The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume X Part 17

Hastings must have taken some money in some irregular way, or he could not have made those payments. Mr. Larkins begins to suspect him. "Where did you lose this bodkin?" said one lady to another, upon a certain occasion. "Pray, Madam, where did you find it?" Mr. Hastings, at the very moment of his life when confidence was required, even when making up his accounts with his accountant, never told him one word of the matter. You see he had no confidence in Mr. Larkins. This makes out one of the propositions I want to impress upon your Lords.h.i.+ps' minds, that no one man did he let into every part of his transactions: a material circ.u.mstance, which will help to lead your Lords.h.i.+ps' judgment in forming your opinion upon many parts of this cause.

You see that Mr. Larkins suspected him. Probably in consequence of those suspicions, or from some other cause, he at last told him, upon the 22d of May, 1782, (but why at that time, rather than at any other time, does not appear; and this we shall find very difficult to be accounted for,)--he told him that he had received a bribe from the Nabob of Oude, of 100,000_l._ He informs him of this on the 22d of May, which, when the accounts were making up, he conceals from him. And he communicates to him the rough draught of his letter to the Court of Directors, informing them that this business was not transacted by any known secretary of the Company, nor with the intervention of any interpreter of the Company, nor pa.s.sed through any official channel whatever, but through a gentleman much in his confidence, his military secretary; and, as if receiving bribes, and receiving letters concerning them, and carrying on correspondence relative to them, was a part of military duty, the rough draught of this letter was in the hands of this military secretary. Upon the communication of the letter, it rushes all at once into the mind of Mr. Larkins, who knows Mr. Hastings's recollection, who knows what does and what does not escape it, and who had a memory ready to explode at Mr. Hastings's desire, "Good G.o.d!" says he, "you have promised the Directors an account of this business!"--a promise which Mr. Larkins a.s.sures the Directors, upon his word, had entirely escaped Mr.

Hastings's recollection. Mr. Hastings, it seems, had totally forgotten the promise relative to the paltry sum of 100,000_l._ which he had made to the Court of Directors in the January before; he never once thought of it, no, not even when he was making up his accounts of that very identical sum, till the 22d of May. So that these persons answer for one another's bad memory: and you will see they have good reason. Mr.

Hastings's want of recollection appears in things of some moment.

However lightly he may regard the sum of 100,000_l._, which, considering the enormous sums he has received, I dare say he does,--for he totally forgot it, he knew nothing about it,--observe what sort of memory this registrar and accountant of such sums as 100,000_l._ has. In what confusion of millions must it be, that such sums can be lost to Mr.

Hastings's recollection! However, at last it was brought to his recollection, and he thought that it was necessary to give some account of it. And who is the accountant whom he produces? His own memory is no accountant. He had dismissed the matter (as he happily expresses it in the Cheltenham letter) from his memory. Major Palmer is not the accountant. One is astonished that a man who had had 100,000_l._ in his hands, and laid it out, as he pretends, in the public service, has not a sc.r.a.p of paper to show for it. No ordinary or extraordinary account is given of it. Well, what is to be done in such circ.u.mstances? He sends for a person whose name you have heard and will often hear of, the faithful Cantoo Baboo. This man comes to Mr. Larkins, and he reads to him (be so good as to remark the words) from a Bengal paper the account of the detached bribes. Your Lords.h.i.+ps will observe that I have stated the receipt of a number of detached bribes, and a bribe in one great body: one, the great _corps d'armee_; the other, flying scouting bodies, which were only to be collected together by a skilful man who knew how to manage them, and regulate the motions of those wild and disorderly troops. When No. 2 was to be explained, Cantoo Baboo failed him; he was not worth a farthing as to any transaction that happened when Mr.

Hastings was in the Upper Provinces, where though he was his faithful and constant attendant through the whole, yet he could give no account of it. Mr. Hastings's moonshee then reads three lines from a paper to Mr. Larkins. Now it is no way even insinuated that both the Bengal and Persian papers did not contain the account of other immense sums; and, indeed, from the circ.u.mstance of only three lines being read from the Persian paper, your Lords.h.i.+ps will be able, in your own minds, to form some judgment upon this business.

I shall now proceed with his letter of explanation. "The particulars,"

he goes on to say, "of the paper No. 1 were read to me from a Bengal paper by Mr. Hastings's banian, Cantoo Baboo; and if I am not mistaken, the three first lines of that No. 2 were read over to me from a Persian paper by his moonshee. The translation of these particulars, made by me, was, as I verily believe, the first complete memorandum that he ever possessed of them in the English language; and I am confident, that, if I had not suggested to him the necessity of his taking this precaution, he would at this moment have been unable to have afforded any such information concerning them."

Now, my Lords, if he had not got, on the intimation of Mr. Larkins, some sc.r.a.ps of paper, your Lords.h.i.+ps might have at this day wanted that valuable information which Mr. Larkins has laid before you.

These, however, contain, Mr. Larkins says, "the first complete"--what?--account, do you imagine?--no, "the first complete _memorandum_." You would imagine that he would himself, for his own use, have notched down, somewhere or other, in short-hand, in Persian characters, short without vowels, or in some other way, _memorandums_.

But he had not himself even a memorandum of this business; and consequently, when he was at Cheltenham, and even here at your bar, he could never have had any account of a sum of 200,000_l._, but by this account of Mr. Larkins, taken, as people read them, from detached pieces of paper.

One would have expected that Mr. Larkins, being warned that day, and cautioned by the strange memory of Mr. Hastings, and the dangerous situation, therefore, in which he himself stood, would at least have been very guarded and cautious. Hear what he next says upon this subject. "As neither of the other sums pa.s.sed through his hands, these"

(meaning the sc.r.a.ps) "contained no such specification, and consequently could not enable him to afford the information with which he has requested me to furnish you; and it is more than probable, that, if the affidavit which I took on the 16th December, 1782, had not exposed my character to the suspicion of my being capable of committing one of the basest trespa.s.ses upon the confidence of mankind, I should, at this distance of time, have been equally unable to have complied with this request: but after I became acquainted with the insinuation suggested in the Eleventh Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, I thought it but too probable, that, unless I was possessed of the original memorandum which I had made of these transactions, I might not at some distant period be able to prove that I had not descended to commit so base an action. I have therefore always most carefully preserved every paper which I possessed regarding these transactions."

You see that Mr. Hastings had no memorandums of his accounts; you see, that, after Mr. Larkins had made his memorandums of them, he had no design of guarding or keeping them; and you will commend those wicked and malicious committees who by their reports have told an accountant-general and first public officer of revenue, that, in order to guard his character from their suspicions, it was necessary that he should keep some paper or other of an account. We have heard of the base, wicked, and mercenary license that has been used by these gentlemen of India towards the House of Commons: a license to libel and traduce the diligence of the House of Commons, the purity of their motives, and the fidelity of their actions, by which the very means of informing the people are attempted to be used for the purpose of leaving them in darkness and delusion. But, my Lords, when the accountant-general declares, that, if the House of Commons had not expressed, as they ought to express, much diffidence and distrust respecting these transactions, and even suspected him of perjury, this very day that man would not have produced a sc.r.a.p of those papers to you, but might have turned them to the basest and most infamous of uses.

If, I say, we have saved these valuable fragments by suspecting his integrity, your Lords.h.i.+ps will see suspicion is of some use: and I hope the world will learn that punishment will be of use, too, in preventing such transactions.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps have seen that no two persons knew anything of these transactions; you see that even memorandums of transactions of very great moment, some of which had pa.s.sed in the year 1779, were not even so much as put in the shape of complete memoranda until May, 1782; you see that Mr. Hastings never kept them: and there is no reason to imagine that a black banian and a Persian moonshee would have been careful of what Mr. Hastings himself, who did not seem to stimulate his accountants to a vast deal of exactness and a vast deal of fidelity, was negligent.

You see that Mr. Larkins, our last, our only hope, if he had not been suspected by the House of Commons, probably would never have kept these papers; and that you could not have had this valuable cargo, such as it is, if it had not been for the circ.u.mstance Mr. Larkins thinks proper to mention.

From the specimen which we have given of Mr. Hastings's mode of accounts, of its vouchers, checks, and counter-checks, your Lords.h.i.+ps will have observed that the mode itself is past describing, and that the checks and counter-checks, instead of being put upon one another to prevent abuse, are put upon each other to prevent discovery and to fortify abuse. When you hear that one man has an account of receipt, another of expenditure, another of control, you say that office is well const.i.tuted: but here is an office const.i.tuted by different persons without the smallest connection with each other; for the only purpose which they have ever answered is the purpose of base concealment.

We shall now proceed a little further with Mr. Larkins. The first of the papers from which he took the memoranda was a paper of Cantoo Baboo. It contained detached payments, amounting in the whole, with the cabooleat, or agreement, to about 95,000_l._ sterling, and of which it appears that there was received by Mr. Croftes 55,000_l._, and no more.

Now will your Lords.h.i.+ps be so good as to let it rest in your memory what sort of an exchequer this is, even with regard to its receipts? As your Lords.h.i.+ps have seen the economy and const.i.tution of this office, so now see the receipt. It appears that in the month of May, 1782, out of the sums beginning to be received in the month of Shawal, that is in July, 1779, there was, during that interval, 40,000_l._ out of 95,000_l._ sunk somewhere, in some of the turnings over upon the gridiron, through some of those agents and panders of corruption which Mr. Hastings uses. Here is the _valuable_ revenue of the Company, _which is to supply them in their exigencies, which is to come from sources which otherwise never would have yielded it_,--which, though small in proportion to the other revenue, yet is a diamond, something that by its value makes amends for its want of bulk,--falling short by 40,000_l._ out of 95,000_l._ Here is a system made for fraud, and producing all the effects of it.

Upon the face of this account, the agreement was to yield to Mr.

Hastings, some way or other, to be paid to Mr. Croftes, 95,000_l._, and there was a deficiency of 40,000_l._ Would any man, even with no more sense than Mr. Hastings, who wants all the faculties of the human mind, who has neither memory nor judgment, any man who was that poor half-idiot creature that Mr. Hastings pretends to be, engage in a dealing that was to extort from some one or other an agreement to pay 95,000_l._ which was not to produce more than 55,000_l._? What, then, is become of it? Is it in the hands of Mr. Hastings's wicked bribe-brokers, or in his own hands? Is it in arrear? Do you know anything about it?

Whom are you to apply to for information? Why, to G.G.S.--G.G.S. I find to be, what indeed I suspected him to be, a person that I have mentioned frequently to your Lords.h.i.+ps, and that you will often hear of, commonly called Gunga Govind Sing,--in a short word, the wickedest of the whole race of banians: the consolidated wickedness of the whole body is to be found in this man.

Of the deficiency which appears in this agreement with somebody or other on the part of Mr. Hastings through Gunga Govind Sing you will expect to hear some explanation. Of the first sum, which is said to have been paid through Gunga Govind Sing, amounting on the cabooleat to four lac, and of which no more than two lac was actually received,--that is to say, half of it was sunk,--we have this memorandum only: "Although Mr.

Hastings was extremely dissatisfied with the excuses Gunga Govind Sing a.s.signed for not paying Mr. Croftes the sum stated by the paper No. 1 to be in his charge, he never could obtain from him any further payments on this account." Mr. Hastings is exceedingly dissatisfied with those excuses, and this is the whole account of the transaction. This is the only thing said of Gunga Govind Sing in the account: he neither states how he came to be employed, or for what he was employed. It appears, however, from the transaction, as far as we can make our way through this darkness, that he had actually received 10,000_l._ of the money, which he did not account for, and that he pretended that there was an arrear of the rest. So here Mr. Hastings's bribe-agent admits that he had received 10,000_l._, but he will not account for it; he says there is an arrear of another 10,000_l._; and thus it appears that he was enabled to take from somebody at Dinagepore, by a cabooleat, 40,000_l._, of which Mr. Hastings can get but 20,000_l._: there is cent per cent loss upon it. Mr. Hastings was so exceedingly dissatisfied with this conduct of Gunga Govind Sing, that you would imagine a breach would have immediately ensued between them. I shall not antic.i.p.ate what some of my honorable friends will bring before your Lords.h.i.+ps; but I tell you, that, so far from quarrelling with Gunga Govind Sing, or being really angry with him, it is only a little pettish love quarrel with Gunga Govind Sing: _amantium irae amoris integratio est_. For Gunga Govind Sing, without having paid him one s.h.i.+lling of this money, attended him to the Ganges; and one of the last acts of Mr. Hastings's government was to represent this man, who was unfaithful even to fraud, who did not keep the common faith of thieves and robbers, this very man he recommends to the Company as a person who ought to be rewarded, as one of their best and most faithful servants. And how does he recommend him to be rewarded? By giving him the estate of another person,--the way in which Mr. Hastings desires to be always rewarded himself: for, in calling upon the Company's justice to give him some money for expenses with which he never charged them, he desires them to a.s.sign him the money upon some person of the country. So here Mr. Hastings recommends Gunga Govind Sing not only to trust, confidence, and employment, which he does very fully, but to a reward taken out of the substance of other people. This is what Mr. Hastings has done with Gunga Govind Sing; and if such are the effects of his anger, what must be the effect of his pleasure and satisfaction? Now I say that Mr. Hastings, who, in fact, saw this man amongst the very last with whom he had any communication in India, could not have so recommended him after this known fraud, in one business only, of 20,000_l._,--he could not so have supported him, he could not so have caressed him, he could not so have employed him, he could not have done all this, unless he had paid to Mr. Hastings privately that sum of money which never was brought into any even of these miserable accounts, without some payment or other with which Mr.

Hastings was and ought to be satisfied, or unless Gunga Govind Sing had some dishonorable secret to tell of him which he did not dare to provoke him to give a just account of, or, lastly, unless the original agreement was that half or a third of the bribe should go to Gunga Govind Sing.

Such is this patriotic scheme of bribery, this public-spirited corruption which Mr. Hastings has invented upon this occasion, and by which he thinks out of the vices of mankind to draw a better revenue than out of any legal source whatever; and therefore he has resolved to become the most corrupt of all Governors-General, in order to be the most useful servant to the finances of the Company.

So much as to the first article of Dinagepore peshcush. All you have is, that G.G.S is Gunga Govind Sing; that he has cheated the public of half of it; that Mr. Hastings was angry with him, and yet went away from Bengal, rewarding, praising, and caressing him. Are these things to pa.s.s as matters of course? They cannot so pa.s.s with your Lords.h.i.+ps' sagacity: I will venture to say that no court, even of _pie-poudre_, could help finding him guilty upon such a matter, if such a court had to inquire into it.

The next article is _Patna_. Here, too, he was to receive 40,000_l._; but from whom this deponent saith not. At this circ.u.mstance Mr. Larkins, who is a famous deponent, never hints once. You may look through his whole letter, which is a pretty long one, (and which I will save your Lords.h.i.+ps the trouble of hearing read at length now, because you will have it before you when you come to the Patna business,) and you will only find that somebody had engaged to pay him 40,000_l._, and that but half of this sum was received. You want an explanation of this. You have seen the kind of explanation given in the former case, a conjectural explanation of G.G.S. But when you come to the present case, who the person paying was, why the money was not paid, what the cause of failure was, you are not told: you only learn that there was that sum deficient; and Mr. Larkins, who is our last resort and final hope of elucidation in this transaction, throws not the smallest glimpse of light upon it. We of the House of Commons have been reduced to form the best legitimate conjectures we could upon this business, and those conjectures have led us to further evidence, which will enable us to fix one of the most scandalous and most mischievous bribes, in all the circ.u.mstances of it, upon Mr. Hastings, that was ever known. If he extorted 40,000_l._ under pretence of the Company's service, here is again another failure of half the money. Oh, my Lords, you will find that even the remaining part was purchased with the loss of one of the best revenues in India, and with the grievous distress of a country that deserved well your protection, instead of being robbed to give 20,000_l._ to the Company, and another 20,000_l._ to some robber or other, black or white. When I say, given to some other robber, black or white, I do not suppose that either generosity, friends.h.i.+p, or even communion, can exist in that country between white men and black: no, their colors are not more adverse than their characters and tempers. There is not that _idem velle et idem nolle_, there are none of those habits of life, nothing, that can bind men together even in the most ordinary society: the mutual means of such an union do not exist between them. It is a money-dealing, and a money-dealing only, which can exist between them; and when you hear that a black man is favored, and that 20,000_l._ is pretended to be left in his hands, do not believe it: indeed, you cannot believe it; for we will bring evidence to show that there is no friends.h.i.+p between those people,--and that, when black men give money to a white man, it is a bribe,--and that, when money is given to a black man, he is only a sharer with the white man in their infamous profits. We find, however, somebody, anonymous, with 20,000_l._ left in his hands; and when we come to discover who the man is, and the final balance which appears against him in his account with the Company, we find that for this 20,000_l._, which was received for the Company, they paid such a compound interest as was never before paid for money advanced: the most violently griping usurer, in dealing with the most extravagant heir, never made such a bargain as Mr. Hastings has made for the Company by this bribe.

Therefore it could be nothing but fraud that could have got him to have undertaken such a revenue. This evidently shows the whole to be a pretence to cover fraud, and not a weak attempt to raise a revenue,--and that Mr. Hastings was not that idiot he represents himself to be, a man forgetting all his offices, all his duties, all his own affairs, and all the public affairs. He does not, however, forget how to make a bargain to get money; but when the money is to be recovered for the Company, (as he says,) he forgets to recover it: so that the accuracy with which he begins a bribe, _acribus initiis et soporosa fine_, and the carelessness with which he ends it, are things that characterize, not weakness and stupidity, but fraud.

The next article we proceed to is _Nuddea_. Here we have more light; but does Mr. Larkins anywhere tell you anything about Nuddea? No it appears as if the account had been paid up, and that the cabooleat and the payments answer and tally with each other; yet, when we come to produce the evidence upon these parts, you will see most abundant reason to be a.s.sured that there is much more concealed than is given in this account,--that it is an account current, and not an account closed,--and that the agreement was for some other and greater sum than appears. It might be expected that the Company would inquire of Mr.

Hastings, and ask, "From whom did he get it? Who has received it? Who is to answer for it?" But he knew that they were not likely to make any inquiry at all,--they are not that kind of people. You would imagine that a mercantile body would have some of the mercantile excellencies, and even you would allow them perhaps some of the mercantile faults. But they have, like Mr. Hastings, forgotten totally the mercantile character; and, accordingly, neither accuracy nor fidelity of account do they ever require of Mr. Hastings. They have too much confidence in him; and he, accordingly, acts like a man in whom such confidence, without reason, is reposed.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps may perhaps suppose that the payment of this money was an act of friends.h.i.+p and generosity in the people of the country. No: we have found out, and shall prove, from whom he got it; at least we shall produce such a conjecture upon it as your Lords.h.i.+ps will think us bound to do, when we have such an account before us. Here on the face of the account there is no deficiency; but when we look into it, we find skulking in a corner a person called Nundulol, from whom there is received 58,000 rupees. You will find that he, who appears to have paid up this money, and which Mr. Hastings spent as he pleased in his journey to Benares, and who consequently must have had some trust reposed in him, was the wickedest of men, next to those I have mentioned,--always giving the first rank to Gunga Govind Sing, _primus inter pares_, the second to Debi Sing, the third to Cantoo Baboo: this man is fit to be one next on a par with them. Mr. Larkins, when he comes to explain this article, says, "I believe it is for a part of the Dinagepore peshcush, which would reduce the balance to about 5,000_l._": but he does not pretend to know what it is given for; he gives several guesses at it; "but," he says, "as I do not know, I shall not pretend to give more than my conjecture upon it." He is in the right; because we shall prove Nundulol never did have any thing to do with the Dinagepore peshcush.

These are very extraordinary proceedings. It is my business simply to state them to your Lords.h.i.+ps now; we will give them in afterwards in evidence, and I will leave that evidence to be confirmed and fortified by further observations.

One of the objects of Mr. Larkins's letter is to ill.u.s.trate the bonds.

He says, "The two first stated sums" (namely, Dinagepore and Patna, in the paper marked No. 1, I suppose, for he seems to explain it to be such) "are sums for a part of which Mr. Hastings took two bonds: viz., No. 1539, dated 1st October, 1780, and No. 1540, dated 2d October, 1780, each for the sum of current rupees 1,16,000, or sicca rupees one lac.

The remainder of that amount was carried to the credit of the head, _Four per Cent Remittance Loan:_ Mr. Hastings having taken a bond for it, (No. 89,) which has been since completely liquidated, conformable to the law." But before I proceed with the bonds, I will beg leave to recall to your Lords.h.i.+ps' recollection that Mr. Larkins states in his letter that these sums were received in November. How does this agree with another state of the transaction given by Mr. Hastings, namely, that the time of his taking the bonds was the 1st and 2d of October? Mr.

Larkins, therefore, who has thought proper to say that the money was received in the month of November, has here given as extraordinary an instance either of fraudulent accuracy or shameful official inaccuracy as was ever perhaps discovered. The first sums are a.s.serted to be paid to Mr. Croftes on the 18th and 19th of Asin, 1187. The month of Asin corresponds with the month of September and part of October, and not with November; and it is the more extraordinary that Mr. Larkins should mistake this, because he is in an office which requires monthly payments, and consequently great monthly exactness, and a continual transfer from one month to another: we cannot suppose any accountant in England can be more accurately acquainted with the succession of months than Mr. Larkins must have been with the comparative state of Bengal and English months. How are we to account for this gross inaccuracy? If you have a poet, if you have a politician, if you have a moralist inaccurate, you know that these are cases which, from the narrow bounds of our weak faculties, do not perhaps admit of accuracy. But what is an inaccurate _accountant_ good for? "Silly man, that dost not know thy own silly trade!" was once well said: but the trade here is not silly. You do not even praise an accountant for being accurate, because you have thousands of them; but you justly blame a public accountant who is guilty of a gross inaccuracy. But what end could his being inaccurate answer? Why not name October as well as November? I know no reason for it; but here is certainly a gross mistake: and from the nature of the thing, it is hardly possible to suppose it to be a mere mistake. But take it that it is a mistake, and to have nothing of fraud, but mere carelessness; this, in a man valued by Mr. Hastings for being very punctilious and accurate, is extraordinary.

But to return to the bonds. We find a bond taken in the month of Shawal, 1186, or 1779, but the receipt is said to be in Asin, 1780: that is to say, there was a year and about three months between the collection and the receipt; and during all that period of time an enormous sum of money had lain in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing, to be employed when Mr.

Hastings should think fit. He employed it, he says, for the Mahratta expedition. Now he began that letter on the 29th of November by telling you that the bribe would not have been taken from Cheyt Sing, if it had not been at the instigation of an exigency which it seems required a supply of money, to be procured lawfully or unlawfully. But in fact there was no exigency for it before the Berar army came upon the borders of the country,--that army which he invited by his careless conduct towards the Rajah of Berar, and whose hostility he was obliged to buy off by a sum of money; and yet this bribe was taken from Cheyt Sing long before he had this occasion for it. The fund lay in Gunga Govind Sing's hands; and he afterwards applied to that purpose a part of this fund, which he must have taken without any view whatever to the Company's interest. This pretence of the exigency of the Company's affairs is the more extraordinary, because the first receipt of these moneys was some time in the year 1779 (I have not got the exact date of the agreement); and it was but a year before that the Company was so far from being in distress, that he declared he should have, at very nearly the period when this bribe became payable, a very large sum (I do not recollect the precise amount) in their treasury. I cannot certainly tell when the cabooleat, or agreement, was made; yet I shall lay open something very extraordinary upon that subject, and will lead you, step by step, to the b.l.o.o.d.y scenes of Debi Sing. Whilst, therefore, Mr. Hastings was carrying on these transactions, he was carrying them on without any reference to the pretended object to which he afterwards applied them. It was an old, premeditated plan; and the money to be received could not have been designed for an exigency, because it was to be paid by monthly instalments. The case is the same with respect to the other cabooleats: it could not have been any momentary exigence which he had to provide for by these sums of money; they were paid regularly, period by period, as a constant, uniform income, to Mr. Hastings.

You find, then, Mr. Hastings first leaving this sum of money for a year and three months in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; you find, that, when an exigence pressed him by the Mahrattas suddenly invading Bengal, and he was obliged to refer to his bribe-fund, he finds that fund empty, and that, in supplying money for this exigence, he takes a bond for two thirds of his own money and one third of the Company's. For, as I stated before, Mr. Larkins proves of one of these accounts, that he took, in the month of January, for this bribe-money, which, according to the principles he lays down, was the Company's money, three bonds as for money advanced from his own cash. Now this sum of three lacs, instead of being all his own, as it should appear to be in the month of January, when he took the bonds, or two thirds his own and one third the Company's, as he said in his letter of the 29th of November, turns out, by Mr. Larkins's account, paragraph 9, which I wish to mark to your Lords.h.i.+ps, to be two thirds the Company's money and one third his own; and yet it is all confounded under bonds, as if the money had been his own. What can you say to this heroic sharper disguised under the name of a patriot, when you find him to be nothing but a downright cheat, first taking money under the Company's name, then taking their securities to him for their own money, and afterwards entering a false account of them, contradicting that by another account?--and G.o.d knows whether the third be true or false. These are not things that I am to make out by any conclusion of mine; here they are, made out by himself and Mr.

Larkins, and, comparing them with his letter of the 27th, you find a gross fraud covered by a direct falsehood.

We have now done with Mr. Larkins's account of the bonds, and are come to the other species of Mr. Hastings's frauds, (for there is a great variety in them,) and first to Cheyt Sing's bribe. Mr. Larkins came to the knowledge of the bond-money through Gunga Govind Sing and through Cantoo Baboo. Of this bribe he was not in the secret originally, but was afterwards made a confidant in it; it was carried to him; and the account he gives of it I will state to your Lords.h.i.+ps.

"The fourth sum stated in Mr. Hastings's account was the produce of sundry payments made to me by Sadamund, Cheyt Sing's buckshee, who either brought or sent the gold mohurs to my house, from whence they were taken by me to Mr. Croftes, either on the same night or early in the morning after: they were made at different times, and I well remember that the same people never came twice. On the 21st June, 1780, Mr. Hastings sent for me, and desired that I would take charge of a present that had been offered to him by Cheyt Sing's buckshee, under the plea of atoning for the opposition which he had made towards the payment of the extra subsidy for defraying part of the expenses of the war, but really in the hope of its inducing Mr. Hastings to give up that claim; with which view the present had first been offered. Mr. Hastings declared, that, although he would not take this for his own use, he would apply it to that of the Company, in removing Mr. Francis's objections to the want of a fund for defraying the extra expenses of Colonel Camac's detachment. On my return to the office, I wrote down the substance of what Mr. Hastings had said to me, and requested Mr. James Miller, my deputy, to seal it up with his own seal, and write upon it, that he had then done so at my request. He was no further informed of my motive for this than merely that it contained the substance of a conversation which had pa.s.sed between me and another gentleman, which, in case that conversation should hereafter become the subject of inquiry, I wished to be able to adduce the memorandum then made of it, in corroboration of my own testimony; and although that paper has remained unopened to this hour, and notwithstanding that I kept no memorandum whatever of the substance thereof, yet, as I have wrote this representation under the most scrupulous adherence to what I conceived to be truth, should it ever become necessary to refer to this paper, I am confident that it will not be found to differ materially from the substance of this representation."

I forgot to mention, that, besides these two bonds, which Mr. Hastings declared to be the Company's, and one bond his own, that he slipped into the place of the bond of his own a much better, namely, a bond of November, which he never mentioned to the Company till the 22d of May; and this bond for current rupees 1,74,000, or sicca rupees 1,50,000, was taken for the payment stated in the paper No. 1 to have been made to Mr.

Croftes on the 11th Aghan, 1187, which corresponds to the 23d of November, 1780. This is the Nuddea money, and this is all that you know of it; you know that this money, for which he had taken this other bond from the Company, was not his own neither, but bribes taken from the other provinces.

I am ashamed to be troublesome to your Lords.h.i.+ps in this dry affair, but the detection of fraud requires a good deal of patience and a.s.siduity, and we cannot wander into anything that can relieve the mind: if it was in my power to do it, I would do it. I wish, however, to call your Lords.h.i.+ps' attention to this last bribe before I quit these bonds. Such is the confusion, so complicated, so intricate are these bribe accounts, that there is always something left behind, glean never so much from the paragraphs of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Larkins. "I could not bring them to account," says Mr. Larkins. "They were received before the 1st and 2d of October." Why does not the running treasury account give an account of them? The Committee of the House of Commons examined whether the running treasury account had any such account of sums deposited. No such thing.

They are said by Mr. Hastings to be deposited in June: they were not deposited in October, nor any account of them given till the January following. "These bonds," says he, "I could not enter as regular money, to be entered on the Company's account, or in any public way, until I had had an order of the Governor-General and Council." But why had not you an order of the Governor-General and Council? We are not calling on you, Mr. Larkins, for an account of your conduct: we are calling upon Mr. Hastings for an account of his conduct, and which he refers to you to explain. Why did not Mr. Hastings order you to carry them to the public account? "Because," says he, "there was no other way." Every one who knows anything of a treasury or public banking-place knows, that if any person brings money as belonging to the public, that the public accountant is bound, no doubt, to receive it and enter it as such.

"But," says he, "I could not do it until the account could be settled, as between debtor and creditor: I did not do it till I could put on one side durbar charges, secret service, to such an amount, and balance that again with bonds to Mr. Hastings." That is, he could not make an entry regularly in the Company's books until Mr. Hastings had enabled him to commit one of the grossest frauds and violations of a public trust that ever was committed, by ordering that money of the Company's to be considered as his own, and a bond to be taken as a security for it from the Company, as if it was his own.

But to proceed with this deposit. What is the substance of Mr. Larkins's explanation of it? The substance of this explanation is, that here was a bribe received by Mr. Hastings from Cheyt Sing, guarded with such scrupulous secrecy, that it was not carried to the house of Mr. Croftes, who was to receive it finally, but to the house of Mr. Larkins, as a less suspected place; and that it was conveyed in various sums, no two people ever returning twice with the various payments which made up that sum of 23,000_l._ or thereabouts. Now do you want an instance of prevarication and trickery in an account? If any person should inquire whether 23,000_l._ had been paid by Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, there was not any one man living, or any person concerned in the transaction, except Mr. Larkins, who received it, that could give an account of how much he received, or who brought it. As no two people are ever his confidants in the same transaction in Mr. Hastings's accounts, so here no two people are permitted to have any share whatever in bringing the several fragments that make up this sum. This bribe, you might imagine, would have been entered by Mr. Larkins to some public account, at least to the fraudulent account of Mr. Hastings. No such thing. It was never entered till the November following. It was not entered till Mr. Francis had left Calcutta. All these corrupt transactions were carried on privately by Mr. Hastings alone, without any signification to his colleagues of his carrying on this patriotic traffic, as he called it.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will also consider both the person who employs such a fraudulent accountant, and his ideas of his duty in his office. These are matters for your Lords.h.i.+ps' grave determination; but I appeal to you, upon the face of these accounts, whether you ever saw anything so gross,--and whether any man could be daring enough to attempt to impose upon the credulity of the weakest of mankind, much more to impose upon such a court as this, such accounts as these are.

If the Company had a mind to inquire what is become of all the debts due to them, and where is the cabooleat, he refers them to Gunga Govind Sing. "Give us," say they, "an account of this balance that remains in your hands." "I know," says he, "of no balance." "Why, is there not a cabooleat?" "Where is it? What are the date and circ.u.mstances of it?

There is no such cabooleat existing." This is the case even where you have the name of the person through whose hands the money pa.s.sed. But suppose the inquiry went to the payments of the Patna cabooleat. "Here,"

they say, "we find half the money due: out of forty thousand pounds there is only twenty thousand received: give us some account of it." Who is to give an account of it? Here there is no mention made of the name of the person who had the cabooleat: whom can they call upon? Mr.

Hastings does not remember; Mr. Larkins does not tell; they can learn nothing about it. If the Directors had a disposition, and were honest enough to the Proprietors and the nation to inquire into it, there is not a hint given, by either of those persons, who received the Nuddea, who received the Patna, who received the Dinagepore peshcush.

But in what court can a suit be inst.i.tuted, and against whom, for the recovery of this balance of 40,000_l._ out of 95,000_l._? I wish your Lords.h.i.+ps to examine strictly this account,--to examine strictly every part, both of the account itself, and Mr. Larkins's explanation: compare them together, and divine, if you can, what remedy the Company could have for their loss. Can your Lords.h.i.+ps believe that this can be any other than a systematical, deliberate fraud, grossly conducted? I will not allow Mr. Hastings to be the man he represents himself to be: he was supposed to be a man of parts; I will only suppose him to be a man of mere common sense. Are these the accounts we should expect from such a man? And yet he and Mr. Larkins are to be magnified to heaven for great financiers; and this is to be called book-keeping! This is the Bengal account saved so miraculously on the 22d of May.

Next comes the Persian account. You have heard of a present to which it refers. It has been already stated, but it must be a good deal farther explained. Mr. Larkins states that this account was taken from a paper, of which three lines, and only three lines, were read to him by a Persian moonshee; and it is not pretended that this was the whole of it.

The three lines read are as follows.

"From the Nabob" (meaning the Nabob of Oude) "to the Governor-General, six lac 60,000

From Hussein Reza Khan and Hyder Beg Khan to ditto, three lac 30,000

And ditto to Mrs. Hastings, one lac 10,000."

Here, I say, are the three lines that were read by a Persian moonshee.

Is he a man you can call to account for these particulars? No: he is an anonymous moonshee; his name is not so much as mentioned by Mr. Larkins, nor hinted at by Mr. Hastings; and you find these sums, which Mr.

Hastings mentions as a sum in gross given to himself, are not so. They were given by three persons: one, six lacs, was given by the Nabob to the Governor; another, of three lacs more, by Hussein Reza Khan [and Hyder Beg Khan?]; and a third, one lac, by both of them clubbing, as a present to Mrs. Hastings. This is the first discovery that appears of Mrs. Hastings having been concerned in receiving presents for the Governor-General and others, in addition to Gunga Govind Sing, Cantoo Baboo, and Mr. Croftes. Now, if this money was not received for the Company, is it proper and right to take it from Mrs. Hastings? Is there honor and justice in taking from a lady a gratuitous present made to her? Yet Mr. Hastings says he has applied it all to the Company's service. He has done ill, in suffering it to be received at all, if she has not justly and properly received it. Whether, in fact, she ever received this money at all, she not being upon the spot, as I can find, at the time, (though, to be sure, a present might be sent her,) I neither affirm nor deny, farther than that, as Mr. Larkins says, there was a sum of 10,000_l._ from these ministers to Mrs. Hastings. Whether she ever received any other money than this, I also neither affirm nor deny. But in whatever manner Mrs. Hastings received this or any other money, I must say, in this grave place in which I stand, that, if the wives of Governors-General, the wives of Presidents of Council, the wives of the princ.i.p.al officers of the India Company, through all the various departments, can receive presents, there is an end of the covenants, there is an end of the act of Parliament, there is an end to every power of restraint. Let a man be but married, and if his wife may take presents, that moment the acts of Parliament, the covenants, and all the rest expire. There is something, too, in the manners of the East that makes this a much more dangerous practice. The people of the East, it is well known, have their zenanah, the apartment for their wives, as a sanctuary which n.o.body can enter,--a kind of holy of holies, a consecrated place, safe from the rage of war, safe from the fury of tyranny. The rapacity of man has here its bounds: here you shall come, and no farther. But if English ladies can go into these zenanahs and there receive presents, the natives of Hindostan cannot be said to have anything left of their own. Every one knows that in the wisest and best time of the Commonwealth of Rome, towards the latter end of it, (I do not mean the best time for morals, but the best for its knowledge how to correct evil government, and to choose the proper means for it,) it was an established rule, that no governor of a province should take his wife along with him into his province,--wives not being subject to the laws in the same manner as their husbands; and though I do not impute to any one any criminality here, I should think myself guilty of a scandalous dereliction of my duty, if I did not mention the fact to your Lords.h.i.+ps.

But I press it no further: here are the accounts, delivered in by Mr.

Larkins at Mr. Hastings's own requisition.

The three lines which were read out of a Persian paper are followed by a long account of the several species in which this present was received, and converted by exchange into one common standard. Now, as these three lines of paper, which are said to have been read out of a Persian paper, contain an account of bribes to the amount of 100,000_l._, and as it is not even insinuated that this was the whole of the paper, but rather the contrary indirectly implied, I shall leave it for your Lords.h.i.+ps, in your serious consideration, to judge what mines of bribery that paper might contain. For why did not Mr. Larkins get the whole of that paper read and translated? The moment any man stops in the midst of an account, he is stopping in the midst of a fraud.