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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)




I shall now state, from what is known of the government of India, that
it does not and cannot delegate, as Mr. Hastings has frequently
declared, the whole of its powers and authority to him. If they 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
constitutions of Hindostan, which are all Mahomedan, the laws of which
are as clear, as explicit, and as learned as ours.

The first foundation of their law is the _Koran_. The next part is the
_Fetwah_, or adjudged cases by proper authority, well known there. The
next, the written interpretations 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 _Kanon_,--that is, a positive rule equivalent to acts of Parliament,
the law of the several powers of the country, taken from the Greek word
[Greek: Kanon], which was brought into their country, and is well known.
The next is the _Rawaj-ul-Mulk_, or common law and custom of the
kingdom, equivalent to our common law. Therefore they have laws from
more sources than we have, exactly in the same order, grounded upon the
same authority, fundamentally fixed to be administered to the people
upon these principles.

The next thing is to show that in India there is a partition of the
powers of the government, which proves that there is no absolute power
delegated.

In every province the first person is the _Subahdar_ or _Nazim_, or
Viceroy: he has the power of the sword, and the administration of
criminal justice only. Then there is the _Dewan_, or High Steward: he
has the revenue and all exchequer causes under him, to be governed
according to the law and custom and institutions of the kingdom. The law
of inheritances, successions, and everything that relates to them, is
under the _Cadi_, in whose court these matters are tried. But this, too,
was subdivided. The Cadi could not judge, but by the advice of his
assessors. Properly in the Mahomedan law there is no appeal, only a
removal of the cause; but when there is no judgment, as none can be when
the court is not unanimous, it goes to the general assembly of all the
men of the law. There are, I will venture to say, other divisions and
subdivisions; for there are the _Kanongoes_, who hold their places for
life, to be the conservators of the canons, customs, and good usages of
the country: all these, as well as the Cadi and the Mufti, hold their
places and situations, not during the wanton pleasure of the prince, but
on permanent and fixed terms for life. All these powers of magistracy,
revenue, and law are all different, consequently not delegated in the
whole to any one person.

This is the provincial constitution, and these the laws of Bengal; which
proves, if there were no other proof, by the division of the functions
and authorities, that the supreme power of the state in the Mogul empire
did by no means delegate to any of its officers the supreme power in its
fulness. Whether or no we have delegated to Mr. Hastings the supreme
power of King and Parliament, that he should act with the plenitude of
authority of the British legislature, you are to judge.

Mr. Hastings has no refuge here. 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 ignorance of them, or fly in the
face of them. Will he fly to the Mahomedan law? That condemns him. Will
he fly to the high magistracy of Asia to defend taking of presents?
Padishah 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? I cannot utter the pains, the tortures, that would be
inflicted on him, if he were to govern there as he has done in a British
province. Let him fly where he will, from law to law; law, I thank God,
meets him everywhere, and enforced, too, by the practice of the most
impious tyrants, which he quotes as if it would justify his conduct. I
would as willingly have him tried by the law of the Koran, or the
Institutes of Tamerlane, as on the common law or statute law of this
kingdom.

The next question is, whether the Gentoo laws justify arbitrary power:
and if he finds any sanctuary there, let him take it, with the cow in
the pagoda. The Gentoos have a law which positively proscribes in
magistrates any idea of will,--a law with which, or rather with extracts
of it, that gentleman himself has furnished us. These people in many
points are governed by their own ancient written law, called the
_Shaster_. Its interpreters and judges are the _Pundits_. This law is
comprehensive, extending to all the concerns of life, affording
principles and maxims and legal theories applicable to all cases, drawn
from the sources of natural equity, modified by their institutions, full
of refinement and subtilty of distinction equal to that of any other
law, and has the grand test of all law, that, wherever it has prevailed,
the country has been populous, flourishing, and happy.

Upon the whole, then, follow him where you will, let 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, the most guilty, human creature. And if this be the
case, as I hope and trust it has been proved to your Lordships, that
there is law in these countries, that there is no delegation 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 profligate practices.

But another thing which he says is, that he was left to himself, to
govern himself by his own practice: that is to say, when he had taken
one bribe, he might take another; when he had robbed one man of his
property, he might rob 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 by such maxims and
principles, he is certainly clear: for there is no manner of doubt that
there is nothing he has practised once which he has not practised again;
and then the repetition of crimes becomes the means of his indemnity.

The next pleas he urges are not so much in bar of the impeachment as in
extenuation. The first are to be laid by as claims to be made on motion
for arrest of judgment, the others as an extenuation or mitigation of
his fine. He says, and with a kind of triumph, "The ministry of this
country have great legal assistance,--commercial lights 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 school-boy from England, or at least little better,--sent to
find my way in that new world as well as I could. I had no men of the
law, no legal assistance, to supply my deficiencies." _At Sphingem
habebas domi._ Had he not the chief-justice, the tamed and domesticated
chief-justice, who waited on him like a familiar spirit, whom he takes
from province to province, his amanuensis at home, his postilion and
riding express abroad?

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 an assuming, rash, presumptuous,
confident, daring, desperate, and disobedient ignorance heightens every
crime that it accompanies. Mr. Hastings, if through ignorance he left
some of the Company's 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_, and sets at nought
the laws of his country,--I believe this will not be thought the
language 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, profligate ignorance could 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 noble seminary,
which has given so many luminaries to the Church and ornaments to the
State. Greatly it is to be lamented that he did not go to those
Universities where arbitrary power will I hope never be heard of, but
the true principles of religion, of liberty, and law will ever be
inculcated, instead of studying in the school of Cossim Ali Khan.

If he had lived with us, he would have quoted the example of Cicero in
his government, he would have quoted several of the sacred and holy
prophets, and made _them_ his example. His want of learning, profane as
well as sacred, reduces him to the necessity of appealing to every name
and authority of barbarism, tyranny, and usurpation that are to be
found; and from these he says, "From the practice of one part of Asia or
other I have 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 who does not know how and where to complain of
that breach,--that Asia is enlightened in that respect as well as
Europe; but if it were 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 by having recourse to
the crimes and criminals of other countries, 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 be 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 he has been
guilty of gross and enormous crimes, he may have the shelter of his
present plea, as 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, and least of all by examples.

There is another topic he takes up 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 acquitted me."--Has it, my Lords? I am bold to say that
the Commons are wholly guiltless of this charge. I will admit, if
Parliament, on a full state of his offences before them, and full
examination of those offences, had appointed him to the government, that
then the people of India and England would have just reason to exclaim
against so flagitious a proceeding. A sense of propriety and decorum
might have restrained us from prosecuting. They might have been
restrained by some sort of decorum from pursuing him criminally. But the
Commons stand before your Lordships without shame. First, in their name
we solemnly assure your Lordships that we had not in our Parliamentary
capacity (and most of us, myself I can say surely, heard very little,
and that in confused rumors) the slightest knowledge of any one of the
acts charged upon this criminal at either of the times of his being
appointed to office, and that we were not guilty of the nefarious act of
collusion and flagitious breach of trust with which he presumes
obliquely to charge us; but from the moment we knew them, we never
ceased to condemn them by reports, by votes, by resolutions, and that we
admonished and declared it to be the duty of the Court of Directors to
take measures for his recall, and when frustrated in the way known to
that court we then proceeded to an inquiry. Your Lordships know whether
you were better informed. We are, therefore, neither guilty of the
precedent crime of colluding with the criminal, nor the subsequent
indecorum of prosecuting what we had virtually and practically approved.

Secondly, several of his worst crimes have been committed since the last
Parliamentary renewal of his trust, as appears by the dates in the
charge.

But I believe, my Lords, the judges--judges to others, grave and weighty
counsellors and assistants to your Lordships--will not, on reference,
assert to your Lordships, (which God forbid, and we cannot conceive, or
hardly state in argument, if but for argument,) that, if one of the
judges had received bribes before his appointment to an higher judiciary
office, he would not still be open to prosecution.

So far from admitting it as a plea in bar, we charge, and we hope your
Lordships will find it an extreme aggravation of his offences, that no
favors heaped upon him could make him grateful, no renewed and repeated
trusts could make him faithful and honest.

We have now gone through most of the general topics.

But he is not responsible, as being thanked by the Court of Directors.
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 is not pleadable here, that
it 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. If any corporation by
collusion with criminals refuse to do their duty in coercing them, the
magistrates are answerable.

It is the use, virtue, and efficacy of Parliamentary judicial procedure,
that it puts an end to this dominion of faction, intrigue, cabal, and
clandestine intelligences. The acts of men are put to their proper test,
and the works of darkness tried in the face of day,--not the corrupted
opinions of others on them, but their own intrinsic merits. We charge it
as his crime, that he bribed the Court of Directors to thank him for
what they had condemned as breaches of his duty.

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 the Directors praise him in the gross, after having condemned
each act in detail. His actions 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 succession of crimes now
brought before you for your judgment, in which the India Company have
not censured him. Nay, in one instance he pleads their censure in bar of
this trial;[27] for he says, "In that censure I have already received my
punishment." If, for any other 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 on a
balance with the India Company; 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, particular
censure and reprobation of every one of those acts for which he now
stands accused.

He says, there is the testimony of Indian princes in his favor. But do
we not know how seals are obtained in that country? Do we not know how
those 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 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 imprisoned, whose treasure he has seized, and
whose eunuchs he has tortured.[28] They 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, provided he
never came again among them, he might have them. I understand that
Mahdajee Sindia has made his panegyric, too. Mahdajee Sindia has not
made his panegyric for nothing; for, if your Lordships will suffer him
to enter into such a justification, we shall prove that he has
sacrificed the dignity of this country and the interests of all its
allies to that prince. We appear here neither with panegyric nor with
satire; it is for substantial crimes we bring him before you, and
amongst others for cruelly using persons of the highest rank and
consideration in India; and when we prove he has cruelly injured them,
you will think the panegyrics either gross forgeries or most miserable
aggravations of his offences, since they show the abject and dreadful
state into which he has driven those people. For let it be proved that I
have cruelly robbed and maltreated any persons, if I produce a
certificate from them of my good behavior, would it not be a
corroborative proof of the terror into which those persons are thrown by
my misconduct?

* * * * *

My Lords, these are, I believe, the general grounds of our 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 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 on which he depends,
and for the effect of which he presumes on the indulgence and patience
of this country, or on the corruption of some persons in it. And here I
close what I had to say upon this subject,--wishing and hoping, that,
when I open before your Lordships the case 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 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
Lordships will permit me, I will state the method of my future
proceeding, and the future proceeding of the gentlemen assisting me.

I mean first to bring before you the crimes as they are classed, and are
of the same species and genus, and how they mutually arose from one
another. I shall first show that Mr. Hastings's crimes had root in that
which is the root of all evil, I 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 indignation of
his country and the vengeance of its laws, in order to raise himself a
faction embodied by the same guilt and rewarded 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 resources
of the Company, 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.

We shall afterwards show what infinite mischief has followed in the case
of Benares, upon which he first laid his hands; next, in the case of the
Begums of Oude.

We shall then lay before you the profligate system by which he
endeavored to oppress that country: first by Residents; next by spies
under the name of British Agents; and lastly, that, pursuing his way up
to the mountains, he has found out one miserable chief, whose crimes
were the prosperity of his country,--that him he endeavored 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.

In short, having shown your Lordships that no man who is in his power is
safe from his arbitrary will,--that no man, within or without, friend,
ally, rival, has been safe from him,--having brought it to this point,
if I am not able in my own person immediately to go up into the country
and show the ramifications of the system, (I hope and trust I shall be
spared to take my part in pursuing him through both,) if I am not, I
shall go at least to the root of it, and some other gentleman, with a
thousand times more ability than I possess, will take up each separate
part in its proper order. And I believe it is proposed by the managers
that one of them shall as soon as possible begin with the affair of
Benares.

The point I now mean first to bring before your Lordships is the
corruption of Mr. Hastings, his system of peculation and bribery, and to
show your Lordships the horrible consequences which resulted from it:
for, at first sight, bribery and peculation do not seem to be so horrid
a matter; they may seem to be only the transferring a little money out
of one pocket into another; but 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.




FOOTNOTES:


[1] 2d year of George II.

[2] See his letter of the 11th of July, 1785, at the end of the Charges.

[3] 13 Geo. III. c. 63, Sec. 10.

[4] 29 February, 1784.

[5] Dated, Benares, 4th of November, 1781.

[6] Revenue Consultation, 28th January, 1775.

[7] Revenue Board, 14th May, 1772.

[8] Address to the Court of Directors, 25th March, 1775.

[9] 3d November, 1772.

[10] 24th October, 1774.

[11] 22d April, 1775.

[12] 5th February, 1777; 4th July, 1777.

[13] 3d November, 1772.

[14] 14th May, 1772.

[15] See his letter of the 11th July, 1785, at the end of the Charges.

[16] Sic orig.

[17] 28th May, 1782.

[18] 15th Dec, 1775.

[19] On the 15th of November.

[20] Resolution of the House of Commons, 28th May, 1782.

[21] Anderson's letter of 26th January, 1782.

[22] Anderson's letter of 24th February, 1782.

[23] Sic orig.

[24] Sic orig.

[25] Observations on Mr. Bristow's Defence.

[26] As the letter referred to in the Eighth and Sixteenth Articles of
Charge is not contained in any of the Appendixes to the Reports of the
Select Committee, it has been thought necessary to annex it as an
Appendix to these Charges.

[27] See Mr. Hastings's answer to the first charge.

[28] A Latin sentence, which was quoted here, is omitted in the MS of
the short-hand writer.--Ed.


END OF VOL. IX.