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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)




If ever there was a time when Bengal should have had respite from
internal revolutions, it was this. The governor forced upon the natives
was now upon the throne. All the great lords of the country, both
Gentoos and Mahomedans, were uneasy, discontented, and disobedient, and
some absolutely in arms, and refusing to recognize the prince we had set
up. An imminent invasion of the Mahrattas, an actual invasion headed by
the son of the Mogul, the revenues on account of the late shock very ill
collected even where the country was in some apparent quiet, an hungry
treasury at Calcutta, an empty treasury at Moorshedabad,--everything
demanded tranquillity, and with it order and economy. In this situation
it was resolved to make a new and entirely mercenary revolution, and to
set up to sale the government, secured to its present possessor by every
tie of public faith and every sacred obligation which could bind or
influence mankind. This second revolution forms that period in the
Bengal history which had the most direct influence upon all the
subsequent transactions. It introduces some of the persons who were most
active in the succeeding scenes, and from that time to this has given
its tone and character to the British affairs and government. It marks
and specifies the origin and true principle of all the abuses which Mr.
Hastings was afterwards appointed to correct, and which the Commons
charge that he continued and aggravated: namely, the venal depositions
and venal exaltations of the country powers; the taking of bribes and
corrupt presents from all parties in those changes; the vitiating and
maiming the Company's records; the suppression of public correspondence;
corrupt combinations and conspiracies; perfidy in negotiation
established into principle; acts of the most atrocious wickedness
justified upon purity of intention; mock-trials and collusive acquittals
among the parties in common guilt; and in the end, the Court of
Directors supporting the scandalous breach of their own orders. I shall
state the particulars of this second revolution more at large.

Soon after the revolution which had seated Mir Jaffier on the viceroyal
throne, the spirit of the Mogul empire began, as it were, to make one
faint struggle before it finally expired. The then heir to that throne,
escaping from the hands of those who had held his father prisoner, had
put himself at the head of several chiefs collected under the standard
of his house, and appeared in force on the frontiers of the provinces of
Bengal and Bahar, upon both which he made some impression. This alarmed
the new powers, the Nabob Mir Jaffier, and the Presidency of Calcutta;
and as in a common cause, and by the terms of their mutual alliance,
they took the field against him. The Nabob's eldest son and
heir-apparent commanded in chief. Major Calliaud commanded the English
forces under the government of Calcutta. Mr. Holwell was in the
temporary possession of the Presidency. Mr. Vansittart was hourly
expected to supersede him. Mr. Warren Hastings, a young gentleman about
twenty-seven years of age, was Resident for the Company at the durbar,
or court, of Mir Jaffier, our new-created Nabob of Bengal, allied to
this country by the most solemn treaties that can bind men; for which
treaties he had paid, and was then paying, immense sums of money. Mr.
Warren Hastings was the pledge in his hands for the honor of the British
nation, and their fidelity to their engagements.

In this situation, Mr. Holwell, whom the terrible example of the Black
Hole at Calcutta had not cured of ambition, thought an hour was not to
be lost in accomplishing a revolution and selling the reigning Nabob.

My Lords, there was in the house of Mir Jaffier, in his court, and in
his family, a man of an intriguing, crafty, subtle, and at the same time
bold, daring, desperate, bloody, and ferocious character, called Cossim
Ali Khan. He was the son-in-law of Mir Jaffier; and he made no other use
of this affinity than to find some means to dethrone and to murder him.
This was the person in whose school of politics Mr. Hastings made his
first studies, and whose conduct he quotes as his example, and for whose
friends, agents, and favorites he has always shown a marked
predilection. This dangerous man was not long without finding persons
who observed his talents with admiration, and who thought fit to employ
him.

The Council at Calcutta was divided into two departments: 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 Committee had no power of acting wholly without the Council at
large,--at least, finally and conclusively. The Select Committee
thought otherwise. Between these litigant parties for power I shall not
determine on the merits,--thinking of nothing but the use that was made
of the power, to whomsoever it belonged. This Secret Committee, then,
without communicating with the rest of the Council, formed the plan for
a second revolution. But the concurrence of Major Calliaud, who
commanded the British troops, was essential to the purpose, as it could
not be accomplished without force. Mr. Hastings's assistance was
necessary, as it could not be accomplished without treachery.

These are the parties concerned in the intended revolution. Mr. Holwell,
who considered himself in possession only of temporary power, was urged
to precipitate the business; for if Mr. Vansittart should arrive before
his plot could be finally put into execution, he would have all the
leading advantages of it, and Mr. Holwell would be considered only as a
secondary instrument. But whilst Mr. Holwell, who originally conceived
this plot, urged forward the execution of it, in order that the chief
share of the profits might fall to him, the Major, and possibly the
Resident, held back, till they might receive the sanction of the
permanent governor, who was hourly expected, with whom one of them was
connected, and who was to carry with him the whole weight of the
authority of this kingdom. This difference produced discussions. Holwell
endeavored by his correspondence to stimulate Calliaud to this
enterprise, which without him could not be undertaken at all. But Major
Calliaud had different views. He concurred inwardly, as he tells us
himself, in all the principles of this intended revolution, in the
propriety and necessity of it. He only wished delay. But he gave such
powerful, solid, and satisfactory reasons, not against the delay, but
the very merits of the design itself, exposing the injustice and the
danger of it, and the impossibility of mending by it their condition in
any respect, as must have damned it in the minds of all rational men: at
least it ought to have damned it forever in his own. But you will see
that Holwell persevered in his plan, and that Major Calliaud thought two
things necessary: first, not wholly to destroy the scheme, which he
tells us he always approved, but to postpone the execution,--and in the
mean time to delude the Nabob by the most strong, direct, and sanguine
assurances of friendship and protection that it was possible to give to
man.

Whilst the projected revolution stood suspended,--whilst Mr. Holwell
urged it forward, and Mr. Vansittart was expected every day to give it
effect,--whilst Major Calliaud, with this design of ruining the Nabob
lodged in his breast, suspended in execution, and condemned in
principle, kept the fairest face and the most confidential interviews
with that unfortunate prince and his son,--as the operations of the
campaign relaxed, the army drew near to Moorshedabad, the capital, when
a truly extraordinary scene happened, such I am sure the English annals
before that time had furnished no example of, nor will, I trust, in
future. I shall state it as one piece from beginning to end, reserving
the events which intervened; because, as I do not produce any part of
this series for the gratification of historical curiosity, the
con-texture is necessary to demonstrate to your Lordships the spirit of
our Bengal politics, and the necessity of some other sort of judicial
inquiries than those which that government institute for themselves.
The transaction so manifestly marks the character of the whole
proceeding that I hope I shall not be blamed for suspending for a moment
the narrative of the steps taken towards the revolution, that you may
see the whole of this episode together,--that by it you may judge of the
causes which led progressively to the state in which the Company's
affairs stood, when Mr. Hastings was sent for the express purpose of
reforming it.

The business I am going to enter into is commonly known by the name of
the Story of the Three Seals. It is to be found in the Appendix, No. 10,
to the First Report of the state and condition of the East India
Company, made in 1773. The word _Report_, my Lords, is sometimes a
little equivocal, and may signify sometimes, not what is made known, but
what remains in obscurity: the detail and evidence of many facts
referred to in the Report being usually thrown into the Appendix. Many
people, and I among the rest, (I take shame to myself for it,) may not
have fully examined that Appendix. I was not a member of either of the
India committees of 1773. It is not, indeed, till within this year that
I have been thoroughly acquainted with that memorable history of the
Three Seals.

The history is this. In the year 1760 the allies were in the course of
operations against the son of the Mogul, now the present Mogul, who, as
I have already stated, had made an irruption into the kingdom of Bahar,
in order to reduce the lower provinces to his obedience. The parties
opposing him were the Nabob of Bengal and the Company's troops under
Major Calliaud. It was whilst they faced the common enemy as one body,
this negotiation for the destruction of the Nabob of Bengal by his
faithful allies of the Company was going on with diligence. At that time
the Nabob's son, Meeran, a youth in the flower of his age, bold,
vigorous, active, full of the politics in which those who are versed in
usurpation are never wanting, commanded the army under his father, but
was in reality the efficient person in all things.

About the 15th of April, 1760, as I have it from Major Calliaud's letter
of that date, the Nabob came into his tent, and, with looks of the
utmost embarrassment, big with some design which swelled his bosom,
something that was too large and burdensome to conceal, and yet too
critical to be told, appeared to be in a state of great distraction. The
Major, seeing him in this condition, kindly, gently, like a fast and
sure friend, employed (to use his own expression) _some of those
assurances that tend to make men fully open their hearts_; and
accordingly, fortified by his assurances, and willing to disburden
himself of the secret that oppressed him, he opens his heart to the
commanding officer of his new friends, allies, and protectors. The
Nabob, thus assured, did open himself, and informed Major Calliaud that
he had just received a message from the Prince, or his principal
minister, informing him that the Prince Royal, now the Mogul, had an
intention (as, indeed, he rationally might, supposing that we were as
well disposed to him as we showed ourselves afterwards) to surrender
himself into the hands of him, the Nabob, but at the same time wished,
as a guaranty, that the commander-in-chief of the English forces should
give him security for his life and his honor, when he should in that
manner surrender himself to the Nabob. I do not mean, my Lords, by
surrendering, that it was supposed he intended to surrender himself
prisoner of war, but as a sovereign dubious of the fidelity of those
about him would put himself into the hands of his faithful subjects, of
those who claimed to derive all their power, as both we and the Nabob
did, under his authority. The Nabob stated to the English general, that
without this English security the Prince would not deliver himself into
his hands. Here he confessed he found a difficulty. For the giving this
faith, if it were kept, would defeat his ultimate view, which was, when
the Prince had delivered himself into his hands, in plain terms to
murder him. This grand act could not be accomplished without the English
general. In the first place, the Prince, without the English security,
would not deliver himself into the Nabob's hands; and afterwards,
without the English concurrence, he could not be murdered. These were
difficulties that pressed upon the mind of the Nabob.

The English commander heard this astonishing proposition without any
apparent emotion. Being a man habituated to great affairs, versed in
revolutions, and with a mind fortified against extraordinary events, he
heard it and answered it without showing any signs of abhorrence or
detestation,--at the same time with a protestation that he would indeed
serve him, the Nabob, but it should be upon such terms as honor and
justice could support: informing him, that an assurance for the Prince's
safety could not be given by him, until he had consulted Mr. Holwell,
who was Governor, and his superior.

This conversation passed in the morning. On that very morning, and
whilst the transaction was hot, Major Calliaud writes to Mr. Holwell an
account of it. In his letter he informs him that he made an inquiry,
without stating from whom, but that he did inquire the probability of
the Nabob's getting possession of the Prince from some persons, who
assured him that there was no probability of the Prince's intention to
deliver himself to the Nabob on any terms. Be that as it may, it is
impossible not to remark that the whole transaction of the morning of
the 15th of April was not very discouraging to the Nabob,--not such as
would induce him to consider this most detestable of all projects as a
thing utterly unfeasible, and as such to abandon it. The evening came on
without anything to alter his opinion. Major Calliaud that evening came
to the Nabob's tent to arrange some matters relative to the approaching
campaign. The business soon ended with regard to the campaign; but the
proposal of the morning to Major Calliaud, as might be expected to
happen, was in effect renewed. Indeed, the form was a little different;
but the substantial part remained the same. Your Lordships will see what
these alterations were.

In the evening scene the persons were more numerous. On the part of the
Company, Major Calliaud, Mr. Lushington, Mr. Knox, and the ambassador at
the Nabob's court, Mr. Warren Hastings. On the part of the Moorish
government, the Nabob himself, his son Meeran, a Persian secretary, and
the Nabob's head spy, an officer well known in that part of the world,
and of some rank. These were the persons of the drama in the evening
scene. The Nabob and his son did not wait for the Prince's committing
himself to their faith, which, it seems, Major Calliaud did not think
likely to happen; so that one act of treachery is saved: but another
opened of as extraordinary a nature. Intent and eager on the execution,
and the more certain, of their design, they accepted the plan of a
wicked wretch, principal servant of the then prime-minister to the
Mogul, or themselves suggested it to him. A person called Conery, dewan
or principal steward to Camgar Khan, a great chief in the service of the
Shahzada, or Prince, (now the Great Mogul, the sovereign under whom the
Company holds their charter,) had, it seems, made a proposal to the
Nabob, that, if a considerable territory then held by his master was
assured to him, and a reward of a lac of rupees (ten or twelve thousand,
pounds) secured to him, he would for that consideration deliver the
Prince, the eldest son of the Mogul, alive into the hands of the Nabob;
or if that could not be effected, he engaged to murder him for the same
reward. But as the assassin could not rely on the Nabob and his son for
his reward for this meritorious action, and thought better of English
honor and fidelity in such delicate cases, he required that Major
Calliaud should set his seal to the agreement. This proposition was made
to an English commander: what discourse happened upon it is uncertain.
Mr. Hastings is stated by some evidence to have acted as interpreter in
this memorable congress. But Major Calliaud agreed to it without any
difficulty. Accordingly, an instrument was drawn, an indenture
tripartite prepared by the Persian secretary, securing to the party the
reward of this infamous, perfidious, murderous act. First, the Nabob put
his own seal to the murder. The Nabob's son, Meeran, affixed _his_ seal.
A third seal, the most important of all, was yet wanting. A pause
ensued: Major Calliaud's seal was not at hand; but Mr. Lushington was
sent near half a mile to bring it. It was brought at length; and the
instrument of blood and treachery was completely executed. Three seals
were set to it.

This business of the three seals, by some means not quite fully
explained, but (as suspected by the parties) by means of the information
of Mr. Holwell, who soon after came home, was conveyed to the ears of
the Court of Directors. The Court of Directors wrote out, under date of
the 7th of October, 1761, within a little more than a year after this
extraordinary transaction, to this effect:--that, in conjunction with
the Nabob, Major 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 the Shahzada, or Prince heir-apparent,--which paper was
offered to the then Chief of Patna to sign, but which he refused on
account of the infamy of the measure. As it appeared in the same light
to them, the Directors, they ordered a strict inquiry into it. The India
Company, who here did their duty with apparent manliness and vigor, were
resolved, however, to do it with gentleness, and to proceed in a manner
that could not produce any serious mischief to the parties charged; for
they directed the commission of inquiry to the very clan and set of
people who, from a participation in their common offences, stood in awe
of one another,--in effect, to the parties in the transaction. Without a
prosecutor, without an impartial director of the inquiry, they left it
substantially to those persons to try one another for their common acts.

Here I come upon the principle which I wish most strongly to mark to
your Lordships: I mean collusive trials and collusive acquittals. When
this matter came to be examined, according to the orders of the Court,
which was on the 4th of October, 1762, the Council consisted of Peter
Maguire, Warren Hastings, and Hugh Watts. Mr. Hastings had by this time
accomplished the business of Resident with the Nabob, and had taken the
seat to which his seniority entitled him in Council. Here a difficulty
arose _in limine_. Mr. Hastings was represented to have acted as
interpreter in this business; he was therefore himself an object of the
inquisition; he was doubtful as evidence; he was disqualified as a
judge. It likewise appeared that there might be some objection to others
whose evidence was wanting, but who were themselves concerned in the
guilt. Mr. Lushington's evidence would be useful, but there were two
circumstances rather unlucky. First, he had put the seal to the
instrument of murder; and, secondly, and what was most material, he had
made an affidavit at Patna, whilst the affair was green and recent, that
he had done so; and in the same affidavit had deposed that Warren
Hastings was interpreter in that transaction. Here were difficulties
both on him and Mr. Hastings. The question was, how to get Mr. Hastings,
the interpreter, out of his interpretation, and to put him upon the seat
of judgment. It was effected, however, and the manner in which it was
effected was something curious. Mr. Lushington, who by this time was got
completely over, himself tells you that in conferences with Major
Calliaud, and by arguments and reasons by him delivered, he was
persuaded to unsay his swearing, and to declare that he believed that
the affidavit which he made at Patna, and while the transaction was
recent or nearly recent, must be a mistake: that he _believed_ (what is
amazing indeed for any belief) that not Mr. Hastings, but he himself,
interpreted. Mr. Lushington completely loses his own memory, and he
accepts an offered, a given memory, a memory supplied to him by a party
in the transaction. By this operation all difficulties are removed: Mr.
Hastings is at once put into the capacity of a judge. He is declared by
Mr. Lushington not to have been an interpreter in the transaction. After
this, Mr. Hastings is himself examined. Your Lordships will look at the
transaction at your leisure, and I think you will consider it as a
pattern for inquiries of this kind. Mr. Hastings is examined: he does
not recollect. His memory also fails on a business in which it is not
easy to suppose a man could be doubtful,--whether he was present or not:
he thinks he was not there,--for that, if he had been there, and acted
as interpreter, he could not have forgot it.

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. On this inaccurate
memory of Mr. Hastings, not venturing, however, to say positively that
he was not the interpreter, or that he was not present, he is discharged
from being an accomplice,--he is removed from the bar, and leaps upon
the seat of justice. The court thus completed, Major Calliaud comes
manfully forward to make his defence. Mr. Lushington is taken off his
back in the manner we have seen, and no one person remains but Captain
Knox. Now, if Captain Knox was there and assenting, he is an accomplice
too. Captain Knox asserts, that, at the consultation about the murder,
he said it was a pity to cut off so fine a young fellow in such a
manner,--meaning that fine young fellow the Prince, the descendant of
Tamerlane, the present reigning Mogul, from whom the Company derive
their present charter. The purpose to be served by this declaration, if
it had any purpose, was, that Captain Knox did not assent to the murder,
and that therefore his evidence might be valid.

The defence set up by Major Calliaud was to this effect. He was
apprehensive, he said, that the Nabob was alarmed at the violent designs
that were formed against him by Mr. Holwell, and that therefore, to
quiet his mind, (to quiet it by a proposition compounded of murder and
treason,--an odd kind of mind he had that was to be quieted by such
means!)--but to quiet his mind, and to show that the English were
willing to go all lengths with him, to sell body and soul to him, he did
put his seal to this extraordinary agreement, he put his seal to this
wonderful paper. He likewise stated, that he was of opinion at the time
that nothing at all sinister could happen from it, that no such murder
was likely to take place, whatever might be the intention of the
parties. In fact, he had very luckily said in a letter of his, written a
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.
In general, the whole gest of his defence comes to one point, in which
he persists,--that, whatever the act might be, his mind is clear: "My
hands are guilty, but my heart is free." He conceived that it would be
very improper, undoubtedly, to do such an act, if he suspected anything
could happen from it: he, however, let the thing out of his own hands;
he put, it into the hands of others; he put the commission into the
hands of a murderer. The fact was not denied; it was fully before these
severe judges. The extenuation was the purity of his heart, and the bad
situation of the Company's affairs,--the perpetual plea, which your
Lordships will hear of forever, and which if it will justify evil
actions, they will take good care that the most nefarious of their deeds
shall never want a sufficient justification. But then he calls upon his
life and his character to oppose to his seal; and though he has declared
that Mr. Holwell had intended ill to the Nabob, and that he approved of
those measures, and only postponed them, yet he thought it necessary, he
says, to quiet the fears of the Nabob; and from this motive he did an
act abhorrent to his nature, and which, he says, he expressed his
abhorrence of the morning after he signed it: not that he did so; 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, these reasons and apologies for it did not appear, nor did
they appear in the letter, nor anywhere else, till next year, when he
came upon his trial. Then it was immediately recollected that Mr.
Holwell's designs were so wicked they certainly must be known to the
Nabob, though he never mentioned them in the conference of the morning
or the evening of the 15th; yet such was now the weight and prevalence
of them upon the Major's mind, that he calls upon Mr. Hastings to know
whether the Nabob was not informed of these designs of Mr. Holwell
against him. Mr. Hastings's 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 Nabob, or the Nabob
to him; but he does recollect, he thinks, speaking something to some of
the Nabob's attendants upon it, and further this deponent sayeth not. On
this state of things, namely, the purity of intention, the necessities
of the Company, the propriety of keeping the Nabob in perfect good-humor
and removing suspicions from his mind, which suspicions he had never
expressed, they came to the resolution I shall have the honor 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,
which we shall consider hereafter); "that, in such circumstances, the
Nabob's urgent account of his own distresses, the Colonel's desire of
making him easy," (for here is a recapitulation of the whole defence,)
"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_
[_Calliaud's_] _conscience, at the time, never reproached him with a bad
design_."