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The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) written by Edmund Burke

E >> Edmund Burke >> The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12)




XXX. That he, the said Warren Hastings, did insult the captive condition
of the said Nabob by informing him, in his imperious instructions
aforesaid, that this total, blind, and implicit obedience, in every
respect whatsoever, to Sir John D'Oyly and himself personally, and
without any reference to the board, "was the very _conditions_ of the
compliance of the Governor-General and Council with his late
requisition"; which requisition was, that he should enjoy _the free and
uncontrolled_ management of his own affairs. And though the said captive
did offer, as he, the said Hastings, himself admits, _four lacs_ of his
stipend, at that time reduced to sixteen lac, for _the free use of the
remainder_, yet he did place him, the said Nabob, in the state of
servitude in the said instructions laid down but a very short time after
he had assumed and used the said Nabob's independent rights as a ground
for refusing to obey the Company's orders,--and although he has
declared, or pretended, on another occasion, which he would have thought
similar, that any attempt to limit the household expenses of the Nabob
of Oude was an indignity, "which no man living, however mean his rank in
life, or dependent his condition in it, would permit to be exercised by
any other, without the want or forfeiture of every manly principle."

XXXI. That the said Warren Hastings did order the said stipend (which
was to be distributed, in the minutest particular, according to the said
Hastings's personal directions) to be paid monthly, not to any officer
of the Nabob, but to the said Resident, Sir John D'Oyly. And whereas the
Governor-General and Council did, on the appointment of Mahomed Reza
Khan, according to their duty, instruct him, that "he do conform to the
_orders_ of the Company, which direct that an annual account of the
Nabob's expenses be transmitted through the Resident at the Durbar, for
the inspection of this _board_" the said Hastings, in making his new
establishment in favor of his Resident, did wholly omit the said
instruction, and did confine the said communication to _himself_,
privately. And in fact it does not appear that any account whatsoever of
the disposition of the said large sum, exceeding 160,000_l._ sterling a
year, has been laid before the board, or at least that any such account
has been transmitted to the Court of Directors; and it is not fitting
that any British servant of the Company should have the management of
any public money, much less of so great a sum, without a public
well-vouched account of the specific expenditure thereof.

XXXII. That the Court of Directors did, on the 17th of May, 1766,
propose certain rules for regulating the correspondence of the Resident
with the Nabob of Bengal, in which they did direct, as a principle for
the said regulations, as follows (paragraph 16th). "We would have his
correspondence to be carried on with the _Select Committee_ through the
channel of the President: he should keep a diary of all his
transactions. His correspondence with the natives _must be publicly
conducted_: copies of _all_ his letters, sent and received, be
transmitted monthly to the Presidency, with duplicates and triplicates
to be transmitted home in our general packet by every ship."

XXXIII. That the President and Select Committee (Lord Clive being then
President) did approve of the whole substantial part of the said
regulation (the diary excepted); and the principle, in all matters of
account, ought to have been strictly adhered to, whatever limitations
may have been given to the office of Resident. Yet he, the said Warren
Hastings, in defiance of the aforesaid good rules, orders, and late
precedent in conformity to the same, did not only withhold any order for
the purpose, but, in order to carry on the business of the said durbar
in a clandestine manner for his own purposes, did, as aforesaid, exclude
all English from an intercourse with the Nabob, who might carry
complaints or representations to the board, or the Court of Directors,
of his condition, or the conduct of the Resident,--and did further, to
defeat all possible publicity, insinuate to him to give the preference
to verbal communication above letters, in the words following, of the
ninth article of his instructions to the Nabob: "Although I desire to
receive your letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which
cannot be _so easily explained by letters as by conversation_, I desire
that you will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such
points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing every
other concern, will give an immediate and the most satisfactory reply
concerning them." Accordingly, no relation whatsoever has been received
by the Court of Directors of the said Nabob's affairs, nor any account
of the money monthly paid, except from public fame, which reports that
his affairs are in groat disorder, his servants unpaid, and many of them
dismissed, and all the Mussulmen dependent on his family in a state of
indigence.




XVIII.--THE MOGUL DELIVERED UP TO THE MAHRATTAS.


I. That Shah Allum, the prince commonly called the Great Mogul, or, by
eminence, _The King_, is, or lately was, in the possession of the
ancient capital of Hindostan, and though without any considerable
territory, and without a revenue sufficient to maintain a moderate
state, he is still much respected and considered, and the custody of his
person is eagerly sought by many of the princes in India, on account of
the use to be made of his title and authority; and it was for the
interest of the East India Company, that, while on one hand no wars
shall be entered into in support of his pretensions, on the other no
steps should be taken which may tend to deliver him into the hands of
any of the powerful states of that country, but that he should be
treated with friendship, good faith, and respectful attention.

II. That Warren Hastings, in contradiction to this safe, just, and
honorable policy, strongly prescribed and enforced by the orders of the
Court of Directors, did, at a time when he was engaged in a negotiation
the declared purpose of which was to give peace to India, concur with
the captain-general of the Mahratta state, called Mahdajee Sindia, in
hostile designs against the few remaining territories of that same Mogul
emperor, by virtue of whose grant the Company actually possess the
government and enjoy the revenues of great provinces, and also against
the possessions of a Mahomedan chief called Nudjif Khan, a person of
much merit with the East India Company, in acknowledgment of which they
had granted him a pension, included in the tribute due to the king, and,
together with that tribute, taken from him by the said Warren Hastings,
though expressly _guarantied_ to him by the Company. With both these
powers the Company had been in friendship, and were actually at peace at
the time of the said clandestine concurrence in a design against them;
and the said Hastings hath since declared, that the right of one of
them, namely, "the right of the Mogul emperor, to our assistance, has
been constantly acknowledged."

III. That the said Warren Hastings, at the time of his treacherous
concurrence in a design against a power which he was himself of opinion
we were bound to assist, and against whom there was no doubt he was
bound neither to form nor to concur in any hostile attempt, did give a
caution to Colonel Muir, to whom the negotiation aforesaid was intrusted
on the part of the Company, against "inserting anything in the treaty
which might _expressly_ mark our _knowledge_ of his [the Mahratta
general's] views, _or concurrence in them_." Which said transaction was
full of duplicity and fraud; and the crime of the said Hastings therein
is aggravated by his having some years before withheld the tribute which
by treaty was solemnly agreed to be paid to the said king, on pretence
that he had thrown himself, for the recovery of his city of Delhi, on
the protection of the Mahrattas, whom the said Warren Hastings then
called _the natural enemies_ of the Company, and the growth of whose
power he then alleged to be highly dangerous to the interests of this
kingdom in India.

IV. That, after having concurred, in the manner before mentioned, in a
design of the Mahrattas against the Mogul, and notwithstanding he, the
said Warren Hastings, had formerly declared, "that with him [the Mogul]
our connection had been a long time suspended, and _he wished never to
see it renewed_, as it had proved a fatal drain to the wealth of Bengal
and the treasury of the Company, without yielding one advantage or
possible resource, even of remote benefits, in return," the said Warren
Hastings did nevertheless, on or about the month of March, 1783, with
the privity and consent of the members of the board, but by no
authoritative act, dispatch, as agents of him, the Governor-General
only, and not as agents of the Governor-General and Council, as they
ought to have been, certain persons, among whom were Major Browne and
Major Davy, to the court of the king at Delhi, and did there enter into
certain engagements with the said king by the means of those agents, and
did carry on certain private and dangerous intrigues for various
purposes, particularly for making war in favor of the said king against
some powers or princes not precisely described, but which, as may be
inferred from a subsequent correspondence, were certain Mahomedan
princes in the neighborhood of Delhi in amity with the Company, and some
of them at that time in the actual service and in the apparent
confidence and favor of the said Mogul; and he did order Major Browne to
offer to the Mogul king to provide for the _entire_ expense of _any_
troops the Shah [the said king] might require; and the proposal was
accordingly accepted, with the conditions annexed: by which proposal and
acceptance thereof the East India Company was placed in a situation of
great and perplexing difficulty; since either they were to engage, at an
unlimited _expense_, in new wars, contrary to their orders, contrary to
their general declared policy, and contrary to the published resolutions
of the House of Commons, and wholly incompatible with the state of their
finances, or, to preserve peace, they must risk the imputation of a new
violation of faith, by departing from an agreement made on the voluntary
proposal of their own government,--the agent of the said Hastings having
declared, in his letter to the said Hastings, by him communicated to the
board, "that the business of assisting the Shah [the Mogul emperor] can
and _must_ go on, if we wish to be secure in India, or regarded as a
nation of faith and honor."

V. That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 20th day of January, 1784,
send in circulation to the other members of the Council a letter to him
from his agent, Major Browne, dated at Delhi, on the 30th of December,
1783, viz., that letter to which the foregoing references are made, in
which the said Browne did directly press, and indirectly (though
sufficiently and strongly) suggest, several highly dangerous measures
for realizing the general offers and engagements of the said Warren
Hastings,--proposing, that, besides a proportion of field artillery, and
a train of battering cannon for the purpose of sieges, six regiments of
sepoys in the Company's service should be transferred to that of the
said king, and that certain other corps should also be raised for the
said service in the English provinces and dependencies, to be
immediately under the king's [the Mogul's] orders, and to be maintained
by assignments of territorial revenue within the province of Oude, a
dependent member of the British government, but with a caution against
having any British officer with the same; the said Major Browne
expressing his caution as followeth: "If any European officer _be_ with
this corps, a very nice judgment indeed must direct the choice; for
scarce any are in the smallest degree _fit_ for _such_ employ, but much
more likely to do harm than good." And the letter aforesaid being
without any observation thereon, or any disavowal of the matters of fact
or of the counsels so strongly and authoritatively delivered therein by
the said Warren Hastings's agent, and without any mark of disapprobation
of any part of his plan, whether that of the assignment of territory
belonging to the Company's allies for the maintenance of troops which
were to be by that plan put under the orders of a foreign independent
power, or that of employing the said troops without any British officer
with them, or for his alarming observation by him entered on the
Company's records, which, if not an implied censure on the nature of the
service in which British officers are supposed improper to be trusted,
is a strong reflection on the character of the British officers, which
was to render them unfit to be employed in an honorable service,--the
said Warren Hastings did thereby give a countenance to the said
unwarrantable and dangerous proposals and reflections.

VI. That a considerable time before the production and circulation of
Major Browne's letter, the said Hastings did enter a Minute of
Consultation containing a proposition similar in the general intent to
that in the said letter contained for assisting the Mogul with a
military force; but the other members of the board did disagree thereto,
and, being alarmed at the disposition so strongly shown by the said
Hastings to engage in new wars and dangerous foreign connections, and
possibly having intelligence of the proceedings of his agent, did call
upon him to produce his instructions to Major Browne; and he did, on the
5th of October, 1783, and not before, enter on the Consultations a
certain paper purporting to be the instructions which he had given to
Major Browne the preceding March, the time of his, the said Browne's,
appointment, in which pretended instructions no direction whatsoever was
given to the effect of his, the said Hastings's, Minute of Consultation
propounded: that is to say, no power was given in the said instructions
to make a direct offer of military aid to the Mogul, or to form the
arrangements stated by the said Browne, in his letter to the said
Hastings, as having been made by the express authority of the said
Hastings himself; but the said instructions contained nothing further on
that subject but a conditional direction, that, in case a military force
should be required for the Mogul's aid or protection, the Major is to
know the service on which it is to be employed, and the resources from
whence it is to be paid; and the instructions produced as his real
instructions by the said Hastings are so guarded as to caution the said
Browne against _taking any part in the intrigues of those who are about
the King's person_. By which letters, instructions, and transactions,
compared with each other, it appears that the said Warren Hastings,
after six months' delay in entering of (contrary to the Company's order)
any instructions to the said Browne, did at last enter a false paper as
the true, or that he did give other secret instructions, totally
different from, and even opposite to, his public ostensible
instructions, thereby to deceive the Council, and to carry on with less
obstruction dark and dangerous intrigues, contrary to the orders of the
Court of Directors, to the true policy of this kingdom, and to the
safety of the British possessions in the East.

VII. That the said letter from Major Browne was by the said Warren
Hastings transmitted to the Court of Directors, without being
accompanied by any part of the previous correspondence; by which wilful
concealment the said Warren Hastings is guilty of an high and criminal
disrespect to the Court of Directors, and of a most flagrant breach and
violation of their orders, which he was bound by an act of Parliament to
obey.

VIII. That the said Hastings having early in the year 1784 procured to
himself a deputation to act in the upper provinces, the Council, being
well aware of his disposition to engage in unwarrantable designs against
the neighboring states, did expressly confine his powers to the
circumstance of his actual residence within the Company's provinces. But
it appears that ways were found out by which he hoped to defeat the
precautions of the board: for the said Warren Hastings did write from
Lucknow, the capital of the country of Oude, to the Court of Directors,
a certain postscript of a letter, dated the 4th of May, 1784, in which
he informs the Court that the son and heir-apparent of the Great Mogul
had taken refuge with him and the Nabob of Oude; that he had a
conference with that prince on the 10th of the same month of May, "no
person being either present or within hearing" during the same; and that
in the said conference the prince had informed him of the distresses of
his father, and his wish for the relief of the king and the restoration
of the dominions of his house, as well as to rescue him from the power
of certain persons not named, who degraded him into a mere instrument of
their interested and sordid designs, and that, on a failure of his
application to him, he would either return to his father, or proceed to
Calcutta, and thence to England; and that the said Warren Hastings did
give him an answer to the following effect: "That our [the British]
government had just obtained relief from a state of universal warfare,
and required a term of repose; that our whole nation was weary of war,
and dreaded the renewal of it, _and would he equally alarmed at any
movement of which it could not see the issue or progress, but which
might eventually tend to create new hostilities_; that he came hither
[to Lucknow] with a limited authority, and could not, if he chose it,
engage in a business of that nature _without the concurrence of his
colleagues in office, who he believed would be adverse to it_; that he
would represent the same to the joint members of his own government, and
wait their determination. In the mean time he advised the prince to make
advances to Mahdajee Sindia, both because our government _was in
intimate and sworn connection_ with him, and because he was the
effectual head of the Mahratta state; besides that he [the said Warren
Hastings] feared his [Sindia's] taking the other side of the question,
unless he was early prevented."

IX. That in the statement of this discourse there is much criminal
reserve towards the Court of Directors,--it not appearing distinctly
what the objects were, nor who the persons concerned, nor what the side
was which he apprehended the Mahrattas might take, if not prevented by
his advances; and in the discourse itself there were many particulars
highly criminal, namely,--for that in the said conversation, in which he
describes himself as declining a compliance with the request of the
prince on account of the aversion (therein strongly expressed) of his
colleagues, of the Company, and of the whole British nation, to engage
in any measures which might even "_eventually lead to hostilities_," he
spoke to the prince as if he had been entirely ignorant of the offers
which but five months before had been made to the king, his father, on
the part of that very government, (whose repugnance to such measures he
then for the first time chose to profess, but which he always had
known,) through Major Browne, the Company's representative at the court
of Delhi, "to provide for the _entire_ expense of _any_ troops which the
Shah [the king] might require," and that this was "what the Resident had
_always_ proposed to the king and his confidential ministers,"--the said
Browne further declaring, "that, if, in consequence of the said
proposals, certain arrangements for the Shah's service by _troops_ were
not immediately ordered, in his opinion all our [English government's]
_offers and promises_ will be considered as false and insidious." This
being the known state of the business, as represented by the said
Hastings's own agent, and this the public opinion of it, although to
impose on the ignorance of the prince with regard to the proceedings at
his father's court would have been unworthy in itself, yet he, the said
Warren Hastings, could not hope to succeed in such imposition, as in the
postscript aforesaid he represents the said prince (who was the king's
eldest son, and thirty-six years of age) as a person of considerable
qualifications, and perfectly acquainted with the transactions at his
father's court, and as one who had long held the _principal_ and most
active part in the little that remained of _the administration of Shah
Allum_. And the said Hastings conferring with a prince so well
instructed, without making the slightest allusions to his said positive
and recent engagements, or without giving any explanation with regard to
them, the said Warren Hastings must appear to the said prince either as
a person not only contracting engagements, but actually being the first
mover and proposer of them, without any authority from _his colleagues_,
and against theirs and the general inclination of the British nation,
and on that ground not to be trusted, or that he had used this plea of
disagreement between him and his Council as a pretence, set up without
color or decency, for a gross violation of his own engagements, leaving
the princes and states of the country no solid ground on which they can
or ought to contract with the Company, to the utter destruction of all
public confidence, and to the equal disgrace of the national candor,
integrity, and wisdom.

X. That in a letter dated from the same place, Lucknow, the 16th of the
following June, 1784, the said Warren Hastings informs the Court of
Directors, that Major Browne, their agent to the Mogul, had arrived
there in the character also of agent from the Mogul, with two sets of
instructions from two opposite parties in his ministry, which
instructions were directly contrary to each other: the first, which were
the ostensible instructions, being to engage the said Hastings, in the
Mogul's name, to enter into a treaty of mutual alliance with a chief of
the country, then minister to the said Mogul, called Afrasaib Khan; the
second were from another principal person, called Mudjed ul Dowlah, also
a minister of the said Mogul, (but styled in the said letter
_confidential_, for distinction,) which were directly destructive of the
former; and the said latter instructions, to which it seems credence was
to be given, were sent "under the most solemn adjurations of secrecy."
The purpose of these latter and secret instructions was to require the
Company's aid in freeing the Mogul from the oppressions of his servants,
namely, from the oppressions of the said Afrasaib, between whom and the
Company Major Browne (at once agent to that Company, and to two
opposite factions in the Mogul's court) accepted a power to make a
treaty of mutual alliance under the sanction of his sovereign. And it
does not appear that he, Warren Hastings, did discountenance the
double-dealing and fraudulent agencies of his and the Company's minister
at that court, or did disavow any particular in the letter from him, the
said Browne, of the 30th of December, 1783, stating the offers made on
his part to the Mogul, so contradictory to his late declarations to the
heir-apparent of that monarch, or did give any reprimand to the said
Browne, or did show any mark of displeasure against him, as having acted
without orders, but did again send him, with renewed confidence, to the
court aforesaid.

XI. That the said Warren Hastings, still pursuing his said evil designs,
did apply to the Council for discretionary powers relative to the
intrigues and factions in the Mogul's court, giving assurances of his
resolution not to proceed against their sense; but the said Council,
being fully aware of his disposition, and having Major Browne's letter,
recorded by himself, the said Warren Hastings, before them, did refuse
to grant the said discretionary powers, but, on the contrary, did exhort
him "most sedulously and cautiously to avoid, in his correspondence with
the different princes in India, whatever may commit, or be strained into
an interpretation of committing the Company, either as to their army or
treasure,"--observing, "that the Company's orders are positive against
their interference in the objects of dispute between the country
powers."

XII. That, in order to subvert the plain and natural interpretation
given by the Council to the orders of the Court of Directors, and to
justify his dangerous intrigues, the said Warren Hastings, in his letter
of the 16th June, 1784, to the said Court, did, in a most insolent and
contemptuous manner, endeavor to persuade them of their ignorance of the
true sense of their own orders, and to limit their prohibition of
interference with the disputes of the country powers to such country
powers as are _permanent_,--expressing himself as follows: "The faction
which now surrounds the throne [the Mogul's throne] is widely different
from the idea which your commands are intended to convey by the
expressions to which you have generally applied them, of _country
powers_, to which that _of permanency is a necessary adjunct_, and which
may be more properly compared to a splendid bubble, which the slightest
breath of opposition may dissipate with every trace of its existence."
By which construction the said Hastings did endeavor to persuade the
Court of Directors that they meant to confine their prohibition of
sinister intrigues to those powers only who could not be easily hurt by
them, and whose strength was such that their resentment of such
clandestine interference was to be dreaded; but that, where the powers
were weak and fragile, such intrigues might be allowed.