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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)




It was the great business of Mr. Hastings's policy to subvert this great
political edifice. His first mode of subverting it was by commanding the
public ministers, paid by the Company, to deliver their correspondence
upon the most critical and momentous affairs to him, in order to be
suppressed and destroyed at his pleasure. To support him in this plan of
spoliation, he has made a mischievous distinction in public business
between public and private correspondence. The Company's orders and
covenants made none. There are, readily I admit, thousands of occasions
in which it is not proper to divulge promiscuously a private
correspondence, though on public affairs, to the world; but there is no
occasion in which it is not a necessary duty, on requisition, to
communicate your correspondence to those who form the paramount
government, on whose interests and on whose concerns and under whose
authority this correspondence has been carried on. The very same reasons
which require secrecy with regard to others demand the freest
communication to them. But Mr. Hastings has established principles of
confidence and secrecy towards himself which have cut off all confidence
between the Directors and their ministers, and effectually kept them at
least out of the secret of their own affairs.

Without entering into all the practices by which he has attempted to
maim the Company's records, I shall state one more to your
Lordships,--that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents,
who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and
ostensible agents who are not in the secret. The correspondence of those
private agents he holds in his own hands, communicates as he thinks
proper, but most commonly withholds. There remains nothing for the
Directors but the shell and husk of a dry, formal, official
correspondence, which neither means anything nor was intended to mean
anything.

These are some of the methods by which he has defeated the purposes of
the excellent institution of a recorded administration. But there are
cases to be brought before this court in which he has laid the axe at
once to the root,--which was, by delegating out of his own hands a great
department of the powers of the Company, which he was himself bound to
execute, to a board which was not bound to record their deliberations
with the same strictness as he himself was bound. He appointed of his
own usurped authority a board for the administration of the revenue, the
members of which were expressly dispensed from recording their dissents,
until they chose it; and in that office, as in a great gulf, a most
important part of the Company's transactions has been buried.

Notwithstanding his unwearied pains in the work of spoliation, some
precious fragments are left, which we ought infinitely to value,--by
which we may learn, and lament, the loss of what he has destroyed. If it
were not for those inestimable fragments and wrecks of the recorded
government which have been saved from the destruction which Mr.
Hastings intended for them all, the most shameful enormities that have
ever disgraced a government or harassed a people would only be known in
this country by secret whispers and unauthenticated anecdotes; the
disgracer's of government, the vexers and afflicters of mankind, instead
of being brought before an awful public tribunal, might have been
honored with the highest distinctions and rewards their country has to
bestow; and sordid bribery, base peculation, iron-handed extortion,
fierce, unrelenting tyranny, might themselves have been invested with
those sacred robes of justice before which this day they have cause to
tremble.

Mr. Hastings, sensible of what he suffers from this register of acts and
opinions, has endeavored to discredit and ruin what remains of it. He
refuses, in his defence to the House of Commons, in letters to the Court
of Directors, in various writings and declarations, he refuses to be
tried by his own recorded declarations; he refuses to be bound by his
own opinions, delivered under his own hand. He knows that he and the
record cannot exist together. He knows that what remains of the written
constitution which he has not destroyed is enough to destroy him. He
claims a privilege of systematic inconstancy, a privilege of
prevarication, a privilege of contradiction,--a privilege of not only
changing his conduct, but the principles of his conduct, whenever it
suits his occasions. But I hope your Lordships will show the destroyers
of that wise constitution, and the destroyers of those records which are
to be the securities against malversation in office, the discoverers and
avengers of it, that whoever destroys the discoverer establishes the
iniquity; that, therefore, your Lordships will bind him to his own
declarations, given on record under his own hand; that you will say to
this unfaithful servant of the Company, what was said to another
unfaithful person upon a far less occasion by a far greater authority,
"Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant."

* * * * *

Having gone through what I have been instructed might be necessary to
state to your Lordships concerning the Company's constitution, (I mean
the real inside, and not the shell of its constitution,)--having stated
the abuses that existed in it,--having stated how Mr. Hastings
endeavored to perpetuate and to increase and to profit of the abuse, and
how he has systematically endeavored to destroy, and has in some
instances in fact destroyed, many things truly excellent in that
constitution,--if I have not wasted your time in explanation of matters
that you are already well acquainted with, I shall next beg leave to
state to you the abuse in some particulars of the other part of the
public authority which the Company acquired over the natives of India,
in virtue of the royal charter of the present Mogul emperor, in the year
1766 [1765?].

My Lords, that you may the better judge of the abuse Mr. Hastings has
made of the powers vested in him, it will be expedient to consider a
little who the people are to whose prejudice he has abused these powers.
I shall explain this point with as much brevity as is consistent with
the distinctness with which I mean to bring the whole before your
Lordships; and I beg to observe to you that this previous discourse,
rather explanatory than accusatorial, (if I may use the expression,) is
meant rather to elucidate the nature of the matter to come before you in
regular charges than as proof of the charges themselves.

I know that a good deal of latitude is allowed to advocates, when
opening a cause in a private court, to indulge themselves in their
narratives leading to the charges they intend to bring. They are not
always called to the strictest account for such prefatory matter,
because the court, when it comes to judge, sifts and distinguishes it
from the points to be strictly proved, and on whose merits the cause
relies. 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
substantial fact, even in this explanatory opening, or even the color of
the fact, should be alleged, which, when called upon, I should not be
ready to make good to you by proof,--I mean, by proof adapted to its
nature: public opinion, by evidence of public opinion; by record, that
to which record is applicable; by oral testimony, things to which oral
testimony alone can be produced; and, last of all, that which is matter
of historic proof, by historic evidence. This I hope to do with the
usual allowance to errors and mistakes, which is the claim of human
infirmity.

Then, my Lords, two distinct people inhabit India. Two sorts of people
inhabit the same country, as totally distinct from each other, in
characters, lives, opinions, prejudices, and manners, as the inhabitants
of countries most remote from each other. For both of these descriptions
Mr. Hastings was bound to provide equally, agreeable to the terms of
the charter which the Company received from the lawful governing power
of that country: a charter received at its own solicitation; a charter
not forced upon us by a superior power, but given at the immediate
solicitation of the principal servants belonging to the Company; a
charter solemnly accepted by the Company, and by them, I am very sorry
to say, little regarded,--or, at least, little regarded by their
principal servants.

My Lords, the first description of people who are subjected virtually to
the British empire through those mediums which I have described to you
are the original inhabitants of Hindostan, who have in all time, and
beyond all the eras which we use, (I mean always the two grand eras
excepted,) been the aboriginal inhabitants and proprietors of that
country,--with manners, religion, customs, and usages appropriated to
themselves, and little resembling those of the rest of mankind. This
description of men is commonly called Gentoos. The system and principle
of that government is locality. Their laws, their manners, their
religion are all local.

Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was is a matter lost in
the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading
principle of his policy to connect the people with their soil.
Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger acquaintance with
our species daily discovers, and which perhaps an attentive reflection
might explain in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of
India,--who are the softest in their manners of any of our race,
approaching almost to feminine tenderness,--who are formed
constitutionally benevolent, and, in many particulars, made to fill a
larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in,--who extend their
good-will to the whole animal creation,--these people are, of all
nations, the most unalliable to any other part of mankind. They cannot,
the highest orders of them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any
other. That bond which is one of the chief instruments of society, and
which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no
existence with them: I mean the convivial bond. That race can be held to
no other by that great link of life. No Hindoo can mix at meals even
with those on whom he depends for the meat he eats. This circumstance
renders it difficult for us to enter with due sympathy into their
concerns, or for them to enter into ours, even when we meet on the same
ground. But there are other circumstances which render our intercourse,
in our mutual relation, very full of difficulty. The sea is between us.
The mass of that element, which, by appearing to disconnect, unites
mankind, is to them a forbidden road. It is a great gulf fixed between
you and them,--not so much that elementary gulf, but that gulf which
manners, opinions, and laws have radicated in the very nature of the
people. None of their high castes, without great danger to his
situation, religion, rank, and estimation, can ever pass the sea; and
this forbids, forever, all direct communication between that country and
this. That material and affecting circumstance, my Lords, makes it ten
times more necessary, since they cannot come to us, to keep a strict eye
upon all persons who go to them. It imposes upon us a stricter duty to
guard with a firm and powerful vigilance those whose principles of
conscience weaken their principles of self-defence. If we undertake to
govern the inhabitants of such a country, we must govern them upon their
own principles and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think to force
them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in
their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result
from both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have
more versatility of character and manners, and it is we who must
conform. We know what the empire of opinion is in human nature. I had
almost said that the law of opinion was human nature itself. It is,
however, the strongest principle in the composition of the frame of the
human mind; and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides
in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put
together. But if such is the empire of opinion even amongst us, it has a
pure, unrestrained, complete, and despotic power amongst them. The
variety of balanced opinions in our minds weakens the force of each: for
in Europe, sometimes, the laws of religion differ from the laws of the
land; sometimes the laws of the land differ from our laws of honor; our
laws of honor are full of caprice, differing from those other laws, and
sometimes differing from themselves: but there the laws of religion, the
laws of the land, and the laws of honor are all united and consolidated
in one invariable system, and bind men by eternal and indissoluble bonds
to the rules of what, amongst them, is called his _caste_.

It may be necessary just to state to your Lordships what a _caste_ is.
The Gentoo people, from the oldest time, have been distributed into
various orders, all of them hereditary: these family orders are called
castes; these castes are the fundamental part of the constitution of
the Gentoo commonwealth, both in their church and in their state.

Your Lordships are born to hereditary honors in the chief of your
houses; the rest mix with the people. With the Gentoos, they who are
born noble can never fall into any second rank. They are divided into
four orders,--the Brahmins, the Chittery, the Bice, and the Soodur, with
many subdivisions in each. An eternal barrier is placed between them.
The higher cannot pass into the lower; the lower cannot rise into the
higher. They have all their appropriated rank, place, and situation, and
their appropriated religion too, which is essentially different in its
rites and ceremonies, sometimes in its object, in each of those castes.
A man who is born in the highest caste, which at once unites what would
be tantamount in this country to the dignity of the peerage and the
ennobled sanctity of the episcopal character,--the Brahmin, who sustains
these characters, if he loses his caste, does not fall into an inferior
order, the Chittery, the Bice, or the Soodur, but he is thrown at once
out of all ranks of society. He is precipitated from the proudest
elevation of respect and honor to a bottomless abyss of contempt,--from
glory to infamy,--from purity to pollution,--from sanctity to
profanation. No honest occupation is open to him; his children are no
longer his children; their parent loses that name; the conjugal bond is
dissolved. Few survive this most terrible of all calamities. To speak to
an Indian of his caste is to speak to him of his all.

But the rule of caste has, with them, given one power more to fortune
than the manners of any other nation were ever known to do. For it is
singular, the caste may be lost, not only by certain voluntary crimes,
but by certain involuntary sufferings, disgraces, and pollutions, that
are utterly out of their power to prevent. Those who have patiently
submitted to imprisonment,--those who have not flinched from the
scourge,--those who have been as unmoved as marble under torture,--those
who have laughed at the menaces of death itself,--have instantly given
way, when it has been attempted to subject them to any of those
pollutions by which they lose caste. To this caste they are bound by all
laws of all descriptions, human and divine; and inveterate usage has
radicated it in them to a depth and with an adhesion with which no other
known prejudice has been known to exist. Tyranny is therefore armed
against them with a greater variety of weapons than are found in its
ordinary stores.

This, amongst a thousand other considerations, speaks to us in very
authoritative language with what care and circumspection we ought to
handle people so delicate. In the course of this trial your Lordships
will see with horror the use which Mr. Hastings made, through several of
his wicked and abominable instruments, chosen from the natives
themselves, of these superadded means of oppression. I shall prove, in
the course of this trial, that he has put his own menial domestic
servant,--a wretch totally dependent,--a wretch grossly ignorant,--the
common instrument of his bribery and peculation,--he has enthroned him,
I say, on the first seat of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which was to
decide upon the castes of all those people, including their rank, their
family, their honor, and their happiness here, and, in their judgment,
their salvation hereafter. Under the awe of this power, no man dared to
breathe a murmur against his tyranny. Fortified in this security, he
says, "Who complains of me!"--"No, none of us dare complain of you,"
says the trembling Gentoo. "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 Ginga Govind Sing, names to which your
Lordships are to be familiarized hereafter,--it is enough that those
persons had the caste and character of all the people of Bengal in their
hands. Through them he has taken effectual security against all
complaint. Your Lordships will hence discern how very necessary it is
become that some other personage should intervene, should take upon him
their representation, and by his freedom and his power should supply the
defects arising from their servitude and their impotence. The Commons of
Great Britain charge themselves with this character.

My Lords, these Gentoo people are the original people of Hindostan. They
are still, beyond comparison, the most numerous. Faults this nation may
have; but God forbid we should pass judgment upon people who framed
their laws and institutions prior to our insect origin of yesterday!
With all the faults of their nature and errors of their institutions,
their institutions, which act so powerfully on their natures, have two
material characteristics which entitle them to respect: first, great
force and stability; and next, excellent moral and civil effects.

Their stability has been proved by their holding on an uniform tenor for
a duration commensurate to all the empires with which history has made
us acquainted; and they still exist in a green old age, with all the
reverence of antiquity, and with all the passion that people have to
novelty and change. They have stood firm on their ancient base; they
have cast their roots deep in their native soil,--perhaps because they
have never spread them anywhere else than in their native soil. Their
blood, their opinions, and the soil of their country make one consistent
piece, admitting no mixture, no adulteration, no improvement:
accordingly, their religion has made no converts, their dominion has
made no conquests; but in proportion as their laws and opinions were
concentred within themselves, and hindered from spreading abroad, they
have doubled their force at home. They have existed in spite of
Mahomedan and Portuguese bigotry,--in spite of Tartarian and Arabian
tyranny,--in spite of all the fury of successive foreign conquest,--in
spite of a more formidable foe, the avarice of the English dominion.

I have spoken now, my Lords, of what their principles are, their laws
and religious institutions, in point of force and stability; I have
given instances of their force in the very circumstance in which all the
institutions of mankind in other respects show their weakness. They have
existed, when the country has been otherwise subdued. This alone
furnishes full proof that there must be some powerful influence
resulting from them beyond all our little fashionable theories upon such
subjects.

The second consideration in the Gentoo institutions is their beneficial
effects, moral and civil. The policy, civil or religious, or, as theirs
is, composed of both, that makes a people happy and a state flourishing,
(putting further and higher considerations out of the way, which are not
now before us,) must undoubtedly, so far as human considerations
prevail, be a policy wisely conceived in any scheme of government. It
is confirmed by all observation, that, where the Hindoo religion has
been established, that country has been flourishing. We have seen some
patterns remaining to this day. The very country which is to be the
subject of your Lordships' judicial inquiry is an instance, by an entire
change of government, of the different effects resulting from the
rapacity of a foreign hand, and the paternal, lenient, protecting arm of
a native government, formed on the long connection of prejudice and
power. I shall give you its state under the Hindoo government from a
book written by a very old servant of the Company, whose authority is of
the greater weight, as the very destruction of all this scheme of
government is the great object of the author.

The author, Mr. Holwell, divides the country of Bengal into its
different provinces. He supposes what they then paid 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. In
enumerating these provinces, at last he comes to the province of
Burdwan.

"In truth," (says this author,) "it would be almost cruelty to molest
this happy people; for in this district are the only vestiges of the
beauty, purity, piety, regularity, equity, and strictness of the ancient
Hindostan government. Here the property as well as the liberty of the
people are inviolate. Here no robberies are heard of, either public or
private. The 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 and 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 behavior, and a receipt
for the traveller and his effects; which certificate and receipt are
returnable to the commanding officer of the first stage, who registers
the same, and regularly reports it to the rajah.

"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 valuables,--the person who finds it hangs it upon the next tree,
and gives notice to the nearest _chowkey_, or place of guard, the
officer of which orders immediate publication of the same by beat of
_tomtom_, or drum."

These, my Lords, are the effects universally produced by the Hindoo
polity throughout that vast region, before it was distorted and put out
of frame by the barbarism of foreign conquests. Some choice, reserved
spots continued to flourish under it to the year 1756. Some remained
till Mr. Hastings obtained the means of utterly defacing them. Such was
the prospect of Benares under the happy government of Bulwant Sing.
Such was the happy state of the same Benares in the happy days of Cheyt
Sing, until, in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings introduced _his_ reform into
that country.

Having stated the general outline of the manners of the original people
of Hindostan, having stated the general principles of their policy,
which either prohibit connection, or oblige us to a connection very
different from what we have hitherto used towards them, I shall leave it
to your Lordships' judgment whether you will suffer such fair monuments
of wisdom and benevolence to be defaced by the rapacity of your
governors. I hope I have not gone out of my way to bring before you any
circumstance relative to the Gentoo religion and manners, further than
as they relate to the spirit of our government over them; for though
there never was such food for the curiosity of the human mind as is
found in the manners of this people, I pass it totally over.

* * * * *

I wish to divide this preliminary view into six periods; and your
Lordships will consider that of the Hindoos, which I have now mentioned,
as the first era.

The second era is an era of great misfortune to that country, and to the
world in general: I mean, the time of the prophet Mahomed. The
enthusiasm which animated his first followers, the despotic power which
religion obtained through that enthusiasm, and the advantages derived
from both over the enervated great empires, and broken, disunited,
lesser governments of the world, extended the influence of that proud
and domineering sect from the banks of the Ganges to the banks of the
Loire.