the giver, which would otherwise be a foul 
 act, is lost and abated in the extortion of the receiver. 
 
 In the first place, consider the wretched situation of this The dis- 
 poor Nawab, who is represented as making this prodigal Inu 
 gift to Mr. Hastings. I will not trouble your Lordships 
 to refer to the disgusting picture which lies before you, in 
 the evidence, respecting the miserable, reduced, abject and 
 unprincely, state of Asoff-ud-Dowla, at this time and for 
 some years before. He gives himself, in a very few words, 
 which are sufficient for my purpose, a true picture of his 
 situation a picture of his situation admitted implicitly by 
 Mr. Purling to have been just and well founded recognised 
 afterwards by Mr. Middleton ; and Mr. Middleton himself 
 admits that the Nawab never was in worse or more distressed 
 circumstances than at the very time he left Lucknow to 
 proceed to join Mr. Hastings at Chunar, in September, 1781. 
 The Nawab says : 
 
 " I cannot describe the solidity of your friendship and brotherly 
 affection which subsisted between you and my late father. From the 
 friendship of the Company he received numberless advantages ; and I, 
 notwithstanding I was left an orphan, from your favour and that of the 
 Company was perfectly at ease; being satisfied that everything would be 
 well, and that I should continue in the same security that I was during 
 my father's lifetime from your protection."
 
 526 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. He then recapitulates some of his distresses, and says : 
 
 " Thanks be given to God, that I have never as yet been backward in 
 performing the will of the English Company, of the Council and of yoii, 
 and have always been from my heart ready to obey them, and have 
 never given you any trouble from my difficulties or wishes. This I have 
 done simply from my knowledge of your favour towards me, and from 
 my being certain that you would learn the particulars of my distresses 
 and difficulties from other quarters, and would then show your friendship 
 and good will in whatever was for my advantage. But when the knife 
 had penetrated to the bone, and I was surrounded with such heavy 
 distresses that I could no longer live in expectations, I then wrote an 
 account of my difficuties. The answer which I have received to it is 
 such that it has given me inexpressible grief and affliction. I never had 
 the least idea or expectation from you and the Council that you would 
 ever have given your orders in so afflicting a manner, in which you never 
 before wrote, and which I could not have imagined." 
 
 He recapitulates his miseries. He says : 
 
 " The pensions of old servants of thirty years have been stopped, the 
 expenses of my family and kitchen, together with the jagirs of my 
 grandmother, mother and aunt, and of my brother and dependants, 
 which were for their support. I had raised 1,600 horse and three 
 battalions of sepoys to attend upon me ; but, as I have no resources to 
 support them, I have been obliged to remove the people stationed in the 
 mhals, and to send his people into the mhals ; so that I have not now 
 one single servant about me. Should I mention what further difficulties 
 I have been reduced to, it would lay me open to contempt. Although 
 I have willingly assented to this, which brings such distress upon me, 
 and have in a manner altogether ruined myself, yet I failed not to do it 
 for this reason because it was for your satisfaction and that of the 
 Council."* 
 
 My Lords, I will not dwell upon this subject further ; 
 but this was the situation of the Nawab about a twelve- 
 month before Mr. Hastings met him at Chunar. His misery 
 and distress had increased. It was a twelvemonth after this 
 miserable scene a mighty period in the progress of British 
 rapacity; it was (if the Counsel will) after some natural 
 calamities had aided the superior vigour of British violence 
 and rapacity ; it was after this distress had become perfect 
 misery ; it was after the country had felt other calamities 
 besides the English ; it was after the angry dispensations of 
 Providence had, with a progressive severity of chastisement, 
 visited the land with a famine one year and with a Colonel 
 Hannay the next ; it was after he had returned to retrace 
 
 * Letter from the Nawab Wazir to Mr. Hastings, dated 24th February, 
 1780. Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 542.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan* 527 
 
 the steps of his former ravages ; it was after he and his 3 JUNE ms. 
 voracious crew had come to plunder ruins which himself had 
 made, and to glean from desolation the little that famine had 
 spared or rapine overlooked then it was that this miserable 
 bankrupt Prince, marching through his country, besieged by 
 the clamours of his starving subjects, crying to him for pro- 
 tection through their cages meeting the curses of some 
 of his subjects and the prayers of others, with famine at his 
 heels and reproach following him then it was that this 
 Prince is represented as exercising this act of prodigal 
 bounty to the very man whom he here reproaches to the 
 very man whose policy had extinguished his power, and 
 whose creatures had desolated his country. To talk of a 
 free will gift ! It is audacious and ridiculous to name the 
 supposition. It was not a free will gift. What was it then ? 
 Was it a bribe? or was it extortion? I shall prove it 
 was both. It was an act of gross bribery and of rank 
 extortion. 
 
 The first suspicious circumstance which I have mentioned Mystery of 
 respecting this transaction is the mystery and management aoo. 
 with which it was conducted. I must say to your Lordships 
 that these transactions are of that nature that it is utterly 
 impossible that you can ever have clear and direct evidence 
 upon them : it is not in the nature of such transactions that 
 you should have that sort of proofs respecting them which 
 are required to establish evidence of guilt of a different sort. 
 What mode of discovery can be looked for ? Is it expected 
 that the natives themselves will disclose that they will 
 complain ? No ; you will see through the whole of the 
 evidence, upon the whole of the records respecting these 
 transactions, that it was thought the greatest infamy, as well 
 as the greatest danger, in any one native of India ever to 
 reproach the English with having received money. Hyder 
 Beg states it as the last degree of infamy, " No man can 
 blast my character with asserting that I ever told of any 
 money I had paid any English gentleman/' Another, Raja 
 Sing, when questioned about receiving a bribe, says, " No ; 
 has not the Raja Nundcomar been hanged ? The Raja Sing 
 may meet with the same fate." No ; that foul murder for 
 no power in this land shall close my lips from giving it that 
 name that strangled every complaint ; that closed every 
 mouth in India. To disclose was to ensure persecution, but 
 to complain of it was to ensure death and destruction.
 
 528 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge- the Begums : 
 
 3JrNEi788. It is a transaction of that nature in which, if there is 
 mystery, if there is quibbling, if there is prevarication, their 
 Mr. Hast- must be guilt. Measure Mr. Hastings' conduct upon the 
 to P Mid(Ue- ce occasion by this test. When he received this money, which 
 othenTon nc savs was f r tne Public use, did he disclose it to any one 
 the subject p ersO n ? did he inform Mr. Middleton, who was acquainted 
 
 of the gift. 1 . 11 . T IT ,.,. . , 
 
 with his distresses and shared in liis anxiety, as he says, tor 
 the want of money ? Not one syllable ! Mr. Middleton 
 tells you that he never heard of this transaction till the 
 account came of it from England. Did he write word of it 
 to the Council ? Not one syllable ! He never once men- 
 tioned it ; and they never heard of it neither till it returned 
 from England. Was it that he was not in the habit of 
 making such communications to the Council? Here we have 
 direct proof that any assistance of a sum of money which he 
 did choose to avow he writes an explicit account of to the 
 Council. In that Narrative in which he invokes the God of 
 truth, in the commencement, that he will reveal the whole 
 truth and give a just state of all the transaction that passed 
 in Oude, he feels himself bound as it were to mention a 
 circumstance which is not connected, as he states, with the 
 Narrative to mention a generous assistance from one 
 Beneram Pundit. He received the whole amount in the 
 instance, and he adds " Examples of fidelity and national 
 attachment merit the first reward of being recorded." He 
 thought that this present of Beneram Pundit, for which he 
 gave a note upon the Company, merited the first reward of 
 being recorded ; but the present from the Nawab, which it 
 is clear it was never in his contemplation to confess, and he 
 himself owns his motive for doing it when he does confess it, 
 namely, that it could no longer be concealed, that which 
 was ten times the sum, did not merit the first reward of 
 being recorded. A dead silence accordingly prevails upon 
 this present his bribe of 100,0007. He never mentions it 
 His subse- till after, and then he mentions it in this way : " That 
 
 quentreport , ' , . . , . e X , 
 
 of the sift fortune had thrown in his way a sum or a magnitude not to 
 Erectors, be concealed." That is the motive he gives for avowing it 
 to the court of Directors. 
 
 Are we to presume that, when a present is so con- 
 fessed, the whole of the sum is really and truly confessed ? 
 Are we to admit as just reasoning that where something 
 is owned nothing is concealed ? If that is the doctrine, the 
 clumsiest practitioner would always confess a small sum
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan, 529 
 
 to conceal a greater. And then he gives a bribe to them 3 J UNE lyss. 
 
 to connive at the oppression and extortion of their servants. 
 
 They do not much reprimand Mr. Hastings ; for when he 
 
 does confess it, I should inform your Lordships, as you? e * skst ? 
 
 f. ', -T ,1 , V -i , f i if be allowed 
 
 perceive from the evidence, that he asks it for himself: to retain it 
 he says he has been so many years in the service, that 
 his fortune is not yet made, and he wishes to owe it to their 
 bounty. After four months' concealment never mention- 
 ing it or giving a hint that he received such assistance from 
 the Nawab he at last owns it, because he says it could no 
 longer be concealed, and then asks it of the Company. He 
 leaves out the distresses of Oude. He owns he did not go to 
 share the prodigal festivity of the court of Lucknow, but to 
 remedy by personal investigation the abuses which then 
 existed. The first thing he does is, he leaves Calcutta in 
 order to go to the relief of the distressed Nawab. The 
 second thing he does is, to take 100,0007. from that distressed 
 Nawab, on account of the distressed Company. And the 
 third thing is, to ask of the distressed Company this sum on 
 account of the distresses of Mr. Hastings. There never 
 were three distresses that seemed so little reconcilable with 
 one another. 
 
 Though the Directors don't reprimand him much for The money 
 taking the money, they don't choose to comply with his theD^ 1 by 
 request. They shake their heads at his having received the rectors - 
 money at all ; but they say, inasmuch as he has applied it to 
 their purpose it is very well, and desire that the money may 
 be so applied and be strictly abided by. No man can defend 
 the conduct of the Directors in this transaction. They knew 
 the distresses of the Nawab, and that he owed them an 
 immense sum at this time : therefore the honest thing would 
 have been to have had that sum wrote off his debt to the 
 Company. 
 
 There is only one ground of defence for the Directors 
 that, knowing the condition of the Nawab, they must have 
 had a conviction that Mr. Hastings must have sold some 
 right of theirs to the Nawab for this money. Nothing but 
 a confidence in the treachery of the Governor General could 
 afford anything like a plea. And in this they don't afford a 
 plea for the Nawab ; for no part of Mr. Hastings' past con- 
 duct would justify the supposition that he meant to keep his 
 word. However, Mr. Hastings is to account for his having 
 concealed it : he avows that he owned it onl}^ because it 
 could no longer be concealed. When he accounts for it, he 
 
 L L
 
 530 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge tlce Begums 
 
 3 JOXE i78s. owns the present was not paid in money but in bills upon 
 
 statement Gopaul Doss, a rich banker at Benares, who was then a 
 
 in M tiia* ast " P r i soner m the hands of Chey t Sing ; therefore the money 
 
 the money was of no use to him, for he was then writing, in January. 
 
 atthetimt " It has now been but in part, and that tardily, realized." 
 
 Here seems something of a reason for his having concealed 
 
 it ; though not certainly a reason for his having taken it : 
 
 for these must stand in opposition to one another. 
 
 We come to Major Scott's evidence upon this subject. 
 Major Scott is asked, " How came Mr. Hastings to take this 
 money under pretence of paying the troops, when Gopaul 
 Doss, being a prisoner in the hands of Cheyt Sing, he could 
 make no use of it, and therefore it was no present advantage 
 Contra- to him ?" " Oh," says he, " Gopaul Doss is but one in a 
 Major Scott, great house, and the bills were equally good. It is a house 
 worth a million of money." So here Mr. Hastings first con- 
 tradicts himself and then Major Scott contradicts him ; for 
 Mr. Hastings' justification for having concealed the present 
 destroys his justification for having taken it, and Major 
 Scott, in order to give a good reason for his having taken it, 
 destroys the only reason for having concealed it. This ever 
 will be the case upon such transactions. Perhaps Major 
 Scott did not know that Gopaul Doss at that time was a 
 prisoner. Taking Mr. Hastings' account of the transaction 
 that the bills were of no use against Major Scott's surmise 
 upon the occasion, will not do ; for here we have it in proof 
 that, before this, he assigns the very same reason the bills 
 being of no use to him because Beneram Pundit, from whom 
 he had the money before, had given him bills upon Gopaul 
 Doss, and then Gopaul Doss was a prisoner in the hands of 
 Cheyt Sing. Therefore he was perfectly aware, previous to 
 receiving this money, that it could answer no temporary 
 exigency. 
 
 His omis- At last, an account is to be had of this present ; and this 
 an accomrt ! it is expected no doubt will clear up whatever before appears 
 action for" 8 " suspicious in the transaction. Unluckily, however, no ac- 
 
 a twelve- count upon the subiect leaves India till a twelvemonth after- 
 month. , TT . J , T . . 
 
 wards. He writes a letter in January, giving the first 
 
 account of his having received the sum. He promises a 
 specific account of the manner in which it was taken, the 
 purpose and application of it, to be sent immediately ; and 
 he omits performing that promise till a twelvemonth after- 
 wards. However there appears at last testimony that it was 
 owing to a number of accidents that the letter, which did not
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 531 
 
 leave India till January, had in fact been written in May ; 3 Jp^i78 
 but a number of accidents happened that there was no 
 getting this letter from shore. At one time it happened that 
 the ship was not well enough manned to carry it. However 
 a variety of circumstances made it impossible to ship this 
 letter till eight months after it was written. Notwithstand- 
 ing the constant intercourse your Lordships have heard, 
 every fortnight, between Major Scott and Mr. Hastings 
 overland, there appeared no possibility of getting this letter 
 from shore till eight months after it was written. But, when 
 it does come, it comes with a voucher (which will be 
 examined when we come to the charge of presents) that it 
 was written in May ; because Mr. Hastings was aware that 
 the delay of the letter did subject him to an odd sort of sus- 
 picion upon the circumstance ; that there happened to have 
 been Committees of the House of Commons, and notice gone 
 to India that there was a cry after this letter. Those busy 
 fellows that the Counsel have made objection to those 
 busy fellows that have the boldness to feel for miseries in 
 which they don't share, and resent injuries of which they 
 have not been themselves the victims had got scent of this 
 present at the time. 
 
 The account at last comes from India ; and here, instead Contradic- 
 of finding anything that clears the subject, we find the mys- previous 
 tery thicken through every part of it. In the first place, we statements 
 find that the money was not given by the Nawab ; for it is the P gfft. ns 
 stated by Mr. Hastings that, though the ministers are men- 
 tioned, the sum was actually coming from the Nawab's 
 treasury; for it was three different presents a certain sum 
 from the Nawab ; a certain sum from Hussein Reza Khan ; 
 and a certain sum from Hyder Beg Khan. 
 
 Next, we find it was not all given to Mr. Hastings, 
 but an article of 10,OOOZ. to Mrs. Hastings. And here I 
 am glad to have an opportunity of clearing her from that 
 circumstance, or any lady; the fact being that she was never 
 at Chunar. She never did see Hyder Beg or Hussein Reza 
 Khan ; therefore in that transaction there must be some 
 blunder, either on the part of Mr. Hastings or of the 
 account. 
 
 The next thing is, that it could not be given in bills upon 
 Gopaul Doss, but must be given in cash. You see by the 
 batta that that must have been the fact, and that there is a 
 suspicious and remarkable coincidence of circumstances with 
 respect to the coins in which at last it was received and the 
 treasures which were dug out of the houses of the Begums' 
 
 L L 2
 
 532 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums; 
 
 s JUNE 1788. eunuchs. So here at last, when the account of the present 
 does come, we find it was not given by the persons by whom 
 it is said it was given ; not paid to the persons to whom it is 
 said to be paid ; not received in the way stated ; and there 
 is no proof that it was ever applied to the objects to which it 
 is said to have been applied. These are the circumstances 
 attending a transaction in which I contend that, if there is 
 mystery or equivocation of any sort, there must be guilt; 
 because a plain man, meaning honesty, however he might 
 think himself authorised, upon circumstances of great public 
 necessity, to receive a sum of money, would take care that 
 the circumstances should stand clear ; that it should be 
 avowed at the moment ; and that there should be no room 
 for suspicion on any part of the transaction whenever he did 
 choose to avow it. 
 
 We produced evidence to your Lordships which seemed a 
 little remarkable in another point of view, namely, the time 
 in which this present was received, which was a few days 
 after Mr. Middleton began to be in the receipt of money at 
 Fyzabad. Now, admitting that Gopaul Doss was the person 
 through whose hands this business was transacted, we also 
 find these suspicious circumstances. We find in Mr. Middle- 
 ton's letter-book a letter from Mr. Hastings recommending 
 Gopaul Doss to Mr. Middleton, just at the time of his receiv- 
 ing the money from the Begum's treasuries. We also find 
 Mr. Middleton's acknowledgment and determined attention 
 to the wishes of Mr. Hastings. With respect to Gopaul 
 Doss, there does appear also another odd circumstance that 
 here is a relation of Gopaul Doss at Fyzabad who has been 
 ill-used by Behar Ali Khan, and Mr. Middleton has informed 
 Mr. Hastings that he has released this man ; and, this man 
 having an account to settle with Behar Ali Khan, he would 
 take care to see that settled. So here is this present con- 
 cealed, as if it were treason, felony, and everything abomina- 
 ble, for four months, coming to light at last when it can be 
 no longer concealed confessed when the money began to be 
 received. We find then a recommendation of the very man 
 upon whom Mr. Hastings states the bills were drawn. We 
 find Mr. Middleton avowing a relation of Gopaul Doss having 
 an account with Behar Ali Khan. And, to crown all, we 
 find Mr. Middleton, when leaving the residency, informing 
 Mr. Bristow that a part of the balance remaining had been 
 made over as a security to this Gopaul Doss. 
 
 When your Lordships take into consideration the whole 
 circumstances respecting this transaction, when you consider 
 
 Suspicious 
 circum- 
 stances in 
 reference 
 to Gopaul 
 Doss, the 
 banker.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 533 
 
 the mystery and concealment of it, when you consider the 3 JUNE ins 
 various false pretences for delaying an account of it, when 
 you consider the false accounts of it when it came, without 
 alluding to the suspicious circumstances of its being a 
 draught upon the treasure of the Begums, the result of the 
 whole is that it is a foul transaction, and that the probability 
 is that it Avas intended at the moment to be a part of his 
 share of the plunder of those women who were then devoted 
 to destruction. 
 
 My Lords, I have dwelt the longer upon this transaction Motives of 
 of the present in order to show your Lordships what I con- 
 
 ceive to have been the true source and origin of those wicked of state 
 
 T , , . -. necessity, 
 
 transactions. 1 want to strip the crimes which we charge 
 upon this man of all that false glare which, in the eyes of 
 weak and timid men, dazzle and produce a sort of false 
 respect to guilt. I want to strip them of everything that can 
 give dignity to crimes. I want to show your Lordships the 
 coarse and homely nature of his offences. State necessity ! 
 No, my Lords : that imperial tyrant, state necessity, is yet a 
 generous despot. Bold is his demeanour, rapid his decisions, 
 and terrible his grasp. But what he does, my Lords, he 
 dares avow, and, avowing, scorns any other justification than 
 the great motives that placed the iron sceptre in his hand. 
 But a skulking, quibbling, pilfering, prevaricating, state 
 necessity a state necessity that tries to skulk behind the 
 skirts of justice a state necessity that tries to steal a pitiful 
 justification from whispered accusations and fabricated ru- 
 mours ! No, rny Lords ; that is no state necessity. Tear off 
 the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar, avarice private pecu- 
 lation lurking under the gaudy disguise, and adding the 
 guilt of libelling the public honour to the fraud of private 
 peculation. 
 
 My Lords, I say this because I am sure the Managers 
 would make every allowance that state necessity could 
 claim upon any great emergency. If any great man, 
 in bearing the arms of this country if any admiral, 
 bearing the vengeance and the glory of Britain to distant 
 coasts should be compelled to some rash acts of violence, 
 in order perhaps to give food to those who are shedding 
 their blood for Britain* if any great general, defending 
 some fortress, barren itself perhaps, but a pledge of the 
 pride, and, with the pride, of the power, of Britain if such 
 a man were to ...... while he himself was ...... 
 
 * Alluding to Lord Hood's argument in defence of Mr. Hastings. See note 
 at p. 449.
 
 534 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums ; 
 
 The treaty 
 of Chunar. 
 
 Nonob- 
 servance of 
 its con- 
 ditions. 
 
 3 JUITE 1788. at the top, like an eagle besieged in its imperial nest, 
 would the Commons of England come to accuse or to 
 arraign such acts of state necessity ? No ! But what would 
 be the answer of such men, but this, They did it : there 
 was the motive of their conduct, and by that they would 
 abide. They would scorn any man that should whisper it 
 to them to endeavour to aid or prove their defence by 
 miserable accusations by blending it with vindictive 
 justice; because they would know that real, honourable, 
 state necessity would be as jealous of blending its justifi- 
 cation with any claim or any plea of justice, as justice 
 herself would be jealous and disdainful of suffering any 
 plea of necessity to weigh one scruple in the balance of 
 her decisions. I state this, not that that plea is resorted 
 to here ; because I also say that, if that plea should at last 
 be resorted to, we -will then show your Lordships, first, 
 that no real state necessity existed ; next, that no real state 
 necessity was answered ; and then, if any had existed and 
 was answered, that it might have been answered by means 
 less iniquitous, and simply by his abstaining from his own 
 corrupt patronage and extortion. 
 
 Having, as I conceive, given your Lordships what you 
 will find to be a just and true clue to many of the transac- 
 tions which follow, I come come now to speak of the 
 celebrated treaty of Chunar. 
 
 My Lords, I am sure it is in your Lordships' recollection 
 the manner in which a question was put to Mr. Middleton 
 upon this subject, 1 took the treaty and laid it under his 
 eye at your Lordships' bar ; and I asked him to point me 
 out any one article of it that had been kept. Mr. Middleton 
 stammered and faltered, and said he must recur to his papers 
 and to his records. I then asked him if the only article 
 which had been carried into effect was not that part signed 
 by the Nawab, and which he had given him a solemn engage- 
 ment never should be carried into execution. Mr. Middleton 
 stammered and faultered again: the Counsel covered his 
 retreat. I did not press the examination : I thought your 
 Lordships felt the conclusion. I say positively that there 
 never was such a mass of fraud in so small a compass since 
 the world began ; that there was not one article kept ; that, 
 it consisting of five engagements made to the Nawab, they 
 broke them every one ; and that the single article that was 
 carried into execution was that which they prevailed upon 
 him to sign under a solemn promise that it should never take 
 effect, Mr. Middleton, however, agreeable to that character
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 535 
 
 your Lordships early heard of him, writing to Mr. Hastings, 3 JP5g 178S - 
 says he will model his public correspondence to Mr. Hast- 
 ings' mind ; he is ready to take the blame of every transac- 
 tion ; that, God willing, he will execute everything he 
 is desired. Mr. Middleton, in that spirit of agency he ^j^n* 
 seems in some degree to have brought over with him that he had 
 to this country, says, it is true he did engage the Nawab t<?makethc y 
 by making that promise, but he had no authority so to treaty; 
 do. I beg your Lordships will recollect that examination. 
 
 The treaty was to be signed upon the 19th of September; 
 the articles are settled ; and, just as he is going to sign it, 
 Mr. Middleton takes the Nawab and his ministers into the 
 corner of the room, and uses these arguments to induce the 
 Nawab to sign his part of it. He is asked, " Did not you an d th at 
 tell Mr. Hastings before or afterwards ?" " No, not one ings wS not 
 Avord." " Did not Mr. Hastings hear ? where were you ?" ir rmed 
 " In a small room. Mr. Hastings was about other business. 
 He was talking to company : and really he had never 
 informed him of the transaction at all." He states that he 
 left Chunar the next day, and that in the hurry, being a 
 thoughtless, careless man, he packed up originals, copies, 
 and everything else, of these treaties, and carried them oft' 
 with him. Your Lordships must observe (it Avas observed Proof to the 
 by a noble and learned Lord) that, four days afterwards, 
 Mr. Hastings writes to Mr. Middleton, and states he enclosed 
 a copy of this very treaty, of Avhich Mr. Middleton said he 
 carried off copies, originals and all. I shall show your 
 Lordships that Mr. Hastings was no man's dupe \vas no 
 Avay imposed upon ; but Avas the source and origin of all 
 the fraud throughout. I shall shoAV your Lordships that 
 Mr. Hastings, after sending a copy to Mr. Middleton, Avrites 
 to Mr. Middleton for a copy for himself; that he Avas in great 
 anxiety to send an account of this to Calcutta. 
 
 This treaty of Chunar is represented by Mr Hastings as ? Ir - Host- 
 having been made in the hour of warm gratitude to the to the 
 Nawab ; and he says he gave the most unqualified assent rea y ' 
 to every article, penetrated Avith gratitude for the recent 
 instance of his attachment to the Company : his heart Avas 
 open, and he gave his unqualified assent to every one of the 
 articles. The object of the treaty seems curious enough. Object of 
 The first article in it for I shall only mention those Avhich 
 are connected Avith my present object, and Avith the plea of 
 state necessity and the rebellion is, that AVC should with- 
 draw the temporary brigade and three regiments of cavalry, troops.
 
 536 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 . 
 16 
 
 Rocallin; 
 
 from Fur- 
 ruckabad. 
 
 This was at the time when this rebellion was supposed to 
 be raging, and the whole country to be actuated by insur- 
 rection and disaffection, in consequence of the machinations 
 of these Begums. The next stipulation is : 
 
 Resumption " That, as great distress has arisen to the Nabob's government from 
 ' s the military power and dominion assumed by the Jaghiredars, he be per- 
 
 mitted to resume such as he may find necessary ; with a reserve that all 
 such for the amount of whose jaghires the Company are guarantees shall, 
 in the case of the resumption of their lands, be paid the amount of their 
 nett collection through the Resident in ready money." 
 
 The third relates to Fyzula Khan, of which I shall take 
 no notice. The fourth relates to the recalling the English 
 Resident from Furruckabad. Here the Nawab seems per- 
 fectly to understand to what the distresses of his country 
 were owing. But what is more material and this is 
 admitted by Mr. Hastings the plea urged by Mr. Hastings, 
 your Lordships recollect, for this extraordinary expedition 
 was, by a minute and personal investigation into the affairs 
 of Oude, to remedy the distresses of the Prince and the 
 difficulties of the country. He meets the Nawab at Chunar. 
 I will grant he was in an embarrassed situation, and he 
 could not pursue his intended plan. Mr. Hastings abandons 
 his original plan. All this minute and personal investigation 
 is laid aside : the Nawab and he settle it in three words. 
 The Nawab says : 
 
 " I know my country is distressed. If you wish to grant me a remedy, 
 at once sweep your countrymen out of my land. If you are my friend 
 and wish me to be faithfully served, take away your own creatures from 
 my court. If you would grant me protection, withdraw your arms." 
 
 The propositions are sensible ; they go to the root of the 
 evil, on the part of the Nawab ; and Mr. Hastings not only 
 admits their justice, but makes a comment upon them, which 
 your Lordships will find will be a full justification of many 
 assertions we shall make in the course of this proceeding. 
 He says : 
 
 " With respect to the removal of the Company's servants, civil and 
 military, from the court and service of the Vizier, I was actuated solely 
 by motives of justice to him, and a regard to the honour of our national 
 character. In removing those gentlemen I diminish my own influence 
 as well as that of my colleagues, by narrowing the line of patronage ; 
 and I expose myself to obloquy and resentment from those who are 
 immediately affected by the arrangement, and the long train of their 
 friends and powerful patrons." 
 
 Your Lordships will observe the character and draw the 
 conclusion with respect to the effects of the conduct of these 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings' ad- 
 missions 
 of the Com- 
 pany's offi- 
 cers being a 
 burden on 
 the Nawab.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 537 
 
 gentlemen, as described by Mr. Hastings ; for I am not their 3 JU>-E ITSS. 
 libeller, nor should I think myself at any time warranted to 
 have dealt in such general reflections ; but 
 
 " Their numbers, their influence, and the enormous amount of their 
 salaries, pensions and emoluments, were an intolerable burden on the 
 revenues and authority of the Vizier, and exposed us to the envy and 
 resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants 
 and adherents of the Vizier from the rewards of their services and 
 attachment." 
 
 Here is certainly a just cause given to remove them. Your Hispre- 
 Lordships will think it extraordinary that, in a letter I read fusai to 
 upon a former occasion, the Nawab had applied for relief, f them! 1 " 
 and had wished for this very remedy of removing the British 
 army and the British gentlemen. It was then refused in 
 terms of insult ; but now, since this bribe was given, it is 
 granted. Your Lordships will recollect Mr. Middleton says, 
 he had induced the Nawab to sign his part of the treaty, 
 in order that Mr. Hastings might have something to show 
 in return ; because it was not his interest or intention to 
 show the real cause for granting it at the time that is, this 
 bribe. AVhatever was his motive, corrupt or otherwise, the 
 action was good. Do you believe for a moment he ever His inten- 
 meant to do it ? No such thing ! Look to Mr. Middleton's 
 evidence upon this occasion. I have it not, in print here ; 
 but I shall quote it accurately from memory, and it must 
 have left an impression upon your Lordships at the time. 
 When asked as to the private orders he had from Mr. Hast- 
 
 1 i ,1 -VT i > -i- L evidence. 
 
 ings to place people upon the JN awab s list as to pensions, 
 &c., he first said it would criminate himself, and therefore 
 refused to answer the question : he trembled at the idea of 
 criminating himself. Your Lordships paused a moment : 
 you told him he must answer it. And here it appeared that 
 his horror of making the confession had destroyed all idea of 
 the fact had deprived him of all recollection of it. How- 
 ever, he does at last recollect the fact ; he says, " Not orders 
 from Mr. Hastings ? by no means ; but recommendations I 
 did to be sure receive, I believe." Your Lordships know 
 what the recommendations of Mr. Hastings, either to 
 Mr. Middleton or the Nawab, mean. So here your Lordships 
 see that, at the very moment he had received a bribe from 
 the Nawab, when he had made him buy indemnity from 
 future extortion, when he had made a solemn covenant 
 with him to remove those people that excited the envy and 
 resentment of the whole country, at that very moment, he
 
 538 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUHE 1788. 
 
 Affected ' 
 surprise of 
 Mr. Hast-, 
 ings at the 
 non-execu- 
 tion of the 
 engagement. 
 
 Letter of the 
 Nawab, 
 showing the 
 English had 
 riot been 
 removed. 
 
 AVritten 
 some years 
 aCtcr the 
 treaty. 
 
 provides for the continuance of all he should think proper. 
 But what makes it the more extraordinary is, the ostenta- 
 tious remark Mr. Hastings makes afterwards upon his own 
 conduct on this occasion. He says, "I have spared no friends 
 of my own." Instantly, as he made this lofty, Roman-like, 
 declaration, Mr. Middleton no doubt standing astonished at 
 his heroism and disinterestedness, and knowing nothing of 
 the secret of the 100,0007. as your Lordships recollect, the 
 instant he has done this, turning to Mr. Middleton, " Go, 
 sweep these people out of the country ; they take money 
 take presents from the Nawab ; they are an intolerable bur- 
 den upon his revenues ; I am distressed at hearing of it ; my 
 purity will not suffer it any longer. Turn them out of the 
 country." But, before Mr. Middleton can ask an explana- 
 tion of the cause of this disinterestedness, he puts a private 
 paper into his hand, a list of persons to continue. He says 
 he spares no friend nor friend's friend, in this very Narrative, 
 written under a solemn appeal to the very God of truth for 
 the truth of every word of it. At the moment he is taking 
 credit for this act of disinterestedness, he is taking means to 
 have the whole of this fraudulent and secret patronage to 
 himself, which was before divided with Sir Eyre Coote and 
 others. 
 
 I am aware there do appear letters of Mr. Hastings in 
 which he calls aloud to Mr. Middleton to know why this part 
 of the treaty had not been executed, and expresses his sur- 
 prise to hear the gentlemen were still in the country : but 
 will any person who has seen the purport of private and pub- 
 lic letters of Mr. Hastings pay any credit to these ? What 
 could be more solemn than the treaty itself? Where could 
 there be a more clear, decided, engagement to remove every 
 person but the Resident's office ? And yet, by the testi- 
 mony of that very Resident, you learn that at that very 
 moment he was providing for and protecting his own crea- 
 tures, which amounted to almost all that he chose to save 
 from this general proscription. 
 
 As a proof that Mr. Hastings never had performed his part 
 of this treaty, and that the persons still swarmed at the 
 Nawab's court, and still remained that heavy and intolerable 
 burden which Mr. Hastings states them to have been, we 
 read a letter which I did not intend afterwards to have taken 
 notice of, but from an observation of the learned Counsel I 
 mean a letter some years afterwards, in which the Nawab 
 still complains of the number and the weight of these gentle-
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 539 
 
 men upon his finances. The Counsel begged your Lordships 3 Jpini _ 1788 - 
 to observe that this letter was written after Mr. Hastings had 
 left Luckiiow the second time, and was on the point of re- 
 turning to England. I thanked them for the observation. I 
 wished your Lordships to observe that very circumstance 
 that this letter was not written at the time or soon after 
 the treaty of Chunar, but that it was written after 
 Mr. Hastings had continued some years afterwards in the 
 government, and shows that there had never been any 
 serious attempt made to carry that part of the treaty into 
 execution. 
 
 The Wazir mentions the circumstance in a manner at once 
 touching and in some degree diverting too. He writes to the 
 Governor General : 
 
 " 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' 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 at 
 Calcutta, he would consult with the Council, and remove from hence 
 the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every person except the gentle- 
 men 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 accord- 
 ing to Mr. Hastings' agreement, I hope that the expenses of the gentle- 
 men may be 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 gentle- 
 men is, when they remain here, they will in the end ask for something. 
 This is best, that they should be recalled."* 
 
 I thank the Counsel for reminding me to observe to your 
 Lordships that this letter was not written immediately after 
 the treaty of Chunar ; that it was not written when Mr. Hast- 
 ings, under the pressure of great business, possibly might not 
 have had it in his power to enforce an execution of that 
 treaty ; that it was written when it was so easily in his 
 power to iiproot these gentlemen, who no doubt shot deep 
 in the luxuriant soil of Oude, and disliked removal to the 
 more barren soil of Bengal ; that it was after he had paid a 
 second visit to the Wazir ; after he had had a second per- 
 sonal interview which was the way he liked to do his 
 business in that country ; I will not say after he had a second 
 bribe, because I will not say what I cannot prove ; but it 
 
 * Letter from the Nawab to Mr. M'Pherson; received 21st April, 1785. 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 544.
 
 540 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 a JusEi788. was after he had entered into a second solemn engagement 
 to remove them out of the country. Here we find they 
 ,were left as heavy a weight upon the Nawab as ever left 
 there with as keen an appetite though not so clamorous. 
 They were reclining on the roots and shades of that spacious 
 tree which their predecessors had stripped branch and 
 bough, watching with eager eyes the first budding of the 
 future prosperity and of the opening harvest which they con- 
 sidered as the prey of their perseverance and rapacity. We 
 find these gentlemen, years after the solemn engagement 
 with the Nawab, left in Oude : and undoubtedly, according 
 to the idea which the Nawab seemed to have had of the 
 qualifications necessary to gentlemen in his country, having 
 given that great present to Mr. Hastings, he must have con- 
 sidered him undoubtedly as the finest gentleman of the whole 
 crew. But this is a fact, that no attempt was made to exe- 
 cute this material part of the treaty which the Nawab had 
 paid for and Mr. Hastings had himself accepted the price of. 
 Upon the subject of removing the army Mr. Hastings also 
 gives a reason which is extremely material. I would first 
 however observe, that [with respect to] the enormous amount, 
 as Mr. Hastings states, of the emoluments and pensions of 
 these gentlemen, supposing a great state necessity had then 
 existed (but none existed, for they had heard of the Mahratta 
 peace and the success in the Carnatic), but I mean the 
 necessity of troops [money ?] if he' had removed that by 
 withdrawing the troops, the end might have been answered 
 without the iniquitous transaction of plundering these 
 Begums. 
 
 illgs'^mis- Mr. Hastings gives this reason for removing the army : 
 
 sion of 
 
 rapacity of " The remote stations of those troops, placing the commanding 
 
 army m officer beyond the notice and control of the Board, afforded too much 
 
 Oude. opportunity and temptation for unwarrantable emoluments, and excited 
 
 the contagion of peculation and rapacity throughout the whole army. 
 
 A most remarkable and uncontrovertible proof has been seen of this in 
 
 the court-martial upon Captain Erskine, where the court, composed of 
 
 officers of rank and respectable characters, unanimously and honourably 
 
 most honourably acquitted him upon an acknowledged fact which, 
 
 in times of stricter discipline, would have been deemed a crime deserving 
 
 the severest punishment." 
 
 I am not the libeller of the British army here ; but I do 
 claim a right to have the advantage of these arguments 
 against Mr. Hastings, and against the false pretences he 
 afterwards sets up in order to account for the insurrections 
 and the disaffection of that country. Your Lordships per- 
 ceive here that he states that such a rage of peculation and
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 541 
 
 rapacity had 'pervaded the whole of the army that even 3 JUNE 1788. 
 actions are called most honourable which ought to be 
 punished Avith death ; and this he gives as a reason for* 
 withdrawing the British army out of Oude. I shall only 
 remind him of that argument when he comes to lay before 
 your Lordships false reasons for the discontent and hatred 
 of the natives to the British name in that country. 
 
 With regard to the other articles of the treaty, it is only t l . ier 
 
 ,Y, . i -r T i . , * n articles of 
 
 sufficient to show your .Lordships that they were not one or the treaty 
 them kept. The NaAvab was to resume his right there he 
 slipped in the words " when time shall suit " : ' by Avhich," 
 he says, " I mean, never :" and with respect to the Nawab 
 of Furruckabad, he admits he broke the whole he stipulated 
 with the Nawab concerning him, and that the Nawab was 
 vexed and dissatisfied with him upon that account. 
 
 With regard to this most material article of it the 
 resumption of the jagirs your Lordships will perceive that, 
 in the second article, there is not one syllable said of re- 
 suming the treasures. It is only stipulated that if the stipulation 
 jagirs were resumed from any persons who have the British theNawa'b 
 guarantee, they should be intitled to a full equivalent. thc C |aSrl 
 Mr. Hastings asserts that the Nawab himself had in view 
 only the resumption of the jagirs of his mother. And now 
 I wish your Lordships to attend to that spirit of fair dealing 
 and that good faith with which Mr. Hastings deals in his 
 political negotiations. Mr. Hastings' account of himself 
 upon this subject is : " My political conduct was invariabty 
 regulated by truth, justice and good faith." He says, " truth 
 and plain dealing are all the arts I ever used in my political 
 negociations." 
 
 Now I wish your Lordships to observe his own account Mr.Hast- 
 of this one article the second article respecting the counter the 
 resumption of the jagirs. The Nawab's stipulation is plain engagement, 
 and clear, that he should be permitted to resume such of 
 the jagirs as he should judge proper : and hereafter a great 
 deal, your Lordships will observe, will turn upon the con- 
 struction of that article ; if it can be supposed in the mind 
 of any person, but Mr. Hastings, to admit a doubt of what 
 the Nawab's meaning was when they signed that article. 
 Mr. Hastings' observation in his Defence upon that article 
 is this : 
 
 " When the Nabob so earnestly desired my sanction for the resump- 
 tion of the jaghires he certainly had in view only the Begums and a few 
 others of magnitude, which he considered protected either by the 
 guarantee or favour of the Company. He could not be supposed to ask
 
 542 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1789. my sanction to the resumption of grants in which the Company's faith 
 " was by no means concerned ; but " 
 
 here comes his good faith, simplicity and plain dealing 
 
 " being aware that his Excellency intended a partial resumption, reserv- 
 ing the jaghires for his particular favourites, who from their character 
 and conduct ought to have been the first proscribed, I determined to 
 defeat the design " 
 
 This is the unqualified manner in which in the hour of 
 gratitude he gave his consent to the Nawab's requisition 
 " by advising him to make the resumption general : and he engaged to 
 follow my advice." 
 
 Here your Lordships are to believe that the Nawab, 
 against the letter and spirit of a written agreement, made a 
 
 i* t -i 
 
 verbal codicil or comment contradicting the whole tenor 
 of the written engagement : 
 
 " He engaged to follow my advice. The consequence of this his 
 Excellency did not at the time advert to ; but, when he discovered that, 
 by the spirit of the agreement and my determined adherence to it, he 
 was precluded from showing any partiality, and moreover that the pro- 
 duce of the jaghires when resumed, instead of coming immediately into 
 his possession, was to be appropriated to the liquidation of his debt to 
 the Company, for which I expressly stipulated, he became indifferent and 
 even apparently averse to the resumption." 
 
 His deceit- Now, my Lords, are we to believe Mr. Hastings upon 
 ti" 8 subject ? Js it possible that, at the moment his heart 
 wag O p en ^ when he was influenced, he says, by gratitude for 
 the recent and extraordinary attachment of this man is it 
 possible that he was really duping so poor an idiot ; that, 
 when he drew him in to make a promise, the effect of which 
 he owns he did not see that, when he proposed to resume 
 all the jagirs that he did not see that he could spare 
 ought he was duping a man so poor in understanding as 
 this Nawab, who had conferred such a recent obligation 
 upon him ? But, if he was, what are you to infer of the 
 good faith of Mr. Hastings, who drew him into a promise, 
 the effect of which he did not see at the time, and after- 
 wards, when he did see it, he says " I peremptorily insisted 
 upon his performance ?" This is the good faith of that man 
 the conduct of him whose declarations are, that truth 
 and plain dealing are all the acts he ever used in his 
 political negotiations. Upon my word, it would be matter 
 of curious speculation to consider what sort of treaty 
 Mr. Hastings would make when you come to him in the hour 
 of cool and crafty policy, if this was his conduct when his 
 heart was open. I should say of such a man " Let me 
 deal with him at any time but when his heart is open ; let 
 me come to him when his hardened heart is [closed?], but
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 543 
 
 rescue me from tlic effusions of his generosity. Let me come 3 JU>-E m 
 to him at any other time but when his heart is open ; for it 
 was in that hour when this treaty was made a treaty which, 
 I will venture to say, outmatches all the records of all the 
 recorded negotiations of the world a treaty commenced 
 in corruption, conducted by fraud and concluded by vio- 
 lence. 
 
 Such is the end and such the history of these fair deal- 
 ings of this upright man with respect to the Nawab and the 
 treaty at Chunar. After he had concluded this treaty he 
 parts with the Nawab. And now just as it occurs to 
 me with respect to that part of the treaty which they 
 engaged the Nawab to sign, upon a solemn promise that it 
 should never be carried into execution. Your Lordships, I 
 am sure, recollect the examination upon that head. It 
 seemed extraordinary that Mr. Hastings should want any- 
 thing in return from the Nawab ; for though he had sold 
 him the terms, he had sold him nothing but what justice 
 required him to have granted. However, as Mr. Middleton 
 says, it was necessary he should have something to show. 
 The purport of the article drawn from the Nawab is neither Enggement 
 more or less than this that he should surrender up to the wabto Na 
 British Resident completely the management of his treasury, thesf- r to 
 and, with that, the care of the whole management of his demthe 
 
 XT i c / -11 i i mangc- 
 
 COUlltry. JNow, upon the lace or it, it is impossible that the mecofhis 
 
 Nawab, who is buying the army and buying the English tr 
 out of his country who is stipulating for freedom should 
 knowingly sign a compact which would fasten his fetters 
 and give him slavery instead of freedom : that, upon the 
 face of it, is impossible. However, Mr. Hastings' reasoning 
 upon the subject seems to be this that, when he found a 
 prince, like the Nawab, who could be, in the first place, so 
 extravagant as to make him such a present, and, in the next 
 place, so weak as to expect he would keep the terms to 
 which he was bribed, such a man was not fit to have the 
 management of his treasures ; such a man could not have 
 his vassalage too much confirmed ; and therefore he draws 
 this covenant from him, which defeats every part of the 
 spirit and letter of the rest of the treaty. But Mr. Middle- 
 ton says he had no orders from Mr. Hastings to make that 
 promise. He cannot escape so ; because, if your Lordships 
 observe, Mr. Middleton. in this celebrated public letter, and
 
 544 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 x XE 1788. in his private letter accompanying it,* in both of these 
 
 states, 
 
 Mr. middle- " Though I do assure you I myself represented to his Excellency 
 "to an( ^ * ne niinisters, conceiving it to be your desire, that the apparent 
 assumption of the reins of his government for in that light he un- 
 
 V\vab 
 
 enpXent doubtedly considered it at the first 
 
 pvppiifpH Viv liim iva<j nnt. mpanf, tn 
 
 vew as specified in the agreement 
 
 was ntt to executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally inforced ; but 
 be ennrced. that it was necessary you should have something to show on your side, 
 as the Company were deprived of a benefit without a requital ; and 
 upon the faith of this assurance alone, I believe I may safely affirm, 
 his Excellency's objections to signing the treaty were given up." 
 
 That is in his private and confidential letter. This might 
 have been a confidential communication, and the fact might 
 have been that he had not instructions from Mr. Hastings ; 
 but in this public letter he says, 
 
 " I conceived your interference in the Nawab's government tended 
 solely to establish the means of the most speedy payment possible for 
 the Company's debt; and that, whenever this should be accomplished, 
 every shadow of interference was to be desisted from ; which I stated 
 to the Nabob and the ministers, and I believe upon the faith of this 
 assurance principally was his Excellency's acquiescence obtained." 
 
 I don't mean to say he had direct instructions from 
 Mr. Hastings ; that he told him to go and give that fallacious 
 assurance to the Nawab ; that he had that order under his 
 hand. No ; watching Mr. Middleton's correspondence, you 
 find him say upon a more important occasion, "I don't 
 expect your public authority for this : it is enough if you 
 but hint your pleasure." He knew him well. He could 
 interpret every nod and motion of that head. He understood 
 the glances of that eye which sealed the perdition of nations, 
 and at whose throne princes waited in pale expectation for 
 their fortune or their doom. It appears that it never, was 
 necessary for Mr. Middleton, through the whole of this 
 business, to have any direct order. It is enough that you but 
 hint either through Sir Elijah Impey or any other means ; 
 that a hint, a nod, upon any such subject Avas enough to 
 convey the true meaning to Mr. Middleton's mind. But, in 
 order to prevent Mr. Hastings escaping from being respons- 
 ible for this treachery to the Nawab, I ask this question, 
 
 * The Public and Private Letters referred to are both dated on the 30th of 
 December, 1781, and are printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," pp. 527, 
 529. 
 
 Decree 
 authoriy 
 given bj 
 Mr. Ha 
 ings to 
 Middlel}n 
 to make 
 such as-l 
 surance
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 545 
 
 When Mr. Middleton made the communication to Mr. Hast- 
 ings when he told him that it was upon the faith of this 
 assurance alone that he signed it and observe Mr. Middle- 
 ton says, " conceiving it to be your desire" he does not say 
 he did it upon his own authority, but he desires to know if 
 he has understood him " my conception of your meaning 
 was so, and upon that I gave that assurance " then what 
 would a man clear of the transaction have said ? " You did 
 misunderstand me. Don't persist in the execution of that 
 treaty ; it is not my intention : and, since the Nawab has 
 been falsely and fraudulently drawn in by your misunder- 
 standing me to execute that treaty, which he never would 
 have otherwise executed, stop your hand/' "Was this the 
 case ? No ; there is no disavowal of Mr. Middleton's con- 
 struction of the hint or nod. No ; but, after this letter, 
 he bids him carry this point and this alone of the treaty into 
 execution. Therefore it is nothing to me whether it is proved 
 or no that he gave orders at Chunar for that transaction. 
 I say that, after he received this letter and did not disclaim 
 it or stop the treaty, from that moment he became respon- 
 sible for it ; as much so as if Mr. Middleton had had autho- 
 rity from him under his hand for taking the Nawab up into 
 the corner and making him this promise. 
 
 After their parting at Chunar, I shall pass by other The design 
 circumstances that occurred till the day upon which Bidjey thelBegums' 
 Ghur was taken. Your Lordships have here the evidence suggested by 
 of Sir Elijah Iinpey with respect to the state of mind in of^Hast 
 which he found Mr. Hastings. I do believe that a cor- ings to 
 recter history was never given. Sir Elijah Impey states plunder of 
 that he found him in great distress. He says that he had 
 two resources Oude and Benares: at Benares he had 
 failed. My Lords, I date from that moment from the 
 moment that he failed at Benares: I mean failed of the 
 treasure, in the capture of Bidjey Ghur that instant he 
 first determined upon the monstrous, extravagant, idea of 
 accusing these miserable Princesses for the purpose of plun- 
 dering their treasures. 
 
 I don't mean to say but that, even before he left Calcutta, 
 he might have had an eye to that only deposit, after 
 Benares, in which there was anything to gratify British 
 rapacity. I don't mean to say he had not an eye to it, con- 
 sidering it as reserved for some future time of exigency. 
 That he might have had an eye to it is probable at the 
 time he signed the treaty at Chunar ; and with a view 
 
 M M
 
 546 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUSTE 178?. 
 
 Hisvcn- 
 
 Choyt Sing, 
 
 On the dis- 
 nt at" 
 
 
 collect cvi- 
 
 dence 
 
 against the 
 
 of settling the money for his own present through the 
 means of Gopaul Doss, if he could not get it from Bidgey 
 Ghur. But he never thought of imputing to them the 
 design of dethroning the Nawab, their son and grandson, 
 and extirpating their benefactors the English; he never 
 thought of it till that day when he was disappointed, when 
 he failed, as Sir Elijah Impey says, of his object at Be- 
 nares. Then I believe he did find him in deep distress ; 
 he found him disappointed in what he states at setting 
 out as the necessary object of his journey ; he found 
 him disappointed in that which, through the whole of his 
 correspondence, he states he dare not return to Calcutta 
 without he dare not write to the Directors without it. In 
 one respect his heart had been gratified ; he had been 
 revenged on Cheyt Sing. The man who had offended his 
 pride fell a victim to his vengeance : he was a miserable 
 wanderer at that time, expelled from his country a fugitive 
 before his anger. He had chastised his subjects that had 
 loved him ; he had even provided for the future desolation of 
 the soil that had prospered under his gentle reign ; he had 
 had the last vile satisfaction of a mean mind, without which 
 the vengeance of it cannot be complete he had brought him 
 in abject submission to his feet, and spurned him while he 
 grovelled in the dust. Yet his prodigal malice his expens- 
 ive revenge had defrauded his rapacity. Major Popham 
 in some respects rightly catching him at his word, by the 
 evidence of Mr. Calcraft, they [the troops] had divided the 
 spoil. They laughed at his project for resumption ; they 
 doubted his credit for the loan ; they refused him at all 
 terms. 
 
 Having committed an act of barren vengeance and unpro- 
 fitable hate, yet still the great object of his journey, which 
 was to buy him indemnity for his crimes, which was to 
 enable him to bear his countenance up to his venal masters 
 that remains to be attained. See then how fast the plot 
 goes on. On the 10th of November he is disappointed of 
 treasures at Bidjey Ghur. The last letter to Major Popham 
 is upon the 14th. Then he is hopeless. The very next day 
 Sir Elijah Impey darts to Lucknow with an order of 
 destruction, of confiscation, against the Begums, and a second 
 order to gather matter to justify the act afterwards. This 
 
 . , *j.l_ V 
 
 is the progress oi the business. 
 
 Upon the subject of Sir Elijah Impey being the person 
 to execute this I will say but little, my Lords ; I should
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 547 
 
 say less but that Sir Elijah Impey has thought it decent and 3 JCXE 1788. 
 dignified perhaps to enter what he has called a protest upon employment 
 your Lordships' minutes, because the Managers, as he said, Commission. 
 had accused him where he could not answer. My Lords, 
 Sir Elijah Impey forgot himself; he forgot the court he 
 spoke to, and forgot the character of the prosecutors. It 
 was not the Managers but the Commons of Great Britain 
 who have stated that not as a charge against him as he 
 says, but as matter of heavy and bitter aggravation against 
 Mr. Hastings ; that he should have employed such a man in 
 such a deed ; that a man who bore out the charter of justice 
 from this country, who was sent to be a type and model of 
 the dignity of British justice, whose situation was such as to 
 claim from him a peculiar decorum over even the actions of 
 his domestic life for such a man to be the tool and pander 
 of vengeance in such a cause against such a person, and 
 working with such instruments ! My Lords, I will not 
 press upon that subject further. I forbear, not from respect 
 to Sir Elijah Impey, which I will not be such an hypocrite 
 as to pretend to feel, but from respect to those who, filling 
 and adorning the judgment seats of this country, must feel 
 for the degradation of any man who has borne a similar 
 rank and character in any place. However, Sir Elijah 
 Impey executes his commission ; and then he brings back 
 that mass of evidence which Mr. Hastings has had the 
 repeated confidence to build and rest his whole justification 
 upon, as what he calls complete, perfect and legal, evidence 
 against the Begums ; what he states so in his answers ; 
 what he states so in the minute of Council. When 
 Mr. Stables proposed an inquiry, " What further informa- 
 tion can you get ?" says he, " You have attained a full, 
 perfect, complete, competent, information from persons best 
 qualified to give it from persons on the spot." 
 
 I will fairly own that, when first I thought of addressing Character of 
 
 a i i n the evidence 
 
 your Lordships in this cause or in any part or it, it was not against the 
 my idea to have meddled with a single particle of that evi- effected by 
 dence. I did observe, in Mr. Hastings' answers to your i m 
 Lordships, he had avoided that spirit of recrimination and 
 those violent accusations againt these ladies ; as I think the 
 only thing he says upon the subject is, that upon the 19th 
 of September he had sufficient reason to believe that their 
 conduct had been such as to justify signing that treaty. 
 These are the expressions ; and, my Lords, I own I did give 
 credit to the learned Counsel I thought it answered to the 
 
 M M 2
 
 548 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 8. general high character which I understood they bore in their 
 profession I did give them credit for having stopped him 
 upon this subject. I thought they had advised him not to 
 have recourse to that miserable expedient of accusation 
 against the Begums, because I thought that was meant to 
 be abandoned. And, above all, I thought they did mean to 
 abandon what they call affidavits and testimonies as legal 
 evidence, or as any sort of matter that could influence the 
 mind of any reasonable or honest man to any one act whatever. 
 I gave them credit for it. I was sorry, in the course of the 
 cross-examinaton, to find I was mistaken : and therefore I 
 must comment upon that evidence. And I do take upon me 
 to say that, when I have but lightly gone through it I 
 trust your Lordships don't think me capable of such cox- 
 combical presumption from any observations I am capable of 
 making upon it, but merely drawing your Lordships' atten- 
 tion to it I will venture to say that, if they were again to 
 set them up as just, honest and legal, testimony, your 
 Lordships would show your indignation in tearing and scat- 
 tering such testimony about your floor and that the Counsel 
 would not stoop to pick up the fragments of it. 
 
 I shall now come to speak upon this just, legal and com- 
 petent, testimony. But, before I do that, I shall say a few 
 words in respect to the manner in which this testimony was 
 collected : and here I must, however reluctantly, introduce 
 Sir Elijah Impey to your particular notice. 
 
 Qbserva- My Lords, there certainly were some peculiarities attend- 
 sirEHjah ing the principle rather than the manner upon which Sir 
 evidence. Elijah Impey gave his evidence. He certainly spoke plainly 
 and directly unlike Mr. Middleton. But one question was 
 put to Sir Elijah Impey, he stated that he had answered to 
 a fact without considering the consequences. We naturally 
 asked him whether it was his custom to consider the con- 
 sequences before he consulted his memory as to a fact. 
 However, Sir Elijah Impey afterwards, upon speaking 
 pretty peremptorily to some things which had happened, 
 stated that he did not speak of them as accurately recollect- 
 ing the facts themselves, " but," says he, " it was in the 
 ordinary course that I should have done so " such, as in 
 the taking the affidavits at Lucknow, when he swore the 
 Hindus, he did not recollect anything of a brahman, a bason 
 and the Ganges " but, that being the ordinary course and 
 proper to be done, therefore I did it." I beg to be under- 
 * stood as not meaning to throw any imputation upon Sir
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan, 549 
 
 Elijah Impey as to concealment, but merely to show the falli- 3 JUNE 1788 
 
 bility of his evidence. I mean to treat him fairly, though 
 
 not always with seriousness. When he states the ground 
 
 of his memory that, a thing being in the ordinary course and 
 
 proper to be done, his memory is probably correct that he 
 
 did that thing, what follows ? Why that he must give me 
 
 the other side of the argument, and that when I see a thing 
 
 that is improper improbable to be done and very much 
 
 out of the ordinary course, then 1 have a right to assume 
 
 that possibly Sir Elijah Impey, according to his own rule of 
 
 judging of evidence, may not be extremely correct and 
 
 accurate with respect to that transaction. Therefore, when 
 
 I meet with anything in his evidence coming under this 
 
 description, I shall merely observe that it is extraordinary, 
 
 and leave it to your Lordships to draw a conclusion or 
 
 not according to Sir Elijah Impey 's own rule upon the 
 
 subject. 
 
 Sir Elijah Impey states that, upon his meeting with His con- 
 Mr. Hastings, Mr. Hastings informed him that the Begums evidence 7 
 were then in actual rebellion. I am speaking now of that the I Begum& 
 part of his testimony which he repeated at your Lordships' rebellion. 
 bar. Admitting the distinction and recollection he made 
 upon one part only of that evidence, stating that the rest of 
 the evidence was correct, he admits that such a conversation 
 as he stated to the House of Commons did pass between him 
 and Mr. Hastings ; that Mr. Hastings stated that the Be- 
 gums were then in actual rebellion ; and he put it as a 
 proposition to Sir Elijah Impey and which Sir Elijah 
 Impey calls an abstract proposition whether or not a sove- 
 reign is not justified in taking away from his subjects in 
 rebellion the means by which they support that rebellion 
 against him ? I never heard or read of a judgment given 
 upon sounder grounds than Sir Elijah Impey's answer 
 " Yes, he would be justified," But Sir Elijah Impey states 
 in this evidence five several times that the Begums were 
 stated then to be in actual rebellion this being in Novem- 
 ber, when he joined Mr. Hastings, He states twice at your 
 Lordships' bar that the Begums were then in actual rebel- 
 lion ; but afterwards, when he comes to an explanation of 
 another matter, he says he did not understand them to be 
 then in actual rebellion, but that they had been in rebellion, 
 and the country was then unquiet. I believe I shall be 
 thought to do so fairly when I say I will let go five asser- 
 tions that they were in rebellion in the House of Commons
 
 550 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 8 JUNE 1788. and two before your Lordships, and take him upon the 
 eighth recollection before your Lordships that they were 
 not in rebellion then, but that the country was not quiet ; 
 but 1 cannot grant the reasons for Avhich he makes that 
 amendment, because one is improbable, the other impossible ; 
 because he says, " When I said before the House of Com- 
 mons they were then in actual rebellion I had not adverted 
 then to two circumstances I had not adverted to a letter 
 Mr. Hastings had written to me from Chunar, in which he 
 mentions the troubles at Fyzabad being quieted/' This is 
 the circumstance which I state as a hard task upon one's 
 credulity actually to believe ; because Sir Elijah Impey, 
 when he gave that evidence in the House of Commons, had 
 previously given in this very letter. He had been desired to 
 search for the letter respecting the Begum's rebellion. He 
 comes to the bar of the House of Commons, and says 
 " I have looked over all my papers, and all that relate to 
 the Begums I have brought;" therefore he gives in the 
 letter first, and then we are called upon to believe this 
 which I don't say is not the fact, but it is an improbable 
 circumstance namely, that Sir Elijah Impey, while he had 
 the letter in his power and while he did acknoAvledge he had 
 examined the letter, had not adverted to a single circum- 
 stance related in the letter ; but that, when it was out of 
 his power, then he did advert to it : that I state as an im- 
 probable ground for having made this eighth recollection. 
 The other is an impossible ground. He says " I did not 
 recollect my having proposed to go round by Fyzabad, 
 Avhich I could not have done if I had heard the Begums 
 were then in actual rebellion." But how stands the fact ? 
 Why, in the House of Commons, he states his information of 
 their being in actual rebellion being an answer to his pro- 
 position of going round by Fyzabad ; so that, instead of 
 its not being in his contemplation, it was the very circum- 
 stance that produced that information ; and he does not 
 seem aware that in both instances, whether the country was 
 unquiet from rebellion or that the Begums were in actual 
 rebellion, he states it as his proposition to go through Fyza- 
 bad, by which he got that information ; and he seems to 
 forget that the answer is more to the purpose, namely, that 
 the country had been in rebellion but was then quiet. But 
 be that as it may, I give all that up and receive his last 
 explanation that there had been a rebellion, as notorious 
 as the rebellion of 1745 in London, and that he offered to
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 551 
 
 go round to Fyzabad. Now the first odd circumstance that 
 occurs is, Fyzabad being considerably out of his way ; and 
 he tells us he went with the utmost expedition, and travelled 
 night and day. Now it seems an odd proposition, especially 
 considering the business he was going upon, that it should 
 ever come into his head to go round by Fyzabad, consider- 
 ing he bore with him a warrant for probably the destruction 
 certainly for the confiscation of the Begums' treasures. 
 However he gets as fast as he can to Lucknow, and then 
 he offers again to come back through Fyzabad. He forgets 
 the warning he had received a few days before that the 
 country was still unquiet from this atrocious rebellion ; and, 
 unless it had luckily happened that he had found friends at 
 Lucknow more cautious than himself, this giddy Chief Jus- 
 tice would have got into the very focus of the rebellion. 
 That being the case, he avoids it and comes the straight 
 road, being equally in a hurry to come back. 
 
 This circumstance is observed to Sir Elijah Impey. His 
 answer is " To be sure it is out of the way, but it was a 
 pleasanter road " as if it was a matter of pleasure 
 a pleasant embassy he was going upon. He represents 
 [himself] as some cheerful schoolboy, running upon an 
 innocent errand wishing to choose the primrose path, to 
 loiter on the way and idle in the sunshine : whereas the 
 business he was going upon was of the most serious if not 
 the darkest grain and nature. He was carrying a Avarrant 
 in his pocket at that moment for the accusation, for the 
 condemnation, possibly for the actual destruction, of these 
 Princesses. Now it does seem a most extraordinary cir- 
 cumstance and we are puzzled what we are to think either 
 of the prudence or of the feelings of Sir Elijah Impey that, 
 with this warrant in his pocket, with only two or three 
 domestics, as he states himself, he should offer to have gone 
 out of his way, to have run such a risk, or that he should 
 wish to gratify any feelings by seeing that court he was 
 going to desolate by seeing the walls of that palace, which 
 walls were to be pierced by the shrieks of famine by seeing 
 those Princesses whose treasures were to be plundered, 
 and those ministers who were to be loaded with irons. This 
 must give one an extraordinary opinion be the road how- 
 ever pleasant of the feelings and imaginations of Sir Elijah 
 Impey. But whether these circumstances are probable, 
 and, if not, whether Sir Elijah Impey is perfectly accurate 
 in the circumstances according to his own rule of recollect-
 
 552 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. ing them I will not take upon me to say ; but this I do 
 implicitly believe, that, if he did offer to go to Fyzabad, 
 Mr. Middlcton and Mr. Hastings warned him to avoid that 
 road. Yes I believe they would have advised his going 
 any other way ; because there they knew he must discover 
 that damning proof of the falsehood of the accusation ; for 
 there he would have seen that the most welcome man at 
 Fyzabad was the friend of Mr. Hastings ; he would have 
 seen copies perhaps of those letters of Colonel Hannay and 
 Captain Gordon which are decisive proofs of their innocence. 
 I therefore believe that, if he had made the proposal, they 
 would have advised him to go over the thickest jungles and 
 barren deserts of Barraitch, and the rugged and rebellious 
 
 of Goruckpore, [rather] than go there, where he 
 
 would have found the fullest evidence of the foul conspi- 
 racy of those that employed him, and the perfect innocence 
 of those he was going to accuse. 
 
 Assertion of Be the fact as it will, Sir Elijah Impey goes upon the 
 imircy^hat, errand of taking these affidavits. When he gets to Luck- 
 a^Lwknow novv ne * s n ^turally asked whether he informed the Nawab 
 he did not 'or his minister, who made a deposition before him, of the 
 
 inform the , . , p i *t. 
 
 Nawab of object and purport ot his journey the great and important 
 MS mission/ object, as it was, of the discovery of, or the means at least to 
 punish, the rebellion which had for its object the dethroning 
 the Prince and extirpating his friends the English. Sir 
 Elijah Impey tells you he did not ; it was not his business- 
 Sir Elijah Impey is certainly a nice, precise, character, and 
 strictly careful to confine himself to his department that it 
 was that brought him to Lucknow upon this occasion. It 
 was his business to lend himself for such a purpose to 
 Mr. Hastings, but not his business to converse with the 
 Nawab or Hyder Beg upon the subject. 
 
 The next extraordinary circumstance is, he was asked, whe- 
 ther the Nawab, seeing a man of his consequence a thousand 
 miles from the place where he must be supposed to be as sta- 
 tionary as himself, coming up in that manner to his capital, and 
 taking the deposition of his minister Hyder Beg [made no 
 reference to the object of his visit] ? He is asked what they 
 said about this rebellion, the object of which was the de- 
 throning the Nawab and extirpating the English ? He says, 
 he never heard one word about it ; he never heard it men- 
 tioned : such was the punctilio of the country. A most 
 extraordinary punctilio. The Nawab is a model for all the 
 Kings of Europe in point of want of curiosity : that Sir
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 553 
 
 Elijah Impey should be taking these depositions, and the 3 JUME nss. 
 object of it being nothing less than inarching an army in 
 force to attack the palace of the Begum and seizing her 
 treasures ; that he should never have a word of conversa- 
 tion with the Prince, the object of the conspiracy, nor the 
 Minister who was to revenge the treason: such was the 
 punctilious etiquette of the country. 
 
 But the most extraordinary etiquette is when he comes back His as ser- 
 to Mr. Hastings. And here he is asked whether Mr. Hast- ^Hast- 
 ings and he did not talk upon the subject of the affidavits: ings put no 
 
 ' , , , . J ,1 j questions to 
 
 whether he had not any conversation upon the nature and him con- 
 force of them? He had advised Mr. Hastings to procure this aaMavfts.on 
 testimony for his own justification: the most natural thing bis return - 
 in the world, it should seem, would have been though Sir 
 Elijah Impey asserts he never had read any one of the 
 affidavits while he was at Lucknow that Mr. Hastings 
 would have inquired into the strength of that testimony, to 
 sec whether it brought any new lights whether it answered 
 his expectation or not. " No ;" says he, " Mr. Hastings 
 never said one word of it." Here Mr. Hastings stood upon 
 punctilio as much as the Nawab. As he was the represent- 
 ative of a great King, he thought it was not right to be 
 outdone by the Nawab : he stood upon punctilio as much 
 therefore ; he said not a word about it. This I must state 
 also as a circumstance a little extraordinary, 
 
 But Sir Elijah Impey says he never looked once at one 
 of the affidavits : and this of course I do certainly implicitly 
 believe ; though it is an extraordinary want of curiosity that f^ t 
 he never should have endeavoured to know what their con- affidavits, 
 tents were. However, afterwards he says that, in conse- 
 quence of an examination before the House of Commons, he 
 did look at those affidavits. Here the Managers turn a 
 little short upon Sir Elijah Impey, and say, " What book 
 did you look into, the Narrative ? " " No ; not the Narra- 
 tive." " What, then?" "Why, it was a report of the House 
 of Commons." The reason given by Sir Elijah Impey upon 
 this is an extraordinary one, and I feel myself called upon 
 to take notice of it ; because, in his evidence, I stand charged 
 by name before your Lordships with having endeavoured to 
 mislead him. I suppose this was one of the snares he after- 
 wards refers to, that had been laid for his imprudence. It 
 was respecting there being or not any sworn interpreter to 
 the affidavits : he says, " Mr. Sheridan, one of the Honour- 
 able Managers, examined me from a book in his hand "
 
 554 Slimming of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. and then, from my looking at this book, he concluded that 
 there was a sworn interpreter. Now how any Manager or 
 member of Parliament looks into a book to show that there 
 was a sworn interpreter to an affidavit I must leave to such 
 great physiognomists as Sir Elijah Impey to determine. But 
 then I not only looked as if I saw there was a sworn inter- 
 preter, but I looked as if I was certain it was not Major 
 Davy. Now that there never was a more intelligent look 
 given than that I leave to your Lordships' observation. He 
 discovers this ; how did he discover that there was no 
 sworn interpreter ? Here it is ; he owns he did look into 
 the Narrative. Here the Managers prick up their ears, and 
 turn round and ask " What book did you look into, the 
 Narrative?" -"No; a Report of the Select Committee, in 
 which the Narrative is contained." " Then you have looked 
 into this Narrative ? " " No," says he, " I shall not be 
 caught in a falsity ; for though I looked at the affidavits I 
 only looked at the tops and bottoms ; I never looked into 
 the middle of them." Here we are not satisfied ; we say, 
 " How so, Sir Elijah ? Your object to look was not to 
 know whether there was an interpreter or no, but to know 
 whether there was any occasion for an interpreter ; there- 
 fore you must have looked into the body, to see whether 
 there was occasion for one." No ; he swears positively he 
 had cut off all communications between his sight and his 
 understanding; that if his eye picked it up his understanding 
 knew nothing of the matter. I don't in the least doubt this, 
 and I have still greater reason not to doubt it, because he 
 says, " I cautiously avoided reading any part of them ; I 
 might casually read some lines, but my premeditated pur- 
 pose was to avoid looking into them." But here I am 
 brought into a little dilemma : for, the very next time he is 
 examined, he confesses he had read the whole of the Narra- 
 tive affidavits and all. So that here is this extraordinary 
 circumstance, that Sir Elijah Impey seven years long ab- 
 stained from looking into this abhorred Narrative, while his 
 friends' and his own reputation were concerned while he 
 was impeached upon some of the articles seven years long 
 he abstained from looking into this book, and, the instant he 
 had made use of a solemn promise upon oath almost that 
 he should still abstain, he went home and read every one of 
 them. My charity and good will make me inclined to 
 believe he did not look into them afterwards ; for, when we 
 found he had read them at last, we examined him a little
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 555 
 
 upon that subject, and I am confirmed in that opinion, 3 JuyE 1788 - 
 because he seemed to know less about them after he con- 
 fessed he had read them than he did before. 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect also that Sir Elijah Impey His state- 
 knew nothing with regard to taking the affidavits. He bore 
 instructions from Mr. Hastings to Mr. Middleton upon the 
 subject, and he troubled himself no further. Whether a . 
 man swears once, twice, or three times, he does not know. 
 In a tent, after dinner, anybody came with a paper and put 
 it into his hand. He sat dining with Colonel Hannay, and 
 the people with their bason and their Ganges a miserable 
 consideration to think of those poor people mixing the inno- 
 cent superstition of their religion with the libations with 
 which they were possibly drinking success to this foul con- 
 spiracy. What was done to them he knows not : he clapped 
 them into his wallet and carried them to Mr. Hastings, and 
 knew nothing about them till he was provoked to it by a 
 promise not to look into them. Such is the account that is 
 given of them by Sir Elijah Impey. 
 
 With regard to Mr. Middleton, there are circumstances Mr. Middle- 
 equally extraordinary. Mr. Middleton receives a positive 
 order from Mr. Hastings to inquire and make himself master 
 of the facts, whether such facts or such evidence should davits, 
 refute or should sustain the charge. Mr. Middleton is shown 
 this order at your Lordships' bar. He, who has been in 
 such habits of implicit obedience, and regular, diligent, atten- 
 tion to the spirit and letter of Mr. Hastings' orders for years, 
 seriously tells you that he never felt the spirit of his orders 
 before, and therefore he turns the business over, he owns, 
 completely to Colonel Hannay. A Manager asked the 
 witness then, in a sort of taunting question perhaps, whether 
 he considered it as a part of military duty to collect affidavits 
 upon which a serious judgment was to be formed ? I think 
 Mr. Middleton makes the best answer that ever came from 
 the lips of man. He appeals to your Lordships for protec- 
 tion begs to decline answering that question, being no 
 military man. It is impossible not to admire the cautious 
 diffidence, the graceful reserve, which characterises the whole 
 of his evidence. He does not know whether it is a branch 
 of military duty ; he knows nothing of tactics of the King 
 of Prussia's exercise ; he has read nothing of General Faw- 
 cett, I suppose ; therefore he begs to decline an answer to 
 that question, being no military man. But, though no mili- 
 tary man, not understanding military duty, he confesses he
 
 556 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 3 JUNE 1788. made a military act of it ; for he recollects the fact that it 
 was delivered over to Colonel Hannay to collect and gather 
 those affidavits. 
 
 Want of There are other extraordinary circumstances attending 
 
 order in r the collection of the affidavits and the manner in which 
 affidavits!* 3 ^ ne y were taken, but I think I have given your Lordships 
 sufficient sample, from the evidence of the principal persons 
 concerned, that there was not any very great, decent, proper 
 or just, attention in the conduct of collecting this evidence, 
 at least, whatever weight the evidence may seem to have 
 issue dial- when it is collected. But now I will waive every inference 
 thewarranty from that. I will suppose they were taken in the day, in 
 ertSsnceto tne ^g ut J ' m an honest, regular, proper, manner. I will 
 proceed waive every argument I can gather from the loose, scan- 
 Begums, dalous, way in which they appear to have been collected, and 
 I will put it upon this issue, if the evidence itself contains 
 any one fact or circumstance that could justify an honest 
 man making up his conscience to hurt a hair of the head of 
 the poorest creature that breathes, much less to do that act 
 which was done upon this evidence. 
 Affidavit of The first affidavit or deposition which I shall trouble your 
 
 Ram Golaub T j i -.LI ^ i A c ii o- T\t" IT 
 
 Kooerre- Lordships with taking notice or is one that OH* iidijah linpey 
 cifeyt'fiiig's remembers perfectly well to have taken ; it is from the 
 derice wrth -^ an ^ Grolaub Kooer, a woman of rank.* She was grand- 
 the Begums, mother, I think, to Mehipnarain, to whom Mr. Hastings had 
 given the Rajaship of Benares. As she is grandmother to 
 Mehipnarain, she is certainly not likely to conceal anything 
 she knew upon this subject of the disaffection of Cheyt 
 Sing. This is the first in point of date that mentions any- 
 thing respecting the Begums ; and your Lordships will 
 observe a passage at the end of it, which I mention rather 
 to show the spirit and temper with which this complete 
 legal evidence is taken than anything else. This is an affi- 
 davit we suspected must have been in answer to interroga- 
 tories which Sir Elijah Impey does not recollect : " With 
 respect to Cheyt Sing's having from of old an improper 
 correspondence with the Begums at Lucknow and the Rajah 
 at Barratch and Gorruckpore, the Declaration of the above 
 Ranny is as follows." That is what we maintain to be a 
 question. The answer is : 
 
 * This affidavit, and those subsequently referred to, are printed in the Ap- 
 pendix to Hastings' " Narrative of the Insurrection in Benares, "pp. 151, ct seqq.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 557 
 
 " Since two years, on account of the enmity of Cheyt Sing to me, I 3 JCNB 1783. 
 
 had left Ramnagur and resided in another dwelling, and Cheyt Sing had 
 
 always acted towards me with such enmity as cannot be described ; how 
 therefore should he have acquainted me with his correspondences ? But 
 I have heard from report that he had in many places improper corre- 
 spondences. However, it is very plain that he had enmity towards the 
 Governor General, because, whenever he learned anything to the preju- 
 dice of the Governor, from the letters of his vakeels, or the reports of 
 ill-designing persons, he used to rejoice. This is known to all the 
 inhabitants of Ramnagur. Accordingly, when the Governor General was 
 lately coming from Calcutta towards this quarter, the Raja and his com- 
 panions used to say, ' The Governor General has been displeased, and is 
 making his escape to Hindostan.' Besides, from the Raja's going to 
 Buxar to meet him with the greatest preparations, his intention plainly 
 appears." 
 
 Here the good Rani deposes to two things ; she gives 
 a very good reason for her knowing nothing upon one 
 subject, and makes a very bad guess upon another subject 
 of which she could know nothing. She makes an inference 
 upon a fact at which she was not present, and those who 
 demand it of her were present. And this is the whole of 
 the solemn Declaration of the Rani Golaub Kooer, made 
 on the 12th day of November, 1781, before Chief Justice 
 Sir Elijah Impey a most pompous attestation, well worthy 
 the important information it conveys. 
 
 The next deposition I shall take notice of to your Lord- Affidavit of 
 
 i . . , , J . . ,, , T j I,- Doond Sing. 
 
 ships is the deposition or a man whose name your Lordships 
 have heard three or four times of Doond Sing. He is 
 styled a commandant. This is before Sir Elijah Impey, at 
 Lucknow, on the 26th of November. He deposes not one 
 word about the Begums. He says that two persons in the 
 service of Cheyt Sing came to his house and desired him 
 to join Cheyt Sing. He answered, "From my youth to 
 this day I have been the servant of the English ; I have 
 never gone to any Rajahs or Bauboos, nor will I go to 
 them." And, upon their threatening to place a guard on his 
 house, he said, " My house and my wife and my children 
 may be destroyed, still I am the servant of the English, 
 and I am faithful and loyal. By the blessing of God, in a 
 short time we shall all go to Benares." 
 
 This is all he swears that he made a very fine answer, 
 which I dare say he did make ; and the whole that he knows 
 is that, And though it does appear here that he was a com- * 
 mandant and subadar, and had an house and grounds, and 
 guards set upon them which must prove his credibility
 
 558 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 3 JUSE1788. 
 
 Second de- 
 
 position of 
 Smg ' 
 
 Third de- 
 
 concerning 
 
 Captain 
 
 Gordon. 
 
 yet we must admit his education has been a little neglected, 
 because this ends with the commandant, Doond Sing, not 
 being able to write either in Persian or Hindi, making his 
 mark. Possibly your Lordships will not wish to hear a 
 great deal more of this Doond Sing ; but, however, upon 
 the very same day he is swearing again. His zeal showed 
 he was likely to swear well ; but they seem to observe 
 nothing was said about the Begums, therefore he is swearing 
 again, and here he is, upon the 26th of November, making 
 a second deposition. But, however, in this second deposition 
 
 , -, . . , ,. *. 
 
 there is not one word, excepting a single line, respecting the 
 Begums ; and that seems rather to make against the report 
 which they wish to have us suppose current in the country at 
 the time. Some of the mutinous sepoys say, " We will go 
 to the Begum at Fyzabad ; if she will retain us we will 
 stay, if not, we will carry the gun (or guns) to the Rajah 
 Cheyt Sing." So that here Doond Sing, instead of con- 
 firming that there was a general opinion at that time that 
 the Begum would entertain any disaffected person against 
 the English, expresses a doubt whether she would entertain 
 them or no. The only other observable circumstance is, 
 that, in part of this affidavit, he swears in the most unquali- 
 fied manner, " I wrote an account of these things to Major 
 Macdonald and Captain Williams, and wrote these things 
 to Major Macdonald again ;" and to this assertion and 
 asseveration of his literary exertions he again sets his mark. 
 I imagine your Lordships will now again think we have 
 done with Doond Sing. No such thing. Here he is again, 
 ^ ne third time, swearing before Sir Elijah Impev. But he is 
 
 ',, ,. & ._, . 7* , -11 
 
 not to be trusted by himself, he is a bad one single-handed, 
 and, as it was a military duty, he is coupled with somebody 
 else he is joined with Mir Ahmud Ali, subadar; and 
 at last he hits the mark. For here is an account of the 
 whole transaction in which Captain Gordon was engaged, 
 and the circumstances respecting Captain Gordon at Tanda, 
 which is the only thing like a fact throughout these deposi- 
 tions which is attempted to be sworn to. 
 
 My Lords, I did conceive that the ninth parcel of affi- 
 davits the affidavits of the British officers was all that 
 was necessary, as they contained a repetition of every matter 
 in the affidavits of the natives ; and I am very ready to 
 admit that the reports to which they depose were prevalent at 
 the time ; but it was at the express desire of the Counsel
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 559 
 
 that different parcels of them were laid before your Lord" 3 JUNE 17 
 ships. They seem to run to greater length than I was 
 aware of. I imagine that, by looking over them, I shall be 
 able to shorten this part of the business, and I pledge myself 
 to show your Lordships that there is not a single atom of 
 fact to be gathered from them ; that there is nothing but 
 loose rumour, upon which no argument could have been 
 rested ; and, above all, that, when I come to speak of the 
 transaction of Sumshire Khan, which is the only atom of a 
 fact that your Lordships can gather from this business, it 
 was not done upon hearing of the success of the British 
 arms, but in the hour of extreme distress ; that it was done 
 at a time when Mr. Hastings describes himself to be in a 
 situation devoted to destruction ; that it was when the ruin of 
 the British affairs was magnified ; that it was in that pinching 
 hour of proof when the hollow, professing, friendship is not 
 to be found, but falls off with a falling cause, but honest 
 zeal alone remains, with those who profess a serious and 
 generous attachment. 
 
 With your Lordships' indulgence I shall pause here for 
 the present
 
 560 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH OF RICHARD 
 BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING UP THE 
 EVIDENCE ON THE SECOND ARTICLE OF CHARGE, 
 RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF OUDE ; GTII JUNE, 
 17S8. 
 
 MY LORDS, In obedience to the directions from the 
 Managers for the Commons, I proceed now to sum up and 
 to observe upon the evidence of the second charge against 
 Warren Hastings, Esq. 
 
 My Lords, I esteem it fortunate that the adjournment 
 from the last time I had the honour of addressing your 
 Lordships has afforded an opportunity to complete and 
 finish the printing of the evidence, as it is much the wish, 
 and I am sure it is the interest, of those who manage the 
 prosecution that your Lordships should have every oppor- 
 tunity of adverting to the evidence, and of watching whether 
 it is fairly and accurately quoted, and whether the inferences 
 and arguments drawn from it are such as are borne out by 
 the evidence itself. 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect that I left off in observa- 
 tions upon the affidavits taken by Sir Elijah Impey and 
 produced against the Begums ; that I left your Lordships as 
 it were in the situation of trying the cause of these 
 Princesses of deciding upon the probability and justness of 
 that evidence which Mr. Hastings has adduced against them. 
 My Lords, before I proceed in examining that testimony, I 
 should wish to recall to your Lordships' recollection two or 
 three circumstances which I think material ; that is, con- 
 ceiving your Lordships to be in the situation at present of 
 trying, as it were, the allegations brought by Mr. Hastings 
 against the Begums. 
 
 Mr. Hast- Your Lordships will recollect that the charges against 
 against the them were not merely confined to the period which followed 
 hostuity to the insurrection at Benares, but that Mr. Hastings does 
 pany 0m ~ specifically allege that the influence which they had they 
 had constantly and invariably employed to the most perni- 
 cious purposes against one state which had conferred on 
 them all that they had possessed, and another state which
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 561 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. 
 
 had supported and protected them. Mr. Hastings stated 
 them to have been actuated by an uniform hatred to the 
 British government. It is remarkable that, upon this part ported'by 
 of the charge at least, there is not the smallest attempt to evidence ' 
 produce a tittle of evidence against them ; that, in the 
 course even of the cross-examination of the Counsel in the 
 course of those affidavits which are called such "perfect 
 legal evidence " upon the Avhole of the record there is not 
 one single tittle of evidence to support that part of the 
 charge against them. Nay, it does seem to be distinctly 
 abandoned by the prosecutor considering Mr. Hastings 
 himself at present as the accuser of the Begums. When a 
 charge, consisting as it were of two parts, is brought against 
 any person, and one part of it, as your Lordships will 
 perceive, appears upon the face of it evidently false, nay, 
 is not even attempted to be supported by the prosecutor 
 but is in fact abandoned by him, what is the conclu- 
 sion, we request from your Lordships ? Not that, because 
 one part of the charge is false and abandoned even by the 
 accuser, therefore the other part is unfounded. No, my 
 Lords ; but I think I have a right to claim that your Lord- 
 ships would watch a little narrowly the conduct of that 
 prosecution in support of the second part of the charge, 
 where the first is proved to be false and abandoned even by 
 the prosecutor himself. 
 
 The next circumstance to which I would wish to call your Avowed ob- 
 Lordships' attention is this the declaration of Mr. Hast- 
 ings himself, when he left Calcutta, namely, that unless he 
 could acquire a sum of money in one of the two resources, 
 either Benares or Oude, his character was gone with his 
 venal masters the Directors, with whom no other plea would 
 avail than that he had procured plunder for them : he states 
 this as one of his motives. Your Lordships will see the 
 miserable situation of those who are accused, where the 
 person is not only the accuser but the judge, and where he 
 himself who is the judge and the accuser has a profit in the 
 conviction and an interest in the condemnation of the party 
 lie accuses. Your Lordships will judge what probability of 
 escape the wretched victims must have, where the judge who 
 decides upon their conduct has a strong interest in the pro- 
 portion and quantity of the fine which he is to levy upon 
 them. But what do I desire from your Lordships upon that 
 consideration? Not that, because the accusing person has 
 an interest in the conviction of the person that he accuses, 
 
 N N
 
 562 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JuNEi788. therefore you will conclude that the accusation is groundless. 
 No, my Lords ; but I think I have a right to claim that your 
 Lordships will not give implicit credit to the bare assertion, 
 at least, of such a prosecutor under such circumstances, 
 improbabi- The next circumstance which I wish your Lordships to 
 tended re advert to is what is admitted through the whole of this 
 the e Begums testimony I mean the infinite improbability at least that 
 * ne Begums should have made this attempt, and the absolute 
 impossibility of their succeeding. But I don't ask you then 
 to say that because a crime is improbable to have been 
 attempted, and the success is impossible, therefore the attempt 
 was not made. No, my Lords ; but I think again I have a 
 right to claim this ; because I am ready to admit that it is 
 impossible to look into the history of these transactions 
 it is impossible to trace the conduct of the w T ild and irregular 
 mind of the man whom we accuse without admitting that 
 there is such a thing as a wantonness in guilt ; that there is 
 such a thing as a perverse propensity to evil that leads the 
 mind of man to evil acts, even where the perpetrator has no 
 obvious motive, either of interest or ambition, to answer. I 
 am ready to admit that. But all I request is that, where 
 the attempt was improbable where the success was impos- 
 sible your Lordships will at least look with a degree of 
 jealousy to the evidence that supports such an accusation, and 
 that you will demand something credible in the proof where 
 there is nothing probable in the charge. 
 
 My Lords, with these preliminary observations upon the 
 evidence, I shall proceed to this mass of weighty, legal, 
 proof, as it is styled by Mr. Hastings. 
 
 And first, I wish your Lordships to observe that I state 
 nothing without evidence. I will quote shortly one of the 
 passages in which Mr. Hastings characterises this evidence. 
 He says : 
 
 Mr. Hast- " I took the best possible evidence that could be obtained ; I gave it 
 ings' at- the best possible sanction, by causing it to be taken before the first 
 give weight magistrate in India. I was not to inquire whether his conduct in this 
 to the affi- instance was irregular." 
 davits by 
 
 Sfr P EiSjlh g Now your Lordships will recollect that the express pur- 
 impey, pose of Sir Elijah Impey's going to Lucknow was to give 
 authenticity, as he states at your Lordships' bar, to this 
 evidence. Your Lordships will also recollect the account 
 which Sir Elijah himself gave of the manner in which he 
 took that evidence ; by which it will appear that any person 
 whatever a common servant that he took with him, or any
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 563 
 
 person residing at Lucknow would equally have given them 
 authenticity, as far as Sir Elijah Impey gave it. 
 
 But your Lordships will also recollect that Sir Elijah 
 Impey states that the purpose of his being the person 
 employed was to give weight and authenticity to this in 
 Great Britain ; and, after his other confession, I am sure 
 your Lordships must come to this conclusion, that in fact 
 he endeavoured to delude and deceive the people of Great 
 Britain, by lending his name to affidavits when he confesses who was 
 he neither knew the substance nor knew even that the tSeir sub- f 
 persons who swore them were the individuals whom they stance- 
 pretended to be. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, speaking of these affidavits, complains Mr. Hast- 
 highly of the person who first moved the impeachment in p^ntof 1 " 
 the House of Commons. He says, that " Mr. Burke, aware ^oVt^to 6 ' 3 
 of the weight of these testimonies, has taken much pains to discredit the 
 discredit them by blackening them in his peculiar manner " 
 what that is I am sure I shall not presume to say " with 
 hard and opprobrious epithets, such as, passionate, careless, 
 irrelevant and irregular." Whether these are too harsh 
 terms for the affidavits your Lordships, when you have 
 heard the whole of them, will be able to decide. 
 
 " But, as he has offered no proof of these daring allegations, and as 
 his depreciation of the evidences is certainly no argument of their want 
 of truth or authenticity, I presume that they will be admitted to establish 
 the facts to which they have a mutual relation, on as ample a conviction 
 as if they had been delivered in every legal form before a British court of 
 judicature." 
 
 Having made this reply to Mr. Burke's daring allegations, His asser- 
 in his second Defence Mr. Hastings has this observation, 
 which I think it proper to repeat to your Lordships before 
 I proceed with the affidavits themselves. He says, Begums was 
 
 incidental, 
 
 " It is worth remarking that these depositions were all taken to esta- gi ven ^th 
 blish a series of facts combined with the rebellion of Cheyt Sing, and design. 
 what they have affirmed concerning the Begums was an accessary subject 
 not required for the original purpose, though probably the most powerful 
 in the feelings and recollection of the deponents, and therefore more 
 particularly noticed in the evidence delivered by them, This is certainly 
 an additional argument of their authenticity." 
 
 Undoubtedly, my Lords, it would be if it were true ; but 
 unfortunately this is a very proper preface to such testi- 
 mony, for it is a direct, deliberate, falsehood. It is so proved 
 by the witnesses concerned in taking these affidavits, Mr. 
 Middleton and Sir Elijah Impey, who acknowledge that the 
 
 N K 2
 
 564 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 e JUJTB 1788. purpose of the affidavits taken at Lucknow was to justify 
 measures to be taken against the Begums, and not for the 
 justification of what had been done with respect to Cheyt 
 Sing. Therefore why Mr. Hastings should think it worth 
 remarking that these were all taken to establish another 
 series of facts unless his principle is that it is always worth 
 while to omit no opportunity of stating that which is not 
 true I cannot determine. 
 
 I did hope that I should be able to pass over some of these 
 affidavits, but your Lordships will find it will not be neces- 
 sary for me to detain you upon them long. We left 
 off with the triple testimony of my friend Doond Sing. I 
 am still among those affidavits which the Counsel were so 
 anxious your Lordships should pay particular attention to 
 I mean the affidavits of the natives. 
 
 Affidavit of The next is sworn by Munshi Mohammed Moraud, who 
 Mohammed was with Captain Williams. There were other persons 
 Moraud. with Captain Williams who swear to having heard some 
 reports about the Begums' disposition ; but this munshi, 
 who was probably a more intelligent person than the subal- 
 terns or common sepoys, does not mention a single word 
 respecting them, and does not remember ever to have heard 
 those reports. I really wish the Counsel to watch me as I 
 go through them ; for I mean to omit no one circumstance, 
 but to state, not [only ?] what I conceive anything like evi- 
 dence in them, but to give them their weight at the time. 
 Affidavit of The next is the deposition of Ahlaud Sing. He was an 
 sing" extraordinary man and a great warrior. He said he had 
 Besieged in confined in Goruckpore an hundred and fifteen burgomauls. 
 Goruckpore. ^pjjis j g one o f fa e instances where numberless hostages are 
 taken and confined upon pretence of a deficiency of dues of 
 the rents ; Colonel Hannay and other military persons being 
 probably the persons who rented those revenues at that time. 
 He says they were besieged in this place, and gives an 
 account of his own transactions, which I take notice of only 
 to show it is an extraordinary piece of testimony altogether. 
 He says he was surrounded in the fort in the night by six 
 thousand matchlocks ; and, upon their entering the fort witli 
 ladders, he attacked and killed seventeen of the enemy on 
 the bastion and wounded several others; that afterwards 
 they made an attack upon the western bastion ; he took 
 shelter under a straw chupper, threw down part of the brick 
 battlement ou the enemy, by which four of them were killed. 
 In the middle of his exploits he seems to have been very
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 565 
 
 collected, and to have numbered very accurately the feats 6 JQ-E nss. 
 he performed. He then says he heard that the one hundred 
 and fifteen burgomauls had attacked the twelve sepoys who 
 guarded them, and he gave orders to put them all to the 
 sword; that he instantly struck off the heads of eighteen 
 burgomauls, and threw them out, and wounded several others. 
 Then he mentions that the people who were united with 
 the Raja of Goruckpore your Lordships will recollect 
 these were the inhabitants who Avere risen to rescue these 
 hostages shouted out the doway* of the Nawab Saadat Ali 
 Khan and the Begums had spread through the country ; that 
 is what these people among other things exclaimed. He 
 said afterwards that a messenger came and told him, " You 
 have no master ; the English are all killed, and the colonel 
 and Captain Gordon are confined by the Begums." 
 
 Now, my Lords, I wish, through all these affidavits, to 
 observe that they are all echos of hearsays and rumours ; but 
 they are all subsequent to the time of Captain Gordon's affair 
 at Tanda. He then mentions that, when they were in the 
 greatest distress, a jemmadar of grenadiers with nine sepoys 
 unexpectedly arrived in the town. He was besieged by six 
 thousand, and he makes this report afterwards to Captain 
 Williams, who mentions it, but, properly, not vouching for it 
 further than as a report of this swaggering subahdar, that those 
 nine people came to their relief; they looked round and called 
 as if more were coming, when the six thousand ran away ; he 
 pursued and made a great slaughter of them. After this, the 
 sepoys mutinied, demanded their pay, and said they would go 
 and deliver up their arms at the gates of the Begums. After- 
 wards he mentions a fact which your Lordships must bear 
 in your memories, that, when they attacked them in their 
 inarch afterwards, the country people came and the Rani 
 of Baunsy came to see Captain Williams, but her son pre- 
 pared for hostilities ; he said, "' They have struck off the 
 head of our Rajah at Gooruckpore, and I will be revenged." 
 
 I should mention that, after they had beheaded these 
 burgomauls and been rescued by those nine sepoys, there 
 came an order from Colonel Hannay to behead the Raja ; 
 which was afterwards executed ; that, in consequence of 
 that, the people still surrounded them, and said " They have 
 struck oft' the head of our Rajah, and we will be revenged." 
 " We marched from thence, and the Rajah of Bulrampoor 
 
 * " The acclamation of appeal to the sovereign power ;" "Narrative," p. 169.
 
 566 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. with his people had thrown up an intrenchment across the 
 road, and he said, * It is the Begum's orders that you shall 
 not march by this road.' With the greatest hazard and 
 caution we marched from thence and arrived at Hoonda, 
 and the country people retired into the fort." That is the 
 whole of this weighty testimony of Ahlaud Sing that, 
 while they were in the fort of Goruckpore, the country 
 people surrounded them, and said they heard the English 
 were all gone, that Captain Gordon and Colonel Hannay 
 were in prison. 
 
 Affidavit of The next is the deposition of Denoo Sing, Subahdar. 
 
 Subadar! ng> He mentions the same thing that he had heard the 
 government of the Colonel meaning Colonel Hannay was 
 at an end. It certainly does appear that there was an 
 universal joy at the idea of the government of the English 
 being at an end, and that the people, mad with oppression, 
 did rise at this news, and considered the hour of delivery as 
 at hand. They also said, " The Rajah Cheyt Sing has cut 
 off the English forces at Benares ; deliver up your baggage ; 
 it is the order of the Begum." 
 
 The next circumstance which alludes at all to the 
 Begums is their having sent out a sepoy to gather news ; 
 that he returned and brought word that Captain Gordon 
 and the subahdars and zemindars were imprisoned at Tanda 
 by order of the Begums ; that many of the sepoys had 
 deserted, and several had been killed. Your Lordships will 
 observe that the whole of this is merely a recapitulation of 
 a number of idle and false rumours which naturally arose 
 from the state of confusion the country was then in, Avithout 
 any regular means of intelligence ; that they heard the Begum 
 had herself confined Captain Gordon. He also heard that 
 the Raja Cheyt Sing destroyed all the English troops, and 
 that three of the English had been killed. It was also 
 reported that the authority of the Nawab (Saadat AH Khan) 
 and the Begum was established throughout the country. 
 This, your Lordships will observe, was after the affair of 
 Captain Gordon at Tanda, and they never mentioned the 
 Begum's name without mentioning Saadat Ali Khan that 
 he was the person who was to take the lead against the 
 English, and the Begums only supported and protected 
 him. Then he describes the mutiny, which appears a 
 serious one, against Captain Williams : tf They said, ' We 
 will not go to Benares : we are the servants of the Begum 
 and Saadit Ally Khan ; we will deliver up our guns and
 
 Speech of Mr Sheridan. 567 
 
 our arms at the gates of the Begum.' " That is the whole of e JPKE nss. 
 this, which is a very long and very circumstantial affidavit 
 namely, that Denoo Sing did, like Ahlaud Sing, hear a 
 great number of false reports; among others, that the 
 Begum and Saadat AH Khan were endeavouring to establish 
 themselves. 
 
 The next is exactly of the same nature, by a person Affidavit of 
 named Ram Sing. He heard that the English were all cut Eam Sing> 
 off it is all hearsay ; that the government of the English 
 was overturned. " It was also reported that Colonel 
 Hannay and Captain Williams were in confinement." 
 Here you see the false reports increase. At the end of this 
 affidavit he mentions the mutinous sepoys, who said, " They 
 would take their arms and the gun of the chuckladar, and 
 receive their pay from him; for the chuckladar was a 
 servant of the Begums." 
 
 This is an account of the mutiny which happened with 
 Captain Williams that these sepoys were still mutinous; 
 that they declared they would attend the Begums and 
 Saadat Ali Khan ; and that, if the captain attempted to 
 escape, they would put a guard over him and deliver him 
 up. And that is every tittle that refers to this rebellion of 
 the Begums : and this at the very time, your Lordships will 
 observe, when, if ever there was a rebellion at all, it raged 
 with the greatest violence. 
 
 The next is a deposition of Hurdeal Sing, commandant: Affidavit of 
 he belonged to Major Macdonald's battalion. He also 
 heard that they had confined that is, these mutinous 
 sepoys had confined their captain, and cruelly beat his 
 munshi. Here he differs from his report, though he is 
 consistent with his own intercepted letter, which is in 
 evidence : he says, 
 
 " Agreeable to the orders of the captain, I went at night to the line 
 to the subahdars and jemmadars and sepoy grenadiers, and asked what 
 they wished for and intended. The sepoys all replied ' If the captain 
 resolves to march to the eastward not one of us will go with him ; more- 
 over we will march early to-morrow morning to the westward to the 
 Vizier ; whoever chooses to go that way may accompany us.' " 
 
 Afterwards, towards the end of this affidavit, he says, 
 when he came to Goruckpore, which was after the troubles 
 were quieted, that there he heard from the people that 
 orders from the Begums had arrived to all the Rajas, and 
 that they had surrounded Ahlaud Sing, had besieged him 
 in the fort of Goruckpore he heard a false account of that
 
 568 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 Affidavit of 
 Bejy Sinjr, 
 Subahdar. 
 
 6 JUXE 1788. transaction. And this is every word and syllable, in an 
 extremely long and very circumstantial affidavit, which 
 Hurdeal Sing seals and attests. 
 
 The next is a deposition of Bejy Sing, Subahdar. He 
 received orders from Captain Williams to join Captain 
 Gordon at Tanda. When he arrived at Naurood " the 
 Hooly rejoicings had commenced, and the country people 
 surrounded and continued to insult us, and they said, 
 ' You have struck off the head of Rajah Juggut Sing ; 
 where will you go ? ' " this seems to refer again to that 
 provocation of beheading that unfortunate Raja " ' AVC 
 Avill strike off your heads in return. It is the orders of 
 the Begum that whoever strikes off and brings in the 
 head of an Englishman shall receive a reward of 1,000 
 rupees, and for the head of a subahdar or jemmadar 100 
 rupees, and for every sepoy's head struck off and brought 
 in a reward of 10 rupees shall be given.'" The country 
 people here, your Lordships will observe, were extremely 
 accurate in these supposed orders from the Begums ; they 
 did not however attack them, nor try to get the heads of 
 these people. The country people said, " Give up your 
 baggage and arms and coats, and go naked where you 
 please.'' They seemed to have forgot the rewards for their 
 heads. That is the whole he says : and, from this single 
 hearsay of the country people, Mr. Hastings boldly asserts 
 in his Defence that the Begums had set a price upon the 
 head of every Englishman in the country. 
 
 The next is the deposition of Merun, munshi to Captain 
 Gordon. He mentions the transaction which happened at 
 Tanda in pretty nearly the same way Captain Gordon himself 
 relates it, and therefore I need not comment much upon his 
 testimony. There is however something remarkable in some 
 of the circumstances that the sepoys seeing a thousand of the 
 country people assembled on one side, and Shumshire Khan 
 your Lordships have heard a great deal of him, and will 
 hear more disposed to hostilities, on the other, and, being 
 also much exhausted by the skirmishing and labour on the 
 march, gave up their resolution and firmness at once, and, 
 throwing aside their arms and their coats, disposed themselves 
 to flight; and, notwithstanding Mr. Gordon used every 
 means of persuasion both to the sepoys and officers, no one 
 either heard or obeyed him, until Mr. Gordon was left with 
 only ten men and the baggage ; all the rest were fled. 
 Now, it does seem a little extraordinary that these thousands 
 
 Affidavit of 
 
 Merun, 
 
 Munshi.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 569 
 
 of country people, who are represented as attacking them 6 JUNE nss. 
 all the way in their march, and as having driven them 
 to a desperate situation just opposite the fort of Tanda, 
 when they had reduced them to ten men, that then they 
 left off insulting them and left them in safety ! 
 
 My Lords, that is, excepting one, the whole of the testi- 
 mony which the Counsel appeared to lay so much stress 
 upon I mean the whole of the testimony of the natives, 
 who were in a situation to be best informed respecting this 
 rebellion every word, tittle and syllable of it, collected by 
 Sir Elijah Impey at Lucknow, except this one single affi- 
 davit, to which I beg your Lordships' particular attention 
 I mean the attestation of Hyder Beg Khan, attested before Affidavit of 
 Sir Elijah Impey the 26th of November, 1781. Here your ggj^* 
 Lordships will naturally suppose you are coming to some Nawab's 
 distinct and authentic account of this rebellion. He was " 
 the Nawab's minister Mr. Hastings' minister in fact and 
 in truth, who was in truth the real Governor of the country. 
 He makes a long deposition, and in it not one word or syl- contaiusno 
 lable respecting the Begums. This was in November, your th^B^ums. 
 Lordships will recollect, after Sir Elijah Impey stated the 
 rebellion to be as notorious as the rebellion in England in 
 1745 after they state the notoriety also of the object of 
 the rebellion ; namely, to dethrone the Nawab, Hyder 
 Beg's master. Hyder Beg makes an accurate, circum- 
 stantial, affidavit before Sir Elijah Impey at Lucknow, and 
 he never once states that he had heard a syllable of this 
 report for he deposes as well to hearsays as to facts ; and 
 there is not a single rumour respecting the Begums. And 
 there ends the whole of these depositions of the natives, 
 which the Counsel were so eager to bring forward, and upon 
 which I suppose they mean to rely so much. 
 
 My Lords, we now come to another class of affidavits Affidavits 
 I mean to the affidavits of the English ; and in the van English. 
 of these, and most important indeed, appears Mr. Mid- 
 dleton's. NOW T again your Lordships' expectations no doubt Of Mr. Mid- 
 will be raised, and here again you will conceive that you dl 
 will have full, decisive, proof of the actual existence of 
 this rebellion and of the objects for which it was raised. 
 Mr. Middleton too deposes, not only to things he has seen 
 or known himself, but also to all the things he has heard 
 upon the two subjects the insurrection of Cheyt Sing and 
 the rebellion of the Begums. Till just at the end of his 
 affidavit, there is not a syllable respecting the rebellion of
 
 570 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums; 
 
 c JUNE 1788. the Begums. And then your Lordships have before you 
 the whole Mr. Middleton knew upon the 27th of November, 
 that is, after he had received Mr. Hastings' pleasure to con- 
 fiscate the treasures of the Begums ; when he kneAv what 
 was to be done upon this testimony ; when of course he 
 had no inducement to be careless, to omit or suppress any 
 circumstance which he knew could tend to the justification 
 of a strong measure then resolved upon. All he knows is, 
 that he heard at the time and believed, and does still 
 believe, that much encouragement and some actual aid in 
 raising troops was given Cheyt Sing by Behar AH Khan 
 and Jewar Ali Khan, the two principal eunuchs and 
 counsellors of the Wazir's mother at Fyzabad, and that 
 their conduct, as well as that of their dependants, during 
 the continuance of the disturbances at Benares, manifested 
 a strong disaffection to the English ; that he further heard 
 from his own newswriter, Hoolas Hoi, whom your Lord- 
 ships will recollect stationed at Fyzabad, 
 
 " that a vakeel or agent from Cheyt Sing had been received at that place, 
 and allowed to remain under the protection of the said" eunuchs ; and for 
 what particular purpose or what was the nature of his commission or 
 negotiation the deponent has not been able to discover. Signed, NA- 
 THANIEL MIDDLETON." 
 
 This is the whole that Mr. Middleton knew at the very 
 moment when he wrote to Mr. Hastings that he had made 
 up his conscience to the plunder and possibly to the destruc- 
 tion of these women. 
 Affidavit of The next is an affidavit from Colonel Hannay. And 
 
 Colonel , T 3 i i i 
 
 Haunay. here we must beg your Lordships always to bear m your 
 minds that there is mutual accusation and recrimination 
 between the Begum and Colonel Hannay. She also 
 accuses Captain Gordon. In a taunting manner, the 
 Counsel call upon us to call Captain Gordon. On the 
 same principle that we should not have called Colonel 
 Hannay if he had been alive, we refuse to call that witness ; 
 for every step they advance upon the accusation of the 
 Begums they do in fact advance in their own justification. 
 Colonel Hannay repeats that he had arrived at Fyzabad on 
 the evening of the 7th of September ; " that the subahdars 
 of. the two companies of Sepoys represented to him that 
 guards were placed said by the authority of the Begums 
 to prevent the sepoys or any one connected with the 
 English from entering the town." And this Colonel
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 571 
 
 Hannay heard in a town where no Englishmen were to be 6 JUNE nss. 
 permitted to enter. 
 
 " That the deponent learned, from various and what he deemed infor- 
 mation to be depended on, that the agents of ICheyt Sing were publicly 
 suffered to raise troops in Fyzabad, and that the eunuchs of both 
 Begums encouraged the people to enter into his service, particularly 
 Jewar Ali Khan, who was represented to have gone into the chouk for 
 this purpose ; that the deponent was credibly informed that, two or three 
 days before he arrived at Fyzabad, a man named Sheakh Khan had 
 marched from thence in order to join Rajah Cheyt Sing.'' 
 
 My Lords, it is observable that in the letter of the 17th of statement 
 October* which is a fabricated letter, as I shall show your 
 Lordships bye and bye, and upon which Mr. Hastings affects 
 to have taken the first alarm on the subject of this rebellion, 
 and first to have founded his determination to have punished 
 it Mr. Middleton there quotes an extract from a supposed 
 letter of Colonel Hannay 's, in which he makes Colonel 
 Hannay say that these thousand najibs were raised in 
 Fyzabad ; but, when Colonel Hannay comes to his testimony 
 upon oath, it appears he never saw them, but was only 
 informed that they marched from that place ; where raised he 
 does not pretend to say, but he had been informed that they 
 marched from that place a few days before he arrived there. 
 
 Then Colonel Hanay goes on to state that, upon the 8th 
 of September, he received a letter from Captain Gordon captain 
 which contained an accurate account of the whole transac- ScouTt of 
 tion, so much noted both by the Counsel and Managers, ^and 
 respecting the affairs at Tanda, and the supposed misconduct 
 of the Begum's faujdar, Shumshire Khan. Your Lordships 
 will observe in this narrative, Captain Gordon admits that, 
 till he arrived at the Tereeah Nullah, running by Tanda, he 
 never suspected the least disaffection on the part of the 
 Begums. He says, when he came there " I now imagined 
 myself in a friend's country." This was upon the 7th of 
 September. He states that this Shumshire Khan did not 
 immediately put over boats to relieve him ; that there was 
 some delay ; that the country people gathered round them ; 
 that they had fought him, he says which is a thing worthy 
 observation that they had fought him all the way, and that 
 his sepoys, hearing these reports that the English were to be 
 extirpated, and that many had been destroyed, deserted him 
 and left him with but a few people ; that when he attempted 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 1 82.
 
 572 Summing of Evidence OH Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 e JUNE 1788. to cross the Nullah they pointed guns across the river. 
 Now it does appear to me as if Shumshire Khan's guns, that 
 were turned across the river, had dispersed those people who 
 were pursuing Captain Gordon ; because, when they had 
 fought him, he says, with great spirit all the way, it seems 
 improbable that they should have desisted when his party 
 was reduced to ten people, and let him quietly cross the 
 river in a boat sent by Shumshire Khan. The whole of this 
 transaction depends upon the supposition that Shumshire 
 Khan, having heard of the affair at Benares, might have 
 imagined he saw a Warren Hastings in the face of every 
 person coming there, and might not be very eager to trans- 
 port Captain Gordon over the river, who for ought he knew 
 might be coming to treat him in the same manner as Cheyt 
 Sing had been treated: however, he did send boats over, 
 and Captain Gordon got safe over to Mr. Scott's factory. 
 
 MSr V Ma c f ^ ne next am( lavit i g tnat ^ Major Macdonald. He 
 donaid. appears to have been out of the way of knowing much with 
 respect to the Begums. He says, 
 
 " The road by which the post usually travelled from Benares became 
 impassable, from the numerous parties it was said Cheyt Sing had sent 
 out, to cut off all communication betwixt the Honourable Governor 
 General and the different stations of the army. As the deponent could 
 not obtain any authentic account of the state of affairs, he thought it 
 best to send out persons to all parts for information, that he might 
 judge from the state of the country how matters stood at the place of the 
 greatest moment." 
 
 He then proceeds to state what account persons sent out 
 in this confused state of affairs brought him in from all parts ; 
 and they brought him in such accounts as your Lordships 
 would expect a number of improbable and false accounts. 
 
 " The country of the daring rebel Cheyt Sing and the city of Fyzabad 
 seemed to the deponent the most likely places to furnish the wished 
 intelligence. In the latter place it was reported that the Honourable 
 Warren Hastings, Esquire, had been massacred at Benares ; then that he 
 had been cut off in his way to Chunar ; at last it was said the Honour- 
 able Governor General was in Chunargur, but must soon fall into the 
 hands of the Benares rebel." 
 
 A number of reports of similar veracity, 
 
 " That the Rajahs of the Vizier's grandmother, as well as those of the 
 Bow Begum, were raising men under various pretences and making 
 every preparation that might be necessary either for offensive or defensive 
 war ; that, during the time the Nabob lay encamped at Sultanpoor, the 
 deponent's people were insulted and ill used at Fyzabad by the peons, 
 sepoys, and other servants of Jewar Ally Khan and the two Begums, as 
 were all who made use of the English name or were suposed to have any 
 connection of the kind."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 573 
 
 He states that as a fact ; but the Counsel will observe it c JUSE ITS . 
 must be hearsay too, for he was not himself at Fyzabad ; he 
 does not state it as a fact within his own knowledge. 
 
 " That the zamindars had absented themselves ; and the deponent 
 learnt from all parts of the country that every man was getting ready 
 his army, arid that Cheyt Sing's name was in everybody's mouth ;" 
 
 and I have no doubt Major Macdonald did hear that there 
 was a most universal horror and indignation when the 
 country received the first accounts of the transactions at 
 Benares 
 
 " that every Rajah in the country had declared for him; that the deponent 
 endeavoured to get some nujjeebs, to supply the place of the troops 
 called away ; but all in vain. But every attempt was rendered abortive 
 by the machinations of the Rajahs belonging to the two Begums at 
 Fyzabad" 
 
 This is still what he had heard " and every soul in that city 
 seemed from this conversation and conduct to look upon 
 the English as on the very eve of extermination" that was 
 on the 8th of September " forbidding any one to serve 
 the Fringies " (the English), " but to repair to Cheyt Sing 
 and Saadit Ally." 
 
 " Nay, every method and way were tried to seduce the sepoys from the 
 deponent's battalion, which, however, did not succeed while remaining 
 under his eye, but had the desired effect upon the nujjeeb and sebundy. 
 After the sepoys' guns and horse had crossed the Gogra, there was an 
 end to all government in that part of the country where the deponent 
 resided. Not an article of any kind was to be had, and, but for the 
 deponent's having foreseen the situation he should be in and provided 
 accordingly, he would have been under the necessity of leaving his 
 station from the want of provisions. Thus surrounded on all sides by 
 lurking enemies (for there was no knowing whom to treat otherwise) the 
 deponent knew not when or from what quarter the blow was to be 
 struck ; but on the 8th of September it broke out in all parts. All 
 outposts were driven into camp ; the roads in an instant secured by 
 armed parties ; hircarrahs murdered ; sepoys attacked ; and the intended 
 destruction of every Englishman openly declared, not only throughout 
 the pergunnah towns and villages, but even in the city of Fyzabad. To 
 such lengths was it carried by the people of Jewar Ally Khan, and other 
 Rajahs belonging to the Begums, that the women of the deponent's camp 
 that were sent across the Gogra to be out of the way of danger, being 
 obnoxious from the connection, were refused that protection which the 
 sex in every country meets with, but particularly in Hindostan claims as a 
 right. From the above date the deponent was confined to the limits of his 
 camp, nor had he any road open but that to Rye Ghaut opposite Oude, 
 at which place Lieutenant Colonel Hannay then lay with a very small 
 force, while the country around him, also the city of Fyzabad, seemed 
 ready to commence hostilities. On the 10th of September, Rajah Zalim 
 Sing, accompanied by other rebellious Rajahs, appeared with a numerous 
 force on the banks of the Gogra, opposite to Amora. The deponent's 
 spies brought him intelligence from the rebels' camp that his, the
 
 574 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. deponent's, property, likewise that all his camp, was already divided ; 
 
 that the deponent's horses, camels, &c., things worth notice, the Rajah 
 
 Zalim Sing reserved to himself, the rest was to be given up to those who 
 could get it." 
 
 Here is a remarkable fact which seems to have come more 
 within the deponent's knowledge. 
 
 " Moreover the deponent saith his people informed him that Rajah 
 Zalim Sing had produced a paper, which he, the Rajah, said was a sunnud 
 from the Nabob, restoring him to his zemindary, appointing him 
 collector of the adjacent pergunnahs, Busty and Naggar ; also that he 
 had the Nabob's directions to drive the English out of his districts ; 
 that he only waited for the site (or fortunate hour) to do so ; that Niza 
 Saadit Ally had written to the Nabob that he was to blame if he gave 
 any assistance; that now was the time to shake off the English yoke; 
 that it might not be prudent to declare himself at once ; that he had only 
 to stand neuter, and, under pretence of defending themselves, direct his 
 subjects to take arms and endeavour to prevent the junction of the British 
 forces, when the matter would work of itself; further, to direct the 
 annuls to send no more supplies of money, which would cause the sepoys 
 to leave the English service for want of pay, while themselves would have 
 plenty of money. In the city of Fyzabad the same language prevailed." 
 
 Then he mentioned that, when he quitted his camp, it 
 was immediately taken possession of by Zalim Sing, and 
 that he marched from Amora to Rye Ghaut. 
 
 " As soon as it was known at Fyzabad that Zalim Sing was in posses- 
 sion of Amora the whole city was in an uproar from joy, and the deponent 
 heard the report and saw the smoke of guns that were discharged at 
 Fyzabad, he believes, on the occasion." 
 
 It is clear that here Major Macdonald must have been misin- 
 formed ; because, at the very time he states this fact to have 
 happened, Colonel Hannay was himself at Fyzabad, and, if 
 there were any such rejoicings upon the 10th of September, 
 Colonel Hannay himself must have added them to the account. 
 It was a natural mistake, Tinder the influence of these 
 reports, for Major Macdonald to have made, and he does 
 not mention it as a fact within his own knowledge, except 
 as matter of opinion, which he does at the end of his 
 affidavit : 
 
 " Nor did the deponent then or even at this moment doubt but what 
 the Begums at Fyzabad and their Rajahs were in a league with Cheyt 
 Sing, the Benares rebel ; and the deponent is of opinion that the whole 
 of the disturbances that happened in the parts where he resided took its 
 rise from the rebellion of Rajah Cheyt Sing ; and the deponent is further 
 of opinion that it would not have extended itself so wide in the short time 
 it really did, had it not been a matter preconcerted and brought to light 
 by mere chance ere properly ripe for execution."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 575 
 
 That is the whole of the account of Captain Macdonald ; 6 JUNE ms. 
 in which your Lordships will perceive he properly does not His evi- 
 take upon himself to assert these facts, but that, being in a fatesfoniy to 
 place where he could get no authentic intelligence, he picked rumours - 
 up what he could, and heard a variety of reports which turned 
 out to be absolutely false. 
 
 The next is Captain Williams. He appeared to be entirely Affidavit of 
 away from Colonel Hannay, and mentions hardly anything wimams. 
 about the Begums. Indeed there is one remarkable thing in 
 the first part of his affidavit. He had received orders in the 
 beginning of September from Colonel Hannay to cross the 
 Gogra at Tanda, and proceed and join him ; from which it is 
 evident that Colonel Hannay at that time thought Tanda a 
 safe place for the passage of English troops. His soldiers 
 mutinied, and put his life in danger. That it became imprac- 
 ticable to prosecute the orders he received to join Colonel 
 Hannay. That a few of our men mutinied, and, to the best 
 of his recollection, they proposed to march to Benares and 
 join Cheyt Sing and Saadat Ali, who, as they said, would pay 
 their arrears and make them, great men, adding that all the 
 Europeans were cut off, and that he, meaning the deponent, 
 was the only person left in the country ; that in the evening 
 they came to a determination to march to Fyzabad to the 
 Begums, who they also declared would pay their arrears 
 and take them into their service. Then he adds that, during 
 the time he remained at Goruckpore, it was currently 
 reported and given out by the rebellious Rajas that they 
 acted in conformity to the orders they had received from 
 Cheyt Sing, Saadat Ali and the Begums, to raise an insur- 
 rection in the country, and to destroy the English wherever 
 they found them ; that, during his march from Goruckpore 
 to Sakrora, the rebels who harassed him gave out that every 
 direction they took was in compliance with the directions they 
 received from the Begum, Saadat Ali and Cheyt Sing. And 
 that is the w T hole of Captain Williams' testimony, containing 
 nothing more than an account, as he professes, of reports 
 which he received. I don't mean to say that he, as well as 
 Major Macdonald and the other officers, did not receive 
 every one of these reports, but that they did receive them, 
 and then put them down exactly as they received them. 
 
 My Lords, the last and the most important certainly is Captain 
 Captain Gordon's affidavit ; for here your Lordships have affidavit, 
 from the first authority an account of the only thing like a 
 fact upon which anything like a suspicion against the Begums
 
 576 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 Suppression 
 of the fact 
 of the Be- 
 gum having 
 saved Cap- 
 tain Gordon, 
 
 Affidavit of 
 a French- 
 man, J. H. 
 Mordelait. 
 
 Second 
 
 colonel* f 
 Hannay. 
 
 . was pretended to be founded. He states the affair at Tanda 
 in pretty much the same terms as in his' letter to Colonel 
 Hannay, and concludes with saying : 
 
 " Notwithstanding this, Shumshire Khan was, and, the deponent 
 believes, is still continued in office; and, while the deponent was at 
 Fyzabad, Shumshire Khan came there and was well received by the 
 Begum and her ministers ; from all which circumstances " 
 
 now this is the extraordinary part of the case 
 
 " from all which circumstances the deponent is convinced that Shum- 
 shire Khan could not have dared to act as he did had he not been 
 authorized by the Begum and her ministers, or at least had he not known 
 that such conduct would be agreeable to them." 
 
 Now, my Lords, this concludes the whole of the testimony. 
 I shall observe only shortly here to your Lordships that both 
 Mr. Middleton, who knew the fact of the Beo;um having- 
 
 * O Q 
 
 saved Captain Gordon when she did hear of his distress, that 
 Colonel Hannay, who also corresponded with the Begum 
 upon the subject, and had thanked her for that act of gene- 
 rosity, and that Captain Gordon, who also corresponded witli 
 the Begum, had written her letters of thanks that they all 
 three, while they were giving breath and substance to every 
 idle rumour against the Begum, smother and stifle this strong- 
 living testimony of her innocence. And he adds, that from all 
 the circumstances he is convinced " that Shumshire Khan had 
 not dared to act as he did had he not been authorized by the 
 Begum and her ministers, or, at least, had he not known that 
 such conduct would be agreeable to them/' And this convic- 
 tion he states to be founded upon this circumstance, that 
 Shumshire Khan came to Fyzabad, was well received and 
 was continued in office, omitting to mention how he himself 
 came to Fyzabad, and that it was by the generous exertions 
 of the Begum, who sent to his assistance, that he did in fact 
 reach the place. 
 
 There is an affidavit of some Frenchman, Jean Honore 
 Mordelait. It is I dare say an original : the language and 
 the style of it is all French. He was run through the body 
 with bayonets, and escaped from tigers. How it came to 
 make its appearance here I can't say, unless from an ambition 
 of being in good company ; for there is not a word of the 
 Begums in it. 
 
 Then comes a second affidavit of Colonel Hannay, emulous 
 of the fame of Doond Sing. Having as we conceived sworn 
 | o everything he knew and heard before Sir Elijah Impey at 
 Lucknow, he seems here to have recollected things he omitted 
 then. Mr. Hastings becomes chief justice himself, which he
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 577 
 
 had as good a right to be undoubtedly as to be a general, c JUSE irss. 
 and he swears Colonel Hannay himself. But he seems to 
 swear with more care than his friend Sir Elijah Impey, 
 for he adds, " Sworn before me: the deponent declaring 
 on his oath that the above affidavit is written in his own 
 hand. "Writing at Benares, this 31st day of December, 
 1781. WARREN HASTINGS/' Here he seems to hit his 
 friend Sir Elijah Impey a rap on the knuckles for the care- 
 less manner in which he took the affidavits, and he establishes 
 the superiority of the Colonel's literary accomplishments over 
 his officer Doond Sing. He says : 
 
 " On the 10th, being encamped near Fyzabad, he was employed in 
 transporting his troops over the river Gogra, in order to act against the 
 insurgents to the northward of that river. In the evening, he received 
 intimation from a person living in the zenana, that the Nabob Begum, 
 grandmother to the Nabob Vizier, had through her agents prevailed 
 upon the principal jemmadar of horse to engage to detach himself from 
 the said deponent and to abandon him, and further warning the said 
 deponent to attend to his own personal safety, as there was an intention 
 of detaining him at Fyzabad." 
 
 This he did not recollect before Sir Elijah Impey 
 
 " That this intimation was given to the deponent in the presence of 
 Lieutenant Charles Middleton, to whom the deponent did communicate 
 it ; and that during the whole course of that day, the 10th of September, 
 he, the deponent, had not been able to prevail on any of the horsemen 
 to cross the river ; a matter which he could not until then account for, 
 but which served to impress him so strongly with the belief of the truth 
 of the information he had received, that he sent for the principal jem- 
 madar of horse, circumstantially communicated the said information to 
 him, and as forcibly as he was able stated to him the treachery, disgrace 
 and infamy, inseparable from so unmanly a behaviour. That the said 
 jemmadar of horse appeared much affected at the conversation, and 
 acknowledged that the information was true in every circumstance, 
 except that of his having acceded to the proposals that were made to 
 him, which he declared he had rejected ; but said they had also been 
 made to the other jemmadars of horse by the agents of both the Begums, 
 the Nabob Vizier's mother and grandmother; and the truth of this 
 assertion was afterwards affirmed to the said deponent by two of the 
 said jemmadars and several of the inferior officers and private horsemen. 
 The deponent further declareth that the above-recited conversation 
 passed in his, the deponent's, tent, to the best of his recollection and 
 memory, on the night of the 10th of September, in the presence of Lieu- 
 tenant Charles Middleton. The deponent further declareth that he is 
 restrained from mentioning the names of the jemmadars alluded to, from 
 an apprehension that their names becoming public might operate to their 
 prejudice, if not ruin ; but that the facts which he hath deposed to are 
 truth." 
 
 Now, my Lords, in God's name what ruin were these 
 jemmadars to apprehend ? This, your Lordships will recol- 
 
 o o
 
 578 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 e;jimE 1788. lect, is sworn upon flie 31st of December, after the warrant 
 for the total destruction and annihilation of every influence 
 and tittle of power had gone from Mr. Hastings, and was 
 then on the point of being carried into execution against the 
 Begums : and yet these jemmadars of horse, who had done 
 this noble act of disinterested fidelity to the Nawab and 
 kindness to the English, they are represented as saying 
 " we have conferred the greatest obligation upon our Sove- 
 reign and the English also ; the only return we have to ask 
 of you is that you will never mention it to any living being;" 
 that is, they were afraid they should be ruined by the 
 Nawab, whose throne they had supported, and the English, 
 whose extirpation they had prevented ; and therefore he 
 conceals the names of those jemmadars who had given him 
 this important information. 
 
 My Lords, I am happy I have now got to the end, without 
 omitting a single word or paragraph where mention is made 
 of the Begums or the rebellion, and that it is the whole of 
 the testimony upon which Mr. Hastings relies for his justifi- 
 cation for his behaviour to the Begums. 
 
 My Lords, I am aware that, if I was in an ordinary court 
 of justice, and the question was the guilt or innocence of the 
 Begums, and I was to propose to enter into a defence against 
 those hearsays and those rumours, I should be stopped by 
 the court, and told I was going to combat nothing ; that 
 there was nothing but contradictory, idle, hearsays, given as 
 such by the persons ; and that there was no sort of ground 
 or foundation worthy of a reply or of evidence being adduced 
 against them. But, as it is my wish to make the whole as 
 plain as possible, and to omit nothing which from the exa- 
 mination of Counsel or the wording of the different Defences 
 of Mr. Hastings I can gather as a ground intended to be 
 relied upon, I shall show that, even if there could a doubt 
 or suspicion of guilt arise upon these women upon this sort 
 of evidence, there is just, legal, substantial, proof that would 
 destroy every such doubt and every such suspicion. 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect that the charges against the 
 Begums are, as it were, under three heads : for as to their 
 uniform hatred and hostility to the English I shall say no- 
 thing, because it is not even attempted to be maintained by 
 the persons concerned for the gentleman at your bar ; there- 
 fore I shall mention the other three. First, the assistance 
 which they are supposed to have given to Cheyt Sing's 
 rebellion ; secondly, that they principally excited the com- 
 
 Character 
 of the evi- 
 dence con- 
 tained in 
 the affida- 
 vits. 
 
 Of the 
 charges 
 against the 
 Begums.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 579 
 
 motions and insurrections in Baraitch and Goruckpore, and 6 JUNB ms., 
 in the Nawab's country ; and thirdly, that they inflamed 
 the jagirdars, and were the cause of the resistance which is 
 stated to have been made to the resumption of the jagirs. 
 
 With regard to the first charge, which is a charge of direct, charge of 
 actual, rebellion, I do protest that, in order to satisfy my cheyt sing's 
 own mind as much as I could, I have been hunting, with all rebelhont 
 the industry at least, though not with the acuteness, of any Uncertainty 
 antiquarian that ever belonged to the Antiquaries' Society, tio 
 to find at what period this rebellion actually existed, and I " 
 have not found any one thing to guide me to the period of 
 its existence. There never was a rebellion so concealed. 
 We asked Mr. Middleton whether any battle was fought any 
 where ? None, he owns, that ever he heard of. " Did any 
 one man, horse or foot, march to suppress this rebellion ?" 
 "None." "Did you ever hear any orders given for any troops 
 to inarch to suppress it ?" " None." The rebellion seems 
 clearly to have died a natural death, though raised certainly 
 for a most unnatural object. But if this rebellion really did 
 exist it is impossible to treat the idea seriously ; and it 
 must have been a merry scene when Mr. Hastings first con- 
 ceived the strange improbable fiction, when he first enter- 
 tained the idea of persuading the Directors that they had 
 entered into such a plot. It is impossible to know when 
 and where there may not be a rebellion. While we are 
 sitting here there may be a rebellion at Knightsbridge of 
 the most fatal tendency that ever was ; for the celebrated 
 account of that army that has given celebrity to that village 
 was an ostentatious display of pomp and military parade 
 compared to that with which this was conducted. 
 
 I will endeavour to trace it by the time which seems to Difficulty of 
 have been a likely way to have made some discovery upon date of the 
 it when it was first determined to punish the Begums for rebellion, 
 having been in this rebellion. I go to Sir Elijah Impey's 
 account that then an actual rebellion did exist ; but I cannot 
 keep my ground there for any time; for Sir Elijah did 
 propose, hearing of it, to go to Fyzabad to read the Riot 
 Act, I suppose, to suppress it that way but he hears it was 
 then at an end, and Mr. Middleton acknowledges the country 
 was completely quiet before the end of September. There- 
 fore we must go back to about the time of the first insur- 
 rection of Cheyt Sing, and see what we can make of it 
 there. I look there among the letters, and I find it clear 
 and manifest that there could have been no rebellion existing 
 
 o o 2
 
 580 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Beyums : 
 
 & JUNE 1788. towards the end of August ; for I find letters from Mr. Middle - 
 ton, upon the road with the Wazir, directed to Mr. Hastings 
 upon the 29th August, confidential letters, not mentioning a 
 word of this rebellion, the Nawab being then upon his march 
 with his army passing near Fyzabad ; and the nearer they 
 make the road from Benares to Chunar to approach to Fyzabad 
 the nearer he was in the way to hear of this rebellion. I find 
 the Nawab, instead of detaching forces to quell the insurrec- 
 tion and rebellion, draws the whole of his army from the neigh- 
 bourhood. I learn from Captain Edwards' evidence that, of 
 30,000 regulars, irregulars and altogether, not one man had 
 ever heard a syllable of that rebellion. I then find letters 
 from Colonel Morgan* at Cawnpore and Kora, within forty 
 miles of Fyzabad, who proposes to detach troops, and does it 
 with great spirit and zeal, to the assistance of Mr. Hastings 
 at Chunar ; but there is not a word or syllable of any 
 supposed rebellion or any preparation for any such thing 
 at Fyzabad. 1 find, on the 27th of September, also at the 
 camp near Allahabad, where he had advanced nearer to 
 Mr. Hastings, that he writes an account of the disaffection 
 that had been supposed to exist at Lucknow, but not a hint 
 of any at Fyzabad ; for observe, he was not in the situation 
 of Colonel Hannay with respect to the Begums he was not 
 accused but he was in the situation of an officer who must 
 have marched to the suppression of such a rebellion if the 
 rumour of any such had existed. These letters are among 
 the last parts of the evidence. I believe I did not explain at 
 the time the purpose for which I wished them to be printed ; 
 but they are infinitely material, and the more they are 
 looked at the more their importance to establish Avhat I am 
 now endeavouring to maintain will appear. 
 
 Better of I then find a letter from Jacob Barnet, who was in the 
 hands of Cheyt Sing. There is a remarkable circumstance 
 in this letter; it enclosed Major Macdonald's letter (which 
 your Lordships will recollect) warning Mr. Middleton and 
 Mr. Hastings against the Wazir. He says : 
 
 " Honourable Sir, It is with the greatest concern I send you the 
 enclosed letter, intercepted by the Rajah s people. They had intercepted 
 one from Major Macdonald, another from Colonel Hannay. There is 
 another letter from Colonel Hannay, dated Fyzabad, the 10th of Septem- 
 ber, the purport of which is nearly the same as that enclosed, to caution 
 you against the secret designs of the Nabob, and that he, Major Hannay, 
 
 * Printed in the Appendix to Mr. Hastings' " Narrative of the Insurrection 
 ia Benares ;" Appendix, No. 69, et seq.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 581 
 
 is much distressed and ill. The Rajah will not suffer me to send the 6 JUNE 1788. 
 Major's letter from some capricious whim, but the Major says nothing ~~ 
 more than I tell you."* 
 
 So that, instead of recurring to what I will prove to be 
 a fabricated letter of Mr. Middleton, and false extracts 
 (j noted as from a letter of Colonel Hannay, here is a proof 
 that a letter of the 10th September was s.ent from Colonel 
 Hannay at Fyzabad, at the moment they would make us 
 believe that this rebellion raged at the highest, and not a 
 word of suspicion against the Begums, but on the contrary 
 a caution against the Wazir, who was then at Chunar with 
 Mr. Hastings. 
 
 I then look at a translation of a paper which was found Paper found 
 at Lutteepoor.f This paper is particularly described in p or? tt 
 Mr. Hastings' Narrative, and spoken of as a performance 
 of good sense, which it certainly is ; and the purpose for 
 which he produces it is to clear his friend Hyder Beg from 
 any suspicions of his having any disaffection against the 
 English. But it contains another proof, which Mr. Hast- Disprove 
 ings was not aware of; which is, that it destroys any idea C nce oflny 
 of any concert with respect to this rebellion between the concert ' 
 
 -rtr i ' ' it T-> mi T i IT between the 
 
 Wazir, his minister, and the Begums. Ihe paper, 1 should Minister of 
 rather suspect, was written by Saadat Ali Khan. It men- and the 
 tions the Nawab Wazir, and warns him not to entertain any Bcgums - 
 hopes of Hyder Beg who was in the interest of the English ; 
 but not a syllable of advice to apply to the English, much 
 less any insinuation of being employed in a common cause 
 with him. 
 
 My Lords, in this situation Ave have traced the history of 
 Fyzabad and of this rebellion through the end of August 
 and beyond the 10th of September, where it manifestly 
 appears that, at that time, not only no rebellion had raged, 
 but no rumour of a preparation for any insurrection nor any 
 symptoms of disaffection had appeared. We now must try Period of 
 to get at the period of its existence by referring to the time partmg wa s 
 when the Nawab returned to Lucknow and parted with Mkfdteton 
 Mr. Hastings. Here we are tracing him upon the road nd return* 
 with his troops, in company with Mr. Middleton. Mr. Mid- 
 dleton states that, it was about the 21st or 22d of Sep- 
 tember. Mr. Hastings in his Narrative states that it was 
 the 25th. Which is right I shall not pretend to say. But 
 he parts from Mr. Middleton to make a friendly visit to his 
 
 * Printed in Appendix to the " Narrative of the Insurrection in Benares," 
 p. 117. 
 
 f Ibid., p. 143.
 
 582 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 e JUKE 1788. mother the Begum. Mr. Middleton was asked, I own, this 
 question I believe we had better have abstained from it. 
 It was rather a question of observation than information ; 
 for he states he went thinly attended and with great expe- 
 dition. We asked whether he did not think it extraordinary 
 that the Nawab should go so thinly attended into the very 
 focus of this rebellion? Mr. Middleton, seeing the effect 
 Assertion of of it, instantly furnishes him with 2,000 horse upon the 
 ton that the spot. From that moment the Counsel lay hold of this 
 cwn> was 2,000 horse, and are determined to give it the effect of 
 paniedby marching with this body of horse to suppress this rebellion. 
 Hearing that Mr. Middleton could not keep company with 
 him, he travelled so fast, we thought we should have tired 
 some of this horse, and they would not get with him into 
 Fyzabad. Mr. Middleton was no military man, but a gleam 
 of military knowledge beams upon him, and he seems to 
 think they might keep up with him. Now I choose to take 
 the opinion of Captain Edwards against that of Field- 
 Marshal Middleton. Upon this occasion I prefer the evi- 
 dence of the Aid-de-Camp to that of the Resident. He 
 denies the existence of 2,000 horse. He says 500 or 600 
 very badly disciplined, ill-paid horse very disaffected ; and 
 Mr. Johnson and Mr. Middleton afterwards both write Avord 
 that this horse of the Nawab's rose upon the Nawab after- 
 wards for want of their pay. Therefore Captain Edwards' 
 evidence stands clear, uncontradicted, unimpeached, when 
 he says that these horse were not fit to be depended upon 
 to suppress a rebellion ; that they were so ill-affected that 
 they themselves rose upon the Nawab. Therefore if there 
 was any rebellion to have suppressed he would have applied 
 for British troops. 
 
 I then find a passage in my never-failing testimony, 
 Mr. Hastings himself, and which convinces me this horse 
 did not keep up with him ; for in his Narrative he says : 
 " The Nabob came to me with such zeal, he travelled with 
 such haste, that he came only with a hundred horse, the 
 rest could not keep up with him/' "When he pays a visit 
 with equal haste to his mother, then the 2,000 can very 
 well keep up with him. But I will give up this point to 
 the Counsel ; they shall have every one of these 2,000 horse, 
 camels, elephants, and all, upon the full trot and gallop, if 
 they please, to the gates of Fyzabad and then what do 
 they get by that ? Why Mr. Middleton tells you in his 
 very same evidence it was his usual guard ; he never paid
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 583 
 
 a visit of friendship or respect, or went upon a hunting e JUNE ITSS. 
 party, without these 2,000 horse ; so that all they would 
 establish is, that the Nawab, in going to pay a visit of 
 respect and affection to his mother, did not fail in that 
 respect, but went with his usual state. We could have no 
 motive to maintain that the Nawab was to lay aside his 
 usual state, and pay a visit to his mother incog., unless he 
 had meant to match the rebellion unless he had heard of 
 a rebellion incog., and thought it a magnanimous thing to 
 go to suppress it in the same manner that this was from 
 some strange, perverse, magnanimity in the Nawab, that 
 hearing of a rebellion incog. in disguise he thought to 
 suppress it himself in disguise without a guard. 
 
 We don't mean to maintain the Nawab to be of the 
 character of Princes who travel privately to learn fashion 
 from France, or liberty from England, not demanding the 
 aid of state ; but only that he went as he usually did go, 
 and that it was a breach of decorum and violation of duty 
 if he had not gone as he did go. Therefore, with respect to 
 these 2,000 horse, wishing to pleasure the Counsel all I can, 
 they shall have every man and horse brought to the gates 
 of Fyzabad then what comes of them afterwards ? Mr. 
 Middleton owns that it was a visit to his mother ; he con- NO mention 
 fesses that there was not a single word said by the Nawab rebefiion by 
 to him upon their parting that he had heard of any rebel- { M^MM- 
 lion ; and more, he confesses that, after his return to Luck- aieton. 
 now, he never once mentioned a syllable of this rebellion. 
 Therefore the rebellion, if it ever had existed, was over at 
 that time, and not only so, but it was forgotten an old, 
 stale rebellion, of a week or ten days, and quite forgotten ; 
 for the Nawab never mentioned a syllable of it to Mr. Mid- 
 dleton upon his return to Lucknow. 
 
 I think the Counsel will find that they have not been able 
 to maintain any idea of an actual rebellion ever having 
 existed. Perhaps we shall be told that as to actual rebel- 
 lion that is only a way of speaking. Mr. Hastings has [said] 
 that he never meant that there really was war levied 
 though it is so expressly stated, and that the eunuchs 
 headed these troops but that there were certain symptoms 
 of disaffection and troops levied for the service of Cheyt 
 Sing, and also the suspicious conduct of the faujdar at 
 Tanda. 
 
 Now I come then to these two points. With regard to Rumours of 
 there being rumours abroad from the mutinous sepoys that nous sepoys.
 
 584 Summing of Evidence on Second Cliaryc the Begums : 
 
 e JCJJE 1788. they were going to the Begum's service even if she had 
 puteriiigthc levied troops, that was not a proof of disaffection to the Eng- 
 Begums 1 jjg^ or rebellion to the Nawab ; because if, as they have 
 
 service. i* '** i * i 
 
 stated, there was a contusion m the country, the natives took 
 to arms, the general cry was against the English, if the 
 Begum did levy troops, it might have been in order to main- 
 tain the authority of her son, or even to assist the English, 
 in case their affairs were driven to that situation as to have 
 required any assistance ; so that, even if the fact were that 
 Jewar and Behar Ali Khan had raised troops it would not 
 amount to much. 
 
 Respecting But now we are come to a strong circumstance that is, 
 najibs 000 these thousand najibs, which so many questions were put 
 raisgiby by the Counsel upon ; for they are as fond of them as 
 and sent to of the 2,000 horse. These were raised in Fyzabad by 
 ,heyt Smg. ^ e jj e g umgj ag j^j. Hastings says, and sent to the assist- 
 ance of Cheyt Sing. Now I will undertake to say I shall 
 rout these najibs in five minutes, and show the extraor- 
 dinary confidence any person must have who should advance 
 any such proposition. Colonel Hannay says " he was cre- 
 dibly informed that, two or three days before his arrival at 
 Fyzabad, a man named Sheakh Khan had marched from 
 thence in order to join Cheyt Sing, with a thousand horse 
 and foot, and that several other detachments had before pro- 
 ceeded from thence with the same design." Mr. Hastings, 
 upon this, writing home to the court of Directors upon the 
 llth of February, says, " The circumstance of these levies is 
 further corroborated by various reports from Fyzabad, and 
 by the list," I beg your Lordships to attend to this list; it 
 is the list of Cheyt Sing's forces, delivered to the Governor 
 General at Chunar. This list is given by a man of the 
 name of Sheakh Mohammed Aumeen Meyher, who was 
 second in command, and had certainly a good opportunity 
 of knowing where the troops came from under Cheyt Sing 
 " in which the troops said to be come from Lucknow, 
 which formed a part of his strength, must evidently be 
 the same (since they agree in number) with those which 
 Colonel Hannay declares to have been raised and sent to 
 him from Fyzabad." Now it is so incredible a circumstance, 
 so wholly unprecedented, that ever there were two corps of 
 a thousand men each mentioned in any other part of the 
 world, that they must be the very same, though stated to 
 have come from another place by the very man who had 
 the best opportunity of knowing. Our curiosity is raised,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 585 
 
 and we go back and look a little into this account, 
 Mr. Hastings gives a very good character of this man, and 
 of the probability of his giving good intelligence ; and it 
 is upon this intelligence that he founds the whole of his 
 opinion of Cheyt Sing's strength before the capture of 
 Pateeta. He says : - 
 
 " The following is a catalogue of Cheyt Sing's whole force, which has 
 been since delivered to me by one of his principal officers, and, as it made 
 a part of a sworn affidavit, I admit and credit it as genuine : it is 
 certainly not exaggerated."* 
 
 One of the articles in this catalogue is " A thousand 
 nujeeb swordmen from Lucknow." 
 
 Now it appeared that the Begum's najibs were match- 
 lock men, and that the Counsel have taken the greatest pains 
 to establish, forgetting in this account I suppose that they 
 represented the najibs in Cheyt Sing's camp to be sword- 
 men. Colonel Hannay represents them as horse and loot. It 
 might be ten times over proved if necessary that the Begums 
 had not an horseman in the world; that the najibs were 
 all footmen matchlock men and not swordmen. Now here 
 comes the most whimsical circumstance : this man, who had Evidence 
 the best information, as Mr. Hastings says, being upon oath, 
 ought to be credited. He says these najib men came from 
 Lucknow, and not from Fyzabad. We did ask a question, 
 which your Lordships I believe stopped us in, whether the 
 person who was second in command with Cheyt Sing, and 
 served with these troops, had not a better opportunity of 
 knowing from whence these men came than Colonel Hannay, 
 who never saw them, and Mr. Middleton who never heard 
 of them ? The question answered itself. But Mr. Hastings, 
 in order to get rid of this, says, in his second Defence : 
 
 " These facts have been proved by the depositions of Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Alexander Hannay, Major John M'Donald, Captain John 
 Gordon, and many other witnesses, taken before Sir Elijah Impey, at 
 Lucknow and Chunar, within three months of the time in which the 
 events had passed : and in one of the latter, namely, that of Sheikh 
 Mahomed Aumeen Mheir, a commandant, and the second officer in 
 command, of the service of Cheyt Sing, a list of the troops which 
 composed Cheyt Sing's force during his rebellion was delivered by him 
 upon oath ; in which were inserted 1,000 nejeebs, or swordmen, newly 
 entertained from Lucknow ; which exactly corroborates the testimony of 
 Colonel Hannay and the other English officers, who mention the 
 recruits enlisted by the Begum's authority at Fyzabad, by the same name 
 of nejeebs, the deponent supposing them to have been sent from Luck- 
 
 * " Narrative of the Insurrection in Benares," p. 43.
 
 586 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. now instead of Fyzabad, through an evident mistake of one capital for 
 * the other."* 
 
 It was so extremely natural that this man commanding- 
 in-chief, should mistake one capital for another, being a 
 native of the country and knowing the whole of it, and that 
 he must have been in the wrong, and Colonel Hannay who 
 never saw them, and Middleton who never heard of them, 
 must have been in the right ! But I suppose there is some 
 circumstance of internal evidence that makes it utterly 
 improbable or impossible that they should have come from 
 Lucknow, that it evidently must have been a mistake of one 
 capital for another. Your Lordships will recollect that we 
 have placed it in evidence before you that, during the 
 absence of the Nawab, there was no part of the whole 
 country that appeared so full of that hatred and malice which 
 Mr. Hastings describes the whole country to have borne 
 against the English so full of that resentment against the 
 name of the English as this capital of Lucknow. Now 
 your Lordships will hear what Mr. Hastings says, and then 
 judge whether there is an internal proof of the impossibility 
 of their having come from Lucknow, and of this man who 
 must know the circumstance having evidently mistaken one 
 capital for another. Mr. Hastings says : 
 
 Extract " I had received several intimations imputing evil designs to the 
 
 Hastings' Nabob, and warning me to guard myself against them, and especially to 
 Narrative, be careful that I did not expose myself to the effects of concealed 
 treachery by visiting him without a strong guard. 
 
 " Many circumstances favoured this suspicion. No sooner had the 
 rebellion of this zemindary manifested itself than its contagion in- 
 stantly flew to Fyzabad, and the extensive territory lying on the north 
 of the river Dewa, and known by the names of Gorruckpoor and 
 Bareech. In the city of Fyzabad, Nawaub Allea and Jenauby Allea, 
 the mother and grandmother of the Nabob, openly espoused the party 
 of Cheyt Sing, encouraging and inviting people to enlist for his service, 
 and their servants took up arms against the English. Two battalions of 
 regular sepoys in the Vizier's service, under the command of Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Hannay, who had been intrusted with the charge of that district, 
 were attacked and surrounded in various places, many of them cut 
 to pieces, and Colonel Hannay himself, encompassed by multitudes, 
 narrowly escaped the same fate."f 
 
 A direct untruth; because here Mr. Hastings says, 
 "I was warned against the Vizier. Among the circum- 
 stances that led me to pay some attention to that warning 
 is this that the Begum had employed troops; had sur- 
 
 * The " Minutes of the Evidence," &c., p. 364. \ " Narrative," p. 36.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 587 
 
 rounded and nearly cut off Colonel Hannay." This is his 6 JUNE ms. 
 reason for thinking there was ground to suspect the Wazir 
 before he joined him at Chunar upon the llth of September: 
 whereas it was upon the 7th of October that Major Naylor 
 rescued Colonel Hannay from his distressed situation. I 
 observe that only in passing: but he says : 
 
 " The Nabob Vizier was charged with being privy to the intrigues 
 which had produced and fomented these disturbances, and the little 
 account that he seemed to make of them served to countenance the 
 suspicion. I can truly say for myself that I never afforded it the 
 slightest degree of credit : neither his character, the tenor of his past 
 conduct, the expectations which I knew he entertained of assistance and 
 relief from myself, nor his inability to support himself without the pro- 
 tection of our government, allowing me for a moment to entertain a 
 thought so injurious to his fidelity and so contrary to probability. Yet 
 I was not perfectly free from apprehensions similar to such a suggestion. 
 The Nabob was surrounded by men base in their characters and improvi- 
 dent in their understandings, his favourites and the companions of his 
 looser hours ; these had every cause to dread the effect of my influence 
 on theirs, and both these and the relations of the family, whose views of 
 consequence and power were intercepted by our participation in the 
 administration of his affairs, entertained a mortal hatred to our nation, 
 and openly avowed it. These all joined in prescribing the most perni- 
 cious and fatal counsels to the Nabob, representing this as the time to 
 deliver himself from what they described as the yoke of servitude." 
 
 These were the men in whose hands he says he ac- 
 quitted the Nawab. But the Nawab was absolutely in their 
 power and in the hands of these men. Therefore here he 
 furnishes the completest evidence of the infinite probability 
 that there was no mistake in the account which is in itself 
 a strong presumption, being by the man who best knew and 
 could judge upon it, that there was no evident mistake of 
 one capital for the other, but that those persons who hated 
 the English and could use the Nawab's name without his 
 authority (even admitting that the Nawab did not hate us, 
 which has never appeared) this is decisive that these 
 troops did come from Lucknow, as stated, and not from 
 Fyzabad : 
 
 " Although he firmly rejected all their persuasions, and I was assured 
 of it, yet he himself was at their mercy, and ifc was in their power to use 
 both his authority and his person for the perpetration of their own 
 designs." 
 
 Now it is here perfectly clear : for your Lordships will 
 recollect that the persons who accompanied the Nawab were 
 Hyder Beg and Hussein Reza Khan, both creatures of
 
 588 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788 
 
 Reason for 
 Mr, Hast- 
 ings not 
 including 
 Saadat Ali 
 in his accu- 
 sation of 
 rebellion. 
 
 Conduct of 
 Shumshirc 
 Khan at 
 Tanda. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, and therefore of whom he was not afraid 
 Hyder Beg particularly who were the people about the 
 Nawab who were left behind at Lucknow, and who could 
 use the Nawab's name in his absence ; and the presumption 
 would have been that, even if these men in Cheyt Sing's 
 army had been put down to have come from Fyzabad 
 instead of Lucknow, it would have been clear that it was a 
 mistake of one capital for the other. So much for this 
 important circumstance of the najibs. 
 
 Here your Lordships I am sure will observe that, when 
 I am defending the cause of the Begums against this accu- 
 sation, it appears a little extraordinary that I have only one 
 client upon the occasion ; because all the testimonies those 
 weighty, credible, authentic testimonies, which it was so 
 indecent in Mr. Burke to call careless or irrelevant that 
 every one or almost every one state the Wazir, and all of 
 them state Saadat Ali, as being equally hostile to the Eng- 
 lish as the Begum. What became of Saadat Ali, that there 
 was no suspicion, no inquiry, into his conduct ? You have an 
 answer to that in a few words by Sir Elijah Impey. He is 
 asked " Had Saadat Ali any wealth?" " No, he was miser- 
 ably poor : he was a pensioner either upon the English or 
 the Nabob." There you find his purity : there could be no 
 suspicion of treason where no man could find treasures ; there 
 was no object to convict him of a plot who had no wealth. 
 His purity is found in his poverty, his safety in his insol- 
 vency ; and, through the whole course of these transactions, 
 you will perceive that Mr. Hastings' doctrine reverses all 
 we have learned in history, where we find that enterprises, 
 intrigues, plots, belong to the desperate. 
 
 Saadat Ali, therefore, he dismisses in a short line in his 
 Narrative. He says that, when he left Benares, he desired 
 him to take care of some prisoners : the good he did was 
 certain and the evil he did precarious. The same observa- 
 tion, one would think, a just and candid mind would at least 
 apply to the Begum in saving Captain Gordon : the good 
 she did was certain, and the evidence against her, after hear- 
 ing it all, you will admit at most is but precarious. But I 
 come now to the strong material fact against the Begum, 
 namely, the conduct of Shumshire Khan at Tanda. 
 
 Your Lordships have heard the account given of this 
 transaction by Captain Gordon : you will now hear the 
 representation made of it very shortly by the Begum herself!,
 
 Speech of Mr. ti/wriilan. 589 
 
 in a, letter to Mr. Hastings [Mr Bristow] previous to her e JUNE 1:88. 
 treasures being seized. She says : 
 
 " The disturbances of Colonel Hannay and Mr. Gordon were made a Letter of 
 pretence for seizing my jaghire. The state of the matter is this : When the Be ? um - 
 Colonel Hannay was by Mr. Hastings ordered to march to Benares, 
 during the troubles of Cheyt Sing, the Colonel, who had plundered the 
 whole country, was incapable of proceeding, from the union of thousands 
 of zemindars who had seized this favourable opportunity. They 
 harassed Mr. Gordon near Junivarra, and the zemindars at that place and 
 Acberpore opposed his march from thence till he arrived near Tanda. 
 As the Tanda Nulla from its overflowing was difficult to cross without 
 a boat, Mr. Gordon sent to the foujdar to supply him. He replied, the 
 boats were all in the river, but he would according to orders assist him 
 as soon as possible. Mr. Gordon's situation would not admit of his 
 waiting. He forded the Nulla upon his elephant, and was hospitably 
 entertained and protected by the foujdar for six days. In the meantime fy^g* fb "* 
 a letter was received by me from Colonel Hannay desiring me to escort Captain 
 Mr. Gordon to Fyzabad. As my friendship for the English was always Gordon, 
 sincere I readily complied, and sent some companies of nugives to escort 
 Mr. Gordon and all his effects to Fyzabad, where having provided for his 
 entertainment I effected his junction with Colonel Hannay. The letters 
 of thanks I received from both these gentlemen upon this occasion are 
 still in my possession ; copies of which I gave in charge to Major Gilpin 
 to be delivered to Mr. Middleton, that he might forward them to the 
 Governor General. To be brief, those who have loaded me with accu- 
 sations are now clearly convicted of falsehood. But is it not extraordi- 
 nary that, notwithstanding the justness of my cause, nobody relieves my 
 misfortune? Why did Major Gilpin return without effect? My prayers 
 have been constantly offered to Heaven for your arrival report has 
 announced it ; for which reason I have taken up the pen and request 
 you will not place implicit confidence in my accusers, but, weighing in 
 the scale of justice their falsehoods and my representations, you will 
 exert your influence in putting a period to the misfortunes with which 
 I am overwhelmed." * 
 
 Now, my Lords, we are at issue upon this point whether 
 is this representation of this transaction just and truly 
 made by the Begum, in opposition to the account given of 
 it which I have read before ? I am sure your Lordships 
 have not forgot the circumstance of those letters which 
 passed between Colonel Hannay, Captain Gordon and the 
 Begum. 
 
 We find in every respect that these letters prove that the Her account 
 Begum's account and representation of this transaction is bytetters 
 literally and accurately true. We find a copy of a letter Ha^nav'a'nd 
 from Colonel Hannay to Jewar Ali Khan and Behar AH captain 
 Khan, her ministers, in which he says : 
 
 " I had the pleasure to receive your friendly letter fraught with bene- 
 volence, and whatever favours you, my friends, have been pleased to 
 
 * Letter from the Bow Begum to Mr. Bristol. Printed in the " Minutes 
 of the Evidence," p. 69 G.
 
 590 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. confer respecting Mr. Gordon afforded me the greatest pleasure. Placing 
 a firm reliance on your friendship, I am in expectation that the aforesaid 
 gentleman with his baggage will arrive at Fyzabad in safety, that the 
 same may oblige and afford satisfaction to me.* 
 
 In another letter from Colonel Hannay lie thanks them 
 in the warmest terms of gratitude, expresses his astonish- 
 ment that another letter of his had not reached the ministers, 
 and writes : 
 
 "You wrote me to remain perfectly easy concerning Mr. Gordon. 
 Verily, from the kindness of you, my indulgent friends, my heart is 
 quite easy. You also observed and mentioned that, as Mr. Gordon's 
 coming with those attached to him, probably his sepoys and others, 
 might be attended with difficulty, if I approved he should be invited 
 alone to Fyzabad. My friends, I place my expectation entirely upon 
 your friendships, and leave it to you to adopt the manner in which the 
 said gentleman may arrive in security without molestation at Fyzabad ; 
 but, at the same time, let the plan be so managed that it may not come 
 to the knowledge of any zemindars. In this case you are men of 
 discernment." 
 
 Here he plainly shows that he knew who were the 
 enemies of himself and of Captain Gordon who had 
 attacked and harassed their march; and that he also well 
 knew where he was to find protection and where he was 
 sure of safety. At the end of the letter he says : 
 
 " From Mr. Gordon's letter I understand that Mirza Imaum Baksh, 
 whom you dispatched thither (to Tanda), has and still continues to pay 
 great attention to that gentleman, which affords me great pleasure, "f 
 
 Here your Lordships perceive that upon the first appli- 
 cation of Captain Gordon to Colonel Hannay, telling him of 
 the letter before he quitted his station at Tanda, and com- 
 plaining of the behaviour of the faujdar, the Begum sends 
 a person to take care of him till they can provide for his 
 march from Tanda in such manner as not to be annoyed by 
 the zamindars, or, as is expressed by the Begum in a letter 
 to Colonel Hannay, " by the short-sighted and deluded 
 ryots, who had carried their disturbances and ravages 
 beyond all bounds." By which it appears that, in another 
 letter, Colonel Hannay had stated what was the fact that 
 it was the peasants assisting the zamindars who had attacked 
 Captain Gordon. Mr. Hastings, writing to the Directors, 
 states that Captain Gordon was attacked by troops levied 
 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 697. 
 Printed as above, p. 698.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 591 
 
 under the authority of the Begums. Then there is a copy 
 of a letter from Mr. Gordon to the Begum, after he had been 
 brought safe from Tanda to Fyzabad after he had gone 
 from Fyzabad and had joined Colonel Hannay in perfect 
 safety, owing to the efforts and interference of the Begum. 
 He says : 
 
 " Your gracious letter, in answer to the petition of your servant from 
 Goondah, exalted me from the contents. I became unspeakably impressed 
 with the honour it conferred. May the Almighty protect that royal 
 purity, and bestow happiness, increase of wealth and prosperity ! The 
 welfare of your servant is entirely owing to your favour and bene- 
 volence." 
 
 There then comes another letter to Behar and Jewar Ali 
 Khan from Captain Gordon, in which he repeats his grati- 
 tude and thanks to them, and says: 
 
 " My indulgent Friends, I have the pleasure to inform you that 
 yesterday, having taken leave of you, I passed the night at Moorgunge ; 
 and next morning, about ten or eleven o'clock, through your favour and 
 benevolence, arrived safe at Goondah." 
 
 Here then, my Lords, you perceive the real fact, sup- 
 ported, not by any collateral or by any circumstantial evi- 
 dence, but by the strong, decisive, testimony of these persons 
 themselves, and of Captain Gordon, who acknowledges that 
 his preservation was entirely and wholly owing to the 
 Begums. 
 
 Now, I must observe upon the circumstance of this being circum- 
 omitted by Mr. Middleton, by Colonel Hannay, and by the n Begum' 
 Captain Gordon, at the time they made their depositions ^c^pTain 
 before Sir Elijah Impey at Lucknow. The Counsel ask us ^^ in 
 in a scorning and taunting manner why we have not called the afflda- 
 Captain Gordon to your Lordships' bar ? I will not call Cap- V1 
 tain Gordon to your Lordships' bar ; and I do hope and trust Observa- 
 that, if ever I do see him at your Lordships' bar, I shall see Capt^m* " 
 him there with contrite zeal and penitential eagerness endea- Affidavit. 8 
 vouring to atone for the injury which has been done by his 
 testimony to his benefactress. I must suppose one of these 
 things, either that he acted under some fascinating or domi- 
 neering authority from those who collected in this scandalous 
 manner this mass of testimony ; or else, that they did conceal 
 from him that upon his testimony that strong measure, the 
 confiscation of the treasures, and possibly the destruction of 
 these women, was to depend. I say, if they took his testi- 
 mony as if it was only an account of his having lost his detach- 
 ment if they took it only as an authority to repay him for 
 the baggage that had been plundered if they took it and
 
 592 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 s. concealed from him that upon this testimony the ruin of 
 these women depended I say they added to the other frauds 
 of this transaction the guilt of this scandalous delusion upon 
 that officer. I will not believe, till I hear it from Captain 
 Gordon's own mouth, that if he had known this circum- 
 stance he could have concealed this testimony for the credit 
 of the Begums, that he would have lent the breath of his 
 life (which was her gift and her bounty) to her destruction, 
 when he stood in the presence of his God before whom he 
 swore. My Lords, I will not believe it ; my respect to 
 human nature forbids me. I therefore do say that I hope, 
 whenever I see Captain Gordon at this bar, that he is struck 
 like Major Gilpin with this that, however he might have 
 been misled at the time he made this affidavit, yet, upon 
 cool, temperate, reflection, he finds he was imposed upon ; 
 that he was imposed upon possibly by their giving that 
 false account of this transaction which they afterwards did, 
 namely, that the Begums were influenced by hearing of our 
 success at Benares. If he was so deluded, he may explain 
 that delusion to your Lordships ; but till that time I will 
 not believe that Captain Gordon, who said to the Begums, 
 " The welfare of your servant is entirely owing to your 
 favour and benevolence," meant to say, " and the gratitude of 
 your servant shall be your destruction." Therefore let the 
 Counsel call Captain Gordon, and then let this matter be 
 cleared up before this court. 
 Effortsofthe Your Lordships I dare say will recollect the pains which 
 
 Counsel to * MI-I I-IP i 
 
 prevent the were taken under legal quibbles and technical torms reluc- 
 
 f evidence tantly taken I have no doubt by the Counsel to oppose 
 
 point! 8 our producing this evidence before your Lordships. I 
 
 Mutilation must beg to call your Lordships' attention to the cvi- 
 
 dJeton'^ ld " dence of Mr. Middleton upon this subject. We hold up to 
 
 books" your Lordships his letter-books. We show you a letter from 
 
 Major Gilpin upon this occasion, where he talks of this 
 
 transaction. He speaks of letters enclosed ; that the record 
 
 is defaced ; that the papers are torn out. We showed your 
 
 Lordships in another book, which was letters received, 
 
 where, if he did, as he must have done, mention something 
 
 of this transaction to Mr. Hastings, that there again in the 
 
 very same period of time the leaves are torn out. 
 
 Mr. Middle- M r . Middleton is pressed upon this subject, and his answer 
 
 UenceTnex- is that he does not recollect having transmitted these 
 
 theTuppref- letters ; that he left a Persian copy of them in his office 
 
 Mters! the a thing against all practice and all precedent, as the very
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 593 
 
 intelligent testimony of Mr. Purling has made clear to your 6 JUNE ms. 
 Lordships. That he left a Persian copy of them in his office ! 
 Why did he do so ? Why not transmit them to Mr. Hast- 
 ings ? He says he received them (looking at the date of 
 Major Gilpin's letter) the day before he left Lucknow. 
 
 A flat perjury, my Lords he received them a month 
 before : we have established that by Major Gilpin's testi- 
 mony. They were not enclosed in the letter of the 17th of 
 October ; but the time clearly appeared to your Lordships 
 at which Major Gilpin delivered them, as he says with his 
 own hand, to Mr. Middleton at Lucknow. We reminded 
 Major Gilpin, who recollected the circumstance immediately, 
 that he wrote a letter in October from Deriabad in his way 
 from Fyzabad to Lucknow ; that he arrived at Lucknow 
 upon the 23d or 24th of September. Upon the very day 
 or the hour after his arrival he gives these letters into 
 Mr. Middleton's hands; he points out their authenticity 
 for Mr. Middleton affects to doubt of the authenticity, and 
 affects to him not to have known of this transaction, though, 
 as appears from his evidence, he knew of it before the affi- 
 davit of Captain Gordon yet he neglects to transmit it to 
 Calcutta, " because," says he, " I left Lucknow the next 
 day." We have proved he did not leave Lucknow till the 
 24th or 25th of October. We show by the date of the orders 
 that they were not issued for his recall at that time. We 
 show a better of the Cth of October from Lucknow, in which 
 he transmits Persian correspondence in a matter of no 
 importance ; and he swears positively that he knew these 
 letters were of importance, but that he had not an opportu- 
 nity of transmitting them, because he left Lucknow the next 
 day! 
 
 I think your Lordships see the real truth of that trans- 
 action and the falsehood told at your bar upon that occasion. 
 No wonder after this the letters disappear from the letter- 
 book. Notwithstanding all these efforts you see at last 
 they do appear, though they were suppressed, when invoking 
 the name of their Maker to what they said though torn 
 from their records though, with a criminal negligence or 
 with a base fraud, Mr. Middleton neglected to transmit 
 them at the time. You see that strong cherub Truth, em- 
 powered by that will which gives a giant's nerve to an 
 infant's arm, has burst the monstrous mass of fraud that 
 has endeavoured to suppress it. It calls now to your Lord- 
 ships. It is the weak but clear tone of that cherub Inno- 
 
 p P
 
 594 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 G JUNE ires, cence, whose voice is more persuasive than eloquence, more 
 convincing than argument ; whose look is supplication ; 
 whose tone is conviction. It calls upon you for redress : it 
 calls upon you for vengeance upon the oppressor, and points 
 its heaven-directed hand to the detested but unrepenting 
 author of its wrongs. 
 
 Efforts of These things, my Lords, having come to light, one more 
 ton to ex- e " expedient is to be resorted to. Finding that we had got 
 th^Beg-um's them in the House of Commons, and placed them in our 
 cL si ta1 nce * cnar o e Mr. Hastings has recourse to another expedient: 
 Gordon. he says : 
 
 " Upon the letters of Colonel Hannay and Captain Gordon, quoted by 
 the Bow Begum in proof of her innocence of the conduct imputed to 
 her and her servants, it is only necessary to observe that they were 
 written at a time and under the impression of the Begums having it 
 very much in their power to contribute to the safety, or possibly to the 
 destruction, of Colonel Hannay's detachment, then in a very precarious 
 situation in the neighbourhood of Fyzabad, and at a time too (a remark- 
 able time) when our affairs at Benares were supposed by those officers 
 to wear an unfavourable aspect. The Colonel's first object was to pro- 
 cure safety for the person of Captain Gordon, who was at the mercy of 
 the Begums and their eunuchs ; and for this purpose he thought no 
 means so likely to succeed as declaring an implicit reliance on their 
 friendship and good faith, and affecting to consider himself under obli- 
 gations to them. Captain Gordon, however," 
 
 [now is the point] 
 
 " most probably owed his salvation to another influence. Soon after 
 he fell into their hand by the treacherous conduct of Behar Ali Khan's 
 naib and adopted son at Tanda, the news of some successful operations 
 of our troops at Benares reached the Begums ; and, as affairs began to 
 promise a speedy and decisive issue in our favour, it is not surprising 
 that the Begums and their agents should endeavour by acts of kindness 
 to efface the impression which they must have been sensible their conduct 
 had made to their discredit." 
 
 This is the probable account this the account upon 
 which, when driven to his last refuge, Mr. Hastings is to 
 rely. The Counsel, I observed, in the course of their ex- 
 amination, have pointed particularly to this Defence, and 
 seem to rest upon it. Will they fairly join issue with me 
 upon this fact? I will be content that the whole cause 
 should rest upon it- that, not when our affairs began to 
 prosper not when there was a prospect of a favourable 
 issue but in the very worst period of the British affairs, 
 then this woman did this generous action. That I will prove 
 very shortly to your Lordships. 
 
 Dates of the In the first place, he must have been led into this 
 Coioni of wilful, fraudulent, falsehood by observing that the letters
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 595 
 
 were without a date. But he must have had a poor and 6 JCHB im. 
 mean opinion either of the common intellect or common Hamiay and 
 industry of those concerned in the prosecution if he thought 
 they could not date them to an hour. They remained 
 six days at Tanda, and then were hospitably enter- 
 tained' by the Begums. On the 8th they first sent a gen- 
 tleman to show them civilities at Tanda. From that to 
 the 14th September is the time when this transaction hap- 
 pened. Now let us see what had happened, and what news, 
 true or false, had reached Fyzabad during that period. In 
 the first place, what had happened? Why the Counsel 
 asked some questions, the motive of which might not 
 perhaps appear to your Lordships, but it appeared that upon 
 the 3d of September our troops had gained an advantage at 
 Pateeta under Captain Blair. Pateeta Avas not taken till 
 the 22d then our affairs did take a prosperous turn. But 
 there was an action upon the 3d of September in which we 
 had an advantage ; granted, if they please : but not for the 
 purpose for which they wish it to be established. Captain 
 Blair was sent to surprise the enemy's camp : he fails in his 
 attempt, and writes word of having accomplished the service, 
 though he could not surprise the enemy's camp, which he 
 states as originally his orders, and he returns : and the truth of 
 the action was this he tried to surprise the camp : they fought 
 stoutly ; killed forty-eight of his men out of a small detach- 
 ment : he got two or three guns and a tumbril, and returned 
 to Chunar. What is the account given of this transaction ? 
 Mr. Hastings states it as a victory, adding at the same time 
 that they could not afford such another victory, his situation 
 was so desperate. Cheyt Sing claims it as a victory too ; 
 and I have Mr. Hastings' authority for it in the Narrative, 
 where, in a letter written to him afterwards, Cheyt Sing 
 says he was successful in all the actions. Was there any 
 false report or false account upon the subject of this action ? 
 What was the effect of the report of this ? You find in the 
 letter of Jacob Barnet, which I mentioned before, dated 
 the 18th of September, he being at Lutteepoor with Cheyt 
 Sing : he says : 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, Sir, condescend to listen to some terras of con- 
 ciliation while we can do it without lessening our dignity. Pardon me 
 the presumption of advising you. I am, it is true, wanting in wisdom 
 and the knowledge of politics, but I see the Rajah is very, I fear too, 
 formidable." 
 
 p P 2
 
 596 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 e JUNE 1788. That letter is of the 15th September, before we had 
 taken Pateeta, but fifteen days after this famous action 
 under the walls of Pateeta. There was enclosed in Bar- 
 net's letters a letter from Major Macdonald, who lay near 
 Fyzabad, and was therefore in the way of hearing good 
 intelligence, if any ever false intelligence had reachect him. 
 He there, in affecting but rather ludicrous terms, takes leave 
 of Mr. Middleton. He says : 
 
 Letter of " My dear Natt, In such critical times as these every man has a 
 Major Mac- right to relate what he hears : a friend should and may do it without 
 Mr 11 Middle. impropriety. Therefore, before Hannay leaves the neighbourhood of 
 ton. Fyzabad, 1 write you my news and opinion lest hereafter our communi- 
 
 cation be cut off. There is certainly villany abroad. The Nawab it is 
 said set out well inclined to our interest, but, since, he and Saadit Ally 
 have come to a proper understanding. The latter wrote him he was 
 wrong to give us any assistance ; that such another opportunity might 
 never offer of striking off the yoke : as yet he need only stand neuter 
 himself, and, under pretence of assembling his. zemindars to attack 
 Cheyt Sing, privately direct them to obstruct the junction of our forces 
 by every possible means. The Begums gave the same advice, and pro- 
 mise of money. This Cheyt Sing has already disbursed to a great amount. 
 This plan was the cause of Gordon s disaster ; being attacked in the 
 Nabob's country while he thought himself among friends. My informa- 
 tion is from some zemindars whom I have had it in my power to be kind 
 to ; also, it is the public talk of Fyzabad, where my people are daily 
 insulted. Likewise Zalim, who is with two thousand men on the other 
 side, and means to cross in the morning boats that he will soon do 
 for us, as the Nabob will send Hannay no assistance that he is sure 
 of nor will any of the collectors pay more money : we shall therefore 
 shortly have none to pay our troops with, while they have plenty. 
 Hannay is now about two coss below Rye Ghaut on the Oude side, with 
 only two companies, two guns, and, I believe, some disaffected horse. 
 I have written him pressingly to cross to this place ; for, should Zalim 
 be over before him, I shall be hemm'd up in a small fort with 150 
 sepoys, when Zalim will take care Hannay does not get over to relieve 
 me ; perhaps, while attempting to pass the Gogre, be attacked by the 
 people of the Begum with the zemindars set on by her. In such an 
 event he could not possibly escape destruction. My wauselant would 
 soon be settled after such an accident. I am apt to think this Mah- 
 rattah treaty is only a fetch to gain time until the rains are over for 
 certain, as their horse could not act during that season. Look to your- 
 self, Nat : you may be in the Nabob's power. Mr. Hastings should not 
 leave Chunar until there be force very sufficient at hand both to check 
 his Excellency and do for Cheyt Sing, lest he get into a worse scrape. 
 A very few days will determine it one way or other with regard to us 
 rulers over, these. You may think me humming, but it is more than 
 odds we never, never, meet again. God prosper you ; and pray take 
 care," &c.* 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 611.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 597 
 
 So says Major Macdonalcl upon the 9th of September. .6 JUNE irss. 
 Your Lordships find the same sort of alarm expressed in a " 
 correspondence of the same period of Colonel Morgan. But 
 there are proofs in abundance that Cheyt Sing's report of 
 this action was rather credited than Mr. Hastings', Mr. Hast- 
 ings having himself said, in a letter to Mr. Wheler, that 
 when anything happened he put the best face upon it; 
 which was a politic and commendable fraud, I admit, because 
 his letters were mostly intercepted : but Cheyt Sing's report 
 that his troops fought bravely (which the officers admit 
 and were astonished at it) and had the advantage, was the 
 report which gained ground. 
 
 I will not dwell upon the mass of evidence upon the sub- 
 ject, but only beg to remind your Lordships of some circum- 
 stances I took notice of, namely, that all the officers of Oude 
 who are swearing to the reports they had heard and here 
 the report is of more consequence than the fact of the 
 advantage gained under the walls of Pateeta, they all swear 
 they heard that Mr. Hastings was actually cut off, and they 
 mention this after they heard of Captain Gordon's affair at 
 Tanda. They hear Mr. Hastings was destroyed, or in a 
 desperate situation at Chunar; therefore, if they do lay 
 stress upon these affidavits, let me quote them for one circum- 
 stance they do prove. But I come to my never failing 
 evidence Mr. Hastings. What was the hour in which he 
 tells us : 
 
 " Before I proceed it may not be improper to state the other resources 
 on which he, Cheyt Sing, not very unreasonably depended for lengthen- 
 ing the war, if not for success in the course of it. First, his fortresses, 
 of which there are many, and some of considerable extent and strength, 
 erected in various parts of the zemindary. Of these the two principal 
 are Bidjegur and Luttufpoor." 
 
 Then he says, " Pateeta is a very large town surrounded 
 by a rampart of earth." At the moment in which he. enu- 
 merates Cheyt Sing's forces and resources with this alarm- 
 ing sort of accuracy, it is before the capture of Pateeta. 
 " His next great resource was his wealth, on which he 
 looked and thought himself invincible, an expression which 
 I borrow from one of the meanest of his dependants." Then 
 he speaks of his allies. Then he says : " The distresses of 
 our government, and the power and number of its enemies, 
 may also be reckoned, though negative, yet among his
 
 598 Summing of. Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 6 JUNE me. resources."* That is the authority of Mr. Hastings himself 
 at that period. Then I have his authority again for it never 
 fails me against himself, as your Lordships will perceive 
 through the whole of this business. When, after the 3d of 
 September, they doubted whether they should begin their 
 attack upon Ramnagur or Pateeta, on the 14th of Septem- 
 ber, eleven days after this action at Pateeta, he says : 
 
 " It had been intended to begin our operation with the attack of 
 Ramnagur, partly because it had been the scene of our first disgrace, 
 and principally because the possession of the capital, which would 
 follow the capture of Ramnagur, would it was thought redeem our 
 credit with the public." 
 
 So that here, upon the 14th of September, he confesses that 
 their credit remained to be repaired with the public. 
 
 In his Defence before the House of Commons he truly 
 describes what his situation was at Chunar. He says : 
 
 " It is well known that, by the example and at the instigation of 
 Rajah Cheyt Sing, the zemindar of Benares, the inhabitants of that 
 district revolted from our government, and continued in a state of 
 rebellion from the 22d of August to the 22d of September '81." 
 
 That was till they took Pateeta. 
 
 " During this short but important period I was confined to the fortress 
 and plain of Chunar, and in a situation which in the apprehension of 
 many portended certain destruction to myself and my small party." 
 
 That is his own account of his situation at Chunar till 
 the 22d of September. But here is I think a circumstance 
 as curious there are various others, if I was to detain 
 your Lordships in heaping a prodigality of proof upon 
 proof, which I am almost ashamed of doing but here is a 
 passage in this very paragraph in which first he gives this 
 fraudulent pretence ; he says : 
 
 " Colonel Hannay was influenced by their having it in their power to 
 contribute to the safety or possibly to the destruction of Colonel 
 Hanriay's detachment : this is the reason why Colonel Hannay applied 
 to them in this civil way, and at a time when our affairs at Benares bore 
 an unfavourable aspect." 
 
 So that here he makes the motive of the officers applying 
 to the Begum in this manner to be their knowledge of the 
 desperate and unfavourable situation of our affairs at Benares, 
 and makes the Begum's motive her knowledge of our pro- 
 
 * " Narrative of the Insurrection in Benares," p. 44,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 599 
 
 sperous situation. And do I say too much if I say I have 
 proved that this woman did this transaction in the hour of 
 the extreme distress of Great Britain ; in the hour of the 
 prosperity of Cheyt Sing ; with all those resources which 
 Mr. Hastings states ; which he, with an alarming accuracy, 
 when the danger is over records ; when he was struggling 
 with his conscience and with his fortune ; while there seemed 
 to be a cloud of ruin impending over the British name ; while 
 it appeared as if the long owed vengeance of Heaven had 
 waited for the ripe exuberance of its guilt in the last trans- 
 action of Cheyt Sing, and was ready to burst upon our 
 heads ? Then it was that this woman, recollecting former 
 'treaties, faithful to former engagements, mindful of their 
 former friendship, rushed forward not to participate in 
 the spoil but to share the ruin impending on the British 
 name. This is the just, the real and true, situation of this 
 transaction. Having said so much I have concluded that 
 part of the charge against the Begums which relates to 
 their having assisted Cheyt Sing, and to their having saved 
 Gaptain Gordon only upon a false and treacherous motive, 
 namely, repenting their past bad conduct, and claiming to 
 obtain forgiveness by late merit. 
 
 The next charge against them is that they principally charge 
 inflamed the jagirdars and excited them to insurrection. I 
 shall make very little comment upon this, but give your -^,^1 the 
 Lordships, from Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton, his own Jagirdars to 
 
 ' & , insurrection. 
 
 account of the transaction : supposing that there ever had 
 been any resistance ; because it seems pretty well to begin 
 that the fact is false, that resistance there never was any. 
 But I will suppose a quibble to be founded upon this, that 
 they mean preparation to resistance, as they talk of disposi- 
 tion to rebellion instead of rebellion ; and your Lordships 
 will see whether it was necessary the Begums should have 
 used many arts and machinations to have inflamed these 
 jagirdars. Mr. Hastings informs us that the Nawab had statement 
 favourites about him unworthy the confidence he reposed in f 
 
 them, who made use of their influence to dissuade him from favourites 
 
 resuming the jagirs which he had granted them. A very 
 natural tiling, that those people who were to lose their him from 
 estates and whole livelihood should endeavour to dissuade [^jagS! 
 the Nawab from it, and should be displeased with and resist planted to 
 
 i -- -*- T -11 them. 
 
 the measure. Mr. Middleton says : 
 
 " The measure of resuming the jaghires involved many and some very 
 powerful interests, subject to such odium from the disappointment of
 
 600 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. t ne parties deprived of their means of subsistence, and in such extensive 
 dominions under a government so irregular in its constitution." 
 
 That is Mr. Middleton's account to Mr. Hastings for his 
 not being able immediately to effect the resumption of the 
 jagirs. Mr. Hastings, in his first Defence, says : 
 
 " With respect to the other jagirdars, excepting only the Nabob 
 Salar Jung and a very few others, they were generally the meanest and 
 most contemptible of the Nabob's subjects, and in no shape deserving 
 of his bounty. They were, in short, his orderlies, and other persons of 
 that stamp, the companions of his looser hours. The personal influence 
 of these men, which was very powerful, was naturally exerted to defeat 
 a design which so materially affected their interests, and not without 
 considerable efficacy." 
 
 My Lords, I shall dwell upon the subject no longer. It 
 is so ridiculous an attempt for imposing upon our credulity, 
 that no man who had not been lost in the arrogance of re- 
 collection of past success in imposition could have attempted 
 to support such an argument. As if it should be said, if 
 any such measures were taken to deprive your Lordships or 
 any other great men in the country of your estates, that it 
 would require the machinations of two ladies to make you a 
 little dissatisfied with the measure. 
 
 Upon the llth or 14th of February, 1782, he writes to 
 the Wazir, and says that he has just received accounts that 
 some preparation was making for resistance among the 
 jagirdars, and that, if timely care is not taken of it, it 
 may spread so as to become actual resistance. He writes 
 in that manner in the middle of February, 1782: and that 
 is the ground of accusation for having confiscated the 
 treasures of the Begums in November, 1781 for having 
 excited that resistance. My Lords, I shall say no more 
 upon that subject. I shall only observe upon that transac- 
 tion that there is a curious part of Mr. Hastings' conduct 
 relating to the means he took to suppress those jagir- 
 dars, when, a little earlier, Mr. Middleton, not meaning that 
 he should be credited (for he retracts the intelligence), 
 writes him a letter that he expects the resumption of the 
 jagirs will meet with opposition. Upon this Mr. Hastings 
 writes back, saying he would send those troops, which he 
 had pledged himself to withdraw from the Nawab's terri 
 tories, and never to send them again unless the Nawab 
 wanted their assistance: he says, "I see the Nabob wants 
 them, and I will send them back." For what purpose does 
 he want them ? Mr. Middleton states, that the Nawab is 
 
 Circum- 
 stances 
 respecting 
 the offer of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings to aid 
 the Nawab 
 with troops 
 in resuming 
 the jagirs.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 601 
 
 in such horror at robbing those personal friends of his e JUNE ITSS. 
 whatever character Mr. Hastings may give them that he 
 was so shocked at being forced to deprive his friends and 
 relations 0? their subsistence that Mr. Middleton thought 
 the enforcing it would drive him into despair which would 
 end in his destruction ; and he conjures him not to send 
 back those troops ; but if he does, Mr. Middleton says, " I 
 shall inarch with those troops " Against whom ? " Against 
 the Vizier's own aumils, who knowing the Nabob's wish 
 upon the subject would not submit to it." " I shall despatch," 
 says he, " the following aumils : but give me time ; I don't 
 wish to attack the whole country at once." Mr. Hastings 
 adds this remarkable circumstance to sending them back: 
 " I shall make him pay for them now, not as he formerly 
 used in a cheaper way ; he shall pay a higher price now, in 
 consideration of the circumstances under which I send 
 them :" which circumstances are to oppose the Nawab's will 
 to oppose his own officers, and probably to destroy him 
 in his own country ; and therefore under these circumstances 
 he is determined to make the Nawab pay liberally for them. 
 
 My Lords, I come now to the charge that is directly and charge 
 
 * ,. , . IT-> iii against the 
 
 pointedly made against the -Begums, namely, that they Begums 
 
 11 M. At. j.- r\ 1 J j.1. that they 
 
 principally excited the commotions in Oude and in the excited the 
 districts of Baraitch and Goruckpore. There is laid ^ode! ns 
 before your Lordships a mass of historical evidence, as it Baraitch 
 
 i i T i T i < 11 andGoruck- 
 
 were, upon this subject, that 1 believe would almost, it well pore, 
 looked into and well attended to, make it almost unnecessary 
 for me to have troubled your Lordships with a single word 
 upon the subject. Your Lordships will perceive the true 
 source, the true origin and the real cause, of those com- 
 motions and of those insurrections in Oude. You will see Commotions 
 it described in a manner disgusting almost from the strange- 
 ness of the calamity, and touching to the heart of any man ns 
 to look over. You will see what follows the sending the sent into 
 
 OU.U.G 
 
 gentlemen that your Lordships heard so much of into Oude 
 their calling for the assistance of the army whenever their 
 rapacity was opposed the military desire naturally to share 
 in the spoils when they were to share in the disgrace and in 
 the toil. 
 
 The consequence of this is, you see the Nawab complain- Letter of 
 
 i f i iv/r TT A.- i * the Nawab 
 
 ing to his tnend Mr. Hastings : he says . complaining 
 
 of their 
 conduct. 
 
 * The Letter here quoted is from the Nawab to liaja Gobind Ram. It is 
 printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 788.
 
 602 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. " I some time ago wrote you the particulars of the conduct of the 
 
 officers, and now write them again. The officers and gentlemen who 
 
 are at Cawnpore and Futtyghur, and Darunghur and other places, by 
 different means act very tyrannically and oppressively towards the 
 aumils, and ryots, and inhabitants, and whosoever requires a dustuck 
 they give it with their own seal affixed, and send for the aumils and 
 punish them. If they say anything, the gentlemen make use of but 
 two words ; one, that it is for the brigade, and the second, that it is to 
 administer justice." 
 
 The army who your Lordships recollect had the total admi- 
 nistration in some of the districts in their own hands, civil, 
 judicial and political that they seized upon the goods of 
 these people and managed in their own way the Nawab said 
 they " used but two words the one, that it is for the army ; 
 the other, that it is in order to administer justice." 
 
 " There is at present no war to occasion a necessity for sending for it. 
 If none comes, whatever quantity will be necessary every month I will 
 mention to the aumils, that they may bring it for sale ; but there is no 
 deficiency of grain the gentlemen have established gunges for their 
 own advantage, called Colonel Gunge at Darunghur, Futtyghur, &c. 
 The collections of the customs from all quarters they have stopped, and 
 collected them at their own gunges. Each gunge is rented out at thirty 
 or forty thousand rupees, and their collections paid to the gentlemen. 
 They have established gunges where there never were any, and where 
 they were those they have abolished. Thirty or forty thousand rupees is 
 the sum they are rented at. The collections, to the amount of a lac of 
 rupees, are stopped. Major Briscoe, who is at Darunghur, has esta- 
 blished a gunge, which he rented out for forty-five thousand rupees, and 
 has stopped the ghauts round about the Bipparies; and merchants 
 coming from Cashmere, from Shaw lehanabeid, and bringing shawls and 
 other goods and spices, &c., from all quarters, he orders to his gunge, 
 and collects the duties from the aumils ; gives them a cheit and a guard, 
 who conducts them about five hundred cose. The former duties are 
 not collected. 
 
 " From the conduct at Cawnpore, Futtyghur, Furruckabad, &c., the 
 duties from the Lilla of Gora and Thlawa are destroyed, and occasions a 
 loss of three lacs of rupees to the duties ; and the losses that are 
 sustained in Furruckabad may be ascertained by the Nabob Mozuffer 
 Jung, to whom every day complaints are made ; exclusive of the aumils 
 and collectors, others lodge complaints. AA 7 hatever I do I desire no benefit 
 from it. I am remediless and silent. From what happens to me I know 
 that worse will happen in other places. The second word I know is 
 from their mouths only : this is the case. In this country, formerly, and 
 even now, whatever is to be received or paid amongst the zemindars, 
 ryots, and inhabitants of the cities, and poor people, neither those who 
 can pay or those who cannot pay ever make any excuse to the Shroffs, 
 but when they could pay they did. 
 
 " In old debts of fifty years, whoever complain to the gentlemen 
 they agree that they shall pay one fourth, and send dustucks and sepoys 
 to all the aumils, the chowdries and canoongoes, and inhabitants of all 
 the towns. They send for everybody to do them justice; confine them; 
 and say they will settle the business."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 603 
 
 That is the way in which the gentlemen do justice, as the G JUNE ITSS. 
 Jsawab says, in his country. 
 
 " So many and numerous are these calamities that I know not how 
 much room it will take up to mention them. Mr. Briscoe is at Darun- 
 ghur, and the complaints of the aumils arrive daily. I am silent. Now 
 Mr. Middleton is coming here, let the Nabob appoint him for the 
 settling all these affairs, that whatever he shall order these gentlemen 
 they will do : from this everything will be settled, and the particulars of 
 this quarter will be made known to the Nabob. I have written this, 
 which you will deliver to the Governor, that everything may be settled ; 
 and, when he has understood it, whatever is his inclination he will favour 
 me with it. The Nabob is master in this country and is my friend. 
 There is no distinction." 
 
 My Lords, there is variety of this evidence. I choose other evi- 
 to save your Lordships' time by just taking a sample of it, oppressed 110 
 as it were, from the whole mass, and, without dwelling upon thTpeo"^ 
 many more of the particulars, you will perceive that similar of Oude. 
 complaints are often repeated from the Nawab, and especially 
 .with respect to Colonel Hannay. I am ready to admit there Evidence of 
 are some circumstances respecting Colonel Hannay I mean, Ha'nnay's 
 in fact, his not being able to vindicate or answer for himself ^P* 01 ^- 
 that must cause regret in every generous mind that we 
 cannot stand upon any light punctilios in this great cause, 
 and that we are obliged to mention fairly that the whole 
 evidence given at your Lordships' bar does go to sustain 
 and justify that assertion of the Begum's that the rapacity, 
 extortion and oppressive government, of Colonel Hannay was 
 the main cause and source, if not the only cause, of those 
 disorders which are falsely attributed to her. 
 
 There is a letter, of the 15th of September, 1782, from Letter of 
 
 , i XT i. the Nawab. 
 
 the Nawab : 
 
 " My country and house belong to you. There is no difference. I 
 hope that you desire in your heart the good of my concerns. Colonel 
 Hannay is inclined to request your permission to be employed in the 
 affairs of this quarter. If by any means any matter of this country, 
 dependent on me, should be intrusted to the colonel, I swear by the Holy 
 Prophet that I will not remain here, but will go from hence to you. 
 From your kindness let no concern dependent on me be intrusted to the 
 Colonel, and oblige me by a speedy answer which may set my mind 
 at ease."* 
 
 He does get a late answer from Mr. Hastings, vindicating 
 himself for ever having intended so monstrous a thing as to 
 employ the Colonel again ; but it was unluckily after the 
 Colonel was dead. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 660.
 
 604 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 788. T -u_n over, as I said, many other circumstances of 
 
 oppression and inhumanity, and gladly come to anything 
 that looks of a contrary quality ; but, at the same time, the 
 little anecdotes in this letter and the manner in which 
 they are expressed serve more forcibly to imprint upon 
 your Lordships what the real oppression of these poor 
 creatures was, and their sense of it, than any recapitulation 
 I could make of the cruelties and acts of tyranny them- 
 selves. 
 
 ofTajor ty Major Naylor, who relieved Colonel Hannay when in that 
 Nayior. desperate situation upon the 6th of October, remains after- 
 Avards in the country ; and I nm glad to say that he docs 
 seem to have been a man of a humane, considerate, temper, 
 and that he was so considered by the poor people. He 
 speaks of a person who was confined with his family as the 
 custom was of all the people of the first rank in that country, 
 putting them in those cages, adding the shame and dis- 
 honour of public disgrace to the pangs of imprisonment. 
 He says: 
 
 Letter of " I have considered, since you left me, more fully the matter that I 
 
 Major was speaking to you of Rajah Hindooput, and request to refer it to your 
 
 Naylor. consideration ; that is, as I seized him, and as his family since his con- 
 finement has been frequently deceived and for which his brother offers 
 to come to me, but on no account to the aumil as he has paid his full 
 balance due to the government, and offers undoubted security for the 
 performance of the rest whether his being delivered over to me would 
 not in some measure be the means of restoring that confidence to the 
 nation in the name of a European which has a good deal suffered, and 
 which my assembling his family (who absolutely refuse to go near the 
 aumil) and securities, &c., together may not have wished for effect. As 
 there is nothing contained in this, more than restoring a little confidence 
 among them, and as I have been a party from the commencement of 
 these troubles, it will be placing me in the point of view amongst them 
 that I would wish to appear in.''* 
 
 A natural wish, to contrast himself as much as possible 
 with the memory of Colonel Hannay 's government. 
 Letter of On the 20th June, 1782, Thomas Hall writes in this 
 Thomas manner to Mr. Middleton; he seems also to have acted 
 towards them with great humanity : 
 
 " I had an opportunity yesterday and the day before of showing some 
 little acts of generosity to the prisoners, particularly in giving some of 
 them money to purchase their freedom from Sookal, when they might 
 go back to his prison. Whether those acts of attention to the wretched 
 state of these people, or fears from our further and immediate resent- 
 
 * Dated on the 8th of January, 1782 ; and printed in the " Minutes of the 
 Evidence," p. 656.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 605 
 
 ment, have operated on the sardars in the villages, I cannot say ; but I 6 JUNE 1788. 
 have had to-day grass sent into camp without sending for it, with 
 Bramins from most of the villages assuring me that I shall never find 
 any further trouble in this district. From the great pains I take to give 
 the most convincing proof that justice, moderation and humanity, are 
 the rules of our conduct, I hope these people will regard us in a more 
 favourable light than to intend, far less attempt, to quarrel with our 
 sepoys or followers."* 
 
 That is the account of Mr. Hall. 
 
 There is one letter more, and also a paper, which, if your Mr.iBria- 
 Lordships advert to the evidence, is an historical account account of 
 from Mr. Bristow, when he went into the country afterwards, meut^fthe 
 in which he describes the progress of the oppression and i )e P le - 
 inhuman conduct, and general bad system, which led these 
 people to the insurrections. He describes the general state 
 of mind in which they then were. It was written by 
 Mr. Bristow with great accuracy, upon his return to Luck- 
 now.f The letter is from Major Naylor. He said he found 
 Colonel Hannay, whose situation was beyond description. 
 It appears that great numbers of these poor, oppressed, 
 injured, wretches were with mad revenge gathering round 
 him, and he upon the point and brink of being destroyed, 
 when Major Naylor arrived and dispersed the rebels. He 
 gives an account of the transaction, and then says that those 
 people, who from the affidavits and through the whole course 
 of this evidence your Lordships perceive to have been the 
 most timid wretches that ever were, seven or eight thousand 
 flying before eight or nine sepoys, were so obstinate. There- 
 must have been great carnage, for they would neither fly 
 from their death when disappointed of their revenge, nor 
 suffer any assistance to be given to their wounds. 
 
 From these short specimens, from these authentic docu- 
 ments before your Lordships, with respect to the real 
 causes of the insurrections of Goruckpore, can it be credited 
 that Mr. Hastings himself, who justifies, authorises and, as it 
 were, sums up and vouches for the truth of the ill-conduct 
 of the British officers and other persons concerned with 
 - them, in the reasons he gives for removing them from Oude 
 and sweeping them from other parts of the country that he 
 could have accounted for it in the misconduct of the Begums ? 
 
 If your Lordships look over the evidence, you will see a Reflections 
 country that, even in the time of Suja-ud-Dowla, is repre- desolation 
 sented as populous desolated. A person lookino- at this of the 
 
 L country 
 
 occasioned 
 
 * Printed iu the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 657. 
 
 t Printed in the " Appendix to the Second Article of Charge," p. 243.
 
 606 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 ' shocking picture of calamity would have been inclined to 
 crtyofthe a " ask, if he had been a stranger to what had passed in India 
 vlnior hGo ~ if we cou ld suppose a person to have come suddenly into the 
 country, unacquainted with any circumstances that had 
 passed since the days of Suja-ud-Dowla he would naturally 
 ask, " What cruel hand has wrought this wide desolation ? 
 What barbarian foe has invaded the country, has desolated 
 its fields, depopulated its villages ?" He would ask, " What 
 disputed succession, what civil rage, what mad frenzy of 
 the inhabitants, has induced them to act in hostility to the 
 beneficent works of God and the beauteous works of man ?" 
 He would ask, " What religious zeal or frenzy has added to 
 the mad despair and horrors of war? The ruin is unlike 
 anything that appears recorded in any age. It looks like 
 neither the barbarities of men nor the judgment of vindict- 
 ive Heaven. There is a waste of desolation, as if caused by 
 fell destroyers never meaning to return, and who make but 
 a short period of their rapacity. It looks as if some fabled 
 monster had made its passage through the country, whose 
 pestiferous breath had blasted more than its voracious 
 appetite could devour." 
 
 If there had been any men in the country who had not 
 their heart and soul so subdued by fear as to refuse to speak 
 the truth at all upon such a subject, they would have told 
 him there had been no war since the time of Suja-ud-Dowla 
 tyrant indeed as he was, but then deeply regretted by his 
 subjects; that no hostile blow of any enemy had been struck 
 in that land ; that there had been no disputed succession, 
 no civil war, no religious frenzy ; but that these were the 
 tokens of British friendship, the marks of the embraces of 
 British alliance more dreadful than the blows of the 
 bitterest enemy. That they had made a Prince a slave, to 
 make himself the principal in the extortion upon his subjects. 
 They would tell him that their rapacity increased in propor- 
 tion as the means of supplying their avarice diminished. 
 They made the Sovereign pay as if they had a right to an 
 increased price, because the labour of extortion and plunder 
 increased. They would tell him it was to these causes these 
 calamities were owing. Need I refer your Lordships to this 
 strong testimony of Major Naylor, when he rescued Colonel 
 Hannay from their hands, when you see that this people, 
 born to submission, bred to most abject subjection, yet that 
 they, in whose meek hearts injury had never yet begot 
 resentment nor even despair bred courage that their hatred,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 607 
 
 their abhorrence of Colonel Hannay was such that they c JUNK nss. 
 clung round him by thousands and thousands ; that when 
 Major Naylor rescued him they refused life from the hand 
 that could rescue Hannay ; that they nourished this desperate 
 consolation that by their death they should at least thin the 
 number of wretches that should suffer by his devastation 
 and extortion ? He says, when he crossed the river he 
 found the poor wretches quivering upon the parched banks 
 of the polluted river, encouraging their blood to flow 
 encouraging the thought that their blood would rot sink 
 into the earth, but rise to the common God of humanity, 
 and cry aloud for vengeance on their cursed destroyers. 
 
 This warm description, which is no declamation of mine, 
 but founded in actual fact, is a fair, clear, proof before your 
 Lordships. I say it speaks powerfully what the cause of 
 these oppressions was, and the justness of those feelings that 
 were occasioned by them. And then I am asked to prove 
 why these people arose in such concert ! ' There must have 
 been machinations, and the Begums' machinations, to produce 
 this ; there was concert. Why did they rise ? ' Because 
 they were people in human shape : the poor souls had 
 human feelings. Because patience under the detested tyranny 
 of man is rebellion to the sovereignty of God. Because 
 allegiance to that Power that gives us the forms of men 
 commands us to maintain the rights of men. And never yet 
 was this truth dismissed from the human heart never, in 
 any time, in any age never, in any clime where rude man 
 ever had any social feeling, or where corrupt refinement had 
 subdued all feeling never was this one unextinguishable 
 truth destroyed from the heart of man, placed in the core 
 and centre of it by its Maker, that man was not made the 
 property of man ; that human power is a trust for human 
 benefit; and that, when it is abused, revenge is justice, 
 if not the duty of the injured. These, my Lords, were the 
 causes why these people rose. 
 
 But, believe Mr. Hastings' account, and no one of these Mr.Hast- 
 causes produced this effect ; no one cause could produce its JJatforuJf a " 
 natural inevitable consequence. Breach of faith did not tresses in 
 create distrust ; want of pay did not create mutiny. Famine Oude - 
 did not pinch. Drought did not parch. No; it was the 
 machinations of these wonderful women, who sat as it were 
 dealing in incantations within the sacred w r all of their zanana, 
 and disturbing the country which would otherwise remain in
 
 608 Summing of Evidence on Second Cliarge the Begums : 
 
 e JUNE 1788. peace and gratitude to its protectors. No ; it is an audacious 
 falsity. 
 
 I call upon Mr. Hastings himself to sum up my evidence 
 upon this subject, I appeal again to his testimony. When 
 he states that the rapacity, the peculation, the fraud, of those 
 British persons in India had excited the rage of the whole 
 country, he sums up, he clinches, my evidence ; and then, 
 with bold, frontless, mockery, attempts to turn to your 
 Lordships, and to account for this by fictitious causes 
 by causes too inadequate ever since corruption composed a 
 part of the wickedness, or credulity a part of the weakness, 
 of human nature. 
 
 My Lords, wishing to put everything I say to the test of 
 
 the evidence before your Lordships, I feel no presumption 
 
 in saying that I think I have proved the innocence of the 
 
 Proofof the Begums respecting these three accusations: and now your 
 
 innocence Lordships will judge whether I pursue the argument fairly, 
 
 sariiy e an S " when I say that I am ready to admit to the Counsel that, 
 
 Mr?Hat- of because I have cleared them, I do not mean to say that I 
 
 ings' guilt, have condemned Mr. Hastings. I do not mean to say that 
 
 a proof of their innocence is necessarily a proof of his guilt. 
 
 Plea of his I will admit that, because it is possible that, being rash and 
 
 fa1se?y per" involved in various difficulties at the time, a person might 
 
 thefr^uiit. nave been imposed upon with respect to the grounds upon 
 
 which he acted, and, though no real guilt did then exist in 
 
 the Begums' conduct, yet that he might in his conscience 
 
 have been persuaded that there did. But, in order to prove 
 
 this, it must first appear that, from the moment he cherished 
 
 and had that persuasion in his mind, it continued in force in 
 
 his breast till the moment when he carried his vindictive 
 
 measures against them into execution. If he took np a 
 
 hasty prejudice, which he afterwards had the means to see 
 
 the error of and to dismiss from his mind if after that he 
 
 persevered with criminal obstinacy in the persecution of 
 
 these women, then I say he is guilty. 
 
 But I will show your Lordships that he never could have 
 been deceived for a single moment upon the subject ; that no 
 man better knew than he indeed no man had better reason 
 to know the true source and origin of these rumours and 
 accusations ; because he himself was the source and origin 
 of them. In order to see whether Mr. Hastings believed 
 these accusations, we must look a little into his conduct at 
 the time that this belief must have come into his mind.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 609 
 
 "What were the communications he made upon it? and e JUKE ms. 
 what were his accounts of the whole transaction afterwards ? 
 If we here find one uniform, consistent, story, although we 
 know it to have been taken up and founded upon a false 
 base, yet still there is a presumption a possibility at least 
 of his being innocent. But if we find nothing but suppres- 
 sion of letters, nothing but equivocation, prevarication, direct 
 falsehoods, concealment and false reasons for that concealment, 
 and at last false and contradictory accounts to every person 
 to whom he relates the transactions of the whole, in such a 
 case there cannot be innocence it is impossible. 
 
 The first circumstance that must strike your Lordships 
 with astonishment is, that, signing this treaty upon the 
 1 9th of September, and having then, as he states in his last 
 Defence, the whole of the information he ever had upon this 
 subject though he contradicts that in the House of Com- 
 mons ; for there he says : 
 
 "The conduct of the Begums, though strongly suspected, was 
 not sufficiently ascertained to justify the depriving them of jaghires 
 held under the pledge of the Company without an equivalent ; and 
 accordingly a full compensation was stipulated. Their conduct, in 
 openly and most violently opposing by armed force the Nabob's orders 
 for the resumption of the jaghires, though they were not to be losers by 
 it ; their exciting their agents and other jaghirdars to unite in forceable 
 resistance ; and, lastly, the subsequent information which was obtained 
 of their supporting the rebellion of Cheyt Sing '' 
 
 I shall have another opportunity of stating the several 
 contradictions in one point of view before your Lord- 
 ships. But I say, if he had a strong suspicion on the His omis- 
 19th of September, that suspicion increasing by subsequent "otice'his 
 information until the 14th of November, when he sent s uP ici ns 
 Sir Elijah Impey to Lucknow, whether it was increasing ?ums to the 
 suspicion, or whether solid, just, information, and as com- 
 plete as it was afterwards whatever it was, let us see 
 what information he gave to those to whom he was bound to 
 communicate everything, and to whom he must have com- 
 municated and would have communicated everything that was 
 not only a slight suspicion but much more everything that 
 was anything like a strong suspicion in his own mind. 
 
 The circumstance, your Lordships will hear with surprise, 
 is this that, whatever he knew on the subject, and at what- 
 ever time he got his knowledge, whether at the end of 
 September, the beginning of October, or the beginning of 
 November, when he told Sir Elijah Impey that there had 
 
 Q Q
 
 610 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 e JtnnjiTss. been an actual rebellion, he never writes one single word to 
 the Council of it until he has completed the whole until, 
 in the same breath, he can tell them that he has got the 
 plunder : never, till the beginning of January, does he once 
 inform the Council upon this subject. It is possible that 
 there may be good reasons for this. I will show your Lord- 
 ships shortly whether there be or no. He states three 
 
 Excuse of reasons, which are these: First, that he had not leisure. 
 
 leisure* He states that he found sufficiency for the occupation of 
 each day in the evil thereof. He says he shall go from 
 Benares to Chunar (from whence he writes) in order to have 
 leisure. The first reason, therefore, is his want of leisure, 
 from the 19th of September to the end of December or the 
 beginning of January, to inform the Council of this great 
 rebellion, which had for its object the dethroning the 
 Nawab, their ally, and the extirpation of the English out of 
 Asia. 
 
 Excuse of His next reason is he writes and signs it himself, and I 
 S beg your Lordships to attend to it on the llth of February, 
 1782, he writes to the Directors, sending them his Narra- 
 
 Benares ^ ve > ^ rom ^is paper he says it will appear 
 
 " that the treachery and intrigues of Cheyt Sing, supported by the dis- 
 affection and restless disposition of the Bow Begum, mother of the Nabob 
 of Oude, at Fyzabad, produced insurrections in that country which till 
 lately we were unapprised of, on account of the communication between 
 that place and Benares being wholly cut off." 
 
 That is the second reason the communication between 
 Oude, Lucknow, and Benares, where Mr. Hastings was, 
 being cut off where all that quantity of correspondence 
 with which we teased and wore out almost your Lordships' 
 patience, was passing regularly by dawk every day, upon 
 a road as plain and uninterrupted, as Sir Elijah Impey 
 said, as from hence to Brentford. That road Sir Elijah 
 Impey went, without going for pleasure by Fyzabad. He 
 never informed the Board that that communication was 
 cut off. 
 Excuse of His third reason is as good a one. He says : 
 
 Mr. Middle- 
 ton ha vin K " I have alluded to the general reasons which have prevented me 
 away the from transmitting the reports of my proceedings to the Board with 
 papers re- punctuality. I am obliged to add a special cause for the present 
 subject the instance, which is that the Resident having carried with him all the 
 authentic papers relating to this business to Lucknow, I have since 
 waited both for them and for the preceding estimates, which are yet 
 incomplete, though sufficient for general elucidation."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 611 
 
 This is his letter, which he dates the 29th of November, e JUNE 1788. 
 but which date is a forgery : that is a very strong circum- 
 stance a letter inserted in his Narrative with a forged date 
 but take it to be the 29th of November. The Resident, 
 thoughtless, giddy, Middleton, carried off the letters and the 
 treaty of Chunar, and therefore Mr. Hastings could not 
 communicate it to the Council. 
 
 Now, will the Counsel join issue with me upon any of 
 those three points ? I want to point out the punctus criminis. 
 1 will meet them upon any point. I will admit he was 
 imposed upon. I will not admit the monstrous, abominable, 
 falsehood that there was any guilt in the Begums, but I will 
 admit that their reports and that the weakness of Mr. Hast- 
 ings' nature were imposed upon by this, if they will meet me 
 upon either of these three points. 
 
 With regard to the first his want of leisure. We placed Disproof of 
 an extraordinary mass of evidence upon your Lordships' 
 minutes on this point ; for we have read and the Counsel 
 insisted upon our reading them at length, I recollect we 
 have read all the correspondence which he had with the 
 Council. The Counsel said to be sure he had leisure 
 to write ; but it will not appear very extraordinary, 
 perhaps, when your Lordships come to hear this letter, 
 that Mr. Hastings never should have mentioned the 
 rebellion or anything relating to Oude or Lucknow. 
 We were a little reluctant with a view of saving your 
 Lordships' time to give our consent to reading that cor- 
 respondence ; but an observation came, from what I believe 
 I may state to be the highest authority in the House an 
 observation given in the spirit of every observation which 
 has come from that high authority made with a view to 
 obtain the fullest evidence upon the record. It was sug- 
 gested by the noble Lord that these papers should be read at 
 length and printed, because it would appear that he had 
 made communications, and that of such a nature that it 
 would be extraordinary that he should not mention and 
 advert to this circumstance of the rebellion of the Begums. 
 I am thankful for that. He first pledges himself to 
 Mr. Wheler that he will write everything of importance 
 that he will omit nothing. In this Narrative he begins his 
 appeal, and says : 
 
 ' May the God of Truth so judge me as my own conscience shall acquit 
 or condemn me of intentional deception." 
 
 Q Q 2
 
 612 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge t lie Begums : 
 
 c JUNE 1788. And then he conceals every one of the circumstances respect- 
 ing the supposed disaffection of the Begum ; respecting the 
 terms of the treaty of Chunar; the Nawab's bribe. He 
 suppresses every one of these transactions, after his promise 
 in the name of the God of Truth, and his promise to 
 Mr. Wheler, that he would conceal none of these circum- 
 stances. Want of leisure ! why the letters are voluminous. 
 We have placed upon the minutes none of the public 
 correspondence, but only in the secret department to 
 Mr. Wheler ; and there he not only talks of Oude and the 
 Nawab, but there are circumstances which make it impos- 
 sible, if such circumstances could be set up, that this treaty 
 of Chunar and the rebellion of the Begum could be out of 
 his head. He tells little stories little pretty anecdotes of 
 sepoys ; attachment to their cannon, and dressing them up 
 with flowers; he is quite garrulous and prattling. So far 
 from wanting leisure to make communications so far the 
 fact does appear. And here, in my never failing evidence 
 again, I find him saying to Mr. Middleton : 
 
 " If you flinch I will come myself and do it. Give me an answer, and 
 don't keep me longer in fruitless inaction." 
 
 So, while he was in fruitless inaction, and his employment 
 was nothing but to spin anecdotes and make tales for the 
 amusement of the Board, then it is he tells you he had not 
 time to communicate a rebellion, the most alarming and 
 unnatural that ever was heard of perhaps ! So much for want 
 of leisure. 
 
 Disproof of Then with respect to the communication being cut off, I 
 ruptlon o'f believe I need not go into argument upon that subject ; but 
 communica- tnat tnev will ^nut, with Sir Elijah Impey, that some com- 
 munication was going on between Benares and Lucknmv. 
 But if it should be doubted, we have placed a long list of 
 letters, going regularly between Mr. Middleton and him by 
 dawk and answered by post ; and the whole tenour of the 
 evidence shows that, at least after the return of the Nawab, 
 whatever it was before on the 22nd or the 23d of Sep- 
 tember the communication Avas perfect ; he writing and 
 receiving answers, private and public, day by day, from 
 Mr. Middleton, and Sir Elijah Impey going to harden the 
 heart and the mild nature, as they call it, of Mr. Middleton, 
 without the least interruption. I need not trouble myself 
 upon that subject. I do believe they will admit that the
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 613 
 
 communication was not wholly cut off, and that that was 6 JUNE 1788. 
 not the reason why Mr. Hastings made no communication 
 respecting these transactions to Mr. Wheler. 
 
 My Lords, I come now to the third reason; that is, that Of the 
 this thoughtless fellow Middleton carried off all the original withdrawal 
 papers with him. On the 19th of September Mr. Middleton ^rs by Mr. 
 says the treaty was signed. He says he went next morning, Middleton. 
 and he packs up and takes with him both parts of the treaty. chunar f 
 First he said the Nawab's part as well as his own, but he thTigtifof 
 afterwards corrects it, and says he took only his own part. September. 
 A noble and learned Lord asked him a question the other 
 day which has made an impression unnecessary for me to 
 repeat. We find a letter of Mr. Hastings on the 23d of 
 September to Mr. Middleton, in his instructions, where he 
 says : 
 
 " Having entered into certain engagements with the Nabob Vizier, copj; corn- 
 tending to relieve his finances of a burthen they were no longer able to municated 
 sustain, with sundry other clauses, the execution of which is intrusted to jf r Middle- 
 to you, I herewith inclose an authentic copy of the same for your ton on the 
 guidance." 23d - 
 
 So this treaty of Chunar, which he could not inform the 
 Council of because Mr. Middleton had packed up and carried 
 off the treaty on the 19th, you find him on the 23d enclosing 
 and sending to Mr. Middleton an authentic copy of that 
 treaty which Mr. Middleton had not, and which he himself 
 had! 
 
 I don't care whether it is true or not that Mr. Middleton 
 did carry off the original treaty, and that Mr. Hastings wrote 
 him an authentic copy from memory I suppose. Unluckily Enclosure of 
 I find that will not avail Mr. Hastings ; because I find that thTtreaVv 
 Mr. Middleton, though he does not send down this original dfetonto lld ~ 
 treaty which I believe no man ever yet saw writes on the j^ 1 ?^*" 
 12th of October that he cannot trust the original treaty by sealed cover, 
 
 , , . , . ,1 ,- for the pur- 
 
 COmmon dawk: in the mean time, he says, an authentic copy pose of con- 
 will answer your purpose. " These papers I have put under cealm & lt - 
 a sealed cover," observe now, my Lords ! " that you may 
 not have them opened and entered before you wish them to 
 become public." So here was Mr. Middleton in the secret 
 of the purpose for which Mr. Hastings pretended not to 
 have any copy of the treaty; and, supposing he had not a 
 copy, he writes a letter enclosing an authentic copy of this 
 treaty, which he puts under a sealed cover, in order that, if 
 Mr. Hastings so pleased perhaps after his return to 
 Calcutta he might break the seal, and say, " I have just
 
 614 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. now got a copy of the treaty from Mr. Middleton" and 
 that he sends him upon the 12th of October [1781]. 
 
 Letter of " My dear Sir, Enclosed I take the liberty of transmitting copies of 
 
 Mr. Middle- ^ n e several papers [you signed previous to my departure from Chunar. 
 The original agreement between you and the Nabob I am afraid to trust 
 to the present uncertainty of the dauks ; it shall, however, be forwarded 
 the moment you desire it, and an authentic copy may in the meantime 
 answer your immediate purpose. These papers I have put under a 
 sealed cover, that you may not have them opened and entered before you 
 wish them to become public]."* 
 
 So writes Mr. Middleton. But here perhaps some evasion 
 will be attempted. Mr. Middleton in this letter says he sent 
 the copy of the treaty ; but non constat that Mr. Hastings re- 
 Answer to ceived it. That won't do ; because here we come to our friend 
 tiontfeS" Sir Elijah Impey, who says that upon the 14th of November 
 ingsmteht Mr. Hastings gave him a copy of the Chunar treaty. So 
 no - th ,?! re ~ here is proof, not only that Mr. Middleton so sent it sealed, 
 
 ceived the i - *- TT i i it i 
 
 copy of the but that Mr. Hastings broke that seal, because he gave a 
 
 copy of it to Sir Elijah Impey upon the 14th of November. 
 Evidence of Your Lordships will, I am sure, recollect Sir Elijah 
 Impey's evidence, by the circumstance of his not having 
 f the ng ard of the guarantee that when Mr. Hastings consulted 
 hi m ne never told him of the circumstance of having 
 ing's. a guarantee ; for Sir Elijah Impey positively swears 
 
 Mr. Hastings never mentioned the guarantee. We then 
 asked him whether he had not a copy of the Chunar treaty ? 
 He says, " Yes : Mr. Hastings gave me a copy/' He says 
 he read that copy, and I admit that the Begums are not 
 mentioned in that ; but it says that those who are guaranteed 
 by the British Company shall be secured. He says he never 
 gathered from reading that treaty that the Begums had any 
 guarantee. Whether he thought that the elephant Mr. Mid- 
 dleton mentions had a jagir had a guarantee I can't 
 say ; but he admits he received this copy of it upon the 14th 
 from Mr. Hastings. 
 
 Letter of But, to carry on this fraud, we find Mr. Middleton upon 
 ton of ti^ 6 " the 22d of November, still conceiving Mr. Hastings had not 
 limber! " acknowledged the receipt of the copy, conceiving perhaps that 
 pretending that letter would be suppressed, he writes " In obedience 
 
 to forward , T . r A , 
 
 the treaty to your commands 1 shall forward to you by the first safe 
 tkae!" 5 * opportunity your agreement with the Nabob Vizier, together 
 with such other authentic papers as are connected with it." 
 
 . _ . . . + 
 
 * Printed in the "Appendix to the Minutes of Evidence," Article II., p. 75.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 615 
 
 Your Lordships recollect Mr. Hastings avers that, when 6 JFNE r/ss. 
 Colonel Hannay joined him at Chunar, he sent this original 
 agreement by Colonel Hannay ; and then we have a letter 
 from Mr. Auriol crying out for the original treaty, two 
 months after Mr. Hastings got back : so that the juggle in 
 this business is the most monstrous that was ever entered 
 into. But the real fact is this, that this third pretence, 
 that he waited for the copy before he could inform the 
 Council of it, is clearly proved to be as false as the other 
 two pretences. 
 
 There is a letter in the Narrative from Mr. Middleton, Forged date, 
 dated in the Narrative the 17th of September, in which he l^tive.'toa 
 gives an account of all he had learned against these Begums j^^iddie- 
 and their supposed misconduct, and all those celebrated ton's of in- 
 extracts from the letters of Colonel Hannay, &c. If you against the 
 cast your eyes but carelessly upon this, you see a very egums< 
 good reason why he should have signed the treaty of 
 Chunar, by which he committed a high crime and mis- 
 demeanor, unless he had strong proof against them, and not 
 mere suspicion. This date is so palpable a forgery that I 
 think it almost unworthy to take notice of it ; and it seemed 
 generally admitted that it ought to have been the 17th of 
 October. But I see so many coarse frauds of this sort that 
 I don't know that it was not meant to be passed as for the 
 17th of September, and the more so because one of the 
 Counsel argued for its being so some time, till it was found 
 that it was impossible. 
 
 But this letter, it is manifest, could not have been written 
 by Mr. Middleton upon the 17th of September; because 
 Mr. Middleton quotes these as extracts from Colonel Hannay, 
 and he tells your Lordships in his evidence that he found 
 these letters principally upon his return afterwards to Luck- 
 now. Now your Lordships will find that these letters of 
 Colonel Hannay were all addressed to Mr. Middleton, and 
 must have been sent they are so stated, and so appear 
 certainly while he was with Mr. Hastings and the Nawab 
 at Chunar; for he desires him to talk with Mr. Hastings 
 upon this, and in one place he guards him against the Nawab 
 who is with him. He says in one place " you being with 
 him at Chunar ;" from whence it is manifest it was while 
 he was with him at Chunar. But the most remarkable circum- 
 stance is, that Mr. Middleton returning to Lucknow upon 
 the [20th ?] of September, never having heard one syllable 
 against the Begums to which they [lie?] appeared to have lent
 
 616 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 6 JUNE 1788. 
 
 The letter 
 fabricated. 
 
 Letter of 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings with 
 the forged 
 date of the 
 29th of No- 
 vember. 
 
 an ear for a single moment, finds this body of what they call 
 complete proof of this most atrocious rebellion. Mr. Middle- 
 ton suffers the information to lie in his bureau till the 17th 
 of October, and then a fit seizes him to take extracts from 
 the letters not to send the letters themselves, but to take 
 extracts, which he sends upon the 17th of October. I prove 
 that he must have received these letters, if any such existed 
 which I think improbable and that, if he thought the 
 letters of consequence, he might have put them into Mr. Hast- 
 ings' hand, and have said " See what a terrible plot is brew- 
 ing at Fyzabad." Instead of that, he rumples them up, puts 
 them in his pocket, carries them to Lucknow, and then 
 writes extracts of this intelligence to Mr. Hastings ! 
 
 The most extraordinary circumstance is, that Mr. Hastings 
 behaves just in the same manner with Mr. Middleton. For 
 he receives this alarming intelligence about the 21st of Oc- 
 tober. What does he do ? why he never takes the least 
 notice of it till he meets with Sir Elijah Impey upon the 
 14th of November. Then, all of a sudden, it is " Here is 
 some horrid proof of rebellion. For God's sake, Sir Elijah 
 Impey, fly to Lucknow. Get more proof of it. But, first of 
 all, take some authority to punish them for these crimes." 
 
 If I thought it was matter to dwell upon, I would show 
 your Lordships that this letter, misdated the 17th of Septem- 
 ber, could not have been written even upon the 1 7th of Octo- 
 ber, but that it was a fabricated letter after the determination 
 of Mr. Hastings after the failure of Bidjey Ghur. and send- 
 ing Sir Elijah Impey to Lucknow. That then they put these 
 letters together, and gave it the shape of antecedent informa- 
 tion, upon which Mr. Hastings had grounded the measure of 
 first employing Sir Elijah Impey, and sending that order for 
 this business. 
 
 The other curious circumstance in this transaction is, that 
 here is a letter which contains the treaty and observations 
 upon it, his motive, the conduct with the Wazir, the whole 
 plot, the rebellion, his defence, his guess at objections, his 
 answers to those objections, and all that pompous farago of 
 professions of his own integrity, and all that mystery of cant, 
 rhapsody and enigma, which characterises this performance. 
 This is dated the 29th of November. Will the Counsel insist 
 that this was written on the 29th of November, or sent to 
 Calcutta at that period ? We have examined Mr. Hudson 
 to this at your Lordships' bar, and find it never appeared till 
 it appeared as a part of the Narrative, which was not sent down
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 617 
 
 till the 31st of December, and did not appear upon the con- 6 JUNEITSS. 
 sultations till January. Therefore, the whole account of 
 this transaction was withheld from the Council wilfully, when 
 every day he had motives to remind him of making the com- 
 munication. Upon the 1 9th he signs the treaty; he writes 
 to Mr. Wheler upon the 18th, and promises to communicate 
 everything ; he writes again the next day ; he writes to 
 the. Council at Calcutta at the moment he was sending 
 Sir Elijah Impey with the warrant for the destruction of 
 these women. It is all silence darkness obscurity : not 
 one word is mentioned of it. At last, when he thinks he can 
 face the Council and the Directors, whose venal credulity he 
 has been accustomed to impose upon, then comes at last the 
 confession of the whole transaction in the lump. But then, 
 being struck with the enormous, damning, proof of his guilt, 
 his silence during the time of carrying on this foul conspi- 
 racy he forges the date of the 29th of November ; and, 
 though there is not any pretence of miscarriage of the letter, 
 or that it ever appeared, or any account, why it did not 
 appear upon the minutes of the Council, he puts the date 
 boldly the 29th of November, as if at that period he had 
 informed the Council of the transaction. There are other 
 circumstances of fraud, deceit, falsehood and forgery, in all 
 his accounts of these transactions, which I should certainly 
 enter into if I thought I had not said enough to convince 
 your Lordships that there was a consciousness of guilt 
 that he was waiting to find a pretence before he dare own 
 the date that he was waiting for a justification, which his 
 heart told him he had not, but which he was in hopes of 
 receiving. If I am asked why Mr/ Hastings withheld the Reasons for 
 intelligence, I shall say " I am not bound to answer that; hlgs^dth- 
 I am not to account for his actions." But I will take upon theinteiii- 
 me to tell why he did withhold this transaction. He was in gence. 
 hopes, knowing the falsehood of his charge of rebellion, of His hopes 
 inciting the insurrection of the jagirdars ; he was in hopes 
 that some serious, calamitous and bloody, reason might arise i 
 to justify his conduct against the Begums. I say it is clear 
 and manifest that these were his hopes. He was in hopes of 
 that which nearly did happen that, when the Begums found 
 that, in spite of the pledged faith, in spite of the guarantee, 
 of the English, the Nawab was going to seize their jagirs, 
 he pretends he meant them no injury, stating they had 
 no right to complain ; because he says in one place that 
 no injury was intended, though, in another place, he says
 
 618 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 e JuNEi788. he did intend every injury that followed, no, but he was 
 in hopes that the jagirdars would take the field ; then there 
 Avould arise something that might be called rebellion, and 
 then he would be justified in the measure. This was his 
 hope, and the reason why I say that is, that, when he comes 
 to his last pinch, he takes up as having happened that 
 excuse which he vainly hoped for and looked to. This is 
 the fact ; he writes to the Nawab ; he represents the Nawab 
 as marching on the 1st of January to Fyzabad, in conse- 
 quence of his order in November to seize the treasures. He 
 had never mentioned a word of seizing the treasures to any 
 other person but the three people engaged in this foul con- 
 
 His account spiracy. He then gives this account of it, on the llth of 
 
 totheDirec-^ * * , ,_ ort ?i -p.. 
 
 tors of the .T ebriiary, 1782, to the Directors : 
 
 seizure of 
 
 suresTnth f " ^ s *ke Resident at Lucknow had been made guarantee to an 
 February, agreement formerly executed between the Nabob and the Begum, in 
 1782. which he had engaged, for a specific sum of money, to desist from all 
 
 further claims upon her, it was necessary for him to acquire the sanction 
 of this government to his intentions before he could carry them into 
 execution, which the infidelity of the Begum gave but too much reason 
 to grant. On the first attempt made by the Nabob to carry this plan 
 into execution of seizing the treasures in January, she determined to 
 resist his authority, and raised a revolt by means of her eunuchs Jewar 
 Ali Khan and Behar Ali Khan, who had collected a force of about five 
 thousand men in order to set the Nabob at defiance." 
 
 This is Mr. Hastings' account of the transaction of the 
 insurrection, and of the 5,000 men at Fyzabad in January, 
 though no injury was intended to the Begums. 
 
 " Notice of this second insurrection " 
 
 He had mentioned Cheyt Sing's before, and now your 
 Lordships hear, for the first time, of a second insurrection, 
 which is the insurrection of the 5th of January at Fyzabad ; 
 these 5,000 men, headed by these two eunuchs, 
 
 " Notice of this second insurrection having been transmitted by the 
 Resident without loss of time to the Governor General at Benares, he 
 immediately ordered a large detachment to march from Cawnpore, and 
 the Nabob resolved to go in person to Fyzabad. On his arrival there, 
 by the assistance of our troops, he took possession of the kella, and the 
 eunuchs, seeing it would be in vain to make a stand when superior 
 forces were expected, surrendered themselves prisoners to the Nabob, 
 and their followers dispersed." 
 
 This, I think, was on the 7th of January, 1782. Now 
 mind, my Lords, in order to punish the Begum for this 
 daring ill conduct, and to put it out of her power to apply 
 the treasures which she had amassed to the purpose of
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. fil9 
 
 raising further commotions in the country, the Nawab re- e JUNE 1788. 
 solved to seize her wealth, which, by the Mohammedan 
 laws, he was intitled to as an inheritance from his father, 
 who, in the latter years of his life, had committed his 
 treasury wholly to her charge. 
 
 Here, then, there is no previous rebellion, no previous dis- 
 affection ; but, as I said before, he was waiting, in hopes that He defers 
 that which was near happening would have happened there ; under ex- 
 in hopes that there would have been some war, some battle ; thfhisSr-^ 
 he fondly wishing for some slaughter and bloodshed between rectum 
 
 ft -11 i TT T taking 
 
 the mother s troops and the son s. He was disappointed, as place. 
 in the case of Cheyt Sing. Their patience was as enduring 
 as his oppression. He says, " I will write as if the thing did 
 happen; I will call this a second insurrection, and upon that 1 
 will found a resolution to seize the treasures in January," which 
 he had sent an order by Sir Elijah Impey in November per- 
 emptorily to seize. Then, my Lords, am I not justified in 
 saying this must have been the thing he looked to? Here you 
 find that the Nawab, when he is resolved to punish this sup- 
 posed resistance of the jagirdars, says he does it under the 
 Mohammedan law. Here is the angry spirit of Moham- 
 med again, never to be appeased till, by the piety and good 
 faith of that country, the inalienable hoard of the mother is 
 lodged in the treasury of the son. Then, I say, it does stand 
 clear and manifest, that he did not dare to send to Calcutta 
 the monstrous, audacious, falsity of the supposed rebellion 
 of the Begums ; that, while he kept plotting in the dark 
 with Sir Elijah Impey, Colonel Hannay and Hyder Beg, it 
 stuck in their own bosoms. He said, " when we come to 
 march against the jagirdars the Begums will look to us for 
 protection ; they will fondly hope we shall march to their 
 rescue ; they will assist the ^awab's army. When they 
 have done that, then I have a pretence ; then I have my 
 rebellion secure ; then I confiscate the treasures ; then I shall 
 be justified." This is proved, becauses when disappointed 
 of these, he names the falsehood, and he does the thing 
 without it. 
 
 Why Mr. Hastings should have had this hope, and why His asser- 
 he should have reckoned this calamity of war and bloodshed ^ene?ai bi- 
 as certain, would seem strange .in the mind of many people 
 who do not recollect the account he gives himself in the 
 House of Commons. He says there, " I believe that all 
 persuasions of men were impressed with a superstitious 
 belief that a fortunate influence directed all my actions to
 
 620 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 e JUNE 1788. their destined ends." This is the blasphemy of his heart. 
 He speaks of Providence as guarding him when he is engaged 
 in corruption and peculation. He would have you believe 
 Providence inspired Nundcomar to commit a forgery that 
 Providence put it into the head of a Prince to do a base act 
 when he wanted to show the world that he was never to 
 be offended in the smallest article with impunity. Then 
 Providence put it into the head of Cheyt Sing to refuse 
 contumaciously a small sum as a tribute while he was giving 
 him four times the sum, by way of atonement, when he 
 wanted a large plunder from the Begum, without which, as 
 he states, he could not return to Calcutta ; without which 
 his character was irretrievably gone ; without which 
 he would be made accountable for all the misconduct in 
 India, owing to him alone. Providence put it into the head 
 of these women to raise an unnatural rebellion against their 
 son, and to endeavour to exterminate their benefactors, the 
 English. This is the way he accounts for his conduct. 
 Providence works by crimes ; not, as in this Christian country 
 we are used to attribute to Providence the inspiring noble 
 generous deeds ; no, it works in him by heaven-born crimes, 
 inspired felonies and providential treasons: and this gave him 
 that confidence to hope for a war and massacre to have 
 arisen for his justification : but at last he is disappointed in 
 it. I think I may say, if there is any agency that protects and 
 guides his actions to any destined end, it is not the agency 
 of that Power whose works are goodness and whose Avays are 
 righteous. 
 
 Now I think I have made out my second proposition 
 that Mr. Hastings was not deceived and deluded in this 
 transaction ; but that he was the deceiver, the deluder of 
 every person concerned of the Nawab, his friend and his 
 ally of Middleton, his wretched tool and instrument of 
 his equals, the Council and of his masters, the Directors. 
 I am perfectly convinced that there is one idea that must 
 arise in your Lordships' mind as a matter of wonder how a 
 person of Mr. Hastings' reputed abilities can furnish such 
 matter against himself. For, to be sure, it must be admit- 
 ted that there never was a person who seems to go so 
 rashly to work, with such an arrogant appearance of contempt 
 of all conclusions from what he advances upon the subject. 
 When he seems most earnest and laborious to defend him- 
 self it seems as if he had but one idea uppermost in his mind 
 a determination not to care what he says, provided he keeps 
 
 Be flection 
 on the 
 evidence 
 furnished 
 by Mr. 
 Hastings 
 against him-
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 621 
 
 clear of fact : provided he keeps clear of that, nothing can 6 JUNE irss. 
 hurt him. He knows that truth must convict him, and he 
 concludes e converse that falsehood will acquit him ; forgetting 
 that there must be some connexion some system some 
 co-operation, otherwise a host of falsities fall, without an 
 enemy, self-discomfited and destroyed. But he really seems 
 never to have had any apprehension of this. He falls to 
 work, an artificer of fraud against all rules of architecture. 
 He lays his ornamental work first, and his massy foundation 
 at the top of it : thus his whole building tumbles upon his 
 head. Other people look well to their ground choose their 
 position watch whether they are likely to be surprised 
 there ; but he, as if in the ostentation of his heart, builds 
 upon a precipice and encamps upon a mire in choice. He 
 seems to have no one actuating principle, but a steady 
 persevering principle not to speak the truth or to tell the 
 fact. 
 
 It is impossible almost to treat conduct of this kind with 
 perfect seriousness; yet I am aware that it ought to be 
 more seriously accounted for ; because I am sure it has been 
 a sort of deduction which must have struck your Lordships, 
 how any person, having so many motives to conceal, having 
 so many reasons to dread detection, should go to work so 
 clumsily upon the subject. And 1 think it is possible that it 
 may raise this doubt whether such person is of sound mind 
 enough to be a proper object of punishment ; or at least 
 a kind of confused notion that that guilt cannot be of such 
 a deep and black grain over which such a thin veil was 
 thrown and so little trouble taken to avoid detection. 
 I own that, to account for this seeming paradox, historians, 
 poets, and even philosophers at least of ancient times 
 have adopted the superstitious solution of the vulgar, and 
 said that the Gods deprive men of reason whom they devote 
 to destruction or to punishment ; but to unassuming or 
 unprejudiced reason there is no need to resort to any supposed 
 supernatural interference ; for it will be found in the eternal 
 rules that formed the mind of man, and gave a quality and 
 nature to every passion that inhabits it. 
 
 An honourable friend of mine, who is now, I believe, Answer to 
 
 ,1 i ,1 IT Mr. Burke's 
 
 near me, in opening this business a gentleman to whom I sentiment 
 never can on any occasion refer without feelings of respect, dence P never 
 and on this subject without feelings of the most grateful homage ^l^^^ 
 a gentleman whose abilities upon this occasion, as upon vicc f vice. 
 some former ones, happily for the glory of the age in which
 
 622 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 c JUNE 1788. we live, are not entrusted merely to the perishable eloquence 
 of the day, but will live to be the admiration of that hour 
 when all of us are mute and most of us forgotten that 
 honourable gentleman has told you that prudence, the first of 
 virtues, never can be used in the cause of vice. If, reluctant 
 and diffident, I might take the liberty, I should express a 
 doubt whether experience, observation or history, will war- 
 rant us in fully assenting to that. It is a noble and lovely 
 sentiment, my Lords, worthy the mind of him who uttered 
 it worthy that proud disdain that generous scorn of the 
 means and instruments of vice which virtue and genius 
 must feel. But I should doubt whether we can read the 
 history of a Philip of Macedon, of Caasar or of Cromwell, if 
 we apprehend prudence to be discreetly and successfully 
 conducting some purpose to its end, without confessing that 
 there have been evil purposes, baneful to the peace and to 
 the rights of men, conducted, if I may not say with prudence 
 or with wisdom, yet with awful craft and most successful 
 and commanding subtlety. But, if I might make a dis- 
 tinction, I should say that it is the proud attempt to mix 
 a variety of lordly crimes that unsettles the prudence of the 
 mind and breeds the distraction of the brain; that one 
 master passion domineering in the breast may win the 
 faculties of the understanding to advance its purpose, and to 
 direct to that object everything that thought or human 
 knowledge can effect, But, to succeed, it must maintain a 
 solitary despotism in the mind: each rival profligacy must 
 stand aloof or wait in abject vassalage upon its throne. For 
 the Power that has not forbad the entrance of evil passions 
 ii}to man's mind has at least forbad their union : if they meet 
 they defeat their object their conquest or their attempt 
 as it is tumult. Turn to the virtues. How different the 
 decree ! Formed to connect to blend to associate and to 
 co-operate ; bearing the same course of kindred energies and 
 harmonious sympathy ; each perfect in its own lovely sphere ; 
 each moving in its wider or more contracted orbit with 
 different but concentrating powers, guided by the same 
 influence of reason, endeavouring at the same blessed end 
 the happiness of the individual, the harmony of the species 
 and the glory of the Creator. But in the vices it is the 
 discord that ensures defeat ; each clamours to be heard in its 
 own barbarous language ; each claims the exclusive cunning 
 of the brain ; each thwarts and reproaches the other, and, 
 even while their fell rage assails with common hate the peace
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 023 
 
 and virtue of the world, the civil war among their own e JUKE nss. 
 tumultuous legions defeats the purpose of the foul conspiracy.* 
 These are the furies of the mind, my Lords, that unsettle 
 the understanding ; these are the furies of the mind that 
 destroy the virtue prudence ; while the distracted brain and 
 shivered intellect proclaim the tumult that is within, and bear 
 their testimonies from the mouth of God himself to the foul 
 condition of the heart. 
 
 My Lords, I thought it necessary to say this gravely and 
 seriously to your Lordships, because I do protest I never 
 have followed the transactions of this gentleman without 
 feeling the astonishment and surprise which I am sure every 
 person has shared in that has taken the same pains in tracing 
 his conduct as I have done, and [without its] leading me to a 
 disposition to endeavour to account for it. 
 
 My Lords, the next period in this transaction, and the Assertion 
 next important stand which the Counsel, if I may judge by proposal to 
 their conduct, appear to wish to make upon this occasion, is j^*^ 
 upon this point, namely, whether the proposition to seize came from 
 
 c .LI AT i c TV*- TT x- theNawab. 
 
 the treasures came from the JNawab or trom Mr. Hastings. 
 Now, my Lords, I protest that it was to my surprise and 
 astonishment which indeed often possesses me at the sort of 
 ground that I see taken upon this defence by gentlemen of 
 the character and judgment which I presume the Counsel 
 possess that an attempt was made to labour this point so 
 much ; because if there was the least difficulty in proving 
 the contrary I would give it them up that the proposition 
 did come from the Nawab ; and what would they attain when 
 they have got that ? 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect what the situation of the 
 Nawab was. You will see it in evidence before you that he 
 proposed it as an alternative ; that he was pressed to resume 
 the jagirs, the landed estates of all his favourites, of all the 
 persons whom he respected ; that, when he did propose it, 
 he said, " Spare me, my friend, this shame, and I will do it at 
 one stroke" supposing he ever made that proposition 
 " I will do at one stroke, by seizing the treasures, that which 
 the others will be years in effecting." What advantages 
 would they gain if I was to admit that, under these circum- 
 stances, he did make this proposition ? If I admit that, being 
 pressed on one hand meanly and basely to resume what bounty 
 had bestowed on friendship or reward on merit, to dishonour 
 
 * Here a Latin quotation was introduced, hut the reporter failed to note it.
 
 624 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Beyums : 
 
 c JUNE 1788. himself with his own servants, friends and relations that, 
 urged with this threat on one side, and having placed before 
 his eyes the monstrous bribe held by Mr. Hastings, that he 
 should never more behold the face of an Englishman again, 
 which includes in one word peace to his own heart and quiet 
 to his country if, urged by this bribe and pressed on the 
 other hand, I should grant that he did propose it. what 
 then? Was the guarantee on the other side to have no con- 
 sideration ? I take up this proposition, your Lordships see, 
 upon the ground of its being a matter of resumption, in 
 which light alone the Nawab ever mentions the subject, and 
 not as a measure of confiscation and punishment. If they 
 say it was a measure of confiscation, then I say that ten 
 thousand times more the son's making the proposal was 
 no justification to them, because then it would have been a 
 vindictive act of justice ; and surely, if there ever were 
 crimes which might go un whipped of justice, it should be 
 where there was to be found no hand but the son's to strip 
 the mother ; that, if the Nawab had, with a barbarous offi- 
 ciousness, offered to have been the executioner to carry it into 
 effect, that he should have withheld his hand. Granted that 
 they had been in rebellion ; granted that they had attempted 
 to extirpate the English ; granted that they had ceased to be 
 our ally : nature was our ally. There is an eternal covenant 
 imprinted in the breast of man that should have told them 
 that the son who attempts to destroy his mother violates 
 his existence, and breaks the covenant subsisting with man- 
 kind. Therefore that which they labour so much, if they 
 could prove it, would be no extenuation namely, that the 
 proposition came first from the son, and not from Mr. Hastings. 
 
 Proof of the ~But so far from this being the fact, when I refer your 
 
 Nawab s ab- T . , . j 
 
 solute sub- .Lordships to a great mass or evidence on your minutes, you 
 Mrfiiast- will perceive, before we come to the fact in dispute of 
 seizing these treasures, strong, unanswerable, proof that the 
 Nawab could not : he had not any will of his own in any 
 act whatever. The history of his vassalage is traced before 
 your Lordships. From its first commencement down to the 
 time when it was confirmed and completed by Mr. Hastings, 
 your Lordships will see specimens of abject submission. It 
 is almost impossible for your Lordships to understand the 
 degree of soul subjection the hard vassalage to which 
 this poor wretch was subdued; because it is impossible 
 almost for any Englishmen, used to the noble equality of 
 this country, to conceive the abject vassalage of a despot,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 625 
 
 and, on the other hand, the arrogant presumption of a free e JUNE ivss. 
 man preposterously elevated to despotic power. 
 
 A few of Mr. Hastings' own acts are sufficient to select 
 for the purpose. Where he states that the Nawab is a cipher 
 in the hand of Hyder Beg, he says afterwards that this 
 Hyder Beg, 
 
 " if he is content to hold his power upon such conditions as I prescribe, 
 shall : I choose him rather than anybody else." 
 
 In another passage he says : 
 
 " Our alliance," speaking of the Nawab, " has proved the extinction 
 of his sovereignty and the dissolution of his country ; and it is but just 
 we should allow him a subsistence." 
 
 I take his own acknowledgment rather than the Nawab's, 
 where abjectly he states that he has no will or power of his 
 own. 
 
 Ore of the strongest marks of that subordination to which 
 he is brought we have under the hand of Mr. Middleton. 
 The Counsel want to possess your Lordships with the idea 
 that he had a will of his own ; that Mr. Middleton thwarted 
 him in this, and he could not be got to assent to that. We 
 have under Mr. Middleton's hand a proof of his being, not 
 only Avithout the will, but without any sense or feeling that 
 he scarce dare call his own in his mind. One of the strongest 
 proofs of this is to be found under that head of evidence 
 Avhich we have styled the subornation of letters. For your 
 Lordships find, not only that the man had no will or power, 
 or notion that he could have any power of his own, [but] 
 that he dare not utter a sentiment of his own ; that he 
 waited for opinions to be sent to him as well as orders ; he 
 stated his readiness to submit to the authority and Avill of 
 any gentleman Mr. Hastings should choose to depute. There 
 is a curious proof of this fact, where Mr. Hastings was 
 shifting about, and at last appointing Mr. Bristow. The 
 Nawab, who had always conveyed letters by Hyder Beg's 
 directions, at last finds a letter come from Mr. Hastings 
 that looks as if he was going to recommend Mr. Bristow 
 to him. The Nawab was puzzled ; but he takes the short 
 way 'to remove difficulty; he writes thus: 
 
 " The arzie which you have sent is arrived. As to the commands of 
 Mr. Hastings, which you write, on the subject of the distraction of the 
 country and the want of information from me, and his wishes that, as 
 Mr. John Bristow has shown sincere wishes and attachment to Mr. Hast- 
 ings, I should write for him to send Mr. John Bristow "
 
 626 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 c TUNE 1788. My Lords, this is to his own vakil or agent at Calcutta, 
 who was the confidential communication between the Nawab 
 and Mr. Hastings : 
 
 " it would have been proper and necessary for you privately to have 
 understood what were Mr. Hastings' real intentions; whether the choice 
 of sending Mr. John Bristow was his own desire, or whether it was in 
 compliance with Mr. Macpherson's ; that I might then have written 
 conformably thereto. Writings are now sent to you for both cases." 
 
 This is the Nawab that had a will of his own that was not 
 to be thwarted. He gets confounded and puzzled : 
 " Sometimes you bid me write against Mr. Bristow. I have 
 done that, black and white, as you choose. I now write 
 one letter, that I like Mr. Bristow. Very well ! another, 
 that I abhor him monstrously." 
 
 " Having privately understood the wishes of Mr. Hastings, deliver 
 whichever of the writings he shall order you ; for I study Mr. Hastings' 
 satisfaction. Whoever is his friend is mine, and whoever is his enemy is 
 mine ; but in both these cases my wishes are the same that having 
 consented to the paper of questions which Major Davy carried with him, 
 and having given me the authority of the country, whomever he may 
 afterwards appoint I am satisfied. I now am brought to great distress 
 by these gentlemen, who ruin me in case of consent. I am contented 
 with Major Davy and Palmer. Hereafter, whatever may be Mr. Hastings' 
 desire, it is best." 
 
 I should tire your Lordships' patience if I were to quote 
 the many extracts that prove the monstrous boldness of the 
 assertion of Mr. Hastings, that the Nawab was not a de- 
 pendant and absolutely under the control of the British 
 government, That is a point I am at issue with them upon. 
 I say there is no one thing in which the will of Mr. Hastings 
 could be signified to him, upon any subject, that he dare 
 have the hope, or thought, or first seeds of anything like a 
 will or intention of his own in, whatever. 
 
 My Lords, I feel myself so fatigued it will not be in my 
 power to finish to-day.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 627 
 
 CONTINUATION OF THE SPEECH OF RICHARD 
 BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING UP THE 
 EVIDENCE ON THE SECOND ARTICLE OF CHARGE, 
 RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF OUDE ; lOrn JUNE, 
 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, Relying upon the attention with which I 
 have been honoured, I feel it wholly unnecessary to recapi- 
 tulate the arguments with which I left off when I last had 
 the honour of addressing your Lordships ; I shall therefore, 
 my Lords, without further preface, proceed to that part of 
 the matter which the argument led to. I was then stating Abject sub- 
 and proving to your Lordships the abject vassalage and the S Nawab 
 submission in which the Nawab of Oude stood with respect * g ^ r - Hasi> 
 to the British Government, and more particularly with 
 regard to Mr. Hastings, the Governor General. I do take 
 upon me to say that that matter was so clearly and so 
 distinctly proved and laid before your Lordships, that I 
 might stand upon that ground alone, and call upon the 
 Counsel for the defendant, when there was such a mass of 
 proof that he was in a situation not to have a will of any 
 sort upon any subject whatever that I should call upon 
 them to prove that, in this great act which is now the 
 subject of this accusation, he had a will of his own, and 
 that it was from that will that he did act. 
 
 Your Lordships will find that, although it is pretended 
 that the application for seizing the treasures as well as for 
 resuming the jagirs of the Begums came from the Nawab, 
 yet those letters do not appear. I therefore say it is Jp t} 16 par- 
 
 I r . J.1 1 i. J.-L J. ticular a Ct 
 
 incumbent upon them in some manner to make out that in question 
 the Nawab did act from his own will, and that the pro- U n<tercom- 
 position did in fact and in truth come from him. However, 
 my Lords, I am sure you will be still more surprised to 
 learn that, even if they could establish that the Nawab 
 
 R R 2
 
 628 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge. the Begums : 
 
 . was that independent prince and sovereign which they 
 endeavour to represent him to have been, even if they could 
 make out that he had uniformly and ever since his con- 
 nexion with the British Government acted independently 
 and from the suggestions of his own mind, yet it will appear 
 that, in this particular act at least, he acted from compulsion, 
 that he did not move one step in it from his own free will, 
 but that there does appear the most perfect, plain and 
 manifest, evidence that it was against his inclinations, and 
 that the whole of these proceedings were in truth forced 
 upon him. 
 
 My Lords, before I proceed to the letters which we have 
 styled the narrative part of these transactions, I should 
 state to your Lordships the persons who are corresponding. 
 ^ e con ceive this conspiracy to have been carried on by 
 three principal and three subordinate conspirators. Of the 
 for con- three principal, first, undoubtedly the source and cause of 
 the a Nawab. all, Mr. Hastings ; secondly, Mr. Middleton ; and thirdly, 
 Sir Elijah Impey. The three subordinate persons, Colonel 
 Hannay ; Hyder Beg Khan, the Nawab's reputed minister, 
 but, in fact, the minister and agent of Mr. Hastings ; and 
 Ali Ibrahim Khan, another black agent of his, resident 
 with him at Benares. 
 
 s^Eirah f However, my Lords, before I refer to the correspondence 
 impey that of Sir Elijah Impey upon this subject, I think it right to 
 eonversa- notice to your Lordships a particular circumstance in his 
 inAhe pect " testimony which I before passed over ; and it is with regret 
 wfth a Mr S ^ na ^ ^ sav ^ na ^ I am compelled to notice this in a more 
 Hastings, serious way than I have any other part of the evidence of 
 that gentleman. Your Lordships will find it stated in Sir 
 Elijah Impey's evidence, that, upon his return with the 
 affidavits from Lucknow, he never had the smallest com- 
 munication or any conversation whatever respecting the 
 matter contained in these affidavits. Sir Elijah Impey is 
 asked whether he did not think it an extraordinary circum- 
 stance that Mr. Hastings should not have discoursed with 
 him upon that subject? He answers, "No; that he did 
 not think it at all extraordinary ;" and then he adds that 
 he left Chunar within a day or two, but he thinks the next 
 day. This Sir Elijah Impey swears to at your Lordships' 
 bar, and by this he would have your Lordships understand 
 that the extraordinary circumstance of his having no com- 
 munication whatever upon the great object which Mr. Hast- 
 ings had sent him to Lucknow upon that that was
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 629 
 
 principally owing to his having parted with Mr. Hastings lojusnnv 
 the day after his return. 
 
 Now, my Lords, I find it clear, from looking into some Proof of 
 of these letters and papers, that Sir Elijah Impey, it is 
 true, did leave Chunar the day after he returned, but 
 Mr. Hastings left Chunar with him. They returned toge- 
 ther to Benares ; and we find that they remained together 
 six days afterwards, after the period when Sir Elijah Impey 
 states, as a reason for not having any conversation with 
 him, that he had in fact parted with him. 
 
 We find a letter of Sir Elijah Impey to Mr. Middleton, 
 dated the 9th of December, then upon the road from 
 Benares to Calcutta. He mentions in this letter that he 
 had parted with Mr. Hastings upon " Thursday last/' Now 
 I took the trouble to make a minute sort of inquiry to 
 see upon what day this last Thursday was. The 9th of 
 December, 1781, was on a Sunday ; the Thursday before of 
 consequence was the 6th of December. Sir Elijah Impey 
 we find returned upon the 1st of December, by a letter to 
 Mr. Middleton of that date. We find him swearing and 
 taking affidavits at Chunar upon the 2d of December, and 
 here by his own account he parts from Mr. Hastings at 
 Benares not till the 6th of December, and remaining with 
 him the whole time, having no communication, no conversa- 
 tion, he swears, whatever with him upon the subject of 
 his mission to Lucknow ; and then, at your Lordships' bar, 
 he states that he did not think it extraordinary, because 
 he parted with Mr. Hastings the day after he arrived. I 
 think it necessary to notice this to your Lordships. 
 
 There is also another circumstance in Sir Elijah Impey's Assertion of 
 
 i , , i a- i -i i i t Slr Elijah 
 
 evidence respecting these affidavits which is extremely impey that 
 material. Sir Elijah Impey has stated that he never eumined 
 examined any part of these affidavits : he also asserts that, rits. affida ~ 
 upon his return to Chunar, he delivered them without 
 any further examination into the hands of Mr. Hastings. 
 What became of them how they were translated who 
 translated them in what manner they were examined 
 Sir Elijah Impey swears he knows not. Now here is 
 a very extraordinary circumstance in the Narrative, to 
 which if your Lordships turn, you will find that these The affida- 
 Persian affidavits which were taken at Lucknow, without transited 
 being at all examined or read to the deponents by Sir ^^^hii" 
 Elijah Impey the sanction of his testimony being in fact j, Sir ^ U ' iah 
 nothing but the purity of his touch in receiving them, they company, 
 
 - "
 
 630 Humming of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 ioJuNEi788. not having even at that time received a glance from his 
 veiling to eye you will find that these affidavits are afterwards 
 Calcutta. trans i a ted by Captain William Davy. But here is the 
 extraordinary circumstance, that we lind : 
 
 " Captain Davy, private Persian translator to the Honourable Warren 
 Hastings, maketh oath and saith, that he understands the Persian 
 language, and that the paper hereunto annexed is a true and faithful 
 translate of the Persian version of the original Hindoo deposition, both 
 hereunto annexed, to the best of this deponent's skill and belief. 
 WILLIAM DAVY." 
 
 Now here the translations are annexed to the Persian 
 papers : they are shown to the person by whom the oath 
 is taken, and he swears he translated them truly and justly. 
 When was this oath taken ? We find it was taken upon 
 the 12th of December, before Sir Elijah Impey ; and, to 
 prove that can be no mistake of the date, it is repeated 
 five several times in the Appendix to the Narrative ; 
 William Davy swearing to the truth of these affidavits, on 
 that 12th of December, before Sir Elijah Impey. 
 
 Now, I want to know, where was Sir Elijah Impey upon 
 this 1 2th of December ? Will it be said he remained with 
 Mr. Hastings at Benares ? We have proved the contrary. 
 We have in the first place his own testimony not true as 
 he states it that he left Chunar the next day, but true 
 that six days after he did in fact leave Mr. Hastings at 
 Benares ; for we have a letter of the 9th of December, 
 dated Buxar, to Mr. Middleton, at which place he might 
 have arrived, leaving Benares upon the 6th. We find him 
 swearing an officer at Buxar upon the 9th, consequently 
 he must have been upon his road to Calcutta on the 1 2th of 
 December. 
 
 Now, the extraordinary circumstance is this that it 
 does plainly and manifestly appear, so far from Sir Elijah 
 Impey never hearing or knowing anything of these affi- 
 davits till afterwards, it clearly appears that Captain Davy 
 must have accompanied Sir Elijah Impey and must have 
 been the partner of his journey ; that these papers were 
 translated while they were together ; that he received his 
 attestation of the truth of that translation while he was 
 with him, upon that 1 2th of December. 
 
 This was a circumstance 1 confess that did not strike me 
 before in looking at these affidavits ; but I do think these 
 are two most material facts respecting the evidence and 
 respecting the testimony of Sir Elijah Impey ; and I can-
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 631 
 
 not dismiss my observations upon that subject without 
 repeating the words of a Manager at your Lordships' bar, 
 in the last prosecution in this House for high crimes and 
 misdemeanors, who says, " Where is truth to be found if 
 not in the judgment seat, or what testimony can be credited 
 if not the affirmation of a judge ?"* I do contend, upon inference of 
 those two facts, that they are most suspicious circum- S^Tn hftl1 " 
 stances ; that they do wholly disprove, in the first place, f^pey^ 11 
 what Sir Elijah Impey so positively affirmed as a reason to evidence, 
 account for that extraordinary omission of communication 
 with Mr. Hastings respecting the business he went on to 
 Lucknow ; that they disprove his assertions on that ac- 
 count ; and that they do warrant a strong suspicion, if not 
 an absolute proof, that his other assertion, that he never 
 saw, was never concerned in, the translations, that he 
 knew not how they were translated that even that is 
 literally untrue. 
 
 My Lords, before I quit the subjects of the affidavits, I 
 must also observe upon another circumstance in them, Suppres- 
 which does not relate to any affidavit that appears, but to MT" Scott's 
 testimony which is suppressed. I must remind your Lord- testimon y- 
 ships, if I had anything to combat in these affidavits, if 
 there was anything that could have left a moment's impres- 
 sion upon any person's mind that read them or made the 
 slightest comment upon them, I should wish to observe 
 that Mr. Scott, who was at Tanda at the time this attack 
 is supposed to be made upon Captain Gordon that it is 
 in evidence before your Lordships, by Mr. Middleton's con- 
 fession, that Mr. Scott never made the slightest complaint of 
 any injury supposed to be received from this rebellious 
 Shumshire Khan. He carried on his manufactory under 
 the walls and under the guns of Shumshire Khan, and no 
 application was ever made to him for his testimony, which 
 must have been complete, perfect and decisive, upon that 
 occasion. 
 
 The other remark I wish to make relates to a still more Suppression 
 extraordinary circumstance I mean the suppression of the mony of 8 * 
 testimony of Hoolas Roi,f of whom your Lordships have Hoolas R 1 - 
 heard so much in the course of this business. 
 
 * The quotation is from the opening Speech of Sir G. Oxenden in the Im- 
 peachment of the Earl of Macclesfield, in 1725. See Howell's State Trials, 
 Vol. xvi., Col. 802. 
 
 f See Sir Elijah Impey 's statements respecting the affidavit of Hoolas Roi, 
 in the ''Minutes of the Evidence," pp. 650, 845.
 
 632 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the lieyiuns : 
 
 . The Counsel, in part of their examination, seem to doubt 
 the fact of Hoolas Roi having been examined. Your Lord- 
 ships will recollect a letter from Mr. Middleton in which it 
 is stated that Hoolas Roi was sent down to Benares in 
 order to be examined. Here is a letter from Captain Davy 
 to Nathaniel Middleton, Esquire, saying : 
 
 " Sir, I am directed by the Governor General to inform you that 
 the bearer, Hoolas Roi, who attended here by your orders, has been 
 examined as to the points on which he could give information, and has 
 now received permission to return." 
 
 Then here is direct proof that Hoolas Roi did arrive at 
 Benares ; that he was examined upon the points to which 
 he could give information : and now I demand from the 
 Counsel why is that testimony suppressed ? Where is the 
 affidavit of Hoolas Roi ; which must have been the most 
 decisive, the most conclusive, evidence upon the whole of 
 this business ? He was a person entrusted by the British 
 government : he resided at Fyzabad during the whole 
 time of the troubles : he had the best opportunity to 
 inform himself : he has the best claim to credit : he has 
 been examined, -and yet that examination, while they are 
 filling this volume with all the rumours they could give 
 shape to that examination is suppressed. Will it be said 
 Hoolas Roi was a person well disposed to the Begums and 
 to their ministers ? We have proved to your Lordships he 
 was hostile to both : we have proved his ill-usage of the 
 servants of the ministers of the Begums. Will it be said 
 he was not upon the spot at the time ? We have proved 
 he was, and that he was attentive to his duty ; because we 
 show, in Mr. Middleton's affidavit, that Hoolas Roi gave 
 him intelligence of the arrival of a vakil from Cheyt Sing, 
 although he could not learn what his commission was : that 
 shows he was upon the spot and attentive to give intelli- 
 gence of everything that occurred. Will it be said he was 
 not in his confidence ? We have placed a letter upon the 
 evidence in which Mr. Middleton speaks of him as a person 
 in whom he places implicit confidence, and desires the officer 
 commanding at Fyzabad to consider Hm even as himself. 
 
 Therefore, under all these circumstances, when your 
 Lordships see a person who had the best means of infor 
 mation, who would have known all the facts that were 
 taken up in the other affidavits by hearsay, who would 
 have known them of his own knowledge, who would have 
 seen those najibs if any such were raised at Fyzabad,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 633 
 
 who would have seen the obstruction, if any such was IOJUNEITSS. 
 given to Colonel Hannay, who would have heard any 
 complaints of Captain Gordon, who would have heard any 
 account that could be given of the ill-conduct of Shum- 
 shire Khan at Tanda, and who could have no motive to 
 withhold it you see this man is examined, and that 
 material evidence is suppressed. 
 
 My Lords, having omitted at the time I spoke formerly 
 relative to the affidavits these two circumstances, I shall 
 now proceed to the narrative part of the correspondence, Narrative 
 in which your Lordships will I am convinced see that, if correspon- 
 nothing had been hitherto proved, the manner in which t ween Mr. 
 this plot is communicated and carried on would of itself ^f^ 8 
 be decisive evidence of the guilt of the persons employed agents, 
 in it. 
 
 Before, however, I proceed to that, I would wish your Contradic- 
 Lordships to advert to the contradictory accounts which coSitTby 
 Mr. Hastings gives of his own degree of knowledge respect- i^g 8 ^V e 
 ing the supposed rebellion and conspiracy, upon the day he ^ k l ^ nt of 
 signed the treaty of Chunar, the 1 9th of September. There ledge of the 
 is no one point upon which Mr. Hastings appears to have rc lhon ' 
 been so completely puzzled as with respect to the degree 
 of information and knowledge he thought proper to have 
 upon this 19th of September, 1781. Sometimes he wishes 
 he had the whole account of all the ill-conduct of the 
 Begums that he obtained afterwards ; sometimes he even 
 tries to insinuate that he had the very testimonies and 
 affidavits which were taken by Sir Elijah Impey in Novem- 
 ber. In one place he actually does assert, in his Narrative, 
 that he had knowledge upon the loth of September of the 
 attack and escape of Colonel Hannay, which happened 
 upon the 8th of October afterwards. At other times, how- 
 ever, he varies from this ; he finds that, if he knows of all 
 this ill-conduct and acts of actual treason, it is difficult to 
 account for his having stipulated for an equivalent to the 
 Begums, and for not having sent any information upon 
 the subject to the Council at Calcutta. 
 
 The same indecision with respect to his own determina- His indc- 
 tion appears with regard to his having withdrawn the ns^tto 1 
 guarantee whether he should consider it at the time *jj| guara n * 
 as binding or otherwise. He says in one place that the 
 treaty, as it is called, was no obstacle, for its obligation had 
 already ceased with the breach of that which appertained 
 on the part of the Begum. Here we learn that, upon the
 
 634 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 10 JUKE 1788. 19th of September, the guarantee was totally out of the 
 question ; that the obligation of it had already ceased, on 
 account of the treason and ill conduct of the Begums. In 
 another place he says, 
 
 "The two distinct acts of resuming the jaghires and seizing the 
 treasures are confounded, and improperly made to originate from one and 
 the same cause, viz., the defection of the Begums in the insurrection at 
 Benares. At the time that the resumption of the jaghires was resolved 
 on, the conduct of the Begums, though strongly suspected, was not 
 sufficiently ascertained to justify the depriving them of jaghires held 
 under the pledge of the Company, without an equivalent, and accordingly 
 a full compensation was stipulated." 
 
 Here we find that the agreement was considered by him 
 as in full force, and he had nothing but a suspicion, which 
 did not justify any injury to the Begums ; but on the con- 
 trary he was compelled to stipulate for a full equivalent. 
 A little afterwards, in his second Defence before the House 
 of Commons, he says : "At this time " speaking of this 
 same 19th of September, 1781, " in a word, I regarded the 
 Nabob's engagement with the Begum and the Company's 
 guarantee, if I regarded them at all, as become two insigni- 
 ficant shreds of waste paper." Here the guarantee is gone 
 completely ; he not only doubts whether he regarded it at 
 all, but, if he did regard it at all, he only considered it as 
 an insignificant shred of waste paper ! In another place he 
 asserts that no injury whatever was intended to them, and 
 that they were expressly provided for, not at tae discretion 
 of the Nawab, but from the Company's treasury under the 
 charge of the Resident. Having crossed backwards and 
 forwards with these doubts in his two Defences before the 
 House of Commons, when he comes before your Lordships 
 he asserts positively in his Defence, now on the table, 
 
 " And the said Warren Hastings avers that, at the time of executing 
 the said treaty, he had sufficient reason to believe and did believe that 
 the Begums had been guilty of such acts of public misconductas reasonably 
 and justly warranted the making of that treaty, so far as the same 
 respected the said Begums." 
 
 Here he states the whole of his knowledge to have 
 existed in his mind upon the 1 9th of September, and that 
 he did know enough of their ill conduct at that time to 
 justify his withdrawing wholly the Company's guarantee. 
 Hiscontra- The same irresolution and confusion appears in his 
 accounting attempts to account for the proposition of seizing the 
 treasures to which we are coming I mean, whether in
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 635 
 
 fact it was a proposition originating with the Nawab, or 
 whether it was a proposition of Ids own. Speaking of the 
 Begums, and of his having signed the treaty of the 1 9th of sures 
 September at Chunar, he says : 
 
 " But when I had proceeded so far, there I stopped. The rigour of 
 the act had derived no part of its construction from resentment, at least 
 not from mine. Enough had been done for the restoration of the 
 Xawab's authority, and for the security of the peace of his country ; 
 enough had been done for an exhibition of example ; and, if I could have 
 regarded personal punishment as an object, enough of that end had also 
 been accomplished in the anguish which might have been inferred from 
 the disappointment of female vengeance and malignity." 
 
 Here he avoAvs that, in signing that treaty, he thought 
 he had done enough even to punish, in the anguish of female 
 disappointment to punish an act which before he states he 
 was ignorant of, which he never meant to punish, and 
 declares that not the smallest injury ever was intended to 
 them. Speaking of the proposition of seizing the treasures, 
 he says : 
 
 " When the resumption of the treasurers was suggested, not as a new 
 and accessary measurej but as an exchange for that which had been 
 already determined, I acquiesced in it in the first sense and encouraged 
 the prosecution of it, but would not allow of it as an exchange.'' 
 
 Here he states the proposition to have come from the 
 Nawab for seizing the treasures, and in a most extraordinary 
 phrase ; he says : To be sure it was proposed to me as an 
 alternative, but I accepted it only in the first sense." That 
 is, the Nawab said, " You wish to force me to resume the 
 jagirs ; I wish to be spared that act. I propose in lieu 
 of it you shall seize the treasures." "I accept your propo- 
 sition," says Mr. Hastings, in the first sense. "I seize the 
 treasures in lieu of the jagirs. I couple that with your 
 former promise, and determine you shall seize both." This 
 he calls, when the alternative is proposed, accepting in 
 the first sense. 
 
 Here the proposition however comes plainly from the 
 Nawab. He afterwards recollects hinibelf a little, and 
 says : 
 
 " Upon a reperusal of that part of my Defence to this charge which 
 relates to the Begum's jaghire and the seizure of her treasures, and com- 
 paring it with papers before the House of Commons, which I had not 
 then read, I find an inaccuracy, which I now wish to correct ; I have 
 observed that I was indebted to Mr. Middleton for the principal part of 
 my reply to the fourth charge, and therefore what was v,. ; tten in it was 
 upon the credit of his recollection, not my own."
 
 G36 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums .- 
 
 lOJujfE 1788, 
 
 His admis- 
 sion of an 
 inaccuracy 
 in his first 
 Defence. 
 
 Here a fit of candour seems to seize Mr. Hastings, and 
 he wishes to set right what he calls an ^accuracy in his 
 former Defence that is. an inaccuracy fhe several times 
 repeated namely, that the proposition of seizing the trea- 
 sures did actually come from the Nawab, and that he did 
 nothing more than give an assent, and in some sense a 
 reluctant assent. We have extracted it from Sir Elijah 
 Impey, that in the interval he bore Mr. Hastings' pleasure 
 to Mr. Middleton upon this subject. I wish your Lordships 
 to bear this accurately in your memory : 
 
 " The fact undoubtedly is, that, not only in consenting to the seizure 
 of the treasures on the Nabob's first requisition to me, on the 2d of 
 December, 1/81," 
 
 here he states it in the beginning even of this sentence, 
 as if it was originally a requisition still from the Nawab, 
 
 " but in strenuously encouraging and supporting the measure, so far 
 as to desire Sir Elijah Impey, on leaving Chunar in November, 1731, to 
 mention the subject as from me to Mr. Middleton, for the express 
 purpose of desiring him to converse upon it with the Nabob, and even to 
 encourage the Nabob to make the proposition to me " 
 
 Here we are getting a little right again ; here he avows 
 that the measure did not come from the Nawab, but he 
 sent Sir Elijah Impey to Mr. Middleton, to suggest to 
 Mr. Middletpn that if he would suggest to the Nawab to 
 suggest to him the seizing of the treasures he would assent 
 to it. In the next sentence he says : 
 
 " though the proposition was made to me on the 2nd of December, 
 1/81, and I instantly assented to it upon the grounds above stated 
 
 Here again he puts the proposition upon the Nawab. In 
 the same page he seems determined to support this second 
 contradiction, and he asserts directly " the proposition for 
 seizing of the treasures unquestionably came from the 
 Nabob." In this same Defence, and in the same page, 
 however, recollecting himself a little afterwards, he says : 
 
 " Unless the proposition had come from the Nabob the measure could 
 not have been carried into effect, and I don't wish to screen myself from 
 responsibility by disavowing any part that I took in the business. I 
 meant by my message to Mr. Middleton that the Nabob should be 
 informed that the proposition coming from him would receive my con- 
 currence." 
 
 Here again we come at the real fact, back again, running 
 round the circle that he did make the proposition in 
 fact to the Nawab, and that he only waited for it to be
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 637 
 
 returned back to him, and then it should receive his 
 concurrence. Through the whole of this your Lordships 
 see the miserable effect of craft bewildered and of fraud 
 entangled in her own snares. 
 
 But he has also added here a new circumstance, wliich ^jfj 
 has been omitted in all his former Defences, and which does the Begums 
 suggest to the mind even a new motive for his conduct meed by" 
 with respect to these unfortunate Princesses. He says this resentment 
 in the second Defence to the House of Commons : him ards 
 
 " It has occurred to me, as a question which might naturally arise out 
 of the subject, why the Begums should have entertained so vehement a 
 hatred as that by which I have described them to have been actuated 
 against the English Government and nation? The answer is obvious 
 to those who know the history of our connection with the Nabob of 
 Oude. The Begums regarded us as the oppressors of their house and 
 the usurpers of its inheritance : nor was their resentment confined to 
 the English ; the Nabob himself had his share in it, for the sacrifice 
 which he had made of the province of Benares, against the united 
 opposition of his family. And the Nabob Salas Jung, the brother of 
 Bow Begum, avowed to me himself that he had from that time with- 
 held himself from all concern in the Nabob's councils, and assigned 
 that as the reason for it now." Mr. Hastings adds " I am sorry that I 
 must in truth add that a part of the resentment of the Begums was, 
 as I had too much reason to suspect, directed to myself personally. The 
 incidents which gave rise to it are too light to be mixed with the pro- 
 fessed subject and occasion of this detail, and as they want the authen- 
 ticity of recorded evidence I could lay no claim to credit in my relating 
 of them." 
 
 This is a sudden modesty too in Mr. Hastings, who 
 through the whole of his Defence states his own single 
 assertion as adequate to perfect proof. 
 
 " At some period I may be induced to offer them to the world my 
 ultimate and unerring judges both of that and of every other trait in my 
 political character." 
 
 Here he furnishes us with a new suggestion with a new 
 idea of the cause of his enmity and oppression of these 
 women. We had before every motive of pride of avarice 
 of habitual rapacity. The only ingredient that was 
 wanting, as it were, to make this action completely black 
 was the supposition of some personal malice and pique 
 between them ; and that suggestion and the ground he has 
 here furnished. 
 
 My Lords, we come now to those letters which engaged Correspon- 
 a considerable degree of your Lordships' attention at the tween 
 time that they were first read ; because we blended with ,^' s> Hast " 
 them a considerable degree of examination of some of the Mr - Middle-
 
 638 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums; 
 
 10 JUNE 1788. writers of them. This correspondence, your Lordships 
 ton,~and will recollect, begins upon the 1st day of December, after 
 fmp^y| ah Sir Elijah Impey had returned with the depositions and 
 
 affidavits from Lucknow. 
 
 Their dis- I should wish to apprise your Lordships here that, 
 each other, although a part of this correspondence consists of private 
 and confidential letters between Mr. Middleton, Sir Elijah 
 Impey and Mr. Hastings letters which were never meant 
 to meet the public view yet your Lordships are not to 
 expect in that correspondence a fa ; .r, perfect and unreserved, 
 communication, even among these parties ; that there is 
 through the whole that sort of knavish half confidence 
 which ever must be found among those who are concerned 
 in such transactions. Your Lordships are not to imagine 
 that Mr. Hastings had no distrust of Mr. Middleton, or 
 that Mr. Middleton, though he was obeying implicitly the 
 orders he receives, and appears, as he certainly was, com- 
 pletely devoted to Mr. Hastings, yet at the same time had 
 any real serious confidence in him, or that he was without 
 a jealous apprehension that he might betray him in some 
 respect or other. The same is to be observed in all Sir 
 Elijah Impey' s letters. 
 
 Mr. Hast- As a convincing proof of this sort of jealousy and sus- 
 tion of picion amongst them, I need only remind your Lordships 
 ton of 1 ' e of the circumstances of Mr. Hastings' accusation against 
 bribe ting a M r - Middleton, upon the supposition that he had received 
 money as a bribe while at Chunar. negotiating that treaty 
 with him. A considerable time after Mr. Middleton's 
 return to Lucknow, Mr. Hastings appears to have heard 
 of some rumour that a considerable sum of money had 
 been taken on account of the concessions made to the 
 Nawab in the treaty of Chunar. As it was found that 
 large concessions were made to the Nawab, and as it was 
 taken for granted that some degree of faith was intended 
 to be kept with him, knowing that those concessions had 
 formerly been refused the Nawab, and refused by Mr. Hast- 
 ings a short period before with every circumstance of 
 reproach and insult, finding they were now unaccountably 
 granted him, they naturally conceived that that which had 
 been denied to justice and truth had been granted now at 
 some corrupt price. Accordingly, it appears that there 
 were rumours abroad that a considerable sum of money 
 had been taken in the course of this negotiation. Mr. Hast- 
 ings hears of this. His purity is shocked, and he is alarmed
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 639 
 
 for his character. He instantly turns towards Middleton 
 and Johnson ; writes them a letter of plain insinuation ; 
 directs another letter to be written by his confidential 
 secretary ; tells them they are two corrupt fellows, and 
 wishes they would clear their characters. Mr. Middleton, 
 astonished at the charge and innocent, for anything that 
 appears, of it he and Johnson jointly say : 
 
 " We solemnly declare before God [and upon our honours, that we 
 never have either of us in fact or idea]" 
 
 Mr. Middleton had not only not in fact received money, 
 but not in idea 
 
 " received or been tendered " not even tendered in idea " a sum of 
 money or a promise, directly or indirectly [any benefits whatever, by 
 any person living, in consideration of any one or the whole of the 
 articles specified or contained in the agreement concluded between you 
 and the Nabob Vizier of the] 19th of September last." 
 
 This solemn asseveration, signed jointly by Middleton 
 and Johnson, comes to the Governor General. He is un- 
 doubtedly struck by the solemnity, by the accuracy and 
 minuteness, of the denial of the charge, and perhaps a 
 little influenced by the consciousness of having the money 
 in his own pocket. He is satisfied, and acquits Middleton 
 and Johnson. I mention this circumstance to your Lord- 
 ships that you will perceive many instances, through the 
 whole of this, in which there is no implicit confidence, but 
 that knavish distrust which must exist among persons 
 concerned in such a business that that pervades through 
 the whole ; and therefore your Lordships are not to be sur- 
 prised if, even in the most private and confidential letters, 
 there appears some degree of contradiction. 
 
 Upon Sir Elijah Impey leaving Lucknow, and having 
 delivered the message, or the pleasure or order, whatever 
 you call it, to Mr. Middleton, we now enter upon the scene 
 of action, and come to the proceedings which were had in 
 consequence of that order or pleasure of Mr. Hastings. A Apparent 
 
 ,. j-rr- contradic- 
 
 great many questions were asked as to an apparent differ- tion of dates 
 ence and contradiction between two letters of Mr. Middle- teUenof 
 ton upon this subject, immediately after Sir Elijah Impey 'ston. M 
 leaving Lucknow, dated the 2d and the 6th of December ; 
 and a noble and very distinguished peer though it is, I 
 believe, irregular to state otherwise than that many ques- 
 tions came from the Court but, however, there were many
 
 640 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Bey urns : 
 
 10JPNE1788 
 
 Explana- 
 tion. 
 
 Two sub- 
 jects of 
 instruction 
 to Mr. Mid- 
 dleton, vie., 
 to compel 
 th e Nawab 
 to resume 
 the jagirs, 
 and to seize 
 the trea- 
 sures. 
 
 His diffi- 
 culty with 
 regard to 
 seizing the 
 jagirs. 
 
 Instruc- 
 tions from 
 
 questions pressed by a noble lord to Mr. Middleton upon 
 this apparent contradiction.* 
 
 Now I thir'c I shall be able to make this matter per- 
 fectly clear to your Lordships. You will observe that there 
 were two greao subjects to be managed under the instruc- 
 tions of Mr. Hastings, both direct violations of the treaty 
 of Chunar ; that is, one the compelling the Nawab to 
 resume the whole of the jagirs a direct infringement of 
 the treaty ; and the oi/her, the seizing of the treasures no 
 part of the treaty. Our attention has been used u o be fixed 
 so much upon the fact of seizing the treasures, as the more 
 violent act and the more disgraceful act, and that act which 
 by bringing the son directly to the oppression of his mother 
 shocks human nature most, that we overlook in a measure 
 the importance of the act of resuming the jagirs. 
 
 The Begum possessed property of two sorts lands and 
 treasures ; ar d the taking from her her jagirs, if it stood 
 alone, would have been an act of the most atrocious violence 
 and most unjustifiable fraud. In considering these two 
 acts, it appears plainly that Mr. Middleton had no great 
 objection to the one, namely, the seizing the treasures ; but 
 that he did go with considerable reluctance to work upon 
 the other, namely, the resuming the jagirs. Resuming the 
 jagirs he describes as not only an odious service, but a ser- 
 vice of some degree of danger. He states that, when he is 
 put upon this, he must have troops to enable him to oppose, 
 not only the jagirdars, but the Nawab's own amils, the 
 Nawab being repugnant to it to the last. He says, I shall 
 have the whole country upon me at once, and he desires 
 leave to remove Mrs. Middleton and his own family out of 
 the way, because he forsees he may incur some personal 
 risk and danger. Therefore it is not extraordinary that, 
 when Sir Elijah Impey makes communication to Mr. Mid- 
 dleton, that, in addition to the plan which was before settled 
 of resuming the jagirs, he should also seize the treasures 
 it is not extraordinary that Mr. Middleton himself should 
 wish to put the proposition which he was to get and pro- 
 cure from the Nawab that he himself should wish to put 
 it in the shape of an alternative ; by which means he should 
 get rid of the hazardous half cf his duty and only have the 
 safe part to execute. For your Lordships will recollect 
 
 * The questions -were put by Lord Stormont. 
 page 910 of the printed Evidence. 
 
 The examination occurs at
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 641 
 
 which is an extraordinary circumstance that in the 10 JUNE irss. 
 whole of this evidence it nowhere appears what authority Mr. Hast- 
 Mr. Hastings gave to Mr. Middleton to resume the whole SSS^t. 111 * 
 of the jagirs. Mr. Hastings himself avows that he did 
 direct the whole to be resumed. He avows more ; he avows 
 that, at the time when he signed the treaty with the Nawab, 
 in which it is expressly stipulated that the Nawab should 
 be permitted to resume such only as he thinks proper 
 that at that time he, Mr. Hastings, determined to defeat 
 that design, and that he resolved he should resume the 
 whole. This he avows, but it does not appear when he 
 avowed it to Mr. Middleton ; nor do any instructions to 
 Mr. Middleton appear, except in one shape, which shows 
 how the whole of this has been done. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Middleton afterwards he says : 
 
 " I am certain of your attachment to myself, and I know that your 
 capacity is equal to any service ; but I must express my doubts of your 
 firmness and activity, and, above all, of your recollection of my in- 
 structions." 
 
 Now this could not refer to the written instructions 
 which he often quotes in his letters, and which Mr. Mid- 
 dleton quotes too, and says he has always under liis eye 
 and is extracting passages from continually to Mr. Hastings; 
 this must relate to certain verbal instructions which he 
 had given him when they were together at Chunar. A part 
 of those instructions must have been to return with the 
 Nawab, and, instead of keeping faith with him in that 
 article, that he should be indulged in his own will or his 
 own caprice ; that he should not be obliged to make the 
 resumption general, which might throw his country into 
 confusion and bring on a civil war 
 
 When Sir Elijah Impey comes with the new propositions Alternative 
 of seizing the treasure also, it is clear that Sir Elijah Impey thelrea- 8 
 did not bear the message from Mr. Hastings in the shape 
 of an alternative ; because Mr. Hastings himself repeatedly 
 avows that the alternative had never entered into his ja#irs. 
 mind, and that, when it did come in the shape of an alter- 
 native, he accepted it only in what he calls the first sense : 
 but, when Sir Elijah Impey suggested to Mr. Middleton 
 that it would be agreeable to Mr. Hastings if he could pro- 
 cure the proposition for seizing the treasures to come from 
 the Nawab, then I say it is natural that Mr. Middleton 
 should have wished to have suggested the idea to come 
 from the Nawab in the shape of an alternative, to get rid 
 
 s s
 
 642 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 10J0NE1788. of the idea of resuming the jagirs. Accordingly, upon the 
 LetteTof 2d of December I shall have little occasion to trouble your 
 ton' of the c " Lordships with many remarks on some of these letters, for 
 MrEirah *^ ie s ^ or y tells itself so plainly that it is impossible to mis- 
 impey. apprehend it, with a slight degree of attention to the letters 
 themselves upon Sir Elijah Impey's having left Lucknow, 
 Mr. Middleton writes a private letter upon the 2d of De- 
 cember, in this manner : 
 
 " My dear Sir, I had yesterday the honour of informing you of the 
 message I sent to the Nabob through the minister respecting the 
 jaghires," 
 
 Your Lordships will observe that this is by message ; that 
 he does not pretend to have conversed with the Nawab 
 upon the subject 
 
 " to which his Excellency this morning returned me a reply, purporting 
 that, if the measure proposed was intended to procure the payment of 
 his balance due to the Company, he could better and more expeditiously 
 effect that object by taking from his mother what she is very able to 
 spare, and what he has an undoubted right, as he conceives, to exact 
 from her. The present debt to the Company, as he with truth observes, 
 is in great part handed down from his father," 
 
 with what truth the past evidence will easily ascertain 
 
 " and the funds from which he might have been enabled to liquidate it 
 it is notorious were held from him by the Begum on the late Nabob's 
 death. That, according to the laws of the koran," 
 
 Here is the Mohammedan law never abandoned for a mo- 
 ment in the midst of all pretences 
 
 " and the invariable custom of the country, he is justly entitled to the 
 whole estate and treasures of his father," 
 
 not the least recollection of the guarantee 
 
 " and could legally demand their being put in his possession, but that 
 the sum he desires to take from his mother about sixty lacs (or 
 600,0()0/.) bears no sort of proportion to the immense wealth which fell 
 into her hands on the death of his father ; nor would it bear at all hard 
 upon her, as he knows how much her treasures exceed that sum. All 
 therefore that he asks is, not to be interrupted in recovering a part of 
 his hereditary right, by which he will be enabled to discharge immediately 
 the whole of his debt to the Company." 
 
 Now we have Mr. Middleton's opinion upon this : 
 
 Proposition " This, my dear Sir, is a flattering proposition : and, as to the point of 
 seizure of "S^t, admitting it to be less clear and defined than the Nabob chooses 
 the trea- to consider it, you may possibly be of opinion that the conduct of the 
 ures. Begums on the late disturbances at Benares, as set forth in the several 
 
 testimonies laid before you, has forfeited any claim they might origi- 
 nally have had to the protection and mediation of the Company ; and 
 further, that it may not be political or yet perfectly safe to trust them any
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 643 
 
 longer with such powerful means of promoting an opposition to our loJuNE 1788. 
 interests." 
 
 I am sure it will strike your Lordships as an odd circum- Motives for 
 stance here that Mr. Middleton should seem to be soliciting Igno^ce'of 
 the acquiescence of Mr. Hastings to a proposition which he j^^n-*" 
 had just received, in the form of a proposal, from Mr. Hast- f ru tionsi 
 
 T. ,,. . .. , , r f to effect the 
 
 ings mmseli through Sir Elijah Impey. J3ut your Lordships seizure, 
 will recollect a moment that it does not follow that, though 
 Sir Elijah Impey had executed his message very faithfully 
 to Mr. Middleton, Mr. Middleton was to acknowledge to 
 Mr. Hastings that he had received such a message, and 
 that he was to do his business in so clumsy a way as to 
 let Mr. Hastings know he had been authorised from him 
 to make the proposal first to the Nawab. Sir Elijah Impey 
 had informed him in conversation that it was his wish that 
 the proposition should come from the Nawab : " Do you 
 accomplish that, and let it come from you as a proposition 
 through you from the Nawab." The other would be a 
 clumsy, coarse, way of doing it ; therefore it is not at all 
 extraordinary that he appears himself not to be conscious 
 that he had received such orders and pleasure from Mr. Hast- 
 ings. He adds : 
 
 " For my own part, I am so well persuaded of the disaffection of the 
 Begums, particularly the present Nabob's mother, to our cause" 
 
 what his persuasion was founded on your Lordships will 
 recollect from his affidavit 
 
 " and of their promptitude to unite in any measure to distress us, that I 
 could very easily reconcile it to my conscience to assist the Nabob, 
 instead of obstructing him, in wresting from them every benefit they 
 enjoy, beyond a decent maintenance. However, this is only my opinion, 
 and by no means meant to influence your's" 
 
 he having just before received Mr. Hastings' positive direc- 
 tions that he should procure from the Nawab this very 
 proposition: " The Nabob writes you himself upon this His refe- 
 subject, and you have his letter enclosed/' Where is that litter of the 
 letter ? I ask again. If the Nawab had ever made the uponthe 
 proposition here, it would have saved Mr. Hastings all the 
 prevarication and quibbles upon the subject: he would 
 have produced the letter at once, and then it would have 
 appeared that the proposition had come originally from the 
 Nawab. But your Lordships will also observe that, if this 
 letter ever tad existed and had contained this proposal, it 
 could not be that the Nawab had proposed to seize the 
 
 SS 2
 
 644 Summing of Evidence on Second Cliarge the Begums : 
 
 . treasures in addition to the resumption of the jagirs, while 
 Mr. Middleton is all the time speaking of it as an alterna- 
 tive and not as an original proposition. Mr. Middleton 
 then adds, " Neither he nor I expect that you should give 
 a formal sanction to the measure proposed." Why not a 
 formal sanction to the measure proposed ? If the measure 
 was a just and honest measure if it was founded in 
 circumstances that would have borne him out a moment in 
 any part of the Defence if it was founded upon a plan 
 to extirpate the English, to dethrone the Nawab if he had 
 the basis for his conduct pretended for why not a formal 
 sanction to that measure ? He adds : 
 
 " It will be sufficient that you but hint your opinion upon it, and 
 enable me to inform his Excellency whether you would or would not 
 oppose his design. Let me therefore intreat you, my dear sir, to favour 
 me with a line by the return of the dawk ; and if your sentiments should 
 happen to accord with my own, I doubt not but I should be able to 
 congratulate you in a very short space of time" 
 
 here comes the great object- 
 
 " upon the remittance of a handsome sum of money to the Presidency."* 
 
 Your Lordships see the hypocrisy and the fraud of this 
 correspondence in this letter. 
 
 Now we come to this letter of the 6th of December, which 
 
 cth of D e a PP ears so contradictory to the letter which I have just read. 
 
 cembcr. " At the time this was written there appears to have been no 
 answer returned from Mr. Hastings to this supposed letter 
 from the Nawab, or to this proposition of the alternative 
 upon the 2d of December. Upon the 6th, we find Mr. Mid- 
 dleton writing in the following manner : 
 
 " Finding the Nabob wavering in his determination about the resump- 
 tion of the jaghires, I this day, in presence of and with the Minister's 
 concurrence, ordered the necessary perwannahs to be written to the 
 several aumils for that purpose ; and it was my firm resolution to have 
 dispatched them this evening, with proper people to see them punctu- 
 ally and implicitly carried into execution; but before they were all 
 transcribed I received a message from the Nabob, who had been informed 
 by the Minister of the resolution I had taken, intreating that I would 
 withhold the perwannahs until to-morrow morning."t 
 
 Your Lordships will alway bear in mind the bold attempt 
 that is made to defeat our assertion with regard to the 
 abject state of vassalage in which the Nawab stood to 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 802. 
 f Printed as above, p. 803.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 645 
 
 Mr. Hastings and his agent Middleton. He here entreats 
 Mr. Middleton to withhold the issuing his (Mr. Middleton's) 
 parwanas for the resumption of the jagirs ; then he adds 
 which is the passage which appears so much to contradict 
 the letter of the 2d of December : 
 
 " Your pleasure respecting the Begums I have learnt from Sir Elijah Refers to 
 Impey, and the measure heretofore proposed will soon follow the resump- {^ons 18 * 1 " 110 " 
 tion of the jaghires. From both, or indeed from the former alone, I have received 
 no doubt of the complete liquidation of the Company's balance." S^FT^I! 
 
 Impey. 
 
 Now the extraordinary circumstance appears to be this Remarkable 
 that Mr. Middleton should upon the 2d of December pro- between 5 the 
 pose this measure as an alternative from the Nawab, stating contained 
 that he even encloses a letter to the same purpose from the {"t 
 Nawab, and that then, without having received his pleasure 
 upon this measure heretofore proposed, that he should upon 
 the 6th say that the alternative should be put out of the 
 question, and that he should say the measure heretofore 
 proposed, namely, the seizure of the treasures, should follow 
 the resumption of the jagirs, not having appeared to have 
 received any communication or orders from Mr. Hastings 
 between the 2d and the 6th. 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect that Sir Elijah Impey in Probability 
 the interval had left Lucknow. We find him swearing ing received 
 away at Lucknow on the 28th of November, and at the fns 
 same work, at Chunar on the 2d of December. He had 
 returned to Chunar upon the 1st of December, and joined j 
 Mr. Hastings. Sir Elijah Impey had left Mr. Middleton, no December, 
 doubt with knowledge that he, Middleton, wished the pro- 
 position should be made in the shape of an alternative, and 
 was acquainted with Mr. Middleton's desire to get rid of the 
 measure of resuming the jagirs if he could ; and conse- 
 quently he writes on the 2d of December and makes the 
 proposition in the shape of an alternative. But Sir Elijah 
 Impey, being possessed of his intention so to do, communi- 
 cates with Mr. Hastings upon the subject. Accordingly we 
 have upon the 1st of December a letter from Sir Elijah 
 Impey, in which he says : " What we talked of respecting 
 the Begums Mr. Hastings approves, and would himself have 
 proposed." Now the only difficulty is this how we are 
 to understand this communication ? And first of all we 
 are to recollect that Sir Elijah Impey does not pretend 
 that these are accurate copies of his correspondence, or 
 that he has given in the whole of his correspondence.
 
 646 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums ; 
 
 ioJuNEi7ss. He admits that many letters may have been lost: he 
 admits that he is sure lie did write more than he has 
 given in, and that the copies he has given in were little 
 more than heads and hints the foul copies, which, after 
 showing Mr. Hastings, he copied. Therefore it is not too 
 much to suppose that if I were to fix upon this letter 
 of the 1st as that which altered Middleton's mind upon 
 the subject, as it refers to the manner of executing the 
 business and not the alternative proposed, there must 
 have been some part of the letter omitted, or else some 
 other letter accompanying it of the 1st of December 
 from Mr. Hastings most probably enclosed, informing 
 Mr. Middleton that he does not accept of the alter- 
 native, but that he accepts of it in the way he tells us in 
 his Defence in the first sense ; for here Mr. Hastin s 
 himself supplies the gap : he says, " when the Nabob made 
 the proposition to me to resume the treasures, not as an 
 original measure but as an alternative," he himself supplies 
 the gap that he would not accept it as an alternative but 
 in the first sense. Therefore that must have been in that 
 letter of Sir Elijah Impey, or else in a note of Mr. Hastings, 
 which is suppressed, accompanying that letter of Sir Elijah 
 Impey 's to Mr. Middleton. Then probably Mr. Middleton, 
 having received this letter from him of the 1st, writes without 
 recurring to it or arguing the matter further : he says, 
 
 " Your pleasure I have received through Sir Elijah Impey, and the 
 measure heretofore proposed will soon follow the resumption of the 
 jaghires. From both, or indeed from the former alone, I have no doubt of 
 the complete liquidation of the Company's balance." 
 
 There it seems as a matter of emphasis to make the matter 
 clear " I did propose it as an alternative, but I have 
 received your pleasure that I must not take it as an alter- 
 native but practise a gross fraud upon the Nawab. I 
 understand your pleasure now, and the seizure of the 
 treasures shall follow the resumption of the jagirs." 
 
 That I do humbly conceive does away any obscurity or 
 
 or any seeming contradiction that there might appear to 
 
 have been between these two letters of the 2d and of the Gth 
 
 of December. 
 
 Subsequent ^his measure being determined upon, you will now find 
 
 hesitationof o . IM/I -\ T -n 
 
 Mr. Middle- that Mr. Middleton begins to be a little wary. You will 
 perceive that he begins to think Mr. Hastings is going 
 a little too fast for him. As he was to execute the 
 measure and Mr. Hastings was to stay aloof I mean par-
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 647 
 
 ticularly now the measure of the resumption of the jagirs, loJuire 
 which is the measure that Mr. Middleton showed most 
 reluctance to and most dreaded to be employed in the 
 execution of, as it was so much against the Nawab's will, 
 would excite a general odium throughout the country, and 
 would be attended even with the risk of his life if this is 
 given up, he says, a hint will do for seizing the treasures. 
 " I cannot expect you will afford a formal sanction to a 
 thing for which there is not the smallest plea of justice, but 
 a hint will do." 
 
 But afterwards he grows a little more cautious, and Desires 
 wishes for something more than a hint from Mr. Hastings fro 
 to begin a measure which will probably involve the country 1 ^ 
 in a civil war, and attach upon him a great responsibility 
 and possibly considerable risk. Here a great delay takes 
 place. Mr. Middleton was not so alert in this business as 
 your Lordships would have expected from his first offer 
 in the letter respecting the treasures. 
 
 In the meantime Sir Elijah Impey and he correspond. Correspond- 
 Here are some confidential letters between them, in which MrfMMdie- 
 it appears that Mr. Middleton expresses his surprise to Sir * n * h , 
 
 TO" tr e 1 j j.1. ?ir Elijah 
 
 Mijah Impey at some supposed acts 01 unkmdness on the impey. 
 part of Mr. Hastings; that he thinks he has not his 
 confidence, as Mr. Hastings is dissatisfied that he does not 
 proceed with more expedition in what he ordered him. In 
 his letter of the 6th, he says for he had the day before 
 received the communication of the 1st : 
 
 "The measure respecting the Begums and the resumption of the 
 jaghires will he instantly adopted." 
 
 He then, upon the 7th, continues his correspondence with His letter of 
 
 -m.- TT , the 7th De- 
 Mr. Hastings : cember to 
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 
 " My dear Sir," (again another private letter) " I had the honour to in ^ s - 
 address you yesterday, informing you of the steps I -had taken in regard 
 to the resumption of the jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me, 
 according to his agreement, but seemingly without any intention or 
 desire to yield me satisfaction on the subject under discussion ; for, after 
 a great deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion and 
 puerile excuses " 
 
 puerile excuses, my Lords, for not plundering his mother 
 
 " for withholding his assent to the measure, though at the same time 
 professing the most implicit submission to your wishes, I found myself 
 without any other resource than the one of employing that exclusive 
 authority with which I consider your instructions to vest me."
 
 648 Summing of Evidence on Second Charye the Begums : 
 
 10JUNE17S8. This is the Mr. Middleton who, at your Lordships' bar, 
 disavows having any direct authority in the management 
 of the Nawab 's affairs, and maintains the independent will 
 of the Nawab. 
 
 His endep- j therefore declared to the Nabob, in the presence of the minister 
 
 suade the and Mr. Johnson, who I desired might bear witness of the conversation, 
 
 Nawab to that I construed his rejection of the measure proposed as a breach of his 
 
 resumption solemn promise to you, and an unwillingness to yield that assistance 
 
 of the which was evidently in his power towards liquidating his heavy accumu- 
 
 jagirs. lated debt to the Company, and that I must in consequence determine, 
 
 in my own justification, to issue immediately the perwannahs, which had 
 
 only been withheld in the sanguine hope that he would be prevailed upon 
 
 to make that his own act which nothing but the most urgent necessity 
 
 could force me to make mine. He left me without any reply, but after- 
 
 wards sent for his minister and authorised him to give me hopes that my 
 
 requisition would be complied with : on which I expressed my satis- 
 
 faction, but declared that 1 could admit of no further delays, and, unless 
 
 I received his Excellency's formal acquiescence before the evening, I 
 
 should then most assuredly issue my perwannahs ; which I have 
 
 accordingly done, not having had any assurances from his Excellency 
 
 that would justify a further suspension." 
 
 At the conclusion of the letter he adds : 
 
 " His Excellency talks of going to Fyzabad, for the purpose heretofore 
 mentioned, in three or four days. I wish he may be serious in this 
 intention, and you may rest assured I shall spare no pains to keep him 
 to it." 
 
 That is his letter of the 7th of December. 
 
 His letter of Upon the 9th of December your Lordships See the 
 cembcr, *~ progress of this business, without its being necessary to 
 
 make a comment upon the letters he says : 
 
 acquies- 
 
 cence. " I had the honour to address you on the 7th, informing you of the 
 
 conversation which had passed between the Nabob and me on the 
 subject of resuming the jaghires, and the step I had taken in conse- 
 quence. His Excellency appeared to be very much hurt and incensed at 
 the measure, and loudly complains of the treachery of his ministers, "- 
 
 I wish your Lordships to observe this particularly that 
 the Nawab, when he found that his ministers were support- 
 ing Mr. Middleton, complains of the treachery of his 
 ministers 
 
 " first in giving you any hopes that such a measure would be adopted, 
 and, secondly, their promising me their whole support in carrying it 
 through. But, as I apprehend, rather than suffer it to appear that the 
 point had been carried in opposition to his will, he at length yielded a 
 nominal acquiescence, and has this day issued his own perwannahs to 
 that effect, declaring, however, at the same time, both to me and his 
 ministers, that it is the act of compulsion. I hope to be able in a few 
 days, in consequence of this measure, to transmit the account of the
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan* 649 
 
 annual value and produce of the jaghires, opposed to the nominal 10JUNE1788. 
 amount at which they stand rated on the books of the Sircar." 
 
 He then adds : 
 
 " I have the pleasure to inform you that the Nabob still adheres to 
 his resolution of proceeding immediately to Fyzabad, for the purposes 
 already mentioned to you, and will, I believe, depart in three days from 
 this date."* 
 
 There is a letter from Sir Eliiah Impey to Mr. Middle- ^^of 
 
 i j. i -n r\L\ T\ -L Sir Elijah 
 
 ton, dated Buxar. 9th December: impeyto 
 
 Mr. Middle- 
 
 " I received yours of the 5th at this place, just before the dawk went ^embcr 1 De 
 to Benares. With regard to the jaghires and Begums, I have no doubt 
 what you say will be satisfactory. Indeed I think the whole so. I left 
 the Governor, who came as far as Benares with me, on Thursday last ; 
 he had, on what I assured him, resolved not to go to Lucknow, but 
 proceed, as I much wished him to do, to the Presidency. He said he 
 would write to you to that effect. If he has not, you will take no notice 
 of this information."t 
 
 Then there is a letter, dated the 19th of December, from Letter of 
 Mr. Middleton to Sir Elijah Impey : { to IS* 
 
 Elijah 
 
 " I think we shall yet have some active service in fully establishing Impey, 19th 
 , , ,. ,1 . i rrru r> i_ i .LI December, 
 
 the measure of resuming the jagheers. 1 he Begum has opposed the 
 
 aumeel that was sent to take charge of her's, and vows vengeance, not 
 only against him and the Nabob, but against the whole country if a 
 jagheer is touched. Her own words to me and the minister are pretty 
 expressive of her disposition, ' If my jagheer is touched, the whole 
 country shall go with it.' She has a number of men in arms, which 
 has obliged the Nabob to call for the assistance of another regiment 
 from Cawnpore. His Excellency proceeds to Fyzabad to settle other 
 matters on the 27th instant. The Mohurrum, he pleads, prevents 
 his going sooner. I think the opposition the Begum has given to the 
 measure of resuming the jagheer, which, as far as concerns her, bears 
 not the shadow of exception, as she is to receive the value in ready 
 money, will be a full justification of the future demands his Excellency 
 has to make upon her. With such a disposition as she has betrayed, it 
 would be the excess of folly to leave her in the means of gratifying it."J 
 
 Then here is a letter, dated Benares, 26th of December, Letter of 
 1781, from Mr. Hastings to Mr. Middleton ; S^to 38 *" 
 
 Mr. Middle- 
 
 " Sir, My mind has been for some days suspended betweeen two ?" 26 ? h 
 opposite impulses, one arising from the necessity of my return to 
 Calcutta, the other from the apprehension of my presence being more 
 necessary and more urgently wanted at Lucknow. Your answer to this 
 shall decide my choice. I have waited thus long in the hopes of hear- Urges him 
 ing that some progress had been made in the execution of the plan to prosecute 
 which I concluded with the Nabob in September last. I do not find offlle" 1 
 
 treasures. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 804. 
 f Printed as above, p. 805. J Printed as above, p. 645.
 
 650 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 that any step towards it has been yet taken, though three months are 
 elapsed, and little more than that period did appear to me requisite to 
 have accomplished the most essential part of it, and to have brought the 
 whole into train. This tardiness, and the opposition prepared to the 
 only decided act yet undertaken, have a bad appearance. I approve 
 the Nabob's resolutions to deprive the Begums of their ill-employed 
 treasures. In both services it must be your care to prevent an abuse of 
 the powers given to those that are employed in them. You yourself 
 ought to be personally present. You must not allow any negotiations 
 [or] forbearance, but must prosecute both services until the Begums are 
 at the entire mercy of the Nabob, their jaghires in the quiet possession 
 of his aumils, and their wealth in such charge as may secure it against 
 private embezzlement. You will have a force more than sufficient to 
 effect both these purposes. 
 
 " The reformation of his army and the new settlement of his revenues 
 are also points of immediate concern, and ought to be immediately 
 concluded. Has anything been done in either ? 
 
 " I now demand and require you most solemnly to answer me, are you 
 confident in your own ability to accomplish all these purposes and the 
 other points of my instructions? If you reply that you are, I will 
 depart with a quiet and assured mind to the Presidency, but leave you a 
 dreadful responsibility if you disappoint me. If you tell me that you 
 cannot rely upon your power and the other means which you possess for 
 performing these services, I will free you from the charge ; I will proceed 
 myself to Lucknow, and I will myself undertake them ; and, in that 
 case, I desire that you will immediately order bearers to be stationed for 
 myself and two other gentlemen between Lucknow and Illahabad, and 
 I will set out from hence in three days after the receipt of your letter. 
 
 " I am sorry that I am under the necessity of writing in this pressing 
 manner- I trust implicitly to your integrity. I am certain of your 
 attachment to myself, and I know that your capacity is equal to any 
 service ; but I must express my doubts of your firmness and actii-ity, 
 and above all of your recollection of my instructions and of their im- 
 portance. My conduct in the late arrangements will be arraigned with 
 all the rancour of disappointed rapacity, and my reputation and influence 
 will suffer a mortal wound from the failure of them. They have already 
 failed in a degree, since no part of them has yet taken place but the 
 removal of our forces from the Douab and Rohilcund, and of the British 
 officers and pensioners from the service of the Nabob, and the expenses 
 of the former thrown without any compensation on the Company. I 
 expect a supply of money equal to the discharge of all the Nabob's 
 arrears, and am much disappointed and mortified that I am not now able 
 to return with it."* 
 
 Tardiness of Here, my Lords, you perceive that at last, after a con- 
 
 these"in- siderable delay, Mr. Middleton does obtain from Mr. Hast- 
 
 structions. ^ ^ pu ^ c authority which he waited for. After the 
 
 private correspondence with him upon this subject, after 
 
 the private letters between him and Sir Elijah Impey, no 
 
 measures seem to have been taken to carry into decisive 
 
 effect this resolution of resuming the jagirs as well as 
 
 * Printed ia the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 807.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 651 
 
 confiscating the treasures, till, upon the 26th of December, 
 Mr. Hastings seems in a surly sort of manner to write to 
 Mr. Middletoii and say, " Well, since you will have this 
 public authority, take it. I approve of the Nawab's reso- 
 lution to deprive the Begums of their ill-employed trea- 
 sures." This is the 26th, on which, in an ostensible public 
 letter, he appears for the first time to give his assent to that 
 measure which he j himself had proposed upon the 24th of 
 November preceding. 
 
 Your Lordships will observe here the peremptory manner 
 in which he gives direction with respect to the mode of 
 carrying this resolution into execution. He says: 
 
 " You yourself ought to be personally present. You must not allow 
 any negotiation or forbearance ; but must prosecute both services until 
 the Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob, their jaghires in the 
 quiet possession of his aumils, and their wealth in such charge as may 
 secure it from private embezzlement." 
 
 Now, when Mr. Hastings comes afterwards to quote this Mr. East- 
 passage, he endeavours to absolve himself from all respon- attempt to 
 sibility as to the mode in which it was carried into exe- f^ 1 ^ 
 cution. With respect to the inhuman cruelties with which from respon. 
 
 ., 111 it c* sibilities as 
 
 it was attended, lie says: bo tar irom encouraging, so to the mode 
 far from directing them " this is in his Defence before themeasurl 
 your Lordships " I ordered Mr. Middleton to be personally 
 present." But why order him to be personally present? 
 In order that there might be no negotiation ; that there 
 might be no forbearance ; that he must stand as it were 
 to guard the Nawab's heart from any chance of return of 
 nature into his mind ; that he must prohibit all negotiation ; 
 he must prohibit all forbearance ; that for this purpose he 
 must be personally present, to seize the wealth of these 
 women, and to bring them, as he says, to the mercy of their 
 son. This is the purpose for which he ordered Mr. Mid- 
 dleton to be present ; though he afterwards insinuates as if 
 it was with a view to prevent any harsh manner of execut- 
 ing his measures. 
 
 Mr. Middleton writes a celebrated answer to this ex- Answer of 
 traordinary letter, divided in two columns; in which ton to 1 
 Mr. Middleton recapitulates all the instructions he received 
 from Mr. Hastings, and then answers it paragraph by 
 paragraph.* He denies that his presence is necessary at all 
 
 * This letter, dated from Lucknow, the 30th of December, 1781, is printed 
 in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 811.
 
 652 Humming of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums 
 
 ioJuNEi788. 
 
 Argues that 
 of the Bug- 
 
 conjpau he 
 
 Private 
 Mr! e Middie- 
 
 ton accom- 
 
 P ub!?"one iS 
 and contra- 
 dieting it. 
 
 at Luck now ; he boasts of his own resolution and firmness 
 to execute his orders ; he answers the whole, paragraph by 
 paragraph ; and, with respect to that part of it in which 
 Mr. Hastings says that his conduct in the late arrangements 
 will be arraigned with all the rancour of disappointed 
 rapacity, and his reputation and influence receive a mortal 
 wound from the failure of them this apprehension was on 
 account of the only article of the treaty which had been 
 carried into execution, being the removal of the troops, 
 which was at that time effected Mr. Middleton undertakes 
 to vouch that, if his conduct should be arraigned in that 
 respect, he would always testify that, upon the plan of 
 the foregoing years, the receipts from the Nawab were only 
 a deception, and not an advantage, but even an injury to the 
 Company. So that he undertakes to prove, swear and 
 certify, that the idea of removing troops from tlie Nawab, 
 80 ^ ar from a detriment to the Company, was a benefit'; 
 for their being there was a deception, and not a benefit to 
 the Company. He says afterwards : 
 
 " The difference between the amount and the remittances to the Presi- 
 dency was an actual loss that the Company annually sustained, instead 
 of a supposed advantage of a brigade of infantry and cavalry being 
 totally defrayed by the Nabob. From this, therefore, I may safely conclude 
 that the remission to the Nabob of this insufferable burthen was a pro- 
 fit to the Company, whenever the extra troops paid by the Nabob shall 
 be disbanded, or quartered upon other neighbours who are protected by 
 our power." 
 
 My Lords, it is a curious phrase, and conveys at once an 
 idea of what the protection of our troops was, when, at the 
 very moment he was removing them from the Nawab 's 
 country, on account of Mr. Hastings 's own argument that 
 they were an intolerable burden upon the Nawab, the cause 
 of the ruin and the desolation of the country, Mr. Middleton 
 proposes that they should quarter them upon other neigh- 
 bours who are protected by our power. 
 
 Having finished this ostensible letter, which was to be 
 the warrant for Mr. Hastings' leaving the whole transac- 
 tions in his hand and his returning to Calcutta, there 
 follows a letter which has been read more than once to 
 your Lordships, but which shows the nature of these pro- 
 ceedings so much that I cannot resist troubling your Lord- 
 ships with it again. It is the private letter which accom- 
 panics this public letter of Mr. Middleton. He says : 
 
 ear ^ r > * nave tn * s ^ answere ^ y our public letter in the form 
 you seemed to expect. I hope there is nothing in it that may to you
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. G53 
 
 appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise understood IOJTTNE 1788. 
 
 than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say I shall be ready to 
 
 conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to take upon myself any 
 share of the blame of the (hitherto) non-performance of the stipulations 
 made on behalf of the Nabob ; though I do assure you I myself repre- 
 sented to his Excellency and the Ministers, conceiving it to be your 
 desire," 
 
 a desire never disavowed, your Lordships observe, by 
 Mr. Hastings 
 
 " that the apparent assumption of the reins of his government (for in 
 that light he undoubtedly considered it at the first view), as specified in 
 the agreement executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally 
 inforced, but that it was necessary you should have something to show 
 on your side, as the Company were deprived of a benefit without a 
 requital."* 
 
 This is the private letter written at the very same mo- 
 ment with that public letter, in which public letter lie 
 
 says: 
 
 " I am well aware that these troops, staying in the Nawab's country, 
 were not a benefit but an injury to the Company." 
 
 And in the private letter, he says : 
 
 " You know we got the Nabob to sign that part of the treaty to 
 account for the Company being deprived of a benefit without any requital 
 whatever, and upon the faith of this assurance alone I may safely affirm 
 his Excellency's objections to signing the treaty were given up. If I 
 have understood this matter wrong, or misconceived your design, I am 
 truly sorry for it. However it is not too late to correct the error, and 
 I am ready to undertake, and, God wiling, to carry through, whatever 
 you may, on receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final resolve. If you 
 determine at all events that the measure of reducing the Nabob's army, 
 &c., shall be immediately undertaken, I shall take it as a particular favour 
 if you will indulge me with a line at Fyzabad, that I may make the neces- 
 sary previous arrangements with respect to the disposal of my family ; 
 which I would not wish to retain here in the event either of a rupture 
 with the Nabob or of the necessity of employing our forces in the reduc- 
 tion of his aumils and troops. This done, 1 can begin the work in three 
 days after my return from Fyzabad." 
 
 This letter, my Lords, is dated the 30th of December, just 
 on the eve of their setting out to plunder the Begums of 
 their treasures ; wherein he contradicts all the main aro*u- 
 
 ' O 
 
 ments in his public letters, he avows what he understands 
 his connexion and relation with Mr. Hastings to be, and 
 promises, God willing, to undertake whatever he orders, to 
 share any part of the blame Mr. Hastings may choose to 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 814.
 
 654 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 ioJiTKEi788. allot him, and to deny any part of his public letters, or to 
 
 alter them in any shape which he may choose to desire. 
 Mr^Middie- The next letter is an account of the first marching to 
 ton of the Fyzabad previous to his seizing the treasures: it is dated 
 i782, a r ary> at Lucknow, the 3d of January, 1782, from Mr. Middleton 
 
 specting the , -*- TT j.* 
 
 inarch to to Mr. Hastings : 
 
 Fyzabad. 
 
 " I have the honour to inform you that the Nabob marched to Fyza- 
 bad on the 1st instant, and that I follow him, conformably to your 
 orders, to-morrow morning, having yesterday ordered away the 8th Re- 
 giment, to be ready to arrive with me on the 6th instant at Fyzabad. 
 The 20th Regiment, under the command of Major Martin Gilpin, which 
 was detached some days ago from Cawnpore to enforce the Vizier's 
 order for the resumption of the Begum's jaghire, I have thought neces- 
 sary to station at Lucknow, in lieu of the 8th Regiment, until my return 
 from Fyzabad, when I shall be better able to judge how far and what 
 force it may be necessary to employ against the agents of the Begums, 
 who I understand have all received the most positive injunctions to 
 oppose, by every means in their power, the execution of the Vizier's 
 orders respecting the jaghires." 
 
 Letter of the There is another letter from Mr. Middleton. dated Fyza- 
 
 13th Janu- , -, -,^,-1 T -i*r\o 
 
 ary. Em- bad, 13th January, 1792 : 
 
 ployment of 
 
 tr<x>pifto Sl1 " With respect to the business here, I have the honour to inform you 
 seize the that yesterday, finding that the temporising and undecisive conduct of 
 treasures. th e Nabob seemed to promise an issue very different from that expected 
 in your commands of the 26th of December last, and that the only use 
 the two leading eunuchs under the Bow Begum made of the delay was 
 to assemble and call in armed men from all quarters, which, when 
 united with the large force already in the town under their direction, 
 would in all probability have brought the matter to a much more severe 
 and arduous test than it at present could admit of, I found myself 
 necessitated to take the most immediate and decisive interference which 
 the force with me was capable of; and accordingly, having the Nabob's 
 written requisition, marched the 23d Regiment, under the command of 
 Major Naylor, with a detachment of his Excellency's own troops, against 
 the kella, and had the happiness to succeed in putting the Nabob's 
 party in possession of it without any effusion of blood ; the armed men 
 returning from it on the approach of our troops, and drawing up with 
 their guns in a large broad street before the house of the old Begum, to 
 which the Bow Begum and the two principal eunuchs had retired the 
 preceding evening. This effected, the Nabob issued his peremptory 
 orders for the immediate departure of all armed men, excepting his own 
 troops, beyond the precincts of the town, threatening them with an 
 instant attack if they disobeyed. This order, after many evasions, was 
 promised to be complied with, and the two eunuchs, Bahar and Jewar 
 Ally Cawn, at the same time coming in and delivering themselves into 
 the Nabob's custody, the armed men, amounting to between three and 
 four thousand, evacuated the town and dispersed. I have since learnt 
 that, had the Nabob's troops alone attempted the seizure of the kella 
 a very desperate resistance was resolved upon ; which appeared very 
 probable, from the state in which the armed men were found, being the 
 preceding evening furnished with a large store of ammunition, and now
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 655 
 
 drawn up in regular order, with loaded pieces and their matches lighted. lOJrKEi788. 
 But they were prudent enough to think themselves unequal to the 
 united efforts of his Excellency's troops, supported by an English 
 regiment, and by this conviction much mischief has happily been 
 prevented."* 
 
 There is a letter from Major Naylor to Mr. Hastings, Letter of 
 dated Fyzabad, January the 14th, 1782 : ??ayior 
 
 command- 
 
 " Honourable Sir, Some business of importance which the Resi- in s tlae 
 dent had to settle at Fyzabad occasioned my suddenly joining him 
 there. After my arrival, a couple of days passed in negociation, but 
 without effect ; and, the party in the town collecting and hourly gaining 
 strength, at length, after mature deliberation, it was resolved that I 
 should, with my regiment and four guns, storm the town, which I 
 effected on the 12th in the morning. I very soon got possession of the 
 kellah, in which is the palace and zenana, and, as there were not only 
 several gates but openings in the walls, as I entered on one side they 
 escaped at the other; but shortly after the party returned again, headed 
 by the two principal eunuchs, Bahar Ally Cawn and Jewar Ally Cawn, 
 and drew up opposite and within sixty yards of one of my posts, with 
 three guns, and added the most aggravating behaviour. However, as 
 they did not fire or offer any other acts of hostility, and when I reflected 
 on the consequence that would attend a contested dispute in the streets 
 of the town, of the zenana, &c. being subject to be plundered, even by 
 themselves, which would have been attributed to me, and being so 
 situated for the safety of the female part of the family on one hand, 
 who were under the most dreadful apprehension, and for the support of 
 his Excellency's authority on the other, who was waiting the result on 
 the outside of the town, I was for a short time doubtful how to decide. 
 However, as I had Mahomed Affrein Cawn along with me, a person in 
 high favour with the Nawab, and well acquainted with both parties, I 
 desired him to circulate lenient advice, pointing out how fatal an attack 
 would be to them and inevitable ruin to those they appeared so zealous 
 to support. It had the effect. The two eunuchs immediately surren- 
 dered ; their people instantly left the town, and I ordered their guns to 
 be dragged away. As soon as the tumultuous noise was over, and I 
 had posted guards for the safety of the palace, &c., I directly sent a 
 chubdar to the Begum, and offered every assistance she might want, and, 
 at the same time, consistent with my instructions ; which she accepted : 
 and now I have the satisfaction to inform you the shops are all open, 
 and peace and tranquillity prevails through the town."* 
 
 Then there is a letter from Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hast- Letter of 
 
 i i i T TO iHoo Mr. Middle- 
 
 ingS, dated January 18, 1782 : ton of the 
 
 13th Jann- 
 
 " I had the honour to address you under date the 13th instant, 
 enclosing you the letter from his Excellency the Vizier, for which you 
 inform me you are waiting, and acquainting you with the measures 
 which had been taken here towards accomplishing the object of your 
 commands. I have hitherto withheld any farther communication, in 
 the expectation of shortly being able to inform you with certainty what 
 
 * Printed iu the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 819.
 
 656 Summinc/ of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 10JUNE1788. will be the issue of our proceedings, a subject on which I have been 
 extremely unwilling to touch until I could do it on such grounds as 
 could not mislead your hopes or expectation. Until yesterday the busi- 
 ness was in no form that could enable me to pronounce or -even 
 conjecture what would be the result. 
 
 Secretion of " It very early appeared that the Begum, with the assistance of her 
 sures'by'the co j ans > had disposed of and secreted her wealth in such a manner as to 
 Begum. elude almost the possibility of obtaining possession of it by mere force 
 of arms ; and, whatever rigorous measures it might be proper for the 
 Nabob ultimately to adopt, it seemed, at all events in the first instance, 
 highly expedient that we should pursue the course which promised with 
 the greatest certainty the accomplishment of his first object, in which 
 the interest of the Company and your desires were too much concerned 
 for me to hesitate a moment in giving my concurrence to a temporary 
 forbearance, which I had reason to believe was the most advisable, and, 
 if it did not succeed, could be attended in the issue with no worse effect 
 than a few days' delay in closing the business. Your letter to the 
 Begum, which I had the honour to receive and forward to her yesterday, 
 having destroyed a reliance which, notwithstanding the part I have 
 avowed and acted with respect to her, she probably placed in the support 
 and mediation of our Government, has given a very favourable turn to 
 the business, and afforded me a well-grounded hope that, in one or two 
 days more, I shall be able to inform you of a satisfactory conclusion 
 of it."* 
 
 Suppression Your Lordships will perceive that a letter is mentioned 
 from here to have been delivered from Mr. Hastings to the 
 
 ings to flu Begum, which letter however is suppressed. 
 Begum. The next ig anot i ier i et ter from Mr. Middleton to 
 
 &trf Mr. Hastings:- 
 
 ton to Mr. " The Begum having finally agreed to surrender to the Nabob the 
 Hastings, treasures of his late father, the Nabob Sujah-al-Dowlah, which she has 
 hitherto retained in her possession, his Excellency desired me to with- 
 draw the troops from the kella, that the Begum might return into it, in 
 order to deliver the treasure. To this I consented, as also to the re-deli- 
 very to the Nabob of the two eunuchs, Bahar and Jewar Ally Cawn, 
 without whose presence and assistance nothing could be effected, as they 
 were the only agents employed by the Begum in the secreting and 
 depositing it ; they previously pledging themselves to be present when 
 called upon to answer to the accusation which I have informed them was 
 laid against them. In the meanwhile, the Begum has delivered over 
 her chelah Shumshire Khan, who was Phoujdar of Tanda when Captain 
 Gordon arrived there, so that I now hope the whole business upon which 
 I came here is in the most favourable train." 
 
 [Mr. Sheridan, being taken ill, withdrew during the 
 reading of the last letter] 
 
 MR. BURKE. Your Lordships will remark that an accu- 
 sation has been proposed to be delivered to this unhappy 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 820.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan, 657 
 
 man. Your Lordships will also not fail to remark that 
 
 Shumshire Khan, upon whose conduct the presumed proof 
 
 of rebellion was to rest, is here made prisoner, and in the 
 
 same circumstances to make a charge upon him, if a charge 
 
 had been found to be supportable. "Fyzabad, 27th Janu- Letter of 
 
 ary, 1782," letter from Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings, ton'on le " 
 
 27th Janu- 
 
 " I had the honour to address you under date the 25th instant, a * y " 
 acquainting you of the Vizier's having, from the treasure delivered up to 
 him by the Bow Begum, commenced on the payment of his debt to the 
 Honourable Company. I have now the pleasure to inform you that I Receipt of 
 am this day in possession of a sum equal to the liquidation of his bond on eyfrom 
 for the balance of 1187, and he further gives me hopes that he shall be Sawab * 
 able shortly to begin payment of the 12 lacks due for the balance of 
 1188; of which I shall in due course give you information." 
 
 This correspondence, your Lordships will observe, con- 
 tinues in a regular train of narrative of the seizure of the 
 Begum's treasures, informing Mr. Hastings of eveiy minute 
 particular concerning that transaction ; " I have had the 
 honour of receiving your commands of the 25th ult., and 
 am exceedingly concerned/' &c. Your Lordships will 
 observe that this letter of the 5th of February, from 
 Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings, was in answer to a letter 
 written from Mr. Hastings to Mr. Middleton previous to 
 that date, in consequence of the letter from Major Naylor 
 to Mr. Hastings, informing him that Mr. Middleton had 
 spent two days in the negotiation. Upon the 25th of Letter of 
 January Mr. Hastings writes a letter to Mr. Middleton ings to 
 disapproving of that forbearance, blaming him for having ton'.^isap?" 
 delayed so much time in negotiation with the Begums, and j^h^nce 
 expressing his decided opinion that he ought to have pro- 
 ceeded against the Begums without negotiation. This Letterof 
 letter of the 5th of February, 1782, is in answer to that, to 
 excusing himself for the negotiation with the Begum : 
 
 " Permit me to assure you, Sir, it is with the greatest reluctance I ever 
 venture to deviate from the express letter of your instructions, and I 
 cannot accuse myself of having done it on any occasion where it did not 
 appear to my judgment that the object and spirit of them rendered it 
 advisable, and that the apparent necessity would justify such latitude. 
 In the present instance, it was more in appearance and expression than 
 in fact that any deviation was made from your orders of the 26th De- 
 cember ; for although I was constrained, from my strict regard to the 
 accomplishment of what I considered the first object of this undertaking, 
 to admit of a temporary forbearance, for the reasons assigned in my 
 address of the 18th ultimo, the Begums were at that time to be con- 
 sidered as entirely at the mercy of the Nabob, the jaghires were in the 
 possession of his aumils, their troops dispersed, and the kella of 
 
 T T
 
 658 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 . Fyzabad, which included also the Bow Begum's own habitation, under 
 the guard of his Excellency's and our troops. It remained only to get 
 possession of her wealth ; and to effect this it was then and is still my 
 firm and unalterable opinion that it was indispensably necessary to employ 
 temporizing expedients, and to work upon the hopes and fears of the 
 Begum herself, and more especially upon those of her principal agents, 
 through whose means alone there appeared any probable chance of our 
 getting access to the hidden treasures of the late Vizier. And when I 
 acquaint you that by far the greatest part of the treasures which has been 
 delivered to the Nabob was taken from the most secret recesses in the 
 houses of the two eunuchs, whence of course it could not have been 
 extracted without the adoption of those means which would induce the 
 discovery, I shall hope for your approbation of what I did. I must also 
 observe that no further rigour than that which I executed could have 
 been used against females in this country, to whom there can be no 
 access. The Nabob and Salar Jung were the only two who could enter 
 the zenana. The first was a son, who* was to address a parent, and of 
 course could use no language or action but that of earnest and reiterated 
 solicitation ; and the other was in all appearance a traitor to our cause. 
 Where force could be employed it was not spared. The troops of the 
 Begum were taken away and dispersed ; their guns taken ; her fort and 
 outward walls of her house seized and occupied by our troops, at the 
 Nabob's requisition, and her chief agents imprisoned and put in irons. 
 No further step was left. And in this situation they still remain and are 
 to continue (excepting only a resumption of the irons) until the final 
 liquidation of the payment ; and, if then you deem it proper, no possible 
 means of offence being left in her hands or those of her agents, all her 
 lands and property having been taken, I mean with your sanction to 
 restore her house and servants to her, and hope to be favoured with your 
 early reply, as I expect that a few days will complete the final surrender 
 of all that is further expected from the Begum." 
 
 [Mr. Fox, who went out with Mr. Sheridan, came into 
 Court and informed the Lords that Mr. Sheridan was 
 so ill he was totally unable to proceed, and therefoi^e he 
 trusted the House would indulge him Ity adjourning to 
 some future
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 659 
 
 CONCLUSION OF THE SPEECH OF RICHARD 
 BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, ESQ., MANAGER FOR THE 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, IN SUMMING UP THE 
 EVIDENCE ON THE SECOND ARTICLE OF CHARGE, 
 RELATING TO THE BEGUMS OF OUDE ; 13TH JUNE, 
 1788. 
 
 MY LORDS, Before I proceed to sum up the evidence, I 
 must thank your Lordships for the indulgence I received 
 when I had last the honour of addressing you at this bar, 
 regretting very much any . embarrassment which may have 
 been occasioned either to the cause or to your Lordships' con- 
 venience by that interruption ; at the same time assuring 
 you that nothing but a positive inability to have proceeded, 
 with that strength and possession of myself necessary to 
 the exercise of the duty I was engaged in, could have 
 induced me to have given your Lordships the trouble of this 
 additional attendance. 
 
 My Lords, I left off recalling your Lordships' more Observa- 
 
 . J , ' . . , ? J , , . f . taons on the 
 
 minute attention to the correspondence, public and private, correspon- 
 which passed between the principal and his agents in this 
 extraordinary business. Letters, my Lords, which are 
 indeed worthy the most minute degree of attention, because 
 they contain, not only a narrative of the facts and conduct 
 of this foul and unmanly conspiracy, but do also contain a 
 plain exposition of the original views, the original motives 
 and the real end and object, of the conspirators. My Lords, 
 they also contain a plain account of all the various shifts, 
 of all the unworthy tricks, of all the quibbles, of all the 
 prevarications and of all the direct untruths, with which 
 these facts were then endeavoured to be disguised, and are 
 now attempted to be defended. 
 
 My Lords, convinced as I am that your Lordships are Expiana- 
 well aware of the importance of attending to the distinction non-sup? 6 
 between the private and the public correspondence, through 
 the whole of this business, I have no doubt but that your letters. 
 Lordships must have been something curious to understand 
 how letters should have come to light and be brought upon 
 
 T T 2
 
 660 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 record by the parties themselves, who had evidently so 
 great an interest in suppressing them for ever from the 
 public view. Your Lordships will have perceived, in parts 
 of this correspondence, that, about the middle of December, 
 there do appear evident signs of a sort of coldness and 
 distrust mutual distrust between Mr. Middleton and Mr. Hastings, 
 between This, your Lordships will perceive in part of the private 
 ings and " correspondence with Sir Elijah Impey, seems to have arisen 
 M* Middle- - n jj- r Middleton's mind very much from the conduct of 
 Mr. Hastings with respect to a man called Ismael Beg, 
 whom he states to have been supported against him by 
 Mr. Hastings, and to have obtained a very galling triumph 
 over him. With regard to Mr. Hastings, it seems to have 
 arisen first from that very tardiness with which Mr. Mid- 
 dleton delayed the execution of his private orders respecting 
 the general resumption of all the jagirs. It seems after- 
 wards to have been augmented by a veiy extraordinary 
 circumstance of conduct on the part of Mr. Middleton 
 something like a direct remonstrance against the orders of 
 his employer, Mr. Hastings, and an endeavour to dissuade 
 him from the last atrocious act of treachery and oppression 
 which he was about to effect against his friend the Nawab : 
 not endeavouring to dissuade him upon the principles of 
 justice or of gratitude your Lordships will I believe not 
 imagine but upon the principles of expediency and policy. 
 Mr. Hast- This beginning of coldness or resentment seems afterwards 
 men/of 6 "*" to have been considerably strengthened 'by another heinous 
 ton-^deiay" offence on the part of Mr. Middleton, and so stated by 
 bearan r j e ^ r - Hastings, namely, his allowing two days of forbearance 
 and negotiation from the Nawab to his mother, while he 
 was besieging her in her capital. This appears to have 
 stuck deepest in his mind, and to have been an offence 
 above all others, and which Mr. Hastings seems least to 
 have forgiven; although it is perfectly plain, both from 
 Major Naylor's evidence and Mr. Middleton's own account, 
 that it did prevent an actual massacre of all the women 
 Suspicion of and children in that palace. It also seems to have broken 
 ton's secur- out more still after the kella was seized and the persons 
 s{fapor~ employed were engaged in the plunder. Here it does 
 a PP ear J from one direct letter by Mr. Hastings, and another 
 written by his order through Major Palmer, which is sup- 
 pressed, that Mr. Hastings suspected strongly that Mr. Mid- 
 dleton was taking infinitely more than his share of this 
 plunder; that he seemed to be reversing the relation
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 661 
 
 between them, and to have taken the lion's share himself. 
 
 Accordingly you see reproaches upon this subject from 
 
 Mr. Hastings to Mr. Middleton. This produces an offer of 
 
 a second present supposed from the Nawab through 
 
 Mr. Middleton ; Mr. Middleton not being acquainted, as he f JJftgjj of 
 
 has sworn, with any circumstance respecting the first pre- from the 
 
 TT i -\ir TT ? ii L LI Nawab to 
 
 sent. Me now however states to Mr. Hastings that the Mr. Hast- 
 Nawab, finding Mr. Hastings had broken every one of the through 
 articles of the treaty of Chunar stating to Mr, Hastings gn. Middle " 
 that the Nawab's own distress was considerably increased, 
 that his troops had risen upon him for want of pay and 
 threatened his life -just in the moment of gratitude and 
 opulence he represents him as offering another 100,000?. to 
 Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings however, seeming then to have Declined by 
 a distrust of Mr. Middleton, refuses this bribe through this ^g' s . Hast 
 channel. Your Lordships will find the account of it in the 
 Appendix to the Evidence ; and you will recollect that 
 Mr. Middleton at your bar refused to answer upon this 
 subject under an idea of criminating himself. 
 
 Your Lordships will however find that Mr. Hastings 
 afterwards sends another agent to Lucknow, Major Palmer, 
 almost for the single purpose of dissuading this Nawab of 
 finding some soft hour catching him in an easy moment, 
 and dissuading him^ circumstanced as I have stated him to 
 be to your Lordships, from forcing this 1 00,000?. upon him. 
 Your Lordships will also find that the Nawab, when it was The offer 
 first mentioned to him, expresses the utmost astonishment ty the 
 and declares he never heard one word of the matter ; he awab> 
 declares that they had better have taken the country at 
 once, for justice is totally out of the question : and there 
 are many acts of munificence of the Nawa.b which he does 
 not appear to have had any cognizance of. It does not 
 appear clear that the Nawab ever heard of the first 
 100,000?. he gave Mr. Hastings; for Mr. Middleton and 
 Hyder Beg managed all these matters with great delicacy. 
 
 Your Lordships know it is always considered as an 
 increase of a favour where the person receiving it is igno- 
 rant of the person from whom the 'obligation conies ; but 
 they, by a delicate refinement upon this delicate principle, 
 managed so that the person conferring the obligation was 
 ignorant of it himself. However these matters were, upon 
 account of these circumstances and certain other supposed 
 neglects, that he did not give information enough to Recall of 
 Mr. Hastings, Mr. Middleton was recalled in September, ton'S dle "
 
 662 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 13JUKE1788. 1*782, and actually left Lucknow in October ; as also was 
 Mr. John- Mr. Johnson, with circumstances of more rigour and more 
 disgrace, though certainly guilty only in a subordinate 
 degree. After their return however no further steps were 
 taken ; and by all accounts and many circumstances 
 appear to credit them they continued to live with 
 Mr. Hastings in the same habits of friendly collusion and 
 fraudulent familiarity which they had ever lived in with 
 menfof" ^ m - This continued till about April, 1783 : Mr. Hastings 
 Mr-Bristow in the meantime had promoted Mr. Bristow, to his destruc- 
 at Lucknow. tion, in the Resiclentship at Lucknow. He had sent him 
 out with a due quantity of spies, and ensnared, beset and 
 entangled, with certain friendly instructions of his own ; 
 Mr. Bristow's obedience to which was afterwards made the 
 principal charge against him, and, when Mr. Bristow stated 
 and produced the very letter of Mr. Hastings' own instruc- 
 tions, Mr. Hastings replied that that was a pitiful mode of 
 defending himself. However, Mr. Bristow was sent up on 
 the recall of Mr. Middleton. 
 
 In 1783, in due order, came some of these suborned 
 letters which I have acquainted your Lordships with, from 
 Hyder Beg, complaining of Mr. Bristow. Your Lordships 
 will recollect that, when Mr. Bristow was first sent, the 
 Nawab was so surprised by Mr. Hastings sending him that 
 he sent those two letters ; one, that he liked him of all 
 things, the other that he hated him abominably. Now, in 
 November, 1783, the Nawab is undeceived, and is told the 
 real view with which Mr. Bristow was sent to Lucknow. 
 Accordingly he sends charges against him by his minister, 
 Hyder Beg. 
 Complaint In April, 1783. Mr. Hastings begins his first complaint 
 
 of Mr. Hast- . TIC -" j Ji rrn. -j 11 
 
 ings against against Mr. Middleton. This causes a considerable degree 
 
 t<m at the 6 " f discussion at the Board, and it is observed as something 
 
 Board. rather extraordinary, both there and out of doors, that 
 
 Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson should have been recalled 
 
 upon the heaviest charges Mr. Johnson brought upon a 
 
 warning of forty hours, with fixed bayonets at his breast 
 
 that he and Mr. Middleton should have remained from 
 
 October, 1782, to April, 1783, without one step being taken 
 
 to inquire into their conduct. Mr. Hastings, to parry this, 
 
 and to show his impartial disinterestedness, for the first 
 
 The private time accuses them altogether. In order to frame this accus- 
 
 letters 
 
 produced by ation Mr. Hastings finds that his public correspondence is 
 ' n( >t quite sufficient, and then, in that rash and eager man-
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 663 
 
 ner in which he went to work upon these sort of things, he ISJUNE i?88. 
 throws these private letters upon the Council table, and porthis 
 directs the secretary to make out charges against Mr. Mid- accusatlon - 
 dleton out of them, not considering what parts made 
 against himself, but, being caught by certain passages 
 which he thought would make a charge against Mr. Mid- 
 dleton, and give a sort of idea that he was in earnest in 
 the business. 
 
 Now, whether there was anything serious in this or not, 
 whether it was only a continuation of that habitual collu- 
 sion in which Mr. Hastings and Mr. Middleton lived, and 
 that it was a sort of juggle in order to keep their hands 
 in, because Mr. Middleton was then out of employment 
 Avhether it was done to blind the Council at Calcutta 
 whether it was done to blind the people at home, or to 
 give an impression to the people at the court of Fyzabad, 
 who, hearing that Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson were 
 called to account, might conclude that he was accusing 
 them on account of severity and rigour against the Begums, 
 whereas, on the contrary, it was for their lenity to them 
 whether there was anything serious whether Mr. Hastings 
 drew the charge and the reply or whether, in short, 
 Mr. Middleton drew his own accusation and Mr. Hastings 
 made the defence for him it is scarcely worth inquiring ; 
 nor are there any circumstances that lead us to determine 
 upon this matter. The event was such , as might be 
 expected ; it ended in a rhapsody of Mr. Hastings in a 
 repartee, and in a poetic quotation : and there all these 
 heavy charges against Mr. Middleton remain to this hour. 
 The good effect however of it was that act of fortunate 
 indiscretion that act of providential folly which has pro- 
 duced these private letters ; from which your Lordships 
 learn so much, and which I take upon me to assert do con- 
 tain as full, plain, decisive and conclusive, evidence of the 
 guilt of these conspirators as ever appeared in any court of 
 justice whatever. 
 
 Having said so much with regard to the manner in The private 
 
 i i , i JJT letters the 
 
 which this private correspondence was produced, 1 am con- only part of 
 fident that your Lordships must have perceived, through 
 the whole of this evidence, that these private letters are in 
 truth the only parts of the correspondence worth looking 
 to, and that all that is in the public and ostensible letters 
 can be regarded only as fabrication and as falsehood, and 
 ought never even with -decency to be referred to for any 
 
 to be relied 
 on.
 
 664 Summing of Evidence on Second Cliarye the Begums : 
 
 iwuKE me. purpose but to prove the contradictions, to prove the false- 
 hoods and the frauds, of those who wrote them. 
 
 As I am confident this must be your Lordships' opinion, 
 and that you must have taken this distinction in your own 
 minds upon the subject, I own it has not been without a 
 considerable degree of astonishment that I have seen, in 
 the course of our examination, the learned Counsel for the 
 Defendant for ever recurring to this public correspondence, 
 and opposing paragraphs from that to the decisive proofs 
 we bring from the private letters, where only the truth 
 ought to be looked for and can be found. But if I was par- 
 ticularly surprised at this general conduct of the Counsel, 
 I was more particularly surprised indeed at their doing this 
 with respect to one particular letter in this public corre- 
 spondence, which they pressed with great eagerness to the 
 attention of Mr. Middleton. The letter I mean is of the 
 27th of December, from Lucknow. 
 
 The original Your Lordships will always bear in mind that the 
 seizing the original orders for seizing these treasures were subsequent 
 sub^uent *o the private orders for resuming all the jagirs ; that they 
 vat^orders were taken, upon the 15th or 16th of November, by Sir 
 forresum- Elijah Impey cleared up in the manner which I natter 
 jafirs. 6 myself I did clear up that circumstance the other day to 
 Mr. Middleton at Lucknow. After this, a private corre- 
 spondence between Mr. Middleton and Sir Elijah Impey 
 goes on ; and your Lordships no doubt have been surprised 
 to observe that no direct answer appears from Mr. Hast- 
 ings ; that he seems to take no part in the business till the 
 26th of December afterwards. In the meantime Mr. Mid- 
 dleton is assured that Mr. Hastings will give him that 
 Letter of public authority which he is waiting for. Upon the 
 ton, written strength of this, Mr. Middleton writes a proper ostensible 
 to justify 6 * letter to justify the conduct of Mr. Hastings. In the same 
 ingskffhe mann er as, upon the 17th of October, he puts together a 
 reumption string of extracts from supposed letters of Colonel Hannay, 
 in order to justify Sir Elijah Impey 's being sent at all to 
 Lucknow; so, upon the 27th of December, he puts toge- 
 ther a mass of supposed new information to justify the 
 intended and indeed already determined resumption of 
 the jagirs. So that your Lordships will see their argument, 
 supposing we take their own case, stands this way : 
 They sign the treaty of Chunar upon rumours of disaffec- 
 tion in the Begums, and of their having given assistance to 
 Cheyt Sing. They determined to give her an equivalent
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 665 
 
 for the jagirs. In November they determine to seize the 
 treasures, as they say, upon a rumour of an intended resist- 
 ance to resume all the jagirs. When they come to resume 
 the jagirs they construe this into an actual resistance. 
 They bring the Nawab to Fyzabad, and then, upon a 
 rumour or something more here indeed upon the appear- 
 ance of resistance to the seizing the treasures, they then 
 resolve to deprive the Begum of the equivalent. 
 
 They state that the Nawab comes to Fyzabad in January ; 
 that, upon finding an apparent resistance to seizing the 
 treasures, he is represented as, upon an after-thought, deter- 
 mining to seize those very treasures for which express 
 purpose he came to Fyzabad. This is so clear that I am 
 sure your Lordships will remember that we examined 
 Mr. Middleton and Sir Elijah Impey both with respect to 
 these facts. We repeated to them Mr. Hastings' ow r n Mr . Hast- 
 account of these transactions, and our question was : " Is j,"^^ the 
 not that account false in every particular ? " They both transaction, 
 answered that it was. It did not indeed require much 
 ingenuity for them to discover what we were endeavouring 
 to extort from them, namely, that a resistance to the 
 execution of an order could not have been the ground and 
 motive for issuing that order. Mr. Middleton and Sir 
 Elijah Impey both, at your Lordships' bar, declared these 
 accounts by Mr. Hastings were untrue accounts of that tran- 
 saction. However, when we were stating to Mr. Middleton 
 the private correspondence, the Counsel pressed much upon 
 Mr. Middleton : " Did you not write this letter of the 27th 
 of December ? " Mr. Middleton, who was often staggered 
 and confounded by questions from his left, seemed now a 
 little astonished at questions from his right from the 
 learned Counsel. He seemed not to be able to enter into 
 the humour of the tiling at all ; he did not know what 
 they meant. " Did you not write a letter of the 27th of 
 December?" "Yes." "Did not you there say that the 
 Begum denounced death and destruction upon the most 
 trifling opposition to her caprice ? " " Yes." He says in 
 his mind, " To be sure it was so settled with Hr. Hastings 
 that I should write that letter ; don't you know in the 
 private correspondence that was settled between Sir Elijah 
 Impey and me that I should write this letter?" 
 
 My Lords, it would be a curious end of this business 
 though the Counsel I am sure do not assist in it but it 
 would be a curious end of this business if they were to
 
 666 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 1W0WB1788. lay the whole of the guilt of this upon the tool Middleton 
 to say that he is guilty and Mr. Hastings innocent. That 
 would be the only thing wanting to complete the consum- 
 mation of the whole of this treacherous, fraudulent and 
 oppressive, business. The private correspondence makes 
 such an attempt wholly impossible ; though I confess these 
 questions to Mr. Middleton did seem to point a little that 
 way. 
 
 imprudence I am more surprised at the Counsel's pressing this letter 
 Counsel in to your Lordships' observation, because it is indeed well 
 Mr. n Middie- worthy your observation but not with the purpose and 
 ton's letter, w jth the view to which they seemed to bring it ; for it 
 does contain, from beginning to end, the most immediate 
 and positive proofs of their guilt, and the most direct con- 
 tradictions to all the pretences and all the defences they 
 have set up ; that I should have conceived, if there was 
 one letter, public or private, in the whole of this corre- 
 spondence, which the Counsel would have been anxious to 
 suppress, to have said " Let us get rid, in God's name, of 
 that letter, and we fear nothing " that it is the very letter 
 which they, with an ostentatious earnestness, were pressing 
 to your Lordships' observation. 
 
 Dissection of My Lords, you are apprised of what has passed in the 
 ton's public private letters. In this of the 27th of December Mr. Mid- 
 dleton writes a public letter* to Mr. Hastings with great 
 gravity, beginning " Sir ;" and tells him of the loss and 
 indignities to which the Wazir has been subject from the 
 jagirs; and he says, in order to remedy these evils, his 
 Excellency had been induced to resume all the jagir lands 
 throughout his country : your Lordships having heard read 
 to you that the Nawab, so far from being induced to resume 
 them all, refused to issue his orders. Then Mr. Middleton 
 tells Mr. Hastings, " I have issued my perwannas to-day." 
 He says he then allowed the Nawab a few hours' considera- 
 tion, whom he had left in silent astonishment at his audacity 
 and Mr. Hastings' treachery. That he then consented, de- 
 claring, however, that it was an act of compulsion. After 
 this, standing clear before your Lordships, comes this letter 
 that the Nawab had determined to resume all the jagirs 
 throughout his country. " This measure," says Mr. Mid- 
 dleton, " has met with violent opposition from the Bow 
 
 * Printed in the " Appendix to the Evidence on the Second Article of 
 Charge," p. 88.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 667 
 
 Begura." He then states that this is the more dangerous i3JuEi788. 
 on account of the reluctance with which the Minister, and 
 even the Nawab himself, interferes with any concerns of 
 the Begum. That is another direct contradiction to every- 
 thing the Counsel endeavoured to establish upon the 
 subject of the particular eagerness of the Nawab to secure 
 and to resume the jagirs, of the Begum in particular. 
 
 My Lords, there are about sixty lines in the letter ; and 
 there are more than sixty falsehoods, and more than sixty 
 contradictions to their own falsehoods, in the whole of it. 
 He goes on : 
 
 " From these two circumstances, strengthened by the immense wealth 
 in her possession, also intrusted to her two chief eunuchs, Behar and 
 Jewar Ali Khan, and her unreasonable expectations of support from the 
 English Government " 
 
 at the very moment that Mr. Middleton is writing to 
 her and declaring the guarantee in full force, he says 
 " This woman's unreasonable expectations that the English 
 should keep any faith or pay any regard to their gua- 
 rantee " a most unreasonable expectation truly, as I ever 
 heard of! 
 
 " of all which she and her servants avail themselves to the utmost, she 
 is become one of the most serious internal evils, that among others seems 
 to bid fair to give great disturbance to this country." 
 
 Then he gives a pompous description of the ill conse- 
 quences of this lady's anger : 
 
 " The great awe in which the Nabob, and of course every one under 
 him, stands of her displeasure, leaves without bounds or restraint the 
 effects of her uncommonly violent temper. Death and destruction is the 
 least menace she denounces " 
 
 certainly strong expressions of the eloquent rage of female 
 fury ; but, when I come to the letters of the Bow Begum, 
 your Lordships will find they are light and trifling expres- 
 sions compared to the provocation under which she uttered 
 them 
 
 " upon the most trifling opposition to her caprice." 
 
 She was a capricious woman, that had a strange feminine 
 objection to being starved. They wanted to take away all 
 her treasures, her whole estate, personal and real ; and her 
 dislike to this a dislike which a great part of the assembly 
 I have the honour to speak before would have sympathised 
 with her in this is called an act of feminine displeasure
 
 668 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Beyums ; 
 
 d caprice in this lady. After making this charge against 
 this capricious lady, he says : 
 
 " By her own conduct, and that of all her agents and dependants 
 during the Benares troubles, it may with truth and justice be affirmed 
 she forfeited every claim she had to the protection of the English 
 government, as she evidently, and it is confidently said avowedly, es- 
 poused the cause of Rajah Cheyt Sing, and united in the idea and plan 
 of a general extirpation of their race and power in Hindostan." 
 
 He goes on telling all these things as news to Mr. Hast- 
 ings. He forgets his own affidavit ; he forgets every cir- 
 cumstance upon the subject ; he forgets the letter of the 
 17th of October, and for an admirable reason, I believe 
 because it was not then fabricated ; if it was, he has lost 
 all memory. Memory, your Lordships perceive, is not 
 Mr. Middleton/s forte ; but here it is extraordinary he 
 should have forgot all the established reasonings he had 
 before communicated. 
 
 " Her agent at Tanda '' 
 here comes the old story again 
 
 " who is the cheyla and adopted son of Behar AH Cawn, her principal 
 minister, treacherously turned his guns upon Lieutenant Gordon's 
 detachment," 
 
 and so on. Towards the conclusion he says : 
 
 " These declared and repeated acts of rebellion are sureiy more than 
 sufficient to forfeit all claim whatever to the interference in her behalf 
 from our government." 
 
 After he has stated this, the last circumstance he states 
 is, her opposition to the resumption of her jagirs, which 
 he says bears not a shadow of objection ; 
 
 " because, notwithstanding all these facts, upon the general resumption 
 of the jaghires I made the rents of her lands payable to me." 
 
 Here he gives information to Mr. Hastings even of the 
 Chunar treaty and, by the bye, I should have informed 
 your Lordships that there are strong circumstances of sus- 
 picion that there never was such a thing as the Chunar 
 treaty, at least not in the form in which Mr. Hastings 
 pretends it to have been signed ; but here he tells him, as 
 an odd circumstance, that he had made the revenues of her 
 lands payable to him, which was an express provision of an 
 article in that very treaty. He then states her supposed 
 intention to resist the resumption of her jagirs, and thinks
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 669 
 
 that now she has forfeited all claim to the interference 
 the English. And here I must remind your Lordships, and Rebellion 
 the Counsel also, that, in another letter, a private letter, to ' 
 
 Mr. Hastings, he speaks of the reports of the Begum's grou 
 intention to resist the resumption of the jagirs speaks of maintaining 
 it with pleasure. And here I beg also to remind your of the 
 Lordships of what I stated the other day ; namely, that Jagirs ' 
 Mr. Hastings did look and hope for another rebellion, as a 
 ground to maintain his seizure of the treasures. In a letter 
 to Sir Elijah Impey he says : 
 
 " I hear she does intend to resist; then I think our Mend will be 
 justified in seizing her treasures." 
 
 Where then is the rebellion ? What is become of that 
 proved established fact, the original antecedent rebellion, 
 which is stated throughout the whole as a full justification 
 of every part of the conduct of Mr. Hastings in that 
 respect ? Here we find that this rumour of an intention to 
 resist the seizure of the jagirs is spoken of as a happy 
 accomplishment of Mr. Hastings' view. Sir Elijah Impey 
 seems to rejoice in it. He thanks him for the good news ; 
 lie says : " Please God, there is a little bloodshed if there 
 is a little providential slaughter, our friend will be justified ; 
 he will have that ground of defence he has been looking to, 
 namely a resistance excited by oppression and by the 
 fraudulent attempt to resume the jagirs against this 
 guarantee and against the treaty of Chunar." 
 
 At the end of this letter he says : 
 
 " This will be a justification to withdraw our interference, and for 
 depriving the Begum of those great resources which she has shown 
 it would be extremely impolitic and unsafe to trust longer in her 
 hands." 
 
 Here Mr. Middleton speaks as not having heard of the least 
 intention hitherto, notwithstanding all the letters and ver- 
 bal communication through Sir Elijah Impey, on the part 
 of Mr. Hastings, with regard to the seizing the treasures, 
 till this circumstance of the supposed resistance to the re- 
 sumption of the jagirs. 
 
 " On this subject the Nabob has communicated to me his sentiments Letter of 
 in a long letter,* a copy whereof I have the honour to enclose you," si^iIfvinK 13 
 
 _ his inten- 
 - ~ - tion to seize 
 
 the trea- 
 * Printed in the " Appendix to the Evidence," p. 86. sures.
 
 670 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 i3JcNiu788. j re p ea t m y question again why is that letter also 
 suppressed ? 
 
 " in which you will observe " 
 in the Nawab's letter 
 
 " he signifies his intention of prosecuting his legal claims upon her for 
 the public treasure and effects belonging to his inheritance from his 
 father." 
 
 So that here the Nawab, on the 27th of December, is 
 writing a long letter, enclosed in this letter of Mr. Middle- 
 ton, in which he proposes, as an eager wish of his own, to 
 resume without condition the treasures of his father ; when, 
 on the 1st of December, he is represented as having written 
 another letter (if he did write any at all) in which he pro- 
 poses it only as an alternative and in order to be saved 
 from being compelled to resume the jagirs. Now, however, 
 the Nawab is eager upon the subject, and he writes this 
 letter to Mr. Hastings. 
 
 on^r. S Mid- There is a circumstance at the end of this letter also 
 dietonfo- worthy of observation, as it is explanatory of Mr. Middle- 
 
 Hit* seizure 
 
 of Fyzoola ton's construction of Mr. Hastings' motive, in which he 
 
 Khan's 
 
 ja#ir. says, 
 
 " I must also take the liberty to add my opinion, that, unless Fyzoola 
 Khan, remotely situated as he is, out of reach of interruption, in the 
 centre of his own tribe and country, connected uninterruptedly with the 
 other two remaining Patan powers, becomes included in this general 
 reform of the jaghires, or some effectual check be imposed upon him, the 
 whole may prove abortive." 
 
 That is to say, unless he is oppressed too the worst con- 
 sequences will follow. Here Mr. Middleton, knowing that 
 Mr. Hastings out of five articles had already broken four, 
 had the rashness to believe he would keep one of them. 
 He takes for granted, here not being in the secret, that 
 Mr. Hastings had slipped in the words as he avows "when 
 time shall suit," that he meant it should never suit, and 
 meant to defeat that article the same as he had done the 
 rest ; and, as he was writing upon the subject of general 
 oppression and fraud, he throws in this suggestion, knowing 
 no more of Fyzoola Khan's ill-conduct or supposed rebel- 
 lion than that of the Begum's, but equally ready to swear 
 that he was an intolerable grievance- and disaffected to our 
 government. Now, it is an extraordinary circumstance, this 
 charge against Fyzoola Khan happens to be the only thing 
 to which Mr Hastings, in his reply to the Commons, 
 pleaded guilty in which he owns that Fyzoola Khan had
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 671 
 
 never shown any symptoms of disaffection ; this he does * JPSEI 
 acknowledge as error, and hopes it will be pardoned. This 
 letter, though written in collusion with Mr. Hastings, I 
 don't mean to insinuate by any means that it was written 
 by Mr. Hastings, as I believe many of Mr. Middleton's 
 answers to him were, because your Lordships observe there 
 is a clumsiness in the fraud, there is a coarseness in the 
 deceit, that does not show the hand of the master at all ; 
 there is a great deal of zeal, but a clumsiness in the execu- 
 tion that 1 think we cannot impute to Mr. Hastings this 
 letter being meant as a public justification of what was to 
 be done in January, the charge against the Begums following 
 in due order the order for their condemnation which had 
 preceded in November. I think your Lordships will be 
 still more astonished upon this subject when you come to 
 compare this public letter with a private letter of nearly 
 the same date ; but, in the interval, you will expect some 
 account of the private correspondence that was going on 
 with Sir Elijah Impey. 
 
 During Mr. Hastings' silence, from the 6th of December ^ va *^^" e 
 till the 26th, the business is carried on by Sir Elijah Impey between sir 
 and Mr. Middleton ; and I wish your Lordships much to impey and 
 advert to these letters between Sir Elijah Impey and JJ n ; Middle " 
 Mr. Middleton ; and it is curious to track Sir Elijah Impey ., 
 
 .,.,.,, , . J V * Celerity of 
 
 and the celerity with which he moves upon this occasion, movements 
 For you find that, even after he had left Mr. Hastings at im5y Elijah 
 Benares, while at Buxar, while down the river, still 
 Mr. Middleton continues to correspond upon this subject 
 through Sir Elijah Impey, and through him to make his 
 communication with Mr. Hastings. You find Sir Elijah 
 Impey, upon the 28th, swearing and taking affidavits at 
 Lucknow; upon the 1st of December, within three days, 
 he is 200 miles off, doing the same at Chunar ; then we 
 catch him swearing away at Benares ; then at Buxar ; 
 then at Bagulpore. We track him all the way in the 
 affidavits. It is something completely ludicrous to con- 
 trast the vivacity and nimbleness of his motions with the 
 gravity and seriousness of the business he is about. We 
 know not what to compare him to. You hear him here and 
 there clamouring for testimony, like the Ghost in Hamlet. 
 We are inclined to call out to him, 
 
 " Well said, old mole ! can'st work i' the ground so fast? "
 
 672 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 J n O ne respect indeed the similitude fails, for when this 
 worthy pioneer made his appearance at Lucknow, though 
 he visited, as he says himself, the Prince for the purpose of 
 whetting his almost blunted purpose, yet he forgot the best 
 part of the conjuration 
 
 " Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive 
 Against thy mother ought." 
 
 in that respect undoubtedly the similitude fails. But, 
 though I have from the beginning mentioned with tender- 
 ness, really, Sir Elijah Impey's evidence, [and] although 
 [it was] delivered with infinite dignity and gravity, yet 
 there is one circumstance which, while in my mind, I must 
 Assertion of recur again to in his evidence ; because I have seen an 
 impey j that additional proof of what I threw out to your Lordships 
 upon a former occasion, namely, that what Sir Elijah Impey 
 asserted at your Lordships' bar that he knew nothing 
 further of these affidavits after his return to Chunar upon 
 toChunar. the 1st of December cannot be true. 
 
 stanc" " ^ Before prove to your Lordships that, though he 
 
 adduced in has sworn that to the best of his belief he parted 
 tfon. r with Mr. Hastings the next day, yet he did remain six 
 days with Mr. Hastings ; that, afterwards, Major Davy 
 accompanied him down the river with these affidavits ; that 
 he translated them while he was with Sir Elijah Impey ; 
 that we find him upon the 9th of December which is the 
 circumstance I was alluding to swearing an officer at 
 Buxar, and swearing him in this manner an Hindu upon 
 an English deposition, which is stated to have been first 
 explained by the interpreter to the deponent. This passed 
 in the presence of Sir Elijah Impey at Buxar, upon the 9th 
 of December : therefore I do wish your Lordships, when 
 you run over the evidence, to compare these facts with his 
 assertions at your bar. I shall not make any comment 
 upon the conclusion which I think will arise on the subject 
 in your Lordships' minds. 
 ton'srivate J Lords, I mentioned an extraordinary letter, as con- 
 
 letter to trasted with the letter of the 27th of December ; and this 
 
 ing's of the letter I do think exhibits a degree of depravity that never 
 
 to*. Decem " yet was exceeded in the foulest heart that ever existed in 
 
 the bosom of man. Your Lordships will recellect all the 
 
 circumstances which attended the Nawab's coming to the 
 
 assistance of, and the acts of friendship which he showed to, 
 
 Mr. Hastings at Chunar. Your Lordships cannot but have
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 673 
 
 now in your memory this public and ostensible letter ISJCK-E ms. 
 written by Mr. Middleton upon the 27th of December the 
 eagerness with which he describes the Nawab to be deter- 
 mined to resume all the jagirs his determination to prose- 
 cute his claim to his father's inheritance and to seize it from 
 his mother the long letter upon the subject which he is sup- 
 posed to have enclosed from the Nawab and the general 
 state and temper, in short, of the Nawab 's mind. Now, my 
 Lords, look to the proof and to the truth. We will come now 
 where the truth is only to be found, in the private and con- 
 fidential correspondence between those conspirators. The 
 date of the last letter is the 27th of December : this letter* 
 is written the next day, upon the 28th of December, " My 
 dear Sir," your Lordships will always recollect these are 
 the distinctions between the public and private letters 
 " I am this day honoured with your public letter of the 
 24th instant/' Your Lordships will observe that, though None of 
 frequent reference is made to private letters from Mr. Hast- ings' private 
 ings, and a distinction taken between the public and private M". Middle- 
 answers of Mr. Hastings, yet that we have no private letters 
 of Mr. Hastings appearing ; for when, at the accusation of 
 Mr. Middleton, he produced these private letters from 
 Mr. Middleton, whether it was that Mr. Middleton, knowing 
 the whole thing to be a farce, or whether it was from that 
 habitual awe in which he stood of, and shrunk under, the 
 domineering and fascinating influence of his master which 
 your Lordships have seen, even in his presence at your bar 
 whatever the motive was, he appeared not to have dared 
 to retort upon him, and none of the private answers of 
 Mr. Hastings appear to have been given up or are upon 
 record : 
 
 " And I do not lose a moment in informing you that, without a total Mr^Middle- 
 seizure of the country, it is not possible to collect this year a larger sum *ontlnued. r 
 than the Nabob has already granted, which altogether exceeds that of 
 any other year, at a time when his collections have been greatly dimi- J??.P ss i" 
 nished by the misconduct of Rajah Bovanny Sing, late Aumil of Byce- collecting 
 warrah, the insurrection across the Gogra and in other parts of this larger sum 
 country, and, lastly, the heavy remissions he has been obliged to allow 
 on the present year's rents for the losses by draught and hail which fell 
 upon the close of the last harvest. Hence, my dear Sir, you will be able 
 to judge how far it would be in his power to grant future jaidads. If 
 your new demand" 
 
 * Printed in the "Appendix to the Evidence," p. 87. 
 U U
 
 674 Summi7ig of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 13JUNE1788. this was sending the four regiments into his country, to 
 resume the jagirs, against the Nawab's will, and to fight 
 the Nawab's own amils and officers ; which Mr. Hastings 
 no * on ty sen ds under the name of a succour to the Nawab, 
 
 sending b u t which he says he shall make him pay for in an extra- 
 
 Lucknow at ordinary way, on account of the peculiar kindness of the 
 
 of the 13 ^ 6 object for which they were sent 
 
 Nawab. 
 
 " If your new demand is to be insisted upon, which your letter seems to 
 portend, I must beg your precise orders upon it, as from the difficulties 
 I have within these few days experienced in carrying the points" 
 
 the resuming the jagirs and seizing the treasures these 
 points which he said the day before the Nawab was eager 
 for pursuing 
 
 " you had enjoined with the Nabob, I have the best grounds for believing 
 that he would consider it a direct breach of the late agreement, and 
 totally reject the proposal as such; and I must own to you" 
 
 mark these words, my Lords, 
 
 " I must own to you, that, in this present fermented state of mind, I 
 could expect nothing less than despair and a declared rupture"- 
 
 he goes on and says 
 
 "the wresting Furruckabad, Kyrague, and Fyzoola Khan's country, 
 from his government ;" 
 
 there your Lordships see the complete account of the 
 accomplishment of the whole of the treaty of Chunar, that 
 is, of the breach of every one of the articles of it, 
 
 " for in that light, my dear Sir, I can faithfully assure you he views the 
 measures adopted in respect to those countries," 
 
 mark this, I beg, my Lords, 
 
 " together with the resumption of all the jaghires, so much against his 
 inclination, have already brought the Nabob to a persuasion that nothing 
 less than his destruction or the annihilation of every shadow of his power 
 is meant, and all my labours to convince him to the contrary have 
 proved abortive ; a settled melancholy has seized him, and his health is 
 impaired beyond conception." 
 
 My Lords, this is the man who, in the letter of the day 
 before, is represented as acting wholly of himself, as being 
 the proposer, the suggester, of all these schemes which have 
 fixed a settled melancholy upon his heart, broke his spirits, 
 destroyed his peace and impaired his health :
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 675 
 
 "And I do most solemnly believe that the march of four regiments of l3JimBl788. 
 sepoys towards Lucknow, under whatever circumstances it might be 
 represented, would be considered by him as a force ultimately to be used 
 in securing his person. In short, my dear Sir, it is a matter of such 
 immediate moment, and involving apparently such very serious and im- 
 portant consequences, that I have not only taken upon me to suspend 
 the communication of it to the Nabob until I shall be honoured with 
 your further commands, but have also ventured to write the enclosed 
 letter to Colonel Morgan," 
 
 to countermand the march of these troops : and then he 
 adds. which lets you into the light of the characters of 
 both these men : 
 
 " If, after all, you determine that the measure be insisted on, it will 
 be only the loss of six or at most eight days in proposing it ; but in 
 the last event, I earnestly intreat your orders may be explicit and positive, 
 that I may clearly know what lengths you would wish me to proceed in 
 carrying them into execution. I again declare it as my firm belief and 
 assure yourself, my dear Mr. Hastings, I am not influenced in this 
 declaration by any considerations but my public duty and my personal 
 attachment to you that the inforcing the measure you have proposed 
 would be productive of an open rupture between us and the Nabob 
 nay, that the first unnecessary step towards carrying it into effect must 
 l)e on our part a declaration of hostility." 
 
 Now, my Lords, comes the conciliating circumstance to 
 Mr. Hastings, in the point of view in which Mr. Middleton 
 sees it : 
 
 " There can, I apprehend, be no doubt but such an extremity would 
 end in the ruin of the Nabob, and I think he would have sense enough 
 to see it ; but, under the circumstances I have mentioned, and encou- 
 raged as he would be by all the malcontents of his court, I am per- 
 suaded, as far as my own reason and judgment enable me to predict, 
 that he would disregard all future consequences." 
 
 My Lords, of the same date (of the 28th) to the same letter of 
 
 T i i -XT. L Mr. John- 
 
 purpose I need not trouble your Lordships with repeat- son to the 
 
 ing it Mr. Johnson also writes, to endeavour to dissuade sa 
 Mr. Hastings from this atrocious measure.* He states the 
 poverty of the Nawab. He states he is so wholly without 
 resources that his troops had risen upon him the day before 
 and threatened his life ; and he says : 
 
 " Without troubling you with detail of arguments, I may venture to 
 pledge myself to you that the additional demand you propose making 
 cannot this year be obtained without a total reform of his government, "- 
 
 And how, my Lords, do you think his government was to 
 be reformed ? 
 
 * The letter is printed in the " Appendix to the Evidence," p. 88. 
 UU 2
 
 676 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 1SJCHB1788. " w hich if brought about by a campaign against him, by which alone 
 it can be done " 
 
 Reforming their friend and ally's government by a cam- 
 paign against him, bringing war and slaughter in his 
 country, is the protection which they gave him. This is 
 the character of all the protection ever offered to the allies 
 Britain under the government of Mr. Hastings. They 
 c?the ames senc ^ their troops to drain the produce of industry, to 
 company seize all the treasures, wealth and prosperity, of the 
 Mr r Hast- y country, then they call it protection; like a vulture with 
 in(?8 ' her harpy talons grappled in the vitals of the prosperity 
 
 of the land, they flap away the lesser kites, and then they 
 call it protection! It is the protection of the vulture to 
 the lamb 
 
 " which would at the same time stop at once all resources of collec- 
 tions; so that, admitting success, our situation in point of finance 
 would be worse than before." 
 
 He adds at the end : 
 
 " I sincerely hope, though I scarcely expect, to avoid displeasing you 
 by the freedom of this representation." 
 
 Now, was there ever an account in the world to match 
 
 Absence of this ? Your Lordships will observe that, through the whole 
 
 to justiofin of their expostulation, through the whole of these representa- 
 
 tuiaffo P ns S of tions. which with trembling and fear they make to this man, 
 
 tonam? dle " * ne y never once think of using the words faith honour 
 
 Mr. John- truth gratitude justice. No, nothing but the impolicy 
 
 the inexpediency the loss of money ; not a word of 
 
 faith ; not a word of the obligations he was under to this 
 
 man, who had flown to his rescue in the hour of distress ; 
 
 not a syllable of honour truth justice or of gratitude. 
 
 The}'- knew the man they were dealing with, and they used 
 
 the only arguments which they thought could find their 
 
 Cruelty of way to his heart. I say that, if you search the history of 
 
 towlrds the the world, you will not find an act of tyranny and fraud 
 
 Nawab. ^ Q sur p ass this. If you read all past histories peruse the 
 
 annals of Tacitus read the luminous page of Gibbon, 
 
 and all the ancient or modern writers that have searched 
 
 into the depravity of former ages to draw a lesson for the 
 
 present, you will not find an act of treacherous, deliberate, 
 
 cool, cruelty that could exceed this. What, after he had 
 
 come to him in his distress at Chunar after, miserable 
 
 bankrupt as he was, he had given him 100,OOOZ. to make
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 677 
 
 his own private fortune after his return, when they had 13 JUNE 1788. 
 broken every article of that treaty ; when they had sub- 
 dued his pride, his power, his conscience and almost his 
 nature ; when they had dishonoured him in the eyes of 
 his subjects ; when they had made him resume what his 
 bounty had given to his friends and the old friends of his 
 father then, because nature had made a little feeble stand 
 in his heart then, with cold and callous severity, with 
 
 temperate malignity, by making 
 
 this man the last victim of their rapacious oppression, I 
 say, my Lords, the man who can fancy evil beyond this, his 
 mind must possess a fertility in iniquity beyond which all 
 the mischiefs in the world, since the entrance of original 
 sin 
 
 Such are the facts that come out upon parts of this 
 private correspondence. Yet, my Lords, though I have said 
 that this is the worst action to my conception that I ever 
 heard or read of, I do not know whether I must not retract 
 it when I think upon this climax of iniquity. Alps rise 
 on Alps. There is something greater still beyond it. I very 
 much doubt whether a letter from Mr. Hastings himself, 
 after this, does not transcend and exceed even the trans- 
 cendant iniquity of those former communications. 
 
 Mr. Hastings, your Lordships will find, indignant and 
 provoked at this resistance on the part of the Nawab, 
 determines upon some measure that shall over-rule and 
 subdue his reluctance. He writes an angry letter, which 
 was produced by a previous communication from Mr. Mid- 
 dleton, to the same purpose. Before he had written this 
 letter of the 27th of December, lie writes to Mr. Middleton Mr. Middle- 
 in an angry style, and then, with a sort of hypocrisy which 
 your Lordships will see through in a minute, he disclaims 
 the private letter : he says, " Don't write private letters to 
 me in future ;" but he rebukes Mr. Middleton, and in a stern 
 manner reproaches him that he has not fulfilled the extent 
 of his orders. Something more, however, is necessary. 
 Mr. Hastings is to let the Nawab know that he is deter- 
 mined upon this measure, and that he must not think of 
 any retreat or any refuge in his kindness or in his com- 
 miseration for his wretched situation. This task is some- 
 thing more difficult than writing to Mr. Middleton. When 
 he writes to Mr. Middleton the matter is easily settled by 
 telling him what he means in the private letter, and giving 
 him the orders he chooses shall appear afterwards in the
 
 678 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 13JUNE1788. 
 Letter of 
 
 ingstothe 
 Nawab. 
 
 Mis-dated 
 15th Febru- 
 ary for 80th 
 or 31st De- 
 cember. 
 
 public letter ; but he cannot write in this way to the 
 Nawab. Therefore it is necessary to couch a letter in such 
 terms as may meet the public eye without convicting him 
 hereafter, and yet at the same time inform the Nawab 
 what his real motive and the real meaning of his heart is. 
 This your Lordships will see most admirably executed in 
 this letter. 
 
 The Counsel, I dare say, will not dispute that point with 
 me that the letter is falsely dated the 15th of February ; 
 because in one respect it is falsely dated against himself. 
 For if it was the 15th of February it would begin with an 
 account of his having at Calcutta, on the 15th February, 
 1782, then first heard of the intention to resist the resump- 
 tion of the jagirs, having before sent the Council an account 
 of all the jagirs being in the quiet possession of the Nawab. 
 But it is clear, from many internal circumstances, that it 
 is parallel with a letter he writes at the same time to 
 Mr. Middleton. He also, in his letter of the 1st of January 
 to Middleton, mentions that he has written a letter to the 
 Nawab, which he encloses and desires him to deliver to him. 
 This is that letter : the 30th or 31st of December ought to 
 be its date. 
 
 It is to the Wazir. He tells him he has received a letter 
 from Mr. Middleton, representing to him the opposition 
 which is threatened by the Begum to his, the Nawab's, 
 authority in the resumption of her jagirs. He mentions 
 other circumstances, and then says he has directed Colonel 
 Morgan, for the internal security of his country, to march 
 our regiments into his country, 
 
 " With order to act as your Excellency shall direct for the internal 
 security of your country and support of your axithority." 
 
 Your Lordships have heard how much they were to support 
 the Wazir's authority ; that is, to maintain a campaign 
 against him, and to reform his government by destroying 
 him and his subjects : 
 
 Tobesubsi- " This detachment you will understand to be no part of the brigade 
 on constant subsidy for the defence of your frontiers : it is formed from 
 the troops lately in your pay, stationed at Futtyghur and in Rohilcund, 
 which I withdrew to relieve your Excellency from a burden which you 
 complained was too heavy for your finances to bear. These troops are at 
 present an unnecessary expense to the Company, and would be disbanded 
 but for the dangers which at present threaten your country. On these 
 considerations your Excellency will allow it to be just and reasonable 
 that the charges of the detachment should be entirely defrayed by you, 
 and that the Company should be fully indemnified for all the contin- 
 
 Purport of 
 the letter. 
 
 Order for 
 march of 
 troops into 
 the country,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 679 
 
 gencies of keeping up a force on a probability of its being wanted for ISJUKE 1788. 
 your service. On this I shall form an estimate, with the strictest 
 attention to justice, for a subsidy to be paid." 
 
 Then comes the curious part of this letter, he having the 
 communication of the light in which the Nawab viewed 
 the resumption of the jagirs, and the miserable state of 
 mind to which he was reduced by that measure. He 
 
 says : 
 
 " When I reflect on the uncommon and generous instance of your Promises 
 zeal for the Company and attachment to myself, manifested by the j^kn* 
 voluntary personal assistance and support which you afforded me at a 
 time of the greatest danger to their interests and my own safety, I can- 
 not, without feeling the strongest self-reprcach of ingratitude, dispense 
 with giving to you in a similar situation equal marks of my zeal and 
 attachment to your person and interests ; and I should on this principle 
 alone fly to share your danger, although it were not in my power to 
 remove it," 
 
 never sure was such noble magnanimous generosity ! 
 
 " especially as that danger has been incurred by my approbation of 
 your design to resume all the jaghires." 
 
 Knowing himself the fact that he had directed this resump- 
 tion contrary to every feeling and every determination of 
 the Nawab. He, however, says : 
 
 " It was your particular request at Chunar that we might meet once a 
 year, and I with the greatest satisfaction accepted your invitation. The 
 present conjunction appears to make it necessary to commence the per- 
 formance of my promise, and, although my presence is required at 
 Calcutta on the most urgent business, I have determined to set out 
 immediately by dawk to Lucknow, and I flatter myself that you will 
 not suffer me to return to the seat of my government without finally 
 obtaining the great object of my journey." 
 
 Your Lordships see here the great object of his journey object of 
 the gaining this great sum of money by any means, securftiie 
 however base, fraudulent or oppressive, from this woman. treasures - 
 He here clothes the most determined threats to the Nawab 
 in words expressive of the effusions of a grateful heart. 
 But he did not deceive the Nawab ; the Nawab understood Submission 
 him well. He saw the mischief that lurked beneath his Nawab. 
 smiles ; he saw the danger that was held out in a friendly 
 tone for his assistance: for from this hour you hear no more 
 objections from the Nawab, no more trifling evasions, no 
 more puerile excuses. No ; the last faint [glow ?] of expiring 
 nature retires from his heart : he sinks and submits from 
 this hour. This is the concluding part of that
 
 680 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 Review of 
 progress of 
 the trans- 
 action. 
 
 13JUNE1788. spondence which brings your Lordships' notice to the 
 march of the troops, and Mr. Middleton, commander of the 
 Nawab and his army, to the palace of Fyzabad. 
 
 I beg your Lordships to review fora moment shortly and 
 I really must apologise to your Lordships for wishing you to 
 dwell longer upon subjects which must be so exasperating 
 to the human .heart to contemplate but I wish your Lord- 
 ships to review for a moment the whole progress of this 
 business, from that period of time which I first stated to be 
 the period when he first determined upon this measure. 
 Your Lordships remember that, after his disappointment at 
 Bidjey Ghur, that instant he seems to have turned an eye 
 of death upon the palace at Fyzabad. At that glance at 
 that fell glance peace, faith, joy, careless innocence and 
 feeble confidence, that lay reposing under the superstitious 
 shade of those protected walls, receive their inexorable 
 doom. You see him instantly despatching Mr. Middleton 
 to Lucknow to bear his orders, and then to gather justifica- 
 tion. After that, you see the correspondence carried on 
 between Sir Elijah Impey and Mr. Middleton ; you see 
 Sir Elijah Impey conveying to Mr. Middleton the alternate 
 hopes and fears that agitated his mind in this business ; you 
 see Hyder Beg applying to Mr. Hastings and encouraging 
 him to proceed ; you see him confessing that he has got the 
 curses and execration of his country for joining in this act 
 of perfidy and oppression against the Nawab and his 
 parents ; you see the miserable state of the Nawab 
 wretched, dejected, in a settled melancholy ; you see him 
 submitting at last to his miserable doom. In the mean- 
 while, the great figure of the piece, not mixing in the battle, 
 but afar off aloof and listening to the war, but not idle 
 and inactive as he calls it, marking the whole of the busi- 
 ness, collected, firm, determined. Then, when things the 
 most tried begin to wince in the proof when the patience 
 of the Nawab and the conscience of Middleton began to fail 
 when things the toughest bend then you see him, deter- 
 mined and firm, casting a general's eye over the scene, 
 despatching his tough tool, Sir Elijah Impey, to reinforce 
 the failing conscience of Middleton, desiring Ali Ibrahim 
 Khan to whet and inflame the stouter villany of Hyder 
 Beg. You see him present in mind everywhere, with cold, 
 deliberate, sober, wrath, with tranquil, veteran, malignity, 
 guiding the fell array and pointing to his object.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 681 
 
 My Lords, these things are before you, not in any manner 
 that I can aggravate them by words, they are before you in 
 clear, plain, distinct, proof, supported by fact and undeniable 
 evidence. While these things are proceeding, if there were 
 anything wanting to convince your Lordships of the guilt of 
 the persons employed, and of the consciousness which they 
 must have had in their own minds of that guilt at the time, 
 you will find that amply supplied by adverting to the cor- 
 respondence which was enclosed in Mr. Middleton's letter 
 of the 27th of December, upon which I commented so much 
 before. The enclosure to which he refers, namely, the Correspou- 
 correspondence between the mother of the Wazir, the Bow Mr. Middle- 
 Begum, and himself, when she first hears of the intention to the BOW 
 resume the jagirs, these do contain (though I shall not Be s ura - 
 dwell long upon them) decisive proof, if there was a doubt 
 remaining upon the subject, of her having never been 
 engaged in any enterprise, any rebellion or disaffection, 
 against the Nawab, her son, or the English, his allies. 
 These are the letters which Mr. Middleton quotes with that 
 angry expression from the Begum : and he states that angiy 
 expression as a just ground for her persecution and ruin. 
 She wrote to Mr. Middleton the moment she heard of an 
 intention to resume the jagirs. 
 
 This letter* is from the Resident to the Bow Begum. He Jitter from 
 
 . - & Mr. Middle- 
 
 miorms her that, ton to the 
 
 Begum, 
 " The Nabob has thought proper, on account of the inconveni" 
 
 encies" resumption 
 
 of her jagir. 
 
 and so on, the old falsehood 
 
 " to resume all the jaghires in his dominions, in which yours is necessarily 
 included ; but, as the amount of your jaghire is confirmed to you by a 
 written agreement between you and the Nabob," 
 
 mark now, my Lords, confession direct that this agreement 
 and guarantee is still in force, when writing to this misera- 
 ble feeble woman whom he determined to ruin 
 
 " and guaranteed by Mr. Bristow, in behalf of the Governor General and 
 Council, it will be made good to you in ready money." 
 
 Upon this communication, the Begum, with the utmost Answer of 
 
 1 o the Begum. 
 
 astonishment, says that, 
 
 * This and the following letters are printed in the " Appendix to the Evi- 
 dence," p. 85.
 
 682 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 13JUNB1788. " The jaghires are not granted by the Nabob, that he should resume 
 them. What has he resolved against me? The consequence shall be 
 extremities." 
 
 Threatcon- And in a letter to Hussein Reza Khan there is this threat, 
 her letter to which the Counsel seem so delighted with : 
 
 Hussein 
 
 Reza Khan. Note tn i s _that if my jaghire falls the country shall not stand. 
 Remember this, and make the Nabob acquainted with it. It is not well 
 that for a trifling matter much trouble should be occasioned. Recall the 
 aumil." 
 
 And so on. The Bow Begum, finding a real intention to 
 seize her jagirs, in spite of the acknowledged existing 
 guarantee by Mr. Middleton, and, so far from being con- 
 scious of any ill intention or- disaffection to the English, 
 conceiving herself intitled to gratitude from them on 
 account of the obligation conferred by her on Captain Gor- 
 don, says to Mr. Middleton : 
 
 Her appeal " The Nawab has sent aumils to take possession of them ;" 
 to Mr. Mid- 
 
 that is, of her jagirs- 
 
 in virtue of 
 
 the guaran- " the coulnamma under your seal" 
 
 tee. 
 
 Mr. Middleton's own seal 
 
 " is in my possession, in which all interference with my jaghire is 
 disclaimed, as well as all demands on me for money. Now the engage- 
 ments of the Nabob are disregarded, although the English are at hand." 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect that Mr. Middleton did not 
 blush to acknowledge at your Lordships' bar that, to the 
 very last moment and hour, the Begum did look for protec- 
 tion and for rescue from the English against the attempts 
 which they attributed to the ministers of the Nawab. She 
 says in another letter : 
 
 " You are acquainted with the purport of the coulnamma disclaiming 
 all interference with my jaghires, and, by the blessing of God, are at hand 
 for my benefit." 
 
 Mr. Middleton is, by the blessing of God, at hand for her 
 benefit at the very moment that he was dragging the 
 wretched son to the walls of Fyzabad to destroy her ! 
 
 " Yet I am astonished at this proceeding. The jaghires are not granted 
 by the Nabob." 
 
 Reply of Mr. Middleton anwers this letter. And now comes the 
 
 Mr.Middie- indignation of his, which bursts forth so violently in the 
 
 letter of the 27th of December, writing to Mr. Hastings.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 683 
 
 Now, no doubt, your Lordships will expect that you shall 
 come at some information with respect to the rebellion, and 
 that you shall hear Mr. Middleton, in a fair and manly 
 manner, vindicating the British character and convincing 
 her that they are not proceeding upon false pretences or 
 unjustifiable grounds ; and that he will now remind her 
 of her ingratitude and perfidy ; that he will remind her 
 of the plan that she had engaged in to dethrone her 
 son and extirpate the English. Among other circum- 
 stances for which I thank the Counsel, they have esta- 
 blished that the treasures were at all times concealed (as always con- 
 appears indeed by other proof) in the inmost parts of the zauana 
 zanana ; and they have proved that it was the custom 
 to hide all treasures throughout all parts of Asia we 
 conceiving it only the custom where the English were 
 known. Your Lordships doubtless would expect that 
 Mr. Middleton, in his answer to the Begum, would reproach 
 her with this ingratitude and perfidy. No such thing. 
 He says : 
 
 " I had the honour to reply to your former letter yesterday, to the contents 
 of which I must beg leave to refer you. As far as relates to securing to 
 you the actual income of your jaghires, gunges, bazars, &c., as set forth in 
 the coulnamma subsisting between you and his Excellency the Nabob, I 
 certainly am bound in duty to interfere ; because the faith of the Governor 
 General and Council, my masters, has been pledged to you for it, and I 
 am ready, as I before informed you, to settle that point to your satisfac- 
 tion. But, as to continuing the lands, &c., in the form you have hitherto He cannot 
 held them, his Excellency the Nabob is the master, and I cannot oppose jj^ab's^ 6 
 his pleasure." pleasure in 
 
 resuming 
 
 Now, my Lords, look at the dates. That very moment j^ ^^^. 
 he had issued out his own perwannas because the Nawab tees an 
 
 . . equivalent. 
 
 would not issue his : 
 
 " It behoves you to reflect well on this matter. I am equally the friend 
 of you and your son the Nabob, and can have no prejudices in favour of 
 the one or the other." 
 
 This man, who had repeated in letters who had made a 
 solemn deposition before his God that he knew she was 
 guilty of the worst of treasons, the most unnatural rebellion 
 against her son and the worst of ingratitude to destroy the 
 English, her protectors, now says he can have no prejudices 
 in favour of one or the other. The Begum now does Answer of 
 get angry ; and I believe your Lordships nor any other 
 person will wonder at it. She says she has heard from 
 Hussein Reza Khan that he had spoken to Mr, Middleton
 
 684 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 13JUNE1788. about her jagirs, and that he, in reply, had said that the 
 Nawab's sending amils into her jagirs was not of any con- 
 sequence or prejudice. That is, that, when she had her own 
 security ard the English guarantee that she should have 
 her jagirs, and not an equivalent in money, it was a thing 
 to satisfy her to tell her that he left her on the bounty of 
 a bankrupt, and gave her the faith of a broken guarantee 
 in lieu of the jagir which had been solemnly guaranteed to 
 her. She says: 
 
 "If these are your sentiments, I cannot but be much astonished. Had 
 
 any other person expressed such I should not have felt it, but imputed 
 
 them to his ignorance. Since I heard that you should declare such as the 
 
 Threatens above I have been in despair ; as I cannot think the country any longer 
 
 countr 6 *' 10 P r P er f r mv remaining in it, as those who bound themselves by 
 
 engagements now disregard them. After the Mohrun is past, I shall 
 
 repair to Lucknow and take my leave of it to sojourn elsewhere, as 
 
 necessitated by the gentlemen at Lucknow, and as my inclinations once 
 
 Imprecates led me, and is now God's decree ; though, should I be necessitated to 
 
 oriuher 1 * 1011 Q u ^ *^ e country, God grant that no soul may be able to remain in it in 
 
 injurers. peace !" 
 
 That is the threat which the Counsel lay so much stress 
 upon. When this poor woman, conscious of the obligations 
 the English owed her, confident of her own zeal of her 
 just attachment to them was stung to madness by her 
 wrongs, this harsh expression, justified by every prin- 
 ciple, is dwelt upon by Mr. Hastings, by Mr. Middleton ; 
 and I am sorry to say that the Counsel themselves are not 
 ashamed to seem to lay stress upon those expressions under 
 such circumstances. She says : 
 
 Reproaches " '^ ne P ower f existence rests not with you, but God. You are a 
 Mr. Middle- ruler of the country, and can take to yourself the jaghires of others. 
 ton - Many are involved in distress. Pride is not commendable. How long 
 
 is to be the period of your reign? Infamy is your due." 
 
 Whether she was justifiable or not in that reproach, I 
 believe your Lordships will see and admit that it was at 
 least made in a spirit of prophecy, and that that man has 
 received that doom which she denounced upon him. 
 
 The Resident, in answer to this, says, in jocose 
 manner : 
 
 Reply of " ^ person assuming your name has just arrived with a letter, under 
 
 Mr. Middle- your seal, addressed to me; but as I cannot believe, either from the 
 
 ton, treating su kj ec t matter or the style, that it can have been dictated by you or 
 
 a forgery. written with your knowledge, I enclose a copy of it, that you may detect 
 
 the forgery, and inflict a proper, exemplary, punishment on the persons 
 
 who shall have dared thus to abuse your confidence and insult me."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 685 
 
 This is the final answer which Mr. Middleton gives, con- 
 eluding with this coarse vulgar jest this brutal wretched 
 waggery the worst oppression and the foulest injustice. 
 You see [him] all the way through, not advancing fairly, 
 avowing his determination as an act of justice an act of 
 vengeance justified by the crimes of the Begum ; no, you 
 see him imitating the manner of looking to his objects of 
 some of those milder monsters that inhabit the jungles of 
 that country ; you see him cringing towards his prey and 
 fawning in his vengeance. This does not conclude the cor- 
 respondence from the Bow Begum. 
 
 Before I mention her last letter, however. I must beg to Letter of 
 
 tnf* "N'awil) 
 
 remind your Lordships of a letter from the Nawab Wazir toMr.Mid- 
 himself to the Resident, though I shall not read it through, reference to 
 Mr. Middleton has enclosed these letters of the Bow Begum ' 
 
 to the Nawab ; therefore he is acquainted with all this ill 
 language, as it is called, of the Begum, and he writes a 
 letter to the Resident in consequence. Now you will 
 expect to hear of this disaffection and ill conduct of the 
 Begum's, whatever motive Mr. Middleton could have had 
 to have concealed it. The Nawab, writing a confidential 
 letter to Mr. Middleton, to communicate to Mr. Hastings, 
 would undoubtedly have said, " I cannot bear these re- 
 proaches. Is not she the aggressor ? Did not she forget 
 her love and affection to me, and endeavour to dethrone 
 me, and extirpate my good friends and allies, the English ? " 
 Is that the language ? He says, 
 
 " She says her jaghires were not granted by me. At the time of the 
 late Nabob's death, these mahls were under the charge of Jewar AH 
 Khan on the footing of other aumils, insomuch that the accounts, &c., 
 were lodged in the dewan's office. These accounts, as they were 
 delivered into the dewan's office to the date of the Nabob's death, are 
 forthcoming. After his death, I, as a dutiful son, made over these 
 mahls to her in jaghires. I am ready to acquiesce in anything for my 
 mother. As for the other parts of her letters, I trust in God they are 
 dictated by the household khajah, and that I have not caused shame to 
 myself from my conduct to God or my mother." 
 
 Then he recapitulates that he was in debt to the Com- 
 pany, and in much distress to discharge it ; and he con- 
 tinues : 
 
 " It is my intention to proceed to Fyzabad in ten days, the Mohrum His inten- 
 
 being over, to request of my mother the whole of my father's estate, to * ion , to . ., 
 
 a? 11 i Ui. ^1 /-i A i-i J.L. a PPly to the 
 
 enable me to pay on all my debts to the Company. Agreeable to the Begum for 
 
 laws of God, all my father's eifects are my right, that I may make good tne trea- 
 all claims on him. If my mother from affection consents, I shall be order to pay
 
 686 Summing of Evidence on Second Gharge the Begums: 
 
 13JUNE 1788. happy; if not, in whatever manner she may render it, I shall pay it 
 his debts towards the adjustment of the balance due to the Company." 
 
 Company.; Now comes a passage which the Counsel seemed to 
 think they could make a great deal of: 
 
 " With respect to the household kajahs, I shall confine and punish 
 them." 
 
 Confine and punish them ! for what ? For heading a 
 rebellion against him ? for causing a British detachment 
 to be cut off, and a British officer to be attacked at Tanda ? 
 -No: 
 
 " I shall confine and punish them for the knavery and means they 
 have used towards effecting a breach between my mother and myself." * 
 
 The officious, tale-bearing, meddling, servants are dis- 
 liked, and through the whole of this letter there is not a 
 syllable that ever there had come to his ears a rumour of a 
 charge of disaffection in his mother to either himself or the 
 English. This is a conclusive proof that, to the last hour 
 and moment at the very time they were forcing this man 
 to this outrageous, sacrilegious, impious, act to his mother 
 they never once suggested that any ill behaviour on her 
 part could justify his conduct ; he does not assert that he 
 ever heard there was an insinuation or charge against them 
 upon these grounds, upon which alone Mr. Middleton and 
 Mr. Hastings affect to justify their conduct. 
 
 Letter of After this letter, the Begum, deprived of all hope from 
 toMrffiast- Mr. Middleton, applies to her last resource she writes to 
 Mr. Hastings himself: and your Lordships will observe 
 that it is received upon the 6th of January, six or seven 
 days before the actual seizure of the jagirs. She com- 
 plains with astonishment that they had attempted to seize 
 her jagirs, and [says] that she had accordingly wrote several 
 times to Mr. Middleton that his seal was to the treaty : 
 
 " Why did he not negotiate in my favour? Mr. Middleton replied, 
 ' The Nawab is the master.' Being helpless, I represent to you the 
 state of my affairs, that, notwithstanding the existence of this treaty, I 
 have been treated in this manner. It is useless for me to stay here. 
 Whatever is is a compact. Whenever any one deviates from his compact 
 he meets with no credit for the future : and the light of mine eyes, 
 Azoph-ul-Dowlah, wrote to me that he had sent his own aumils into my 
 jaghires, and would pay me ready money from his treasury. Reflect on 
 my security for his adhering to his future engagements from the 
 
 * Fruited in the " Appendix to the Evidence," p. 86.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 687 
 
 consideration of his conduct under his past promises. I do not agree 13JUKE1788. 
 
 to his ready money. Let me have my jaghires as formerly : otherwise, 
 
 leaving this place, I will wait on you at Benares, and thence will go 
 towards Shah Jehan Abad, because he has not adhered to his engage- 
 ments. Send letters to Azoph-ul-Dowlah, and to Mr. Middleton, and 
 Hussein Reza Khan, and Hyder Beg Khan, not to molest the Begum's Rumour of 
 jaghire, and to let them remain as formerly with the Begum's aumils of ^pt"* 6 ' 
 and it is here suspected of me that my aumil plunder'd the property of Gordon by 
 Mr. John Gordon." her amil - 
 
 As the Nawab never heard a rumour a shadow, or hint 
 or reverberation, of a rumour with respect to the dis- 
 affection of the Begum, so the Begum herself, to the 
 very last hour or moment, never heard that there was the 
 smallest insinuation against her. The only circumstance 
 that ever came to her knowledge, till her son was besieging 
 the kella the only rumour was, that a servant of hers 
 had plundered the baggage of Captain Gordon. She 
 says : 
 
 " The case is this : Mr. John Gordon arrived at Tanda, a jaghire of Her expla- 
 mine, fighting with the zemindars of Akberpoor, which belongs to the natlon - 
 Khelsch. Accordingly, Mr. John Gordon having come to Tanda, my 
 aumil performed whatever appertained to his duty. ' 
 
 She afterwards says to 'Mr. Hastings : 
 
 " Mr. John Gordon is now present : ask him yourself of these 
 matters. Mr. John Gordon will represent matters in detail ; the truth 
 will then become known how ill founded the calumny is." * 
 
 My Lords, this letter is proved to have been received at Refusal of 
 the date I mentioned ; time enough, if his remorseless ingjrto 8 *" 
 heart could have been softened. If he was not what he the'case'of 
 boasts of himself inexorable and determined which must ** Gor - 
 be applied only to purposes of vengeance and oppression 
 if he could have been brought to doubt a moment what 
 his duty was, he could then have inquired into those cir- 
 cumstances of Captain Gordon, he could then have stopped 
 the execution of his last treacherous order. I say he did 
 not inquire into the circumstances of Captain Gordon. I 
 say so because, in the House of Commons, he refers to an 
 explanation supposed to have been given by Colonel Han- 
 nay to Mr. Middleton, which is proof direct that he, 
 knowing explanation would only make against the foul 
 determination which lurked in his heart, never made any 
 endeavour, while in time, to satisfy his mind and to stop 
 this abominable act. He sends an answer to this letter. 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 699.
 
 688 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 13JUNE178S 
 
 His answer 
 to the 
 Begum not 
 produced. 
 
 Her aban- 
 donment 
 of hope on 
 the receipt 
 of it. 
 
 Validity of 
 the private 
 letters as 
 testimony. 
 
 Reference to 
 Mr. Middle- 
 ton's feel- 
 ings towards 
 his own 
 child. 
 
 This answer does not appear. We have only Mr. Middleton's 
 evidence that, while two days were passing in negotiation, 
 Mr. Middleton delivered this answer of Mr. Hastings to the 
 Begum ; and then he confesses that hope left her at once 
 that she had no further hope, no further expectation. 
 Her ministers, who were represented as Generals com- 
 manding troops, submitted instantly. Shumshire Khan 
 was delivered up. The whole business was instantly con- 
 cluded. For, till that moment, as appears by all the 
 records, by all the evidence at your Lordships' bar, till 
 that letter of Mr. Hastings'" was delivered to this feeble 
 woman, she did cherisli the fond delusion that the English 
 could not be so treacherous as to forget the solemn faith in 
 which the British guarantee was pledged. 
 
 This concludes the circumstance as far as relates to the 
 progress of this business towards seizing the treasures. 
 With regard to the private letters which I have dwelt so 
 much upon, I do trust that your Lordships will not coun- 
 tenance a sort of distinction which was endeavoured to be 
 taken by the learned Counsel, when first these letters were 
 produced, when they requested your Lordships to remark 
 that they were letters of a most private and familiar 
 nature, inferring from that that they were not to be con- 
 sidered as testimony of equal authority with the deliberate 
 public letters which stand upon record. I trust your Lordships 
 will not countenance such a distinction. I trust you will 
 not suffer them to insinuate, as Sir Elijah Impey does in 
 his oral evidence, that it is not fair to take advantage of an 
 answer which he made without adverting to the conse- 
 quences. It is because these letters were written without 
 adverting to the consequences because these letters were 
 written in an unguarded moment because they were not 
 meant for public view it is therefore that I do state them 
 as the best authority, the weightiest evidence, in the whole 
 of these proceedings. If the learned Counsel had another 
 object in making that distinction because I believe your 
 Lordships will recollect something of a remarkable circum- 
 stance in their compelling us to read certain private and 
 domestic parts of these letters which we wished undoubtedly 
 to avoid if their object was to bring out an anecdote which 
 is now under my eye, respecting the paternal tenderness and 
 affection of the accomplice, Mr. Middleton, to his son, who 
 was then ill if they conceive that that would be a kind of 
 reconciling and palliating circumstance to your Lordships,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 689 
 
 I must say, though it may perhaps be thought something 
 harsh, that the effect upon my mind was directly the con- 
 trary. I must speak what I feel on this occasion. I must 
 then ask your Lordships, seeing this family anecdote in the 
 light which I do, what must be the nature of these crimes, 
 into which the loveliest energies of the human mind cannot 
 intrude without exciting sensations rather of disgust and 
 contempt than of respect ? 
 
 I know that I am speaking before those who understand 
 what the feelings of fathers are. I trust I am not to learn 
 them : but, my Lords, I say this aggravates what I con- 
 sider as Mr. Middleton's guilt in this business ; because it 
 convinces me that his mind was not without circumstances 
 to show him the sacredness of those ties which he was violat- 
 ing ; because it shows me that he did not want opportu- 
 nities of those duties which he was tearing from the bosom 
 of another that he could look in his child's face and read 
 nothing there to warn him. from the deed he was engaged 
 in. Good God ! my Lords, what a cause is this we are 
 maintaining ! What ! when I feel it a part of my duty, as breach of 
 
 ., i -r r> -I , , -i c L .filial duty. 
 
 it were, when 1 teel it an instruction in my briet to support 
 the claim of age to reverence, of maternal feebleness to 
 filial protection and support, can I recollect where I stand ? 
 can I recollect before whom I am pleading ? I look round 
 on this various assembly that surrounds me, seeing in every 
 countenance a breathing testimony to this general principle, 
 and yet for a moment think it necessary to enforce the 
 bitter aggravation which attends the crimes of those who 
 violate this universal duty. Yet, my Lords, such is the 
 nature of the charge which we maintain such the mon- 
 strous nature of the guilt which we arraign and such the 
 more monstrous nature of the defence opposed to that 
 guilt that when I see in many of these letters the infir- 
 mities of age made a subject of mockery and ridicule 
 when I see the feelings of a son treated by Mr. Middleton 
 as puerile (as he calls them) and contemptible when I see 
 an order given from Mr. Hastings to harden that son's 
 heart, to choke the struggling nature in his bosom when 
 I see them pointing to the son's name and to his standard, 
 when they march to oppress the mother, as to a banner 
 that gives dignity, that gives an holy sanction and a 
 reverence, to their enterprise when I see and hear these 
 tilings done when I hear them brought into three delibe- 
 rate Defences offered to the charges of the Commons my 
 Lords, I own I grow puzzled and confounded, and almost 
 
 X X
 
 690 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 i3Ji7iTEi788. doubt whether where such a defence can be offered it may 
 
 not be tolerated. 
 
 Filial love. And yet, my Lords, how can I support the claim of 
 filial love by argument, much less the affection of a son to 
 a mother, where love loses its awe, and veneration is mixed 
 with tenderness ? What can I say upon such a subject ? 
 What can I do but repeat the ready truths which with 
 the quick impulse of the mind must spring to the lips 
 of every man on such a theme? Filial love the mora- 
 lity, the instinct, the sacrament of nature a duty ; or 
 rather let me say it is miscalled a duty, for it flows from 
 the heart without effort its delight its indulgence 
 its enjoyment. It is guided not by the slow dictates 
 of reason ; it awaits not encouragement from reflec- 
 tion or from thought; it asks no aid of memory; it is 
 an innate but active consciousness of having been the 
 object of a thousand tender solicitudes, a thousand waking 
 watchful cares, of meek anxiety and patient sacrifices, 
 unremarked and unrequited by the object. It is a grati- 
 tude founded upon a conviction of obligations not remem- 
 bered, but the more binding because not remembered, 
 because conferred before the tender reason could acknow- 
 ledge or the infant memory record them a gratitude 
 and affection which no circumstances should subdue and 
 which few can strengthen a gratitude [in] which even 
 injury from the object, though it may blend regret, should 
 never breed resentment and affection which can be in- 
 creased only by the decay of those to whom we owe it 
 then most fervent when the tremulous voice of age, resist- 
 less in its feebleness, inquires for the natural protectors of 
 its cold decline. 
 
 If these are the general sentiments of man, what must 
 be their depravity, what must be their degeneracy, who 
 can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is 
 deepest rooted in the human heart, and twined within the 
 cords of life itself aliens from nature apostates from 
 Baseness of humanity ! And yet, if there is a crime more fell more 
 fliiai ! vio^ nB f u l if there is anything worse than a wilful persecutor of 
 lence. j^g mo ther it is to see a deliberate, reasoning, instigator and 
 abettor to the deed. This is a thing that shocks, disgusts 
 and appals, the mind more than the other. To view not a 
 wilful parricide to see a parricide by compulsion a miser- 
 able wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own 
 worthless heart not driven by the fury of his own dis- 
 tracted brain but leading his sacrilegious hand, without
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 691 
 
 malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the 
 human fiends that have subdued his will. To condemn 
 crimes like these we need not talk of laws or of human 
 rules. Their foulness their deformity does not depend 
 upon local constitutions, upon human institutes or religious 
 creeds. They are crimes ; and the persons who perpetrate 
 them are monsters who violate the primitive condition upon 
 which the earth was given to man. They are guilty by the 
 general verdict of human kind. 
 
 I protest, my Lords, I am ashamed to have found it 
 necessary to have bestowed a thought even upon a subject 
 such as I have just now treated ; but it does appear to me 
 that the feelings I have been describing were not and are 
 not in the hearts of those whom we accuse. 
 
 My Lords, before I proceed to the manner in which this 
 act was executed, and the cruelties which are disclaimed by 
 Mr. Hastings and laid upon his instruments which followed 
 them, I shall observe to your Lordships upon one or two 
 circumstances which come in an intermediate place in point 
 of time, though they are not perhaps of equal importance 
 with those to which I am coming. Your Lordships will violation of 
 recollect that, through the whole of this business, the 
 strongest assurances are given that the Begums, after they 
 are deprived of their jagirs, should have an equivalent ; equivalent 
 and, even when the determination of resuming their trea- j^irf 
 sures was taken, as that was not taken upon any new 
 provocation in fact and in reality, still Mr. Middleton to the 
 last moment states that this equivalent should be punctually 
 paid to them. I need only in one word observe to your 
 Lordships that this, like every other thing in the shape or 
 form of an engagement, was grossly and atrociously vio- 
 lated ; that, after they had seized her treasures, these 
 robbers never thought of giving her any sort of equivalent : 
 that there never was a single rupee paid to her in fact is 
 acknowledged. I need not dwell upon that : it is acknow- 
 ledged by the gentleman at the bar that they were mort- 
 gaged in order to raise money to pay the Company's debt. 
 Your Lordships have before you a letter of Mr. Bristow 
 we made Mr. Middleton confess it at the bar that in 1783 
 they had not even received a single rupee ; and Mr. Middle- 
 ton states that the Begum was tenacious of her hoards ; that, 
 being deprived of her jagirs, and not having a single rupee 
 granted in lieu of them, she was tenacious of retaining 
 
 X x 2
 
 692 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 i3JrNEi788. what remained of her treasures. That is therefore a cir- 
 cumstance of great aggravation in this business. 
 Thepre- The other circumstance I wish to allude to very shortly 
 
 oHier goods, is the manner in which they disposed of the goods ; for 
 your Lordships will observe in the evidence that, after 
 torturing and threatening the servants and ministers of this 
 woman, they tore away, not only all the treasures, all the 
 jewels, but all her wearing apparel, even to her table 
 utensils, and sent them to be sold at Lucknow. 
 
 My Lords, Mr. Middleton was examined at your bar 
 upon the manner in which this sale was conducted. I will 
 not enter into the evidence ; for, comparatively speaking, 
 those are small objects, although they are such as in a civi- 
 lised country would bring the perpetrator to a gibbet or a 
 gaol probably to both. They did divide the spoil in any 
 manner they pleased. Mr. Hastings, even, in his Defence before 
 your Lordships, calls it a sale or a pretended sale : so that he 
 seems not to spare Mr. Middleton with regard to the man- 
 ner in which this pretended sale was conducted. Your 
 Lordships observe in the evidence there is an auction with- 
 out bidders. They put their own price : and this is the 
 manner in which they disposed of these goods ; justifying 
 undoubtedly the lamentation of the poor Begum, who says, 
 that 
 
 " Even jewellery and goods she finds, from woeful experience, lose 
 their value the moment it is known they come from her." 
 
 But I will not dwell upon this ; for who doubts that, 
 when the tyrant's oppression and rapacity took the field, 
 the camp followers' pilfering, fraud and every meanness, 
 followed. 
 
 It is in evidence before your Lordships, and it is undoubt- 
 edly an heavy aggravation upon the whole of this business 
 particularly in one light your Lordships will find that, 
 after they had disposed of these goods, the eunuchs [were 
 put] in fetters in imprisonment ; not for any part of the ori- 
 ginal bond taken from these ministers, but it was on account 
 of the deficiency arising from the fraudulent sale they had 
 made of some of these goods, and for the deficiency in the 
 batta of the money they had dug out of the minister's 
 house. They continued their abominable cruelties or per- 
 secution for a sum that was not part of the original fine, 
 as it were, but upon a pretence of the difference of exchange 
 
 The eu- 
 nuchs, her 
 ministers, 
 put in 
 fetters on 
 account of 
 the defi- 
 ciency from 
 the sale.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 693 
 
 which they charged upon her account ; and they continued ISJUXEITSS. 
 their persecution till they had received it. 
 
 The other circumstance is a very extraordinary one, Attempts to 
 which is, the attempt that is made to find out new crimes 
 against these women after they had possessed themselves 
 
 of all their treasures ; that is to say, not to find out new wab and the 
 crimes indeed, but to find out, what was exactly the same, 
 new debts to the Nawab and the Company. For, as their 
 guilt originated in the distress and wants of the India 
 Company, it was but a fair mode of proceeding that they 
 should measure the extent of their guilt and crime accord- 
 ing to their own necessities and the claim they could make 
 out to the Nawab accordingly ; and, though they had 
 fined her to the amount of 600,OOOL, which they seized and 
 got possession of, Mr. Hastings, before he returned to Cal- 
 cutta, writes to Mr. Middleton to desire him not to suffer 
 the Nawab to make a conclusive settlement with his 
 mother : " I don't know how far she may be guilty, yet 
 " I shall write to Mr. Larkin to search the faithful records 
 " of the crimes of our allies in the cash accounts of the 
 " Company : who knows but more crimes may be found 
 " there?" 
 
 One of the accusations against Mr. Middleton was, that 
 he maintained he had got all he had ever heard of. " Aye/' 
 says Mr. Hastings, 
 
 " but there is a further balance of 26 lacs, 260,000/., which appears 
 to have been by some means overlooked or withheld from Mr. Middleton 
 on the transfer of his office." 
 
 So he writes to Mr. Middleton, " Stop your hand : here is 
 2 60,00 01. worth of treason. You must not think of coming 
 to a conclusion till we have got that. We don't consider 
 their treasons by any reference to the laws of their country 
 by any old civil law of Justinian much less by the 
 institutions of Tiinur or the local institutions of the country. 
 No ; but we try them upon the multiplication table ; we 
 try them by the rule of three, and condemn them under the 
 institutes of that great legislator, Cocker's arithmetic/' 
 This is the dignified mode of proceeding : and this little 
 circumstance, perhaps as much as all the proofs together 
 which I have heaped upon your Lordships' table this cir- 
 cumstance may serve as much to show you where lay the 
 real origin and cause of all those treasons and rebellions of 
 which your Lordships have heard so much.
 
 694 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 13JUNE1788. I come now, my Lords, to mention the circumstances of 
 
 aggravation, of inhumanity and cruelty, which followed the 
 
 Disclaimer seizure of these treasures, and by which the small remnant 
 
 influencing of balance which remained was extorted. The gentleman 
 
 by e descrfp- at your bar states, in one of his Defences, that the famine 
 
 cmeities he ^ * ne women an d ^ ue imprisonment of the eunuchs are 
 
 practised artfully brought forward by his accusers in order to interest 
 
 eunuchs people and to claim pity ; but that they are circumstances 
 
 women! with which he has no connexion, and for which he is not in 
 
 the least responsible. I should think it an unworthy and 
 
 pitiful mode of endeavouring to steal an interest to this 
 
 cause which we do not want, if the Commons of England 
 
 had placed in their charge a recapitulation and a narrative 
 
 of those inhumanities, which must shock and disgust the 
 
 heart of every man who hears them I should think it a 
 
 mean and pitiful method of endeavouring to create a feel- 
 
 ing, and to be beholden to that feeling in our cause, unless 
 
 I could bring them directly home to the person we accuse. 
 
 Upon that ground alone it is that I refer to them. 
 
 Assertion of Mr. Hastings, in his answer before the House of Commons, 
 
 ings that says : 
 
 the trans- 
 
 ustand " ^ ^ ave conducted the narration of the preceding detail to its close, 
 
 honourable, without choosing to interrupt it or disturb the attention of my honour- 
 able hearers by the concluding observation which I now think it neces- 
 sary to make upon it ; because I hold the whole series of the acts thus 
 connected strictly reconcileable to justice, honour and good policy, who- 
 ever were the parties concerned in them."* 
 
 I beg your Lordships to observe that the Committee 
 appointed to draw up the charges for the Commons had at 
 that time regularly recapitulated every one of the cruelties, 
 the severities, and the famished state of the Khourd Mahal. 
 Upon that recapitulation Mr. Hastings states he had had 
 full and perfect explanation ; and then, having had that 
 explanation, he makes this concluding remark : 
 
 " Because I hold the whole series of the acts thus connected strictly 
 reconcileable to justice, honour and good policy, whoever were the parties 
 concerned in them." 
 
 Now, my Lords, recollect, I beseech you, the information 
 we had from Major Scott, the incomparable agent of Mr. Hast- 
 ings, relative to this passage. You will recollect that this 
 
 * Defence of Mr. Hastings at the Bar of the House of Commons Ed. 
 Debrett, p. 120.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 695 
 
 incomparable Major Scott told you at your bar that, after 
 the Defence had been finished that, after Mr. Hastings' 
 had approved of it Mr. Hastings added this particular 
 paragraph with his own proper hand. He seems to have 
 said to Mr. Middleton, " You have done well indeed in 
 owning these transactions. You have done what I expected 
 from you. You have acted up to that character in your 
 celebrated letter from Lucknow, when you offer, God 
 willing/' and never had a man more reason to trust in 
 the connivance of God for a while to wickedness than this 
 agent had " that you were ready, God willing, not only 
 to do anything, but to take the share of any blame upon 
 yourself. You have done well, my trusty agent, in this ; 
 but you have not defended the acts you have not said 
 they were defensible by justice or policy. Give me the 
 paper, puny profligate ! my conscience is light ; my character 
 will bear it out. I will claim merit and applause from 
 them. I will state that they are reconcileable to honour, 
 justice and policy " by policy I presume he means that 
 wise and just policy which conducts good actions to a wise 
 and good end. This seems the dialogue between him and 
 Middleton. Mr. Middleton doubtless extends the compli- 
 ment " I will own everything. You find character ; I'll 
 find memory," and memory is his forte " You bear the 
 sword ; I'll carry the shield." And forth these twin warriors 
 sally to encounter the justice and indignation of their 
 country. 
 
 Before I proceed therefore to impute those actions to 
 Mr. Hastings, it is proper I should see a little whether they 
 are of a nature that will justify the assertion in your Lord- 
 ships' opinions of their being reconcileable to truth, to justice, 
 to honour and to policy. It will be necessary, therefore, 
 for me to state the actions themselves first, before I endeavour 
 to impute them as crimes to Mr. Hastings. For, if I per- 
 ceive, by that sort of consciousness which every person feels, 
 in a certain degree, of the effect of what he is saying upon 
 the assembly which he addresses if I perceive that your 
 Lordships also are of opinion that these are just, humane, 
 honourable and wise, actions I shall give your Lordships 
 no further trouble upon that subject ; for I stand here, not 
 to display the merits of Mr. Hastings, but to arraign his 
 crimes. But, if, on the contrary, I perceive as I think I 
 shall do that all and every part of this assembly are 
 struck with astonishment at the wickedness of the deeds and
 
 G96 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 is JUNE 1788. with horror at the boldness of the man that could defend 
 them ; if I perceive that those who have borne or who do 
 bear the characters of statesmen are ashamed and con- 
 founded to hear the name of policy connected with such 
 deeds if I perceive that those who fill and adorn the 
 judgment seats of this country regret and feel indignation 
 that the name of justice should be prostituted in such a 
 cause if I perceive that those whose duty, and whose incli- 
 nations and tempers, doubtless, lead them to consider truth 
 and mercy as the pillars of that faith which they cherish 
 if I perceive those grieve that a Christian should have borne 
 such deeds or a man should own them then, as assuredly 
 as I see which I think I shall one spirit of burning 
 indignation actuating all and every part of this great 
 assembly then will I, as surely as you judge them crimes, 
 bring them full home, and place them upon the head of the 
 bold culprit at your bar. 
 
 Or^r fro The first of these transactions that appears, is that note 
 
 Mr.Middle- ... i i -- -mr- i n -i 1-11 
 
 ton for which was recognised by Mr. Middleton, and which he 
 eunuchs in admitted he had not been authorised to explain or deny by 
 Mr. Hastings. It is directed to Francis Rutledge, upon 
 their having obtained possession of the persons of these old 
 ministers. Your Lordships will also recollect which is 
 another part of the evidence which adds to the gratitude I 
 owe to the Counsel for many things they have brought out 
 clear to your Lordships that these men were persons of the 
 highest rank in the country, which local ideas here would 
 not lead people of this country to believe at first ; that they 
 had palaces and gardens, and were men of the first rank 
 and situation in Fyzabad. The order is : 
 
 " Sir, When this note is delivered to you by Hoolas Iloi, I have to 
 desire that you order the two prisoners to be put in irons, keeping them 
 from all food," &c., agreeably to my 4 instructions yesterday. NATHANIEL 
 MIDDLETON."* 
 
 This is the first of these humane, honourable, just and 
 
 politic, actions, in that which was to take the course 
 
 of a judicial proceeding for the discovery of alleged crimes. 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect here that there were three 
 
 Major t periods of these cruelties. Perhaps your Lordships 
 
 evidence, might have been a little puzzled by some part of the 
 
 evidence given ah your bar, particularly by Major Gilpin ; 
 
 to whose evidence I am happy to give the most honourable 
 
 * See " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 936,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 697 
 
 testimony that it was such as did him credit ; and I 
 
 happy to perceive, and shall ever be happy in having an 
 
 opportunity of doing justice to, the humanity which is 
 
 so seldom seen among any of the persons concerned in 
 
 these transactions. But Major Gilpin's evidence, and part 
 
 of Captain Jaques' too, did seem to go to prove that they 
 
 were treated with no other rigour than merely being con- That th y , 
 
 o / o were merely 
 
 fined in those good houses and gardens ; and some attempts confined to 
 were made by the Counsel to prove that they partook of 
 some diversions ; in which they were rather checked by 
 an observation made by one of your Lordships. 
 
 The first time they were put in irons is upon this order ^J!-^* 
 to Rutledge, when they were kept without food, and pent in 
 certainly nearly famished. The object of that was, by 
 severity as Mr. Middleton afterwards owns in a letter 
 to compel them to tell where the treasures were hidden. 
 When they had got possession of the secret, so as to have 
 been in the receipt, as Mr. Middleton says, of 350,OOOL they Release 
 
 , , i r -, f , , . j J f ' , 5 from fetters 
 
 then took a bond lor the remainder 01 the money ; and, after giving 
 during the period of taking the bond and the bond becom- money. r 
 ing due, they were content with confining these prisoners 
 to this house and this garden. They were content with 
 the remission of the irons, and they certainly, I believe, 
 had food. But when the bond became due and they were Again 
 unable to pay it, and the Begum would not discover more of fevers 1 " 
 the treasures, then they recommenced those severities and ^nd be? 
 replaced those irons. I wish your Lordships to bear that came due. 
 in your minds. Undoubtedly, when you perceive that they shumshirc 
 have got the possession of these persons, and also of Shum- 
 shire Khan that famous arch-rebel who never must be 
 out of your Lordships' minds you will naturally ask, as 
 we did of the witnesses at the bar, what inquiry was 
 instituted into the treason and the rebellion? Mr. Middleton 
 answers, " None. No attempt was made to develope this 
 plot." " Did you leave any measures untried to discover 
 the treasures ?" " None." " Did you take any measure to 
 discover the treason ?" " None," he confesses with equal 
 veracity. Well, what becomes of Shumshire Khan ? He is 
 not included in this order ; there is no mention of him. I 
 should call him, if he could hear me at the bottom of that 
 deep dungeon in which, no doubt, he was plunged, and if he 
 could move or stir, for those tenfold fetters which, no doubt, 
 he was loaded with. When you inquire, you find he had 
 never had any severity used towards him. This arch-
 
 698 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 3JuNju788. traitor they paid no sort of attention to ; they did not even 
 pay him attention enough to omit his food ; they did not 
 pay him the compliment of fetters ; they treated him with 
 the most mortifying neglect ; nay, so much so that Major 
 Gilpin says that, when he received an order to release the 
 others, they forgot Shumshire Khan entirely, and knowing 
 he was in prison only for a farce, he says he loosed him of 
 his own accord; and Shumshire Khan is now upon his 
 parole, or in the way to be forthcoming whenever this 
 accusation shall be renewed. Few of your Lordships will 
 believe that it is likely he will hear any more of this ; 
 though, no doubt, when he does learn from the Defences of 
 Mr. Hastings when they are circulated in India the 
 destroying of a British detachment, he will no doubt think 
 he had a providential escape, when he had been so long in 
 the hands of his enemies. But, however, no inquiry what- 
 ever was made, either with respect to those men or Shum- 
 shire Khan, having got possession of these ministers. 
 
 Captain Jaques says in his evidence that twelve lacs are 
 yet due upon the fifty-five. He met forty-three, he says, 
 upon the road. Twelve only remained due. " And, there- 
 fore," says Mr. Johnson, "you may assure them that, on 
 the day their agreement expires, I shall be obliged to 
 recommence severities upon them, until the last farthing 
 is fully paid of the agreement that they have entered into/' 
 After this Mr. Middleton writes on the 18th of March 
 your Lordships will recollect they had extorted a bond 
 from Behar and Jewar Ali Khan by famine ; they forced 
 Second them to sign it, and then kept them in prison Mr. Middleton 
 order from says, " The two prisoners have violated their written 
 
 Mr. Middle- V \ .., , , , , 
 
 ton for solemn engagement with me he was shocked at such a 
 
 the eunuchs thing as a breach of engagement in any person whatsoever 
 
 in fetters. " and therefore/' he says, "I am under the disagreeable 
 
 necessity of recurring to severities to enforce the payment. 
 
 This is, therefore, to desire you immediately cause them to 
 
 be put in irons [and keep them so until I shall arrive at 
 
 Fyzabad to take further measures as may be necessary]."* 
 
 Letter of The next letter is the complaint of Captain Jaques, which 
 
 Jaques? wa>s * ne on ty matter of dispute among them ; it was, who 
 
 in eo the nend " snou ^ P av f r ^ ne irons. He afterwards says : 
 
 the'fetters. " The prisoners, Behar and Jewar Aly Khan, who seem to be very 
 sickly, have requested that their irons might be taken off for a few days, 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 856,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 699 
 
 that they might take medicine, and walk about the garden of the place 13JUHE1788 
 where they are confined to assist the medicine in its operation. Now, as 
 I am sure they would be equally as secure without irons as with them, I 
 think it my duty to inform you of this request."* 
 
 The answer is from Mr. Middleton: 
 
 Mr. Middlc- 
 
 " I am sorry it is not in my power to comply with your proposal of 
 easing the prisoners for a few days of their fetters, much as my humanity 
 may be touched by their sufferings." 
 
 This is the mild, gentle, meek, Mr. Middleton, of whose 
 tenderness of heart Mr. Hastings was constantly apprehen- 
 sive. He can't ease them of their fetters, though he is told 
 that they will be equally secure, though they were sick and 
 wanted to take medicine. He seems delighted to hear it : 
 what signifies disease upon them ? Then we have an ally 
 that assists us in our cause. Now their spirits must be 
 subdued. Now is the time to extract, in alliance with 
 their disease and sickness, the secrets we are looking for 
 the hoards and concealed treasures of their mistress. They 
 now propose to remove them to Lucknow : 
 
 " When once their removal to Lucknow is effected, it will not be in Their re- 
 my power to show them mercy or stand between them and the vengeance ov j*l to 
 of the Nabob. Advise them to reflect seriously upon the unhappy 
 predicament in which they will be involved in one case." 
 
 Major Gilpin, out of whose custody they were then 
 taken, is written to by Mr. Johnson, who informs him 
 that the prisoners are to be threatened with severities 
 to-morrow to make them discover where the balance may be 
 procured, the fear of which may possibly have a good effect 
 on the apprehensions of the Begums, lest they should dis- 
 cover the hidden treasures. 
 
 Now there is a circumstance relating to this supposed 
 discovery that I own I saw with regret ; I allude to the Passage in 
 sort of advantage the Counsel wished to take of a passage jrfn 
 in one of these letters. Major Gilpin says that a spy, that 
 he had placed over the prisoners to attend to what messages 
 might pass between them and the Begums, informed him 
 that, on their arrival at Begum Gunge, they sent to the 
 Begum desiring her to consider that their situation grew 
 more and more serious, and urged strong arguments to 
 induce her to pay the balance ; that, if she did not, they 
 
 * This letter, -with the answer of Mr. Middleton, is printed iu the "Minutes 
 of the Evidence," p. 857,
 
 700 Summing of Evidence on Second Chargethe Begums : 
 
 13JUNE1788. must at Lucknow divulge every secret to save themselves. 
 Upon this the Counsel began an examination of Major 
 Gilpin, insinuating and endeavouring to draw it to this 
 conclusion, that the secret that was to be discovered was 
 the secret of the rebellion against the Nawab and the plan 
 of extirpation of the English. But here you have, in 
 Mr. Johnson's answer, notice of what that secret is that 
 they should, by fear of severities, discover the secret of the 
 hidden treasure. Every man who reads the letter must 
 see that it will bear no other interpretation. 
 
 Suggestion Major Gilpin says that the cojahs one day told him that, if 
 eunuchs to he would pitch the Begum's camp equipage and desire her 
 Begum from ^ prepare for an immediate journey, in all probability she 
 herpaiace. W ould pay the balance due. Upon this circumstance also 
 the Counsel seemed to think that they should gain some- 
 thing, by establishing that the inhuman proposition of 
 tearing this old lady from her palace, and exposing her to 
 shame and indignation, was the ministers'. Granted ; and 
 what do they get by that, but prove and they triumph 
 in it that they had subdued the spirit of these poor 
 wretches till they had reduced them to something like 
 treachery against their mistress. They seem to say it 
 came from him who was most conversant with the religious 
 superstitions and decorum of the country ; a suggestion of 
 those who know that the very threat itself was a threat 
 against the life, and the attempt to execute it equal to the 
 punishment of death : it was from that authority we adopt 
 the threat. And in that they triumph, and think they have 
 discovered a plea and excuse for this defendant. 
 
 crucitfes After that there comes a threat of a curious nature, which 
 practised gives an answer to all the Counsel attempt to establish 
 eunuchs, and all their examination endeavours to lead to that those 
 ministers were the Nawab 's prisoners, and not the prisoners 
 of the English. The last final threat is, to tell them that, 
 after having been put in irons at Fyzabad after having 
 been brought and double ironed, as your Lordships see in 
 one of these letters, in which it is said, " I send you here 
 another pair of fetters to load their feet with:" the answer 
 is, " They are already so galled and swollen that they 
 cannot put on the additional fetters;" after all this, 
 Mr. Holt in his evidence [and] a letter of Mr. Bristow's 
 aver the fact that they were led out to corporal punishment; 
 that they saw the preparations made to tie them up ; and 
 the fact is, the elder of them, an old man near seventy, was
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 701 
 
 inhumanly scourged in the streets of Lucknow. After being 
 confined in Fyzabad after being double-ironed at Luck- 
 now after being publicly scourged now comes the climax, Threat to 
 the threat that they will send them where ? to Chunar themYo the 
 Ghur. They give them four days' notice that they will send 
 them into a British fort into pure British custody : having 
 found a greater degree of punishment under the immediate 
 eye of the Nawab, then, to come to the climax of misery, 
 they point to Chunar, a British fort, where the British flag 
 was flying at the moment ! Am I speaking in the hearing 
 of any officer who has served in India ? and gallantly 
 many, nay, all, have served in India. Am I speaking 
 before those who think that that flag, at whose sight the 
 heart of slavery has always drooped and the standard of 
 tyranny tottered that that should be pointed to as the 
 signal of oppression, as the mark of a spot where neither 
 inercy nor humanity can inhabit where there are heavier 
 chains, severer threats and sharper scourges where there 
 was something to be found lower than perdition and blacker 
 than despair? "We will send you from this place into 
 custody purely British, and think what your situation will 
 be then." 
 
 And yet, after this last damning proof of whose prisoners 
 they really were, and of what they thought was the severest to prove 
 threat and the sharpest torture they could use to them, the the^ 
 Counsel still endeavour to maintain, and Mr. Middleton pnsoners< 
 attempts at your Lordships' bar to maintain the same, that 
 they were not his prisoners they were the Nawab's pri- 
 soners ; he ordered the fetters, he ordered them to be 
 scourged ; that he entirely practised all these cruelties. 
 Your Lordships will not, after that, have much doubt whose 
 prisoners they were, or who are responsible for the inhu- 
 manity with which they were treated. 
 
 My Lords, I have said there was no inquiry. There was 
 however something not an inquiry ; but a threat of accu- 
 sation was used to them. Mai or Gilpin answers the letter 9, rde T r jj <om 
 
 - i r T i . i . , i T , i , ,1 , Mr. Johnson 
 
 of Mr. Johnson, in which he is directed to threaten that to .Major 
 they will be charged, unless they discover where the trea- threaten 
 sures are, with a new accusation. They say, " We will aii 
 suspect you of being concerned with a rebel, Bulbudder 
 Sing, who is an enemy of the Begums, and who had destroyed 
 and ravaged parts of her own lands." " Tell them that," 
 says Mr. Johnson, " and see whether they will not tremble 
 under that accusation." Major Gilpin answers, "They
 
 702 Summiny of Evidence on Secorid Charge the Begums : 
 
 13JIINE1788. deny all the facts, and they do stake their lives upon any 
 the smallest proof being brought against them." What 
 is the answer to this ? " Tell us where the treasure is " is 
 the only reply. All craft is thrown aside. They seem to 
 disdain the limping pace of fraud ; they stand upon no 
 pretences ; they disclaim all appearances ; they instantly 
 answer, " Then tell us where the treasures are hidden." 
 injustice This is one of those actions consonant to British justice 
 them 8 !;!) 8 and policy. They say, " You are charged with the blackest 
 m1stress, h the f a ^ crimes with ingratitude and treason to the Nawab, 
 Begum. your master. You are charged with a bloody and desperate 
 attempt to lay the country in civil war. You are charged 
 with an attempt to destroy your brethren and allies, the 
 English. Now, if you will add but one more crime to the 
 black catalogue the basest that can deform human nature 
 ingratitude and treachery to your mistress then we are 
 friends, then we take you to our bosom, and you become fit 
 associates for the British Government in India/' Oh ! Jus- 
 tice ! Faith ! Policy ! fly from this spot though your temple 
 and sanctuary for a moment, and do not hear that human 
 arrogancy has charged you with such crimes ; for it is not 
 in the power of human vengeance to punish for such crimes. 
 These are the crimes and the charges, so far as they relate 
 to the treatment of the eunuchs of the Begums, 
 in-treat- The next series of acts of justice, of policy and of 
 Begums. tlle humanity, relates to the two Princesses, the mother and 
 the grandmother of the Nawab. I have no doubt but that 
 your Lordships would have hoped that the inhumanity and 
 the cruelty of these persons should have been confined to 
 the agents of the Princesses. I have no doubt but that you 
 would have hoped that they would have confined the 
 torture of the mind, and their severities and their threats 
 to use Mr. Middleton's phrase to have endeavoured to 
 have acted upon the Princesses only through the medium 
 of their confidential servants. But I am sorry to say that 
 you will find the same spirit exactly exercised towards these 
 unfortunate women themselves. This is really a disgusting 
 part of the subject. It so shocks and affronts human nature 
 to listen to it that I shall touch but very lightly upon it. 
 
 Captain Jaques first states a complaint from the Bow 
 Begum of her servants having left her ; which he states 
 to be true ; also of their want of means to subsist them. 
 Major Gilpin afterwards, upon Mr. Johnson's suggestion 
 that this hint, as he calls it, of the cojah's was a good one,
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 703 
 
 directs him to place a guard upon the elder Begum's palace, 
 who lives at a considerable distance, as your Lordships will 
 recollect to have heard, from the Zanana and the Khourd 
 Mahal, which are nearer together, and the residence of the | f e t ^ n elder 
 widow of Suja-ud-Dowla, the late Nawab, the Bow Begum. 
 Upon placing this guard, a general spirit of indignation 
 and resentment appears to have possessed the minds of 
 all the poor wretches round the country, and they gather 
 together in a hostile threatening manner. Major Gilpin, Removal of 
 with a humanity that does him credit, disobeys his orders *, he jg^o* 
 and returns from the palace. Upon this, Mr. Johnson Gilpin. 
 writes him a reproaching letter.* Mr. Johnson, acting under Reproached 
 the true spirit of these peremptory orders, and that dreadful b^lir.lkJhn 
 responsibility which Mr. Hastings had denounced upon 80n - 
 those to whom he had committed the execution of his 
 orders, reproaches Major Gilpin for having taken this 
 measure, which Major Gilpin himself stated it might have 
 led to a general massacre if he had not taken. Major Gilpin Major > 
 replies to this, and remonstrates with Mr. Johnson upon the repty s 
 occasion. He said it was impossible for him to have restrained 
 his troops ; and he mentions what Mr. Johnson himself 
 states in his letter, 
 
 " That it was necessary, unless my orders for extirpating every man in 
 arms had been positive , and which from the tenor of your letter I never 
 could expect to receive, as you say it is not worth proceeding to extremities 
 with so respectable a family, &c." 
 
 I must too do credit to them wherever I see anything 
 like lenity in Mr. Middleton or his agent. They do seem 
 to admit here that it was not worth while to commit a 
 massacre for the discount of a small note of hand, and to 
 put two thousand women and children to death in order to 
 procure prompt payment. I wish to do them credit where 
 I can, and this is the only opportunity that I had of 
 doing it. 
 
 " The situation of affairs all day yesterday was very precarious, so His repre- 
 
 much so that, by the increase of troops in the city, I every moment sentation of 
 
 miTT apprehen- 
 
 expected the serious scene to open. 1 he .now rsegum sent no message S j ons O f an 
 
 all the day ; which confirmed me in opinion she meant an immediate attack from 
 attack ; and in consequence I was prepared in every respect, and gave 
 the necessary instructions to every post and party. Early in the evening 
 the Bow Begum sent to request I would send my commandant to her ; 
 
 * See the Correspondence between Major Gilpin and Mr. Johnson in the 
 'Minutes of the Evidence," pp. 874, et seqq.
 
 704 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 13JUNE1788. which I readily complied with; but told him to tell her that assembling 
 such a numerous force in the town was needles ; that I had given orders, 
 in case of a single shot from them, to enter the palace and put to death 
 every man in arms ; that the Benares massacre was still fresh in the 
 minds of the officers and sepoys, and that, notwithstanding the orders 
 I had given to spare women and children, I could not expect much 
 delicacy would be observed if once they entered. I therefore recommended 
 her to consider the critical situation, and come to terms." 
 
 Imminence 
 of the dan- 
 ger of a 
 massacre. 
 
 One would have imagined that, after this representation, 
 coupled as I know it was too with a fact that this dread- 
 ful event was upon the point of happening that there was 
 one of the matchlock men who had his match to the gun 
 upon the point of firing, when a Lieutenant Patrick (I think 
 his name was) felled him to the ground that, if that gun 
 had been fired, every man and woman aud child within 
 those walls had been massacred I say, after this represen- 
 tation and these facts had been so clear, your Lordships 
 would have imagined that Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson 
 would have been satisfied. But you will find they were 
 still actuated by that dreadful responsibility Mr. Hastings 
 had denounced against them, to prosecute his designs till 
 the Begum was at the mercy of him to whom she had 
 given a double life and who owed her every duty under 
 heaven. They order him again to resume his former post 
 under all this peril. Mr. Middleton reviews the whole of 
 this correspondence ; and, after he is acquainted with all 
 these facts, he writes again to Major Gilpin. 
 
 " It is not possible I can listen to any terms from the Begums before 
 the final discharge of their conditional agreement for fifty-five lacs. 
 Your coming here upon such an agency can only be loss of time in 
 completing the recovery of the balance of 655,OOOZ., for which your 
 regiment was sent to Fyzabad. I must therefore desire that you will 
 leave no efforts, gentle or harsh, unattempted to complete this before you 
 move from Fyzabad." 
 
 He then orders him to repossess himself of his former 
 Further post. Maior Gilpin again endeavours to touch his heart 
 
 remon- i , , ,1-1 - L ^ IT 
 
 strancesof and to interest his humanity, deceived I suppose in imagin- 
 ing he had some humanity. He says : 
 
 Order from 
 Mr. Middle- 
 to Major 
 Gilpin to 
 replace the 
 guard on the 
 palace. 
 
 Major 
 Gilpin. 
 
 " She (the Bow Begum) observes that her situation is truly pitiable ; 
 her estates sequestered, her treasury ransacked, her cojahs prisoners and 
 her servants deserting daily from her for want of subsistence. That she 
 has solicited the loan of money, to satisfy the demands of the Company, 
 from every person that she imagined would or could assist her with 
 any ; but the opulent will not listen to her adversity. She did hope 
 the wardrobe that was sent to Lucknow might have sold for at least one 
 half of the Company's demands on her ; but even jewellery and goods
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 705 
 
 she finds from woeful experience, lose their value the moment it is known 13JCNE1788. 
 they come from her." 
 
 My Lords, while these transactions are going on with respect sufferings 
 to the two Princesses, whom the Counsel have been very women in 
 eager to distinguish from those who inhabited the Khourd ^S?*** 
 Mahal and it is necessary that a distinction should be made 
 your Lordships will find that still greater calamities fell, 
 in consequence of those transactions, upon those unfortunate 
 women. Your Lordships will recollect a considerable degree 
 of examination with regard to the situation of the Khourd Separation 
 Mahal and the zanana ; but, upon looking at the evidence, Khourd 
 it will be seen they were perfectly distinct and separate 
 buildings ; that there was no communication ; that there 
 was in fact a house upon the banks of the Gogra between 
 them, which was in part inhabited by British officers ; that 
 that large and spacious garden was the quarters of the 
 guards ; that these were two palaces totally disconnected, 
 and there were separate guards : therefore there was no 
 ground for the pretence that, in order to surround the 
 zanana, they were obliged to surround them. And here Absence of 
 your Lordships undoubtedly will ask upon what pretence harshness 
 did they surround the lesser palace, where those unfortu- 
 nate women and children lived ? children indeed whom 
 Mr. Hastings, in his Defence before your Lordships, doubts 
 the existence of. They were not accused of any rebellion. 
 I suppose, while this great rebellion was going on, they 
 had not been carrying on any little sub-rebellion of their 
 own. I don't presume it was intended to be maintained 
 that the Nawab, under the Mohammedan law, had any 
 right to the property of these women. 
 
 Your Lordships recollect they stopped all persons going closeness O f 
 out of the palace ; that even visitors with child who {Cement." 
 wanted to go out from the palace that they prohibited 
 them ; that they searched every doolah or conveyance used 
 for carrying out these women ; that they exercised the 
 same strictness, the same severity, towards the persons in 
 the Khourd Mahal as to those in the palace. The con- 
 sequence was that Captain Jaques writes on the 6th of 
 March : 
 
 " The women belonging to the Khourd Mhal complain of being in Representa- 
 want of every necessary of life, and are at last driven to that desperation captam" 
 that they at night get to the top of the zenana, make a great disturb- Jaques of 
 ance, and, last night, not only abused the sentinels posted in the gardens, their desti- 
 but threw dirt at them. They threaten to throw themselves from the " 
 walls of the zenana, and also to break out of it." 
 
 Y Y
 
 706 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 . Major Gilpin, who succeeds Captain Jaques in command 
 And by at Fyzabad, finds them in the same situation. In a letter 
 G$fe. of the 30th of October he says :- 
 
 " Last night, at eight o'clock, the women in the Khourd Mhal zenana, 
 under the charge of Letaffut Ally Cawn, assembled on the tops of the 
 buildings, crying in a most lamentable manner for food that for the 
 last four days they had got but a very scanty allowance, and that yester- 
 day they had got none. The melancholy cries of famine are more 
 easily imagined than described ;" 
 
 there is much in this business indeed more easily imagined 
 than described 
 
 " and from their representations I fear the Nabob's agents for that 
 business are very inattentive." 
 
 In a letter which he writes four days afterwards, he 
 says : 
 
 " The repeated cries of the women in the Khourd Mhal zenana have 
 been truly melancholy. They beg most piteously for liberty, that they 
 may earn their daily bread by laborious servitude, or to be relieved from 
 their misery by immediate death." 
 
 This matter proceeds, till, in a subsequent year which 
 the Counsel took particular pains to distinguish as being 
 after the period of the exact existence of the present pres- 
 sure ; but if he is responsible for any part he is equally 
 They break responsible for this they did break out of the palace ; 
 paiace. thc they marched in melancholy array, the children in front, 
 behind them the ladies of the seraglio, and behind them 
 again their attendants. On the day following, their cla- 
 mours were more violent than usual. Lataffut 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; winch they accord- 
 ingly did, except two or three of the ladies and most of 
 their attendants. Lataffut then went to Hoshmund Ally 
 Khan, to consult with him about what means they should 
 Forcibly take. They came to a resolution of driving them in by 
 driven back f Qli:Q ,^ an( j g av e orders to their sepoys to beat any one of 
 sepoys. tj ie women w h o 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 zanana. He goes on with a description which is 
 pitiable and disgusting to read. He concludes it that the 
 elder Begum sent for the wounded children ; gave them 
 money ; shed tears over them ; and lamented the miserable
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 707 
 
 state to which the family of Suja-ud-Dowla was then 
 reduced. 
 
 The whole of this business, as far as relates to the Release of 
 eunuchs and the Begums, is at last ended not by any by e Mr n Bris 
 order, as your Lordships will observe, from Mr. Hastings, tow " 
 but by a humane act of disobedience rather on the part 
 of Mr. Bristow ; though, with a politic generosity he gives 
 Mr. Hastings the credit of it ; for he takes upon himself 
 at last to release the ministers of the Begum. Major 
 Gilpin describes the enlargement of the prisoners in two 
 short letters, the one a public and the other a private 
 letter. He says : 
 
 " Dear Sir, I wish you had been present at the enlargement of the 
 prisoners. The quivering lips, the tears of joy stealing down the poor 
 men's cheeks, was a scene truly affecting." 
 
 He mentions that it was to the great joy of all the city of 
 Fyzabad that they were released, which shows the esteem 
 in which they were held. 
 
 My Lords, to avoid the insinuation Mr. Hastings makes 
 in his Defence, I have merely stated these facts. I shall 
 not comment upon them, or endeavour to touch your 
 feelings by observation upon any circumstance of aggrava- 
 tion whatever, but simply submit the facts to your Lord- 
 ships. 
 
 My Lords, I now come to the argument upon which I ^ e jj^t f 
 feel and upon which alone I wish to state any force, which ings'respon 
 is, whether or not Mr. Hastings is answerable for this con- their pro- r 
 duct ? Your Lordships will recollect the treaty of the 12th ccedin s - 
 of October, 1778, which Mr. Middleton acknowledges he Treaties 
 did execute. Your Lordships will also recollect the two 
 treaties the one, Mr. Middleton 's engagement to procure 
 a treaty from the Nawab ; and the other, the treaty signed 
 by the Nawab in consequence of that engagement. Your 
 Lordships recollect, I am sure, the number of questions and 
 answers upon that subject. The result of which was that 
 Mr. Middleton acknowledged distinctly that treaty with 
 the Bow Begum of the 1 2th of October. He acknowledged 
 he did sign that, and had complete sanction and authority 
 from Mr. Hastings to sign it. As to the other treaty, he 
 says, " I think I must have signed it ;" and, upon refreshing 
 his memory with his papers the next day, he says he thinks 
 he did sign it ; but he doubts and hesitates with regard to 
 the authority from the board to sign that treaty. 
 
 Y Y 2 "
 
 708 Summing of Evidence on Second C/tarye the Begums: 
 
 i3JuxEi788. Whatever doubt Mr. Middleton had upon the subject, I 
 venture to assume that your Lordships, recollecting the 
 evidence upon it, whatever confusion there might have been 
 with respect to the dates and the time when signed, when 
 you recollect that one plain decisive fact I mean these 
 treaties being given by the Nawab to Mr. Purling, in 1780, 
 as acknowledged binding treaties that when sent down to 
 Calcutta they were entered upon record by Mr. Hastings, 
 Mr. Hast- and not denied by him to Mr. Purling or the Begums I 
 by g thcm. n assume that the conclusion in your Lordship's breasts is 
 with me that, when Mr Hastings left Calcutta in 1781, 
 he did proceed bound and constrained by these treaties as 
 much as by the guarantee in 1775 and the treaty executed 
 by Mr. Middleton. Therefore their binding force upon 
 Mr. Hastings in 1781 is proved, and I don't supppose there 
 can be a doubt in one of your Lordships' minds upon the 
 stipulation subject. What then? Examine these treaties, and you 
 theTreaties will find a representation of Mr. Middleton expressly stating 
 mainte- that ^ ne j^idads and assignments for the maintenance of 
 xlwimf the ^ ie l^- nour< i Mahal were never paid. He expressly states 
 Mahal. that they did depend in great measure upon the country 
 of the Begums. He expressly states that one of their 
 jagirs was assigned for the very maintenance of this 
 Khourd Mahal. Upon that representation these treaties 
 Duty of were executed. Then I do say that those women who 
 ings to have remained upon the faith of it in the seraglio, the marriage 
 provision of these children, the portion for them, &c., being undertaken 
 women ^y ^ ie Begum upon the faith and sanction of these treaties 
 I say that these women and children had the same claim 
 to the guarantee, to the good faith and protection, of the 
 Company, as either of the Begums had. The Begums might 
 forfeit it ; so might they by misconduct. Is any miscon- 
 duct alleged against them ? None. Then, whenever the 
 Governor General determined to resume the jagirs and seize 
 the treasures, upon whatever pretence he did that, whether 
 upon a base and dishonest pretence of an hereditary right 
 in the Nawab or the base and stupid pretence of a rebel- 
 lion, when he determined upon this, the first idea that 
 ought to have presented itself to his mind was to have taken 
 care that these women were not sufferers in consequence of 
 removing that which proved to have been their subsistence, 
 and that they were not reduced to that state of famine 
 which I have read, and which the event proves was and 
 must have been the inevitable consequence. I mention
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 709 
 
 that, with this fair inference upon it, .as far as amounts to 
 the crime of omission in Mr. Hastings. 
 
 o 
 
 Now, with regard to the general responsibility in which 
 he stood for the other actions. Mr. Hastings says he is not Mr.^ast- 
 responsible for them. He uses the old hackneyed plea of ^f^ or thc 
 Tyranny, assisted by his prime minister Treachery that actions. 
 his instruments did them, and they are responsible for them His attempt 
 and not he. And Mr. Middleton did make the strangest ^l^ 1 
 attempt so strange that I am sure it cannot be blotted agents. 
 from your Lordships memory when, in the last day, he Efforts or 
 made a stand against these transactions, telling us that he to"n'to iddle " 
 was fearing to criminate himself, because he was so unfor- SJ cu JP at<5 
 
 M.1* -Hast* 
 
 tunate as to find that he had incurred, not only the dis- ings. 
 pleasure of the House of Commons, but of his principal, 
 Mr. Hastings, by these transactions ; insinuating that his 
 severities, his rigour, his conduct at Fyzabad, in seizing the 
 treasures, and to the eunuchs afterwards, had been the cause 
 of Mr. Hastings' displeasure. We pressed him upon that : 
 he still persevered in it with a sort of avarice of infamy, 
 with an aspiring after all the guilt : he persevered in 
 saying " I think myself more criminal than Mr. Hastings." 
 " When did you learn it ? When did you first hear 
 Mr. Hastings disapproved of your conduct? " " Why, my 
 conduct at Fyzabad was part of the charge against me upon 
 my return to Calcutta," We pressed him home ; and, before His 
 
 he left your bar, he was forced to own that the charge against contra?. 
 him was for lenity and forbearance, and not for severity and 
 rigour. Acting under that strange awe, that strange fasci- 
 nating and domineering power, Mr. Hastings seemed ever 
 to have held over him, he comes here in order to claim the 
 infamy, to solicit the guilt, of all these transactions, and to 
 transfer all the infamy and guilt from the head of Mr. Hast- 
 tings to his own. But the fact is, he was accused for 
 forbearance and not severity. "However," says Mr. Hast- ^Has? ' 
 ings, " I was so little the cause of these transactions that I jugs of his 
 was not acquainted Avith them till after I came to Eng- oYti 1 " 
 land." My Lords, I am at issue with the Counsel upon tfons* " 
 that point. I say it is not true. He knew the whole of 
 the outline ; he knew the whole of what was going on ; nay, 
 he did know the detail, as I shall show, in many points. 
 
 With regard to the agency of Mr. Middleton, I shall not Proofs or 
 
 i -I i i T i n Til- T Mr - M ddlc- 
 
 have much trouble to prove that to your Lordships. 1 ton acting 
 have here a mass of evidence, which we have brought press^ent 
 before your Lordships upon this occasion. We have given ^ r - Hast '
 
 710 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Beyums : 
 
 13 JUNE 1788. you the whole history here of their connexion, from the 
 first time when he was appointed in 177-t as his particular 
 private agent. Your Lordships will then recollect the fact 
 of his refusing to deliver up the correspondence relative to 
 the Rohilla war upon the most public matters, in defiance 
 and in disobedience of his masters, the Directors, and dis- 
 obedience of the Council at Calcutta, because he was 
 Mr. Hastings' private agent. 
 
 In one of Sir. Hastings' Defences before the House of 
 Commons, he says, " In 1777 I re-appointed my own agent, 
 Mr. Middleton;" which shows that in 1777 he did con- 
 sider him in the same light of peculiar responsibility to him 
 as in 1774. Then what is his situation in 1780? The 
 same. Your Lordships will see the battles and strug- 
 gles ; Mr. Hastings always fighting for him ; his contest 
 with General Clavering, Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, 
 those noble, worthy, characters, who did for a while make 
 a stand for the honour of the English name. You see him 
 making a struggle with Sir Eyre Coote, Mr. Francis and 
 Mr. Wheler ; and he at last gets him appointed in this 
 way, dividing the office between him and Mr. Bristow. 
 Then, in 1781, conscious of what his heart was fraught 
 with, you see him removing Mr. Bristow from Lucknow, 
 that there might be no spy upon the transactions that 
 brooded in his breast, when they came to blow and blossom 
 forth in the world. Look to the letters of credence he 
 gives him. He tells the Nawab he tells the Begums 
 '' Mr. Middleton is myself:" and undoubtedly persons 
 more identified, blended and made one, there never were 
 since the Creation. Therefore, upon the circumstance of 
 proving the agency of Mr. Middleton, and the peculiar 
 responsibility which Mr. Hastings stood in with regard to 
 this man's actions, I think I need not trouble your Lord- 
 ships any further. 
 
 Responsi- Now Mr. Hastings did none of these things himself. He 
 
 Mr. Hast- was not on the spot. Granted. But I believe it will not 
 
 done' 01 " acts be denied to me that it is not only consistent with sense 
 
 a*ent ghhis an( ^ reason, but with strict law, that where any person by 
 
 authority directs another to do a deed which is illegal, he 
 
 becomes responsible for the consequences arising out of that 
 
 deed, although he did not even foresee, much less direct, 
 
 those consequences ; that in that case the person whose 
 
 authority awes, whose orders influence and direct it, in 
 
 fact becomes the principal, and the agent who executes
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 711 
 
 rather the subordinate, in that business. These are the 
 principles of natural law and reason. It is so to common 
 sense ; and is it not so to the common law of England ? 
 The common law of England is the perfection of common 
 sense and the consummation of the reason of man. It is 
 strict law that a person shall be responsible for the con- 
 sequence of an illegal act done under his influence, his 
 authority and direction. Mr. Hastings had at this time 
 illegally assumed and taken to himself the whole power of 
 the Council, civil and military. This Mr. Middleton owns 
 he was apprised of; and, under this authority and under 
 this idea, Mr. Middleton obeyed the orders of Mr. Hastings. 
 
 The next question is, what was the order he gave ? Did Question of 
 he order irons fetters famine guards searching, scourg- h^ha 
 ing, persons ? No : he says, 
 
 " I approve of the Nabob's resolution to deprive the Begums of H j s \ e ^ er 
 their ill-employed treasures. In both services it must be your care to of instruc- 
 
 prevent an abuse of the powers given to those that are employed in them. il 011 ^/.^ ,, 
 V ii? -uj. L i_ n -vr Mr. Middle- 
 
 You yourself ought to be personally present. You must not allow any ton. 
 
 negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both services until the 
 Begums are at the entire mercy of the Nabob, their jaghires in the quiet 
 possession of his aumils, and their wealth in such charge as may secure 
 it against private embezzlement. I now demand, and require you most 
 solemnly to answer me are you confident in your own ability to accom- 
 plish all these purposes and' the other points of my instructions ? If 
 you reply that you are, I will depart with a quiet and assured mind to 
 the Presidency, but leave you a dreadful responsibility if you disappoint 
 me." 
 
 Here is the order, and here is the obligation. Now 
 what is the question ? Could Mr. Middleton execute this 
 order by any milder means than those he attempted to 
 carry it into execution with ? We press him at your 
 Lordships' bar, and he does own that it was not possible to 
 have executed this commission by any other less severe 
 means. Mr. Middleton says that no man living, even in 
 times of war, could enter the walls of the zanana, other 
 than the father, the husband or brother, of the Begums. 
 Did Mr. Hastings suppose the treasures lay scattered about 
 the outside of the walls of the zanana? Did he believe 
 the Begums would deliver them up easily? Why, we 
 have his own proof ten thousand thousandfold that he 
 knew of their reluctance ; that they were concealed ; and 
 that nothing but extremity and compulsion would force 
 them from them. And in this the Counsel again assist us ; 
 because, when they say the Nawab was always aiming to 
 get these treasures if we choose to admit the fact, which.
 
 712 Summing of Evidence on Second Charyc the Begum*: 
 
 J3J t;Niu78s. as it makes against themselves, we have no great objection 
 to do they must have been upon their guard. But it is 
 proved there was no earthly means of getting at these 
 treasures or bringing the Begums to the entire mercy of 
 the Nawab but by operating upon their hopes and fears- 
 threatening and chastising their confidential servants. 
 Then I assume this that, if I only prove the agency, and 
 prove the general principles of responsibility for agency 
 if I prove the order, and that it could not be executed by 
 any lighter means than those used, I need not prove that he 
 ever heard of the means. He might have stopped his ears 
 for ever. But I will show that he heard of the means, and 
 that, hearing of them, he approved them. 
 
 aiico of r " ^ r ' Middleton apologises for a temporary forbearance. 
 
 Mr. Middle- Up on the 13th of January he writes to Mr. Hastings, and 
 
 proved by says the two eunuchs, Behar and Jewar Ali Khan, have 
 delivered themselves into the Nawab's custody. He after- 
 wards mentions their having been surrendered, and that 
 they were then his prisoners. Mr. Hastings then, in a 
 letter of the 25th, reproaches Mr. Middleton for having 
 used the least forbearance. He says, he receives the advice 
 of their having the eunuchs in possession at the time with 
 satisfaction ; but, he says. 
 
 " You began by negotiation, which had the natural effect of exciting 
 resistance : and you now tell me that, without hesitating a moment, 
 you have given your concurrence to a temporary forbearance. It is pos- 
 sible that in this repeated opposition to my orders you have been 
 actuated by some necessity," 
 
 Here he rebukes him, and gives him a lesson for the 
 future; that if he hears of forbearance till he has accom- 
 plished the full effects of the order, namely, bringing them 
 to the entire mercy of the Nawab, he lets him see what the 
 effect of his anger will be : at this time he had not notice 
 of severity or of irons 
 
 " but this I can hardly suppose, as you have not even alluded to them 
 or assigned reasons for having deviated from them. I shall wait 
 anxiously for the result of your proceedings. After having, at the 
 earnest solicitation of the Nabob, in the first instance, and his appli- 
 cation to me for my concurrence in the second, agreed to his resumption 
 of the jaghires held by the Begums and to the confiscation of their 
 treasures, and thereby involved my own name and the credit of the 
 Company in participation of both measures, I have a right to require 
 and insist on the complete execution of them ; and I look to you for 
 their execution, declaring that I shall hold you accountable for it if they
 
 S [icech of Mr. Sheridan. 713 
 
 shall fail of the ends proposed, after the attainment of the means which I 
 the dismission and dispersion of these forces and the possession of the 
 kella have afforded you for accomplishing them, beyond the apparent 
 possibility of disappointment." 
 
 Mr. Middleton afterwards lets him know that they had ^-"cr of 
 
 L ,1 i 11 i-i T 11 i Mr. Middle- 
 
 got the kella, and it was indispensably necessary in his ton inform- 
 owii excuse to employ temporising expedients, and to work H 
 upon the hopes and fears of the Begum, and more especially cccdf 
 upon those of her principal agents, through whose means 
 alone there appeared any probable chance of our getting 
 access to the hidden treasures of the late Wazir. He says 
 in the same letter, excusing this strange suspicion and 
 doubt of his having some humanity: 
 
 " Where force could be employed it was not spared." 
 He assures him of that, and then he informs him : 
 
 " Her chief agents imprisoned and put in irons, no further step was 
 left;" 
 
 now, my Lords, observe this 
 
 " and in this situation they still remain, and are to continue, excepting 
 only a remission of the irons, until the final liquidation of the payment. 
 And, if then you deem it proper, no possible means of offence being left 
 in her hands or those of her agents, all her lands and property having 
 been taken, I mean, with your sanction, to restore her house and 
 servants to her." 
 
 Here then, upon the 5th of February, there is complete 
 notice to Mr. Hastings of this that they had surrounded 
 the kella that they had guarded the passages of it, dug 
 out the treasures that they had hold of the ministers 
 that they were in irons, and were to continue so till the 
 final liquidation of the payment. He is now protesting 
 solemnly in England that he never knew any part of the 
 means used till his return to this country. 
 
 In a letter of the 2oth he writes to Sir Elijah Impey : His letter 
 and your Lordships recollect Sir Elijah Impey swears that im^ r y Ehjah 
 all he received upon this subject he communicated to ^"^1"^ 
 Mr. Hastings; so it was the same as if he had wrote to mentor the 
 
 - r TT . * .- eunuchs. 
 
 Mr. Hastings. He says : 
 
 " The ministers have supported me nobly throughout the business/'- 
 
 the nobleness of their conduct was this abandoned treachery 
 to their mistress
 
 Order of 
 
 dissuade 
 the Nawab 
 
 settlement 
 
 714 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 13JUNE1788. " and deserve much commendation. Without the shrewd discernment 
 and knowledge of the finesse and tricks of the country which Hyder 
 Beg Cawn possesses, I believe we should have succeeded but indiffe- 
 rently ; for I soon found that no real advantage was to be obtained by 
 proceeding at once to violent extremities with the Begum, and that 
 she was only to be attacked through the medium of her confidential 
 servants, whom it required considerable address to get hold of. How- 
 ever, we at last effected it ; and, by using some few severities with 
 them, we at length came at the secret hoards of the old lady.'' * 
 
 This is the language of the representative of the British 
 government in India to the representative of British 
 justice in India ! Can it be so ? or is it not rather the 
 language of some banditti in a cavern plotting the destruc- 
 tion of some innocent family in their neighbourhood 1 So 
 far we trace the information to Mr. Hastings. 
 
 The next thing is this order of Mr. Hastings : 
 
 " I desire that you will endeavour to dissuade the Nabob from con- 
 eluding any settlement with the Begums, until the Board or myself has 
 ^ ieen advised of the amount of the treasure recovered from them, and of 
 the balance due at the latest period from the Nabob to the Company." 
 
 Your Lordships heard before that they were to remain 
 under these severities to remain in these prisons and under 
 these irons till a final settlement ; and then Mr. Hastings 
 orders him to make no final settlement till he shall give 
 n * m s P ec i a l directions for it. Afterwards Mr. Middleton 
 returns, and Mr. Hastings accuses him for his conduct at 
 Fyzabad. And what does he accuse him of? He accuses 
 him for his forbearance for his lenity. He recognises and 
 acknowledges his information of these facts, but that lie 
 was too lenient and too forbearing. Mr. Middleton makes 
 
 . TT 
 
 a curious answer. He says, he was as severe as he could 
 be ; he exercised all the severity in his power. He talks of 
 his expedition ; for one of the charges against him was, not 
 only that he was not cruel enough, but that he was not 
 quick enough. He says : 
 
 " On the 4th I went from Lucknow [which carries me two days 
 beyond my promise. But had it taken twenty days, or even a month, 
 it could not, I natter myself, be termed a long or unwarrantable delay, 
 when the importance of the business and the peculiar embarrassments 
 attending the prosecution of it to its desired end] are considered." 
 
 Now your Lordships will attend to this 
 
 " The Nawab," 
 
 says Mr. Middleton, excusing himself to Mr. Hastings 
 
 Mr. Middle- 
 
 Answer of 
 
 Mr. Middle- 
 
 ton. 
 
 Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 636.
 
 Speech of Mr. Xhcridan. 7 1 5 
 
 "the Nawab was son to the Begum, against whom we were to proceed. 13JUXE178 
 A son against his mother must at least save appearances in his mode of 
 proceeding." 
 
 This is not asserted but modestly and diffidently submitted 
 by Mr. Middleton to Mr. Hastings that a son must at 
 least save appearances when persecuting and destroying his 
 mother. And } T our Lordships will mark what follows, as 
 an answer to the argument that the English were not 
 movers in the business : 
 
 " The produce of his negotiation was to be received by the Company. 
 Receiving a benefit, accompanying the Nabob, withdrawing their protec- 
 tion, were circumstances sufficient to mark the English as the principal 
 movers in this business. At a court where no opportunity is lost to 
 throw odium upon us, so favourable an occasion was not missed to per- 
 suade the Nabob that we instigated him to dishonour his family for our 
 benefit. The impressions made by such suggestions constantly retarded 
 the progress and more than once actually broke oif the business ; which 
 rendered the utmost caution on my part necessary, especially as I had 
 no assistance to expect from the ministers, who could not openly move in 
 the business. In the East it is well known that no man, either by him- 
 self or his troops, can enter the walls of a zenana, scarcely in the case 
 of acting against an open enemy much less of an ally an ally acting 
 against his own mother. The outward walls and the Begum's agents 
 were all that were liable to be immediately attacked. They were dealt 
 with, and successfully, as the event proved."* 
 
 He therefore confidently trusts that the spirit and main object 
 of his orders were strictly adhered to and fulfilled, and that he 
 shall no longer be held criminal for a deviation from them. 
 This is his defence to Mr. Hastings' accusation ; detailing 
 the circumstances of the cruelty ; justifying it upon such 
 grounds as surely never was justification offered to the ears 
 of men before ; and then Mr. Hastings tells you he never knew 
 anything of the circumstances till he came to England. 
 What is Mr. Hastings' reply to this 1 Does he admit that 
 appearances were necessary to be observed by a son against 
 his mother ? Does he admit that there should be anything 
 like decency or decorum where there is no principle no 
 humanity? X<>; he says, " My orders were peremptory," 
 he seems to have regretted that his first order, which was 
 that there should be no forbearance, not even of an hour, 
 was not carried into execution " and, though a savage foe 
 in time of war respects the sacred walls of a zanana, you 
 ought not to have respected them, but to have pounced 
 upon the prey immediately, though a massacre of men, 
 
 * Letter of Mkldleton to the Governor and Council ; dated 28th July, 1783. 
 Printed in the Appendix to the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 150.
 
 716 Summing of Evidence on Second Charye the Bcyums : 
 
 women and children, had been the immediate consequence." 
 For that is the direct conclusion, 
 information I should mention here to your Lordships, though I think 
 Mr. Bristow I have proved it enough, that it does not stop even here ; 
 ings! 1 "' Hast " because after this Mr. Bristow goes up to Lucknow. Is he 
 silent ? Does he give him no information on these transac- 
 tions? No; he transmits him this very paper which I have 
 read, representing the famished condition of the Khourd 
 Mahal. He informs him he has found the eunuchs under re- 
 straint and in prison. He then communicates to him, for the 
 first time I will suppose, an extract of a letter which he 
 (Mr. Bristow) received from Mr. Middletonin October, 1782, 
 when he superseded him in his employ.* What does he tell 
 him in that extract ? He tells him he had kept these 
 people in severe restraint. He refers him, I should say, 
 to the correspondence between him and the Governor 
 General for a full explanation of what had passed respecting 
 the Begums. He says : 
 
 " Not having since the 2/th of January received any directions 
 from the Board nor the Governor General relative to the Begums, I 
 know not what their wishes may be concerning them." 
 
 It was in October, 1782, when Mr. Middleton writes this 
 letter, and which is transmitted by Mr. Bristow to 
 Mr. Hastings, which recapitulates what had been done with 
 regard to Mr. Middleton and the Begums ; and this letter 
 Mr. Hastings receives and records. 
 
 Further There are other letters from Mr. Bristow, which it is 
 
 transmitted needless I am sure to trouble your Lordships with ; but he 
 tow^to Bris " afterwards gives Mr. Hastings notice that Major Gilpin had 
 Mr. Hast- informed him that all further force would Ml ; that every- 
 
 I Y\ t^s . ' v 
 
 thing that violence could do had failed. He encloses 
 Major Gilpin's letter, in which he says that then every- 
 thing force or violence could do had been done, and now he 
 recommends lenient measures. So says Mr. Bristow. He 
 also transmits to Mr. Hastings the correspondence between 
 Captain Jaques, Major Gilpin, himself and Mr. Middleton, 
 upon the circumstances of the famine and the distresses of 
 the Khourd Mahal. 
 Mr.Bris- Now your Lordships will mark what Mr. Hastings does. 
 
 tow's letter, -.,-,-,., -, , j L i TT 
 
 announcing Mr. Bristow determines to adopt lenient measures. He 
 ofthc lease accordingly orders the eunuchs to be released. He writes 
 
 eunuchs, 
 withheld 
 
 from the * Printed in the Appendix to the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 355.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 717 
 
 word of this to Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings receives his 
 letter and withholds it from the [Council]. That is the council by 
 letter we had such a battle about, your Lordships recollect, f, 1 ,^! 1 ""' 1 " 
 with the Counsel, when they wanted us to read another 
 letter that was nothing to the purpose. He withholds that 
 letter ; and then gets the Board to write to know what had 
 been done with respect to the Begums. After he had heard 
 a detail of all the severities of all the cruelties ; after he 
 had not only had this communicated to him, but had heard 
 from the best authority that nothing but lenient proceed- 
 ings would do he suppresses the information that the 
 Begum's ministers were released, and gets the Board to give 
 a new order to recommence severities, which he had already 
 been apprised were not equal to the object. This is the 
 man that had never any information upon the subject till 
 after his arrival in England ! 
 
 If anything more was wanted upon the subject the Suppression 
 
 T\ 1 J T3 ii i. by Mr. Hast- 
 
 Directors here order an inquiry. By suppressing that jn^ 
 inquiry while Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson were upon or^ 
 the spot, he avoided an opportunity of gaining fuller J 
 information, if he wanted fuller information, upon that 
 subject. To crown the whole, he hears them narrated in 
 our charges ; he hears Mr. Middleton's explanation upon 
 them ; he hears them, [and says] deliberately, 
 
 " I won't say they are mine, but they are just, honourable, humane and 
 politic." 
 
 This crowns the whole ; this shows the monstrous falsity 
 upon which the whole of his Defence is founded. 1 have 
 proved the falsity of the assertion; that he knew, not only 
 the outline, but the detail ; that, knowing it, he approved 
 it ; and he defended it as just, politic and honourable. And 
 am I now to be told, when I have brought such proof 
 before your Lordships, that when he gives an agent autho- 
 rity to awe, to force, to compel, to kill when he inflames 
 and pronounces dreadful responsibility when lie has 
 communications of it, he says, 
 
 " I am happy to hear of it, and shall return with delighted mind to 
 Calcutta ;'' 
 
 when he afterwards makes a charge against his agent that he 
 was not cruel enough when he finally calls all the measures 
 just, humane and politic am I then to be told that he is 
 not responsible, because I cannot prove that he ordered the
 
 718 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 i3JuyEi788. number of lashes or the weight of the irons? Shall I be 
 told he was not the cause this noble tree was felled, because 
 he ordered them to lay an axe to the root but did not bid 
 them tear the bark because he ordered them to tear out 
 the heart but did not order a drop of blood to be shed ? 
 My Lords, he is as much responsible as if he had himself 
 executed these orders ; as much as if he had executed that 
 threat ; as much as if he had stooped to the gaoler's office 
 and fastened the irons on the swollen feet of the ministers ; 
 as much as if he had torn the bread from the children's 
 mouths ; as much as if he had searched the zanana and 
 examined the doolahs. I say I have brought home these 
 crimes and laid them full upon Warren Hastings at your 
 bar that he is answerable for them to law. to equity, to 
 his country and to his God. 
 
 My Lords, having concluded this head with respect to 
 the responsibility of Mr. Hastings for these actions, I trust 
 your Lordships will at least do me the justice to own that 
 I avoided the reproach Mr. Hastings has endeavoured to 
 throw upon the Commons, of laying their force and their 
 stress upon the incidents and upon the calamities them- 
 selves, and endeavouring to procure an interest in the mind 
 from them ; that I did pass them over as lightly as I could 
 in respect to the assembly I speak before, and in respect 
 indeed to the national character of those Englishmen who, 
 I am sorry to say, were concerned in it ; that I did point 
 it to the ground upon which I wish to stand upon a clear, 
 plain, proof of facts, and clear, warrantable, conclusions from 
 the facts themselves. 
 
 Mr. Hastings has endeavoured to cast the reproach, the 
 rnfanvy, the crime, of these transactions upon his instruments 
 His attempt and agents. He is not content with that, but, feeling no 
 the'cduncii doubt that would probably fail him, he then has recourse 
 . t another expedient, namely, to endeavour to shelter his 
 delinquency by finding participators in his guilt, thinking 
 he can procure impunity to himself by proving community 
 in his crimes. In his Defence before the House of Commons, 
 first he says they were not his, they were the instruments'. 
 Then, whosever they were, they were admirable actions, 
 just, humane and politic. That your Lordships will judge 
 of. But then he concludes with saying, 
 
 " However, if they are not so, the Board were equally concerned and 
 equally responsible."
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 719 
 
 equally concerned and equally unanimous with himself. 
 Good God ! this poor, miserable, Board I don't mean to 
 speak with any disrespect of Sir John Macpherson ; but has 
 Sir John Macpherson no friend in the world that would 
 wish to vindicate him from this foul charge ? Mr. Wheler 
 is unfortunately dead ; but has he no friend that would wish 
 to rescue his name from being the associate in such transac- 
 tions ? Mr. Stables, with a pathetic exclamation and the 
 heart's tongue spoke at the moment when he was asked, 
 had he any share in this ? " No ; God forbid \" He 
 deprecated the idea in the most solemn manner that he 
 could, to clear himself from the imputation. In one respect 
 some degree of, not guilt, but error certainly, may be 
 attributed to the Board I mean for the criminal credulity 
 which they gave to Mr. Hastings' account of these transac- 
 tions. 
 
 Your Lordships must never for a moment leave out of withhpid- 
 your minds this decisive circumstance, that, during all the mlt?onof 
 time he was absent, till the very moment he had his hand h^f^m** 1 " 
 upon the treasures and could send an account of the spoils thc Council. 
 of his rapine, as well as the means he took to effect it, he 
 never once acquainted the Board of Calcutta with any one 
 of the transactions. If your Lordships look at the letters J^*^ 1 " 9 of ., 
 to the Directors, it is a most ludicrous series of letters, to the 
 There you hear them say: giving*!' 
 
 particulars 
 
 " Mr. Hastings, the Governor General, is with great power in the ceediVgs?" 
 upper provinces ; he had an escape at Benares ; what he is about since 
 we don't know." 
 
 Then you have a letter late in December from them, in 
 which they say, they have got accounts at last about him, 
 and if they had time to copy them they would send them. 
 The ship remains seven days, and nobody could find time 
 to copy this little treaty of Chunar. The Swallow never 
 brings home any one account ; not a word of the Begums, nor 
 of confiscation, nor of rebellion. The Directors have not a 
 syllable of information upon that subject, when the Swallow 
 leaves Calcutta in January. At last the Board do get 
 information : and here, if there can be aggravation to the 
 crimes we accuse him of, it is the mass of falsity to which 
 he induces these gentleman to sign their names in concert 
 with himself for I accuse none of them. This letter of 
 the 1 1 th of February consists of ten paragraphs, and there 
 is not one syllable of anything like a fact that Mr. Mac-
 
 720 Summing of Evidence on Second Charr/e the Begums : 
 
 13JUNE1783. plierson and Mr. Wheler set their names to. They mention 
 their having detained the Swallow for the purpose of cany- 
 ing home a complete narrative of the Governor General's 
 proceedings at Benares and Chimar, which they daily 
 expected to receive from him ; but the length of the paper 
 and the great number of references in it made it impossible 
 to send it down sooner than he did, and they found it would 
 have required a long time to copy them ; therefore the 
 Swallow went without them. They despatch the Nancy, 
 
 and send home Major Fairfax, at the expense of 
 
 pounds, to the Company ; and he modestly disclaims any 
 merit for reclaiming a province, because he confesses he was 
 the means of losing it. They send home the ship Nancy 
 with the accounts of the Governor General, which your 
 Transmittai Lordships recollect is that famous Narrative, with that 
 inpVxarro- forged date of the 29th of November included in it, by 
 forgeddate. which he could not dupe the Board; and how they came to 
 join in the deception I cannot reconcile well to my mind ; 
 because they knew that it was not the 29th of November, 
 for they never had such a letter : but it was done to make 
 the Directors believe he had written it on the 29th of 
 November ; and there he tells them of the Begums, the 
 for S er r Chunar treaty, &c. Many people, I am aware, may have 
 looked at this subject and be a little puzzled to make out 
 why he fixed upon this day, the 29th of November, more 
 particularly than any other day whether it was from any 
 Indian prejudice, from its being the site or fortunate hour. 
 But, if your Lordships look a little into the matter, you 
 will see some reason for the date. It does seem a little 
 odd, as Sir Elijah Impey was coming back with the 
 affidavits the next day, that he should not have waited 
 till he got that testimony before he sends this long letter 
 to the Directors. But he parries that. It showed, he 
 thought, these affidavits might require some little segrega- 
 tion the cramp word used by Sir Elijah Impey. I do 
 think, from that cramp phrase and the denial of being 
 employed in such an office, which he gave by anticipation, 
 that it does appear that it was literally the idea of its being 
 the very duty he was employed in which suggested an idea 
 of denying the fact. But, however, he chose this date, the 
 29th of November. He saj^s it can be well attested ; which 
 shows he had not got the attestations. Sir Elijah Impey 
 was not returned. But there were other good reasons, 
 were it necessary, for having withdrawn the temporary
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 721 
 
 brigade, and thrown the expense of it upon the Company. ISJUSB 
 There are many little internal circumstances in the letter 
 which will show he chose wisely in fixing this date, if he 
 could impose upon the Directors, for that purpose. 
 
 However, this Narrative comes home to the Board at 
 last. They say, the motives and reasons upon them are so 
 much at large it is unnecessary to add any. And there is 
 nothing more material than that when Mr. Hastings, free 
 from all confusion, having leisure and recollection of mind, 
 and having accomplished his object when he sits down 
 deliberately to tell what he did and why he did it to the 
 Directors if, upon his return, when he does that he tells Falsehoods 
 nothing but falsehood, then I do imagine your Lordships {^ Nan*.*" 
 will suspect there is a degree of guilt at bottom. He tive - 
 says : 
 
 " By these it will appear that the treachery and intrigues of Cheyt That the 
 Sing, supported by the disaffection and restless disposition of the Bow insurreo 
 Begum, mother to the Nabob of Oude, at Fyzabad, produced insur- oudlwero 
 rections in that country which till lately we were unapprised of, on caused by 
 account of the communication between that place and Benares being P,?,? 3 ^ ing 
 
 i_ n rt* * a.nu. UK, 
 
 wholly cut off." Begums. 
 
 This is one of the facts which he makes Sir John Mac- 
 pherson and Mr. Wheler put their names to. The first 
 moment this information reached them they received 
 accounts of the successful efforts of their troops in Septem- 
 ber. The Counsel have endeavoured to establish that the 
 first successful effort was on the third ; that the sepoys That the 
 under Colonel Hannay gave evident proofs by their deser- attacked 
 tion that they had been tampered with, and he with most Hannay and 
 of his officers were in great danger of their lives, a de- G^o 11 * 
 tachment under Lieutenant Gordon having been actually unde r 
 attacked and cut off, and the rest of the corps being sur- the Begum, 
 rounded by the rabble levied. Now by whom do your 
 Lordships think this rabble were levied? levied under the 
 sanction of the Begum, avowedly for the service of Raja 
 Cheyt Sing. He makes the Council say that the troops 
 that attacked him were troops levied under the authority 
 of the Begum, and there is not one word of the rescue. 
 They then mention how these circumstances are corrobo- 
 rated. Then the Council tell them that 
 
 Disaffection 
 
 " The just grounds of suspicion which had been given to the JNabob 9fthe 
 by the Begums and other principal jagirdars in his country, by the {^essitated 
 symptoms of disaffection and even treachery displayed in their conduct, the confisra 
 made it an object of serious consideration with him to take the first * ion o
 
 722 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums: 
 
 13JUNE17S8. opportunity which should offer, consistent with justice, to dispossess 
 
 them of the means of becoming injurious to his authority; and, the 
 
 necessities of his government requiring extraordinary aid, he resolved 
 to take this occasion of depriving them of these extensive jaghires, which 
 enabled them to become troublesome by the revenues which they yielded 
 and the number of dependants necessarily retained for their collection 
 and defence, and to resume the lands." 
 
 This is the fourth or fifth direct untruth, as your Lord- 
 ships must recollect. 
 
 " As the Resident at Lucknow had been made guarantee to an agree- 
 ment formerly executed between the Nabob and the Begum, in which 
 he had engaged, for a specific sum of money, to desist from all further 
 claims upon her, it was necessary for him to acquire the sanction of this 
 government to his intentions before he could carry them into execution, 
 which the infidelity of the Begum gave but too much reason to grant. 
 You will find this measure provided for in the treaty." 
 
 Now comes the grand climax of falsity of the whole : 
 
 That a " On the first attempt made by the Nabob to carry this plan into 
 
 revolt was execution against the Begum, she determined to resist his authority," 
 raised by 
 
 um ' for this, if there could be no other proof, he never could 
 hold up his head ; for, having set his hand to this para- 
 graph, he was bound to conceal no part of the truth from 
 them 
 
 " and raised a revolt by the means of her eunuchs, who had collected a 
 force of about 5,000 men in order to set the Nabob at defiance. Notice 
 of this second insurrection having been transmitted by the Resident 
 without loss of time to the Governor General at Benares, he imme- 
 diately ordered a large detachment to march from Cawnpore," 
 
 the purpose of which your Lordships will recollect 
 " and the Nabob resolved to go in person to Fyzabad.'' 
 That was the first time he took that resolution. 
 
 " On his arrival there, by the assistance of our troops he took posses- 
 sion of the kella ; and the eunuchs, seeing it would be in vain to make 
 a stand when superior forces were expected, surrendered themselves 
 prisoners to the Nabob, and their followers dispersed. In order to 
 punish the Begum for this daring ill-conduct, and to put it out of her 
 power to apply the treasures which she had amassed to the purpose of 
 raising further commotions in his country, the Nabob resolved to seize 
 her wealth. '* 
 
 His induce- My Lords, I do say that his inducing the Council to sign 
 council to e their names with rash credulity to his assertion to this 
 
 agree to the 
 report to 
 
 the Uircc- * Extract from a letter from the Board at Calcutta to the Court of Directors, 
 dated llth February, 1782. Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence." &c., 
 p. 638.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 723 
 
 string of falsehoods [such] that, if ever Sir John Macpher- 
 son comes to that bar, I will venture to say he will stand 
 ashamed at his weakness and credulity to have been so 
 imposed upon ; for I understand he is an honourable and 
 sensible man but to see the name of Wan-en Hastings the 
 first to sign this deliberate falsehood to the Directors, I say, 
 if I had proved nothing before, that this would prove not 
 only the guilt, but, what is more material if possible, the 
 conscious guilt and the real sense he had of his own 
 ill-conduct at the moment when all these transactions were 
 over. 
 
 I think so far I shall have vindicated the Council, for 
 they were wholly imposed upon ; and it is this circum- Deliberate. 
 stance of deliberation and consciousness of his guilt it u?ft f Ius 
 is that that inflames the minds of those who watch his 
 transactions. They root out all pity almost for persons 
 who can act under such an influence. We have an impres- 
 sion of such tyrants as Caligula and Nero, that, having 
 been bred up to tyranny and oppression, having had no 
 equals to control them, no moment for reflection we con- 
 ceive that if it could have been possible to seize the guilty 
 profligates for a moment you might bring conviction to 
 their heart and repentance to their mind. But where you 
 see a cool, reasoning, deliberate, tyrant one who was not 
 born and bred to an arrogant, fell, despotism; who has 
 been nursed in a mercantile line ; who has been used to 
 look round among his fellow subjects, to transact with his 
 equals, to account for his conduct to his masters, and, by 
 that wise system of the Company, to detail all his transac- 
 tions ; who never could fly one moment from himself, but 
 must be obliged every night to sit down and hold up a 
 glass to his own soul could never be blind to his deformity, 
 and who must have brought his conscience not only to 
 connive but to approve of it this distinguishes it from the 
 worst cruelties, the worst enormities, we read of of those 
 who, born to tyranny, who, finding no superior, no adviser, 
 have gone to the rash presumption that there were none 
 above to control them hereafter. This is a circumstance 
 that aggravates the whole of the guilt of the unfortunate 
 gentleman we are now arraigning at your bar. 
 
 There still remains behind one circumstance which His stifling 
 your Lordships perhaps will be surprised when I say that qu ir 
 
 I protest, if I was to call upon you to dismiss any impres- 
 sion I may have made, and the recollection of every fact tors - 
 
 z z 2
 
 724 Summing -of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 . and every proof I have brought forward if I were to 
 call upon you to blot them out from your minds one 
 circumstance remains, which I before a little alluded to, 
 which would in itself be final and conclusive against him 
 I mean the circumstance of his stifling an inquiry and 
 voting an indemnity to himself, as we rightly charge it 
 and he boldly denies it, upon receiving the orders of the 
 court of Directors, sent even upon this false account trans- 
 mitted home by him and the Council whom he had imposed 
 upon. 
 
 Your Lordships will recollect that this letter of the llth 
 of February and the fabricated Narrative were the only 
 papers before the court of Directors ; yet even upon this 
 false account though not much in the habit of firing with 
 that indignation which they ought to feel at oppression, 
 tyranny and fraud, practised by their servants, especially 
 where it is a productive fraud and brought emoluments 
 into their coffers they did fire, notwithstanding that, 
 when they heard of these transactions. They express them- 
 selves in strong terms of disapprobation , of the revolution 
 of Benares. They say: 
 
 Disap- " With respect to the resumption of the jaghires possessed by the 
 
 provalofthc Begums in particular, and the subsequent seizure of the treasures depo- 
 the^resump- sited with the Vizier's mother, which the Governor General, in his letter 
 turn of the to the Board of the 23d January, 1/82, has declared he strenuously 
 jagirs. encouraged and supported, we hope and trust, for the honour of the 
 
 British nation, that the measure appeared to be fully justified in the eyes 
 
 of all Hindostan." 
 
 They then state the circumstance of the guarantee they 
 had. 
 
 " If, therefore, the disaffection of the Begums was not a matter of 
 public notoriety, we cannot but be alarmed for the effects which these 
 subsequent transactions must have had on the minds of the natives of 
 India. The only consolation we feel upon this occasion is that the 
 amount of these jaghires, for which the Company were guarantees, is to 
 be paid through our Resident at the court of the Vizier."' 
 
 What that consolation was, and what foundation there 
 was for their comfort, your Lordships are already apprised. 
 They then add : 
 
 " If it shall hereafter be found that the Begums did not take that 
 hostile part against the Company which has been represented, as well 
 in the Governor General's Narrative as in several documents therein 
 referred to, and as it nowhere appears, from the papers at present in our 
 possession,"
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 725 
 
 having the whole of what he calls his legal, complete, 
 evidence, 
 
 " that they excited any commotion previous to the imprisonment of 
 Rajah Cheyt Sing, but only armed themselves in consequence of that 
 transaction ; and as it is probable that such a conduct proceeded entirely 
 from motives of self-defence, under an apprehension that they themselves 
 might' likewise be laid under an unwarrantable contribution, we direct 
 that you use your influence with the Vizier that their jaghires may be 
 restored to them." * 
 
 Here your Lordships see the Directors did make a fair 
 and natural conclusion, even upon all that mass of false- 
 hood, disguise and misrepresentation. They did believe 
 there had been some arming and something like a prepara- 
 tion for resistance the reverse of which I have proved. 
 They naturally concluded that they might have dreaded the 
 fate of Cheyt Sing, and that all persons might have put 
 themselves in a state of defence after that transaction. 
 Now what do your Lordships think is Mr. Hastings' con- 
 duct ? Mr. Wheler, willing always implicitly to conform to movS? "o7 
 the orders of the court of Directors, moves for an inquiry ?,* th 5 , 
 
 , . T. J Board of 
 
 Upon the Subject, the Council. 
 
 " And that the present Resident at the Vizier's court and the com- 
 manding officers in the Vizier's country ought to be required to collect 
 and lay before the Board all the information they can obtain with respect 
 to the defection of the Begum during the troubles at Benares and their 
 present to the Company." 
 
 A proper proposition to come from any man who regarded 
 either his own character or the duty he owed the Directors. 
 This, however, must not be given way to. Mr. Hastings 
 accordingly takes a curious distinction, and denies that the 
 court of Directors had ordered any inquiry. Says he, 
 " They say, ' If upon the inquiry ;' but they don't say, 
 ' which inquiry you shall make/ Now they have expressed 
 themselves ill, and have omitted to say you must make an 
 inquiry. They have presumed upon what they had no 
 right to presume, namely, our good faith and fair under- 
 standing of the spirit of their orders ; and now, as I do 
 not see in the bond, ' Make an inquiry,' I dont see that I 
 am bound to make an inquiry." 
 
 Mr. Macpherson at first is desirous of supporting Mr. 
 Wheler ; and a minute comes of Mr. Macpherson's, which 
 the Council took particular pains to have placed upon the 
 
 * Printed in the "Minutes of the Evidence," p. 920.
 
 Mr. Hast- 
 ings. 
 
 726 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 788. minutes as part of our evidence I shall say a word why 
 presently. Then comes an answer from Mr. Hastings to 
 Mr. Macpherson, which I will venture to say does exceed 
 anything of the sort, even in his own compositions for 
 nowhere else can you look for anything like any part of 
 them anything he had hitherto anywhere penned : he 
 says : 
 
 " I should gladly acquiesce in the motion made by Mr. Macpherson if 
 I thought it possible to frame a letter to the Begums in any terms 
 which should at the same time convey the intimation proposed by it, 
 and not defeat the purpose of it, or be productive of evils greater than 
 any which have already taken place and which time has almost 
 obliterated." 
 
 This is in October, 1783 ; and the ministers had been 
 
 - released about seven or eight months from their irons. But 
 
 he conceived that, in the rapidity and succession of his own 
 
 enormities, nine months was a sufficient time to obliterate 
 
 any past transactions of his. 
 
 Opposes " If I am rightly informed, the Nabob Vizier and the Begums are 
 
 the inquiry. on terms of mutual good will. It would ill become this government to 
 interpose its influence by any act which might tend to revive their 
 animosities, and a very slight occasion would be sufficient to effect it. 
 ft will be of little purpose to tell them that their conduct has in our 
 estimation of it been very wrong, and at the same time to announce to 
 them the orders of our superiors which more than indicate the reverse. 
 They will instantly take fire on such a declaration, proclaim the judgment 
 of the Company in their favour, demand a reparation of the acts which 
 they will construe wrongs with such a sentence 'warranting that con- 
 struction, and either accept the invitation to the proclaimed scandal of 
 the Vizier, which will not add to the credit of our government, or 
 remain in his dominions, but not under his authority, to add to his 
 vexations and the disorder of the country by contimial intrigues and 
 seditions. Enough already exists to affect his peace and the quiet of his 
 people. If we cannot heal, let us not inflame the wounds which have 
 been inflicted." * 
 
 Tender, compassionate, considerate, man ! 
 
 " If the Begums think themselves aggrieved to such a degree as to 
 justify them in an appeal to a foreign jurisdiction to appeal to it against 
 a man standing in the relation of a son and grandson to appeal to the 
 justice of those who have been the abettors and instruments of their 
 imputed wrongs let us at least permit them to be the judges of their 
 own feelings, and prefer their complaints before we offer to redress them. 
 They will not need to be prompted." 
 
 And now, before I come to the last magnificent para- 
 graph, let me call the attention of those who think them- 
 
 * Printed in the " Minutes of the Evidence," p. 923.
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 727 
 
 selves perhaps capable of judging of the dignity and 
 character of justice in this country let me call the atten- 
 tion of those who arrogantly, possibly, presume that they 
 understand what the features, what the duties, of justice are 
 here and in India let them learn a lesson from this great 
 statesman, this enlarged, this liberal, philosopher : 
 
 " I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity of official language in Argues that 
 saying that the majesty of justice ought to be approached with solicita- for iuqfry d 
 tiim, not to descend to provoke or invite it, much less to debase itself by ought to 
 the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of redress, with the denuncia- <*""" fr ' 
 tion of punishment before trial, and even before accusation." 
 
 This is the exhortation which Mr. Hastings makes to his 
 Council ! This is the character which he gives of British 
 justice ! 
 
 Here the Counsel choose we should read a minute of jK in i lt , of 
 Sir John Macpherson. Why they should I am at -a phenion! 1 *" 
 loss to determine ; only that I see something I regret 
 in this minute, and something that I should not have 
 expected from the good sense of Sir John Macpherson ; 
 because he seems to have been convinced by this bold, 
 bombastical, quibble, which I should have thought he would 
 have laughed at to Mr. Hastings' face. He answers, " The 
 majesty of justice ought certainly to be met with solicitation, 
 and should not descend to provoke or invite it." That is 
 very true, he is convinced, when he hears this character of 
 justice. Was it in tenderness to Sir John Macpherson they 
 wished us to read this ? What does it prove ? It proves 
 nothing but that he had something of an oriental style ; 
 that he . had not learned his ideas of the sublime and 
 beautiful in writing from the immortal leader of the present 
 prosecution. Upon the strength of this the inquiry is 
 stifled and crushed : and this Mr. Hastings denies to be 
 stifling the inquiry. This he says was not checking an 
 inquiry not dreading the result of an investigation. What 
 Sir John Macpherson's opinion of this majesty of justice was 
 is little to me. I will ask your Lordships do your Lordships 
 approve this representation ? Do you feel that this is the 
 true image of justice ? Is this the character of British justice ? 
 Are these her features ? Is this her countenance ? Is this her 
 gait or her mien ? No :I think even now I hear you calling 
 upon me to turn from this vile libel this base carica- 
 turethis Indian pagod(?) this vile [idol?] hewn from 
 soi no rock blasted in some uiiluilluved grove formed by
 
 728 Summing of Evidence on Second Charge the Begums : 
 
 i3JrirEi788. the hand of guilty and knavish tyranny to dupe the heart 
 of ignorance to turn from this deformed idol to the true 
 majesty of justice here. Here, indeed, I see a different 
 form, enthroned by the sovereign hand of Freedom, and 
 adorned by the hand of [Mercy ?] awful without severity 
 commanding without pride vigilant and active without 
 restlessness and suspicion searching and inquisitive with- 
 out meanness and debasement not arrogantly scorning to 
 stoop when listening to the voice of afflicted innocence 
 and in its loveliest attitude when bending to uplift its 
 suppliant at its feet. 
 
 My Lords, I have closed the evidence. I have no further 
 comments. When I have done with the evidence I have 
 done with everything that is near my heart. It is by the 
 majesty by the form of that justice that I do conjure 
 and implore your Lordships to give your minds to this 
 great business. That is the only exhortation I have to 
 make. It is not to exhort you to decide with perfect clear 
 conscience with confident proof in your bosom without 
 suffering the influence of any power upon earth to weigh 
 with you without suffering any party or political feeling. 
 It would be presumption to warn you against that I 
 know it cannot be the case. But what I exhort you to 
 is, that when you lay your hands upon your breasts, you 
 not only cover that pure, sublime and clear, conscience, but 
 that you do cover a mind convinced by a diligent appli- 
 cation to the evidence brought before you. It is to that 
 I quote the example of the Commons, to exhort your 
 Lordships to weigh and to look into facts not so much to 
 words, which may be denied or quibbled away but to 
 look to the plain facts to weigh and consider the testi- 
 mony in your own minds. We know, the -result must be 
 inevitable. Let the truth appear, and our cause is gained. 
 It is to this I conjure your Lordships, for your own 
 honour for the honour of the nation for the honour of 
 human nature now entrusted to your care that I, for the 
 Commons of England speaking through us, claim this duty 
 at your hands' They exhort you to it by everything that 
 calls sublimely upon the heart of man by the majesty of 
 that justice which this bold man has libelled by the wide 
 fame of your own renowned tribunal by the sacred pledge 
 by which you swear in the solemn hour of decision ; know- 
 ing that that decision will then bring you the greatest
 
 Speech of Mr. Sheridan. 729 
 
 reward that ever blessed the heart of man the conscious- 
 ness of having done the greatest act of mercy for the world 
 that the earth has ever yet received from any hand but 
 Heaven. 
 
 My Lords, I have done.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by GEORGE E. EYRE and WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE, 
 Printers to the Queen's most Excellent Majesty. 
 
 For Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
 
 r of 
 
 BMM REG '? NAL LIBR ARY FACILITY 
 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 Return this material to the library 
 from which It was borrowed
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARYfiWUTY 
 
 A 000 647 361 5