The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume XI Part 13

It may be necessary that I should recall to your Lords.h.i.+ps' recollection the principles of the accusation and of the defence. Your Lords.h.i.+ps will bear in mind that the matters of fact are all either settled by confession or conviction, and that the question now before you is no longer an issue of fact, but an issue of law. The question is, what degree of merit or demerit you are to a.s.sign by law to actions which have been laid before you, and their truth acknowledged.

The principle being established that you are to decide upon an issue at law, we examined by what law the prisoner ought to be tried; and we preferred a claim which we do now solemnly prefer, and which we trust your Lords.h.i.+ps will concur with us in a laudable emulation to establish,--a claim founded upon the great truths, that all power is limited by law, and ought to be guided by discretion, and not by arbitrary will,--that all discretion must be referred to the conservation and benefit of those over whom power is exercised, and therefore must be guided by rules of sound political morality.

We next contended, that, wherever existing laws were applicable, the prisoner at your bar was bound by the laws and statutes of this kingdom, as a British subject; and that, whenever he exercised authority in the name of the Company, or in the name of his Majesty, or under any other name, he was bound by the laws and statutes of this kingdom, both in letter and spirit, so far as they were applicable to him and to his case; and above all, that he was bound by the act to which he owed his appointment, in all transactions with foreign powers, to act according to the known recognized rules of the Law of Nations, whether these powers were really or nominally sovereign, whether they were dependent or independent.

The next point which we established, and which we now call to your Lords.h.i.+ps' recollection, is, that he was bound to proceed according to the laws, rights, laudable customs, privileges, and franchises of the country that he governed; and we contended that to such laws, rights, privileges, and franchises the people of the country had a clear and just claim.

Having established these points as the basis of Mr. Hastings's general power, we contended that he was obliged by the nature of his relation, as a servant to the Company, to be obedient to their orders at all times, and particularly where he had entered into special covenants regarding special articles of obedience.

These are the principles by which we have examined the conduct of this man, and upon which we have brought him to your Lords.h.i.+ps' bar for judgment. This is our table of the law. Your Lords.h.i.+ps shall now be shown the table by which he claims to be judged. But I will first beg your Lords.h.i.+ps to take notice of the utter contempt with which he treats all our acts of Parliament.

Speaking of the absolute sovereignty which he would have you believe is exercised by the princes of India, he says, "The sovereignty which they a.s.sumed it fell to my lot, very unexpectedly, to exert; and whether or not such power, or powers of that nature, were delegated to me by any provisions of any act of Parliament I confess myself too little of a lawyer to p.r.o.nounce," and so on. This is the manner in which he treats an act of Parliament! In the place of acts of Parliament he subst.i.tutes his own arbitrary will. This he contends is the sole law of the country he governed, as laid down in what he calls the arbitrary Inst.i.tutes of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. This arbitrary will he claims, to the exclusion of the Gentoo law, the Mahometan law, and the law of his own country. He claims the right of making his own will the sole rule of his government, and justifies the exercise of this power by the examples of Aliverdy Khan, Cossim Ali Khan, Sujah Dowlah Khan, and all those Khans who have rebelled against their masters, and desolated the countries subjected to their rule. This, my Lords, is the law which he has laid down for himself, and these are the examples which he has expressly told the House of Commons he is resolved to follow. These examples, my Lords, and the principles with which they are connected, without any softening or mitigation, he has prescribed to you as the rule by which his conduct is to be judged.

Another principle of the prisoner is, that, whenever the Company's affairs are in distress, even when that distress proceeds from his own prodigality, mismanagement, or corruption, he has a right to take for the Company's benefit privately in his own name, with the future application of it to their use reserved in his own breast, every kind of bribe or corrupt present whatever.

I have now restated to your Lords.h.i.+ps the maxims by which the prisoner persists in defending himself, and the principles upon which we claim to have him judged. The issue before your Lords.h.i.+ps is a hundred times more important than the cause itself, for it is to determine by what law or maxims of law the conduct of governors is to be judged.

On one side, your Lords.h.i.+ps have the prisoner declaring that the people have no laws, no rights, no usages, no distinctions of rank, no sense of honor, no property,--in short, that they are nothing but a herd of slaves, to be governed by the arbitrary will of a master. On the other side, we a.s.sert that the direct contrary of this is true. And to prove our a.s.sertion we have referred you to the Inst.i.tutes of Genghis Khan and of Tamerlane; we have referred you to the Mahometan law, which is binding upon all, from the crowned head to the meanest subject,--a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned, and most enlightened jurisprudence that perhaps ever existed in the world. We have shown you, that, if these parties are to be compared together, it is not the rights of the people which are nothing, but rather the rights of the sovereign which are so. The rights of the people are everything, as they ought to be, in the true and natural order of things. G.o.d forbid that these maxims should trench upon sovereignty, and its true, just, and lawful prerogative!--on the contrary, they ought to support and establish them. The sovereign's rights are undoubtedly sacred rights, and ought to be so held in every country in the world, because exercised for the benefit of the people, and in subordination to that great end for which alone G.o.d has vested power in any man or any set of men. This is the law that we insist upon, and these are the principles upon which your Lords.h.i.+ps are to try the prisoner at your bar.

Let me remind your Lords.h.i.+ps that these people lived under the laws to which I have referred you, and that these laws were formed whilst we, I may say, were in the forest, certainly before we knew what technical jurisprudence was. These laws are allowed to be the basis and substratum of the manners, customs, and opinions of the people of India; and we contend that Mr. Hastings is bound to know them and to act by them; and I shall prove that the very condition upon which he received power in India was to protect the people in their laws and known rights. But whether Mr. Hastings did know these laws, or whether, content with credit gained by as base a fraud as was ever practised, he did not read the books which n.o.bkissin paid for, we take the benefit of them: we know and speak after knowledge of them. And although I believe his Council have never read them, I should be sorry to stand in this place, if there was one word and t.i.ttle in these books that I had not read over.

We therefore come here and declare to you that he is not borne out by these Inst.i.tutes, either in their general spirit or in any particular pa.s.sage to which he has had the impudence to appeal, in the a.s.sumption of the arbitrary power which he has exercised. We claim, that, as our own government and every person exercising authority in Great Britain is bound by the laws of Great Britain, so every person exercising authority in another country shall be subject to the laws of that country; since otherwise they break the very covenant by which we hold our power there.

Even if these Inst.i.tutes had been arbitrary, which they are not, they might have been excused as the acts of conquerors. But, my Lords, he is no conqueror, nor anything but what you see him,--a bad scribbler of absurd papers, in which he can put no two sentences together without contradiction. We know him in no other character than that of having been a bullock-contractor for some years, of having acted fraudulently in that capacity, and afterwards giving fraudulent contracts to others; and yet I will maintain that the first conquerors of the world would have been base and abandoned, if they had a.s.sumed such a right as he dares to claim. It is the glory of all such great men to have for their motto, _Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos_. These were men that said they would recompense the countries which they had obtained through torrents of blood, through carnage and violence, by the justice of their inst.i.tutions, the mildness of their laws, and the equity of their government. Even if these conquerors had promulgated arbitrary inst.i.tutes instead of disclaiming them in every point, you, my Lords, would never suffer such principles of defence to be urged here; still less will you suffer the examples of men acting by violence, of men acting by wrong, the example of a man who has become a rebel to his sovereign in order that he should become the tyrant of his people, to be examples for a British governor, or for any governor. We here confidently protest against this mode of justification, and we maintain that his pretending to follow these examples is in itself a crime. The prisoner has ransacked all Asia for principles of despotism; he has ransacked all the bad and corrupted part of it for tyrannical examples to justify himself: and certainly in no other way can he be justified.

Having established the falsehood of the first principle of the prisoner's defence, that sovereignty, wherever it exists in India, implies in its nature and essence a power of exacting anything from the subject, and disposing of his person and property, we now come to his second a.s.sertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative of that sovereignty in India.

In opposition to this a.s.sertion we first do positively deny that he or the Company are the perfect representative of any sovereign power whatever. They have certain rights by their charter, and by acts of Parliament, but they have no other. They have their legal rights only, and these do not imply any such thing as sovereign power. The sovereignty of Great Britain is in the King; he is the sovereign of the Lords and the sovereign of the Commons, individually and collectively; and as he has his prerogative established by law, he must exercise it, and all persons claiming and deriving under him, whether by act of Parliament, whether by charter of the Crown, or by any other mode whatever, all are alike bound by law, and responsible to it. No one can a.s.sume or receive any power of sovereignty, because the sovereignty is in the Crown, and cannot be delegated away from the Crown; no such delegation ever took place, or ever was intended, as any one may see in the act by which Mr. Hastings was nominated Governor. He cannot, therefore, exercise that high supreme sovereignty which is vested by the law, with the consent of both Houses of Parliament, in the King, and in the King only. It is a violent, rebellious a.s.sumption of power, when Mr.

Hastings pretends fully, perfectly, and entirely to represent the sovereign of this country, and to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial authority, with as large and broad a sway as his Majesty, acting with the consent of the two Houses of Parliament, and agreeably to the laws of this kingdom. I say, my Lords, this is a traitorous and rebellious a.s.sumption, which he has no right to make, and which we charge against him, and therefore it cannot be urged in justification of his conduct in any respect.

He next alleges, with reference to one particular case, that he received this sovereignty from the Vizier Sujah Dowlah, who he pretends was sovereign, with an unlimited power over the life, goods, and property of Cheyt Sing. This we positively deny. Whatever power the supreme sovereign of the empire had, we deny that it was delegated to Sujah Dowlah. He never was in possession of it. He was a vizier of the empire; he had a grant of certain lands for the support of that dignity: and we refer you to the Inst.i.tutes of Timour, to the Inst.i.tutes of Akbar, to the inst.i.tutes of the Mahometan law, for the powers of delegated governors and viceroys. You will find that there is not a trace of sovereignty in them, but that they are, to all intents and purposes, mere subjects; and consequently, as Sujah Dowlah had not these powers, he could not transfer them to the India Company. His master, the Mogul emperor, had them not. I defy any man to show an instance of that emperor's claiming any such thing as arbitrary power; much less can it be claimed by a rebellious viceroy who had broken loose from his sovereign's authority, just as this man broke loose from the authority of Parliament. The one had not a right to give, nor the other to receive such powers. But whatever rights were vested in the Mogul, they cannot belong either to Sujah Dowlah, to Mr. Hastings, or to the Company. These latter are expressly bound by their compact to take care of the subjects of the empire, and to govern them according to law, reason, and equity; and when they do otherwise, they are guilty of tyranny, of a violation of the rights of the people, and of rebellion against their sovereign.

We have taken these pains to ascertain and fix principles, because your Lords.h.i.+ps are not called upon to judge of facts. A jury may find facts, but no jury can form a judgment of law; it is an application of the law to the fact that makes the act criminal or laudable. You must find a fixed standard of some kind or other; for if there is no standard but the immediate momentary purpose of the day, guided and governed by the man who uses it, fixed not only for the disposition of all the wealth and strength of the state, but for the life, fortune, and property of every individual, your Lords.h.i.+ps are left without a principle to direct your judgment. This high court, this supreme court of appeal from all the courts of the kingdom, this highest court of criminal jurisdiction, exercised upon the requisition of the House of Commons, if left without a rule, would be as lawless as the wild savage, and as unprincipled as the prisoner that stands at your bar. Our whole issue is upon principles, and what I shall say to you will be in perpetual reference to them; because it is better to have no principles at all than to have false principles of government and of morality. Leave a man to his pa.s.sions, and you leave a wild beast to a savage and capricious nature.

A wild beast, indeed, when its stomach is full, will caress you, and may lick your hands; in like manner, when a tyrant is pleased or his pa.s.sion satiated, you may have a happy and serene day under an arbitrary government. But when the principle founded on solid reason, which ought to restrain pa.s.sion, is perverted from its proper end, the false principle will be subst.i.tuted for it, and then man becomes ten times worse than a wild beast. The evil principle, grown solid and perennial, goads him on and takes entire possession of his mind; and then perhaps the best refuge that you can have from that diabolical principle is in the natural wild pa.s.sions and unbridled appet.i.tes of mankind. This is a dreadful state of things; and therefore we have thought it necessary to say a great deal upon his principles.

My Lords, we come next to apply these principles to facts which cannot otherwise be judged, as we have contended and do now contend. I will not go over facts which have been opened to you by my fellow Managers: if I did so, I should appear to have a distrust, which I am sure no other man has, of the greatest abilities displayed in the greatest of all causes.

I should be guilty of a presumption which I hope I shall not dream of, but leave to those who exercise arbitrary power, in supposing that I could go over the ground which my fellow Managers have once trodden, and make anything more clear and forcible than they have done. In my humble opinion, human ability cannot go farther than they have gone; and if I ever allude to anything which they have already touched, it will be to show it in another light,--to mark more particularly its departure from the principles upon which we contend you ought to judge, or to supply those parts which through bodily infirmity, and I am sure nothing else, one of my excellent fellow Managers has left untouched. I am here alluding to the case of Cheyt Sing.

My honorable fellow Manager, Mr. Grey, has stated to you all the circ.u.mstances requisite to prove two things: first, that the demands made by Mr. Hastings upon Cheyt Sing were contrary to fundamental treaties between the Company and that Rajah; and next, that they were the result and effect of private malice and corruption. This having been stated and proved to you, I shall take up the subject where it was left.

My Lords, in the first place, I have to remark to you, that the whole of the charge originally brought by Mr. Hastings against Cheyt Sing, in justification of his wicked and tyrannical proceedings, is, that he had been dilatory, evasive, shuffling, and unwilling to pay that which, however unwilling, evasive, and shuffling, he did pay; and that, with regard to the business of furnis.h.i.+ng cavalry, the Rajah has a.s.serted, and his a.s.sertion has not been denied, that, when he was desired by the Council to furnish these troopers, the purpose for which this application was made was not mentioned or alluded to, nor was there any place of muster pointed out. We therefore contended, that the demand was not made for the service of the state, but for the oppression of the individual that suffered by it.

But admitting the Rajah to have been guilty of delay and unwillingness, what is the nature of the offence? If you strip it of the epithets by which it has been disguised, it merely amounts to an unwillingness in the Rajah to pay more than the sums stipulated by the mutual agreement existing between him and the Company. This is the whole of it, the whole front and head of the offence; and for this offence, such as it is, and admitting that he could be legally fined for it, he was subjected to the secret punishment of giving a bribe to Mr. Hastings, by which he was to buy off the fine, and which was consequently a commutation for it.

That your Lords.h.i.+ps may be enabled to judge more fully of the nature of this offence, let us see in what relation Cheyt Sing stood with the Company. He was, my Lords, a person clothed with every one of the attributes of sovereignty, under a direct stipulation that the Company should not interfere in his internal government. The military and civil authority, the power of life and death, the whole revenue, and the whole administration of the law, rested in him. Such was the sovereignty he possessed within Benares: but he was a subordinate sovereign dependent upon a superior, according to the tenor of his compact, expressed or implied. Now, having contended, as we still contend, that the Law of Nations is the law of India as well as of Europe, because it is the law of reason and the law of Nature, drawn from the pure sources of morality, of public good, and of natural equity, and recognized and digested into order by the labor of learned men, I will refer your Lords.h.i.+ps to Vattel, Book I. Cap. 16, where he treats of the breach of such agreements, by the protector refusing to give protection, or the protected refusing to perform his part of the engagement. My design in referring you to this author is to prove that Cheyt Sing, so far from being blamable in raising objections to the unauthorized demand made upon him by Mr. Hastings, was absolutely bound to do so; nor could he have done otherwise, without hazarding the whole benefit of the agreement upon which his subjection and protection were founded. The law is the same with respect to both contracting parties: if the protected or protector does not fulfil with fidelity _each his separate stipulation_, the protected may resist the unauthorized demand of the protector, or the protector is discharged from his engagement; he may refuse protection, and declare the treaty broken.

We contend in favor of Cheyt Sing, in support of the principles of natural equity, and of the Law of Nations, which is the birthright of us all,--we contend, I say, that Cheyt Sing would have established, in the opinions of the best writers on the Law of Nations, a precedent against himself for any future violation of the engagement, if he submitted to any new demand, without what our laws call a continual claim or perpetual remonstrance against the imposition. Instead, therefore, of doing that which was criminal, he did that which his safety and his duty bound him to do; and for doing this he was considered by Mr. Hastings as being guilty of a great crime. In a paper which was published by the prisoner in justification of this act, he considers the Rajah to have been guilty of rebellious intentions; and he represents these acts of contumacy, as he calls them, not as proofs of contumacy merely, but as proofs of a settled design to rebel, and to throw off the authority of that nation by which he was protected. This belief he declares on oath to be the ground of his conduct towards Cheyt Sing.

Now, my Lords, we do contend, that, if any subject, under any name, or of any description, be not engaged in public, open rebellion, but continues to acknowledge the authority of his sovereign, and, if tributary, to pay tribute conformably to agreement, such a subject, in case of being suspected of having formed traitorous designs, ought to be treated in a manner totally different from that which was adopted by Mr.

Hastings. If the Rajah of Benares had formed a secret conspiracy, Mr.

Hastings had a state duty and a judicial duty to perform. He was bound, as Governor, knowing of such a conspiracy, to provide for the public safety; and as a judge, he was bound to convene a criminal court, and to lay before it a detailed accusation of the offence. He was bound to proceed publicly and legally against the accused, and to convict him of his crime, previous to his inflicting, or forming any intention of inflicting, punishment. I say, my Lords, that Mr. Hastings, as a magistrate, was bound to proceed against the Rajah either by English law, by Mahometan law, or by the Gentoo law; and that, by all or any of these laws, he was bound to make the accused acquainted with the crime alleged, to hear his answer to the charge, and to produce evidence against him, in an open, clear, and judicial manner. And here, my Lords, we have again to remark, that the Mahometan law is a great discriminator of persons, and that it prescribes the mode of proceeding against those who are accused of any delinquency requiring punishment, with a reference to the distinction and rank which the accused held in society.

The proceedings are exceedingly sober, regular, and respectful, even to criminals charged with the highest crimes; and every magistrate is required to exercise his office in the prescribed manner. In the Hedaya, after declaring and discussing the propriety of the Kazi's sitting openly in the execution of his office, it is added, that there is no impropriety in the Kazi sitting in his own house to pa.s.s judgment, but it is requisite that he give orders for a free access to the people. It then proceeds thus:--"It is requisite that such people sit along with the Kazi as were used to sit with him, prior to his appointment to the office; because, if he were to sit alone in his house, he would thereby give rise to suspicion."[98]

My Lords, having thus seen what the duty of a judge is in such a case, let us examine whether Mr. Hastings observed any part of the prescribed rules. First, with regard to the publicity of the matter. Did he ever give any notice to the Supreme Council of the charges which he says he had received against Cheyt Sing? Did he accuse the Rajah in the Council, even when it was reduced to himself and his poor, worn, down, cowed, and I am afraid bribed colleague, Mr. Wheler? Did he even then, I ask, produce any one charge against this man? He sat in Council as a judge,--as an English judge,--as a Mahometan judge,--as a judge by the Gentoo law, and by the Law of Nature. He should have summoned the party to appear in person, or by his attorney, before him, and should have there informed him of the charge against him. But, my Lords, he did not act thus. He kept the accusation secret in his own bosom. And why?

Because he did not believe it to be true. This may at least be inferred from his having never informed the Council of the matter. He never informed the Rajah of Benares of the suspicions entertained against him, during the discussions which took place respecting the multiplied demands that were made upon him. He never told this victim, as he has had the audacity to tell us and all this kingdom in the paper that is before your Lords.h.i.+ps, that he looked upon these refusals to comply with his demands to be overt acts of rebellion; nor did he ever call upon him to answer or to justify himself with regard to that imputed conspiracy or rebellion. Did he tell Sadanund, the Rajah's agent, when that agent was giving him a bribe or a present in secret, and was thus endeavoring to deprecate his wrath, that he accepted that bribe because his master was in rebellion? Never, my Lords; nor did he, when he first reached Benares, and had the Rajah in his power, suggest one word concerning this rebellion. Did he, when he met Mr. Markham at Boglipore, where they consulted about the destruction of this unhappy man, did he tell Mr.

Markham, or did Mr. Markham insinuate to him, any one thing about this conspiracy and rebellion? No, not a word there, or in his whole progress up the country. While at Boglipore, he wrote a letter to Lord Macartney upon the state of the empire, giving him much and various advice. Did he insinuate in that letter that he was going up to Benares to suppress a rebellion of the Rajah Cheyt Sing or to punish him? No, not a word. Did he, my Lords, at the eve of his departure from Calcutta, when he communicated his intention of taking 500,000_l._, which he calls a fine or penalty, from the Rajah, did he inform Mr. Wheler of it? No, not a word of his rebellion, nor anything like it. Did he inform his secret confidants, Mr. Anderson and Major Palmer, upon that subject? Not a word, there was not a word dropped from him of any such rebellion, or of any intention in the Rajah Cheyt Sing to rebel. Did he, when he had vakeels in every part of the Mahratta empire and in the country of Sujah Dowlah, when he had in most of those courts English amba.s.sadors and native spies, did he either from amba.s.sadors or spies receive anything like authentic intelligence upon this subject? While he was at Benares, he had in his hands Benaram Pundit, the vakeel of the Rajah of Berar, his own confidential friend, a person whom he took out of the service of his master, and to whom he gave a jaghire in this very zemindary of Benares. This man, so attached to Mr. Hastings, so knowing in all the transactions of India, neither accused Cheyt Sing of rebellious intentions, or furnished Mr. Hastings with one single proof that any conspiracy with any foreign power existed.

In this absence of evidence, My Lords, let us have recourse to probability. Is it to be believed that the Zemindar of Benares, a person whom Mr. Hastings describes as being of a timid, weak, irresolute, and feeble nature, should venture to make war alone with the whole power of the Company in India, aided by all the powers which Great Britain could bring to the protection of its Indian empire? Could that poor man, in his comparatively small district, possibly have formed such an intention, without giving Mr. Hastings access to the knowledge of the fact from one or other of the numerous correspondents which he had in that country?

As to the Rajah's supposed intrigues with the Nabob of Oude: this man was an actual prisoner of Mr. Hastings, and nothing else,--a mere va.s.sal, as he says himself, in effect and substance, though not in name.

Can any one believe or think that Mr. Hastings would not have received from the English Resident, or from some one of that tribe of English gentlemen and English military collectors who were placed in that country in the exercise of the most arbitrary powers, some intelligence which he could trust, if any rebellious designs had really existed previous to the rebellion which did actually break out upon his arresting Cheyt Sing?

There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they called _Cui Bono_, from his having first introduced into juridical proceedings the argument, _What end or object could the party have had in the art with which he is accused?_ Surely it may be here asked, Why should Cheyt Sing wish to rebel, who held on easy and moderate terms (for such I admit they were) a very considerable territory, with every attribute of royalty attached? The tribute was paid for protection, which he had a right to claim, and which he actually received. What reason under heaven could he have to go and seek another master, to place himself under the protection of Sujah Dowlah, in whose hands Mr. Hastings tells you, in so many direct and plain words, that neither the Rajah's property, his honor, or his life could be safe? Was he to seek refuge with the Mahrattas, who, though Gentoos like himself, had reduced every nation which they subdued, except those who were originally of their own empire, to a severe servitude? Can any one believe that he wished either for the one or the other of these charges [changes?], or that he was desirous to quit the happy independent situation in which he stood under the protection of the British empire, from any loose, wild, improbable notion of mending his condition? My Lords, it is impossible. There is not one particle of evidence, not one word of this charge on record, prior to the publication of Mr. Hastings's Narrative; and all the presumptive evidence in the world would scarcely be sufficient to prove the fact, because it is almost impossible that it should be true.

But, my Lords, although Mr. Hastings swore to the truth of this charge, when he came before the House of Commons, yet in his Narrative he thus fairly and candidly avowed that he entertained no such opinion at the time. "Every step," says he, "which I had taken before that fatal moment, namely, the flight of Cheyt Sing, is an incontrovertible proof that I had formed no design of seizing upon the Rajah's treasures or of deposing him. And certainly, at the time when I did form the design of making the punishment that his former ill conduct deserved subservient to the exigencies of the state by a large fine, I did not believe him guilty of that premeditated project for driving the English out of India with which I afterwards charged him." Thus, then, he declares upon oath that the Rajah's contumacy was the ground of his suspecting him of rebellion, and yet, when he comes to make his defence before the House of Commons, he simply and candidly declares, that, long after these alleged acts of contumacy had taken place, he did not believe him to be guilty of any such thing as rebellion, and that the fine imposed upon him was for another reason and another purpose.

In page 28 of your printed Minutes he thus declares the purpose for which the fine was imposed:--"I can answer only to this formidable dilemma, that, so long as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and contumacy to have me rather than the Company for its object, at least to be merely the effect of pernicious advice or misguided folly, without any formal design of openly resisting our authority or disclaiming our sovereignty, I looked upon a considerable fine as sufficient both for his immediate punishment and for binding him to future good behavior."

Here, my Lords, the secret comes out. He declares it was not for a rebellion or a suspicion of rebellion that he resolved, over and above all his exorbitant demands, to take from the Rajah 500,000_l._, (a good stout sum to be taken from a tributary power!)--that it was not for misconduct of this kind that he took this sum, but for personal ill behavior towards himself. I must again beg your Lords.h.i.+ps to note that he then considered the Rajah's contumacy as having for its object, not the Company, but Warren Hastings, and that he afterwards declared publicly to the House of Commons, and now before your Lords.h.i.+ps he declares finally and conclusively, that he did believe Cheyt Sing to have had the criminal intention imputed to him.

"So long," says he, "as I conceived Cheyt Sing's misconduct and contumacy to have _me_" (in Italics, as he ordered it to be printed,) "rather than the Company, for its object, so long I was satisfied with a fine: I therefore entertained no serious thoughts of expelling him, or proceeding otherwise to violence. But when he and his people broke out into the most atrocious acts of rebellion and murder, when the _jus fortioris et lex ultima regum_ were appealed to on his part, and without any sufficient plea afforded him on mine, I from that moment considered him as the traitor and criminal described in the charge, and no concessions, no humiliations, could ever after induce me to settle on him the zemindary of Benares, or any other territory, upon any footing whatever."

Thus, then, my Lords, he has confessed that the era and the only era of rebellion was when the tumult broke out upon the act of violence offered by himself to Cheyt Sing; and upon the ground of that tumult, or rebellion as he calls it, he says he never would suffer him to enjoy any territory or any right whatever. We have fixed the period of the rebellion for which he is supposed to have exacted this fine; this period of rebellion was after the exaction of the fine itself: so that the fine was not laid for the rebellion, but the rebellion broke out in consequence of the fine, and the violent measure accompanying it. We have established this, and the whole human race cannot shake it. He went up the country through malice, to revenge his own private wrongs, not those of the Company. He fixed 500,000_l._ as a mulct for an insult offered to himself, and then a rebellion broke out in consequence of his violence. This was the rebellion, and the only rebellion; it was Warren Hastings's rebellion,--a rebellion which arose from his own dreadful exaction, from his pride, from his malice and insatiable avarice,--a rebellion which arose from his abominable tyranny, from his l.u.s.t of arbitrary power, and from his determination to follow the examples of Sujah Dowlah, Asoph ul Dowlah, Cossim Ali Khan, Aliverdy Khan, and all the gang of rebels who are the objects of his imitation.

"_My patience_," says he, "_was exhausted_." Your Lords.h.i.+ps have, and ought to have, a judicial patience. Mr. Hastings has none of any kind. I hold that patience is one of the great virtues of a governor; it was said of Moses, that he governed by patience, and that he was the meekest man upon earth. Patience is also the distinguis.h.i.+ng character of a judge; and I think your Lords.h.i.+ps, both with regard to us and with regard to him, have shown a great deal of it: we shall ever honor the quality, and if we pretend to say that we have had great patience in going through this trial, so your Lords.h.i.+ps must have had great patience in hearing it. But this man's patience, as he himself tells you, was soon exhausted. "I considered," he says, "the light in which such behavior would have been viewed by his native sovereign, and I resolved he should feel the power he had so long insulted. Forty or fifty lacs of rupees would have been a moderate fine for Sujah ul Dowlah to exact,--he who had demanded twenty-five lacs for the mere fine of succession, and received twenty in hand, and an increased rent tantamount to considerably above thirty lacs more; and therefore I rejected the offer of twenty, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late."

Now, my Lords, observe who his models were, when he intended to punish this man for an insult on himself. Did he consult the laws? Did he look to the Inst.i.tutes of Timour, or to those of Genghis Khan? Did he look to the Hedaya, or to any of the approved authorities in this country? No, my Lords, he exactly followed the advice which Longinus gives to a great writer:--"Whenever you have a mind to elevate your mind, to raise it to its highest pitch, and even to exceed yourself, upon any subject, think how Homer would have described it, how Plato would have imagined it, and how Demosthenes would have expressed it; and when you have so done, you will then, no doubt, have a standard which will raise you up to the dignity of anything that human genius can aspire to." Mr. Hastings was calling upon himself, and raising his mind to the dignity of what tyranny could do, what unrighteous exaction could perform. He considered, he says, how much Sujah Dowlah would have exacted, and that he thinks would not be too much for him to exact. He boldly avows,--"I raised my mind to the elevation of Sujah Dowlah; I considered what Cossim Ali Khan would have done, or Aliverdy Khan, who murdered and robbed so many, I had all this line of great examples before me, and I asked myself what fine they would have exacted upon such an occasion.

But," says he, "Sujah Dowlah levied a fine of twenty lacs for a right of succession."

Good G.o.d! my Lords, if you are not appalled with the violent injustice of arbitrary proceedings, you must feel something humiliating at the gross ignorance of men who are in this manner playing with the rights of mankind. This man confounds a fine upon succession with a fine of penalty. He takes advantage of a defect in the technical language of our law, which, I am sorry to say, is not, in many parts, as correct in its distinctions and as wise in its provisions as the Mahometan law. We use the word _fine_ in three senses: first, as a punishment and penalty; secondly, as a formal means of cutting off by one form the ties of another form, which we call levying a fine; and, thirdly, we use the word to signify a sum of money payable upon renewal of a lease or copyhold. The word has in each case a totally different sense; but such is the stupidity and barbarism of the prisoner, that he confounds these senses, and tells you Sujah Dowlah took twenty-five lacs as a fine from Cheyt Sing for the renewal of his zemindary, and therefore, as a punishment for his offences, he shall take fifty. Suppose any one of your Lords.h.i.+ps, or of us, were to be fined for a.s.sault and battery, or for anything else, and it should be said, "You paid such a fine for a bishop's lease, you paid such a fine on the purchase of an estate, and therefore, now that you are going to be fined for a punishment, we will take the measure of the fine, not from the nature and quality of your offence, not from the law upon the subject, or from your ability to pay, but the amount of a fine you paid some years ago for an estate shall be the measure of your punishment." My Lords, what should we say of such brutish ignorance, and such shocking confusion of ideas?

When this man had elevated his mind according to the rules of art, and stimulated himself to great things by great examples, he goes on to tell you that he rejected the offer of twenty lacs with which the Rajah would have compounded for his guilt when it was too late.

Permit me, my Lords, to say a few words here, by way of referring back all this monstrous heap of violence and absurdity to some degree of principle. Mr. Hastings having completely acquitted the Rajah of any other fault than contumacy, and having supposed even that to be only personal to himself, he thought a fine of 500,000_l._ would be a proper punishment. Now, when any man goes to exact a fine, it presupposes inquiry, charge, defence, and judgment. It does so in the Mahometan law; it does so in the Gentoo law; it does so in the law of England, in the Roman law, and in the law, I believe, of every nation under heaven, except in that law which resides in the arbitrary breast of Mr.

Hastings, poisoned by the principles and stimulated by the examples of those wicked traitors and rebels whom I have before described. He mentions his intention of levying a fine; but does he make any mention of having charged the Rajah with his offences? It appears that he held an incredible quant.i.ty of private correspondence through the various Residents, through Mr. Graham, Mr. Fowke, Mr. Markham, Mr. Benn, concerning the affairs of that country. Did he ever, upon this alleged contumacy, (for at present I put the rebellion out of the question,) inquire the progress of this personal affront offered to the Governor-General of Bengal? Did he ever state it to the Rajah, or did he call his vakeel before the Council to answer the charge? Did he examine any one person, or particularize a single fact, in any manner whatever?

No. What, then, did he do? Why, my Lords, he declared himself the person injured, stood forward as the accuser, a.s.sumed the office of judge, and proceeded to judgment without a party before him, without trial, without examination, without proof. He thus directly reversed the order of justice. He determined to fine the Rajah when his own patience, as he says, was exhausted, not when justice demanded the punishment. He resolved to fine him in the enormous sum of 500,000_l._ Does he inform the Council of this determination? No. The Court of Directors? No. Any one of his confidants? No, not one of them,--not Mr. Palmer, not Mr.

Middleton, nor any of that legion of secretaries that he had; nor did he even inform Mr. Malcolm [Markham?] of his intentions, until he met him at Boglipore.

In regard to the object of his malice, we only know that many letters came from Cheyt Sing to Mr. Hastings, in which the unfortunate man endeavored to appease his wrath, and to none of which he ever gave an answer. He is an accuser preferring a charge and receiving apologies, without giving the party an answer, although he had a crowd of secretaries about him, maintained at the expense of the miserable people of Benares, and paid by sums of money drawn fraudulently from their pockets. Still not one word of answer was given, till he had formed the resolution of exacting a fine, and had actually by torture made his victim's servant discover where his master's treasures lay, in order that he might rob him of all his family possessed. Are these the proceedings of a British judge? or are they not rather such as are described by Lord c.o.ke (and these learned gentlemen, I dare say, will remember the pa.s.sage; it is too striking not to be remembered) as _"the d.a.m.ned and d.a.m.nable proceedings of a judge in h.e.l.l_"? Such a judge has the prisoner at your bar proved himself to be. First he determines upon the punishment, then he prepares the accusation, and then by torture and violence endeavors to extort the fine.

My Lords, I must again beg leave to call your attention to his mode of proceeding in this business. He never entered any charge. He never answered any letter. Not that he was idle. He was carrying on a wicked and clandestine plot for the destruction of the Rajah, under the pretence of this fine; although the plot was not known, I verily believe, to any European at the time. He does not pretend that he told any one of the Company's servants of his intentions of fining the Rajah; but that some hostile project against him had been formed by Mr.

Hastings was perfectly well known to the natives. Mr. Hastings tells you, that Cheyt Sing had a vakeel at Calcutta, whose business it was to learn the general transactions of our government, and the most minute particulars which could in any manner affect the interest of his employer.

I must here tell your Lords.h.i.+ps, that there is no court in Asia, from the highest to the lowest, no petty sovereign, that does not both employ and receive what they call _hircarrahs_, or, in other words, persons to collect and to communicate political intelligence. These men are received with the state and in the rank of amba.s.sadors; they have their place in the durbar; and their business, as authorized spies, is as well known there as that of amba.s.sadors extraordinary and ordinary in the courts of Europe. Mr. Hastings had a public spy, in the person of the Resident, at Benares, and he had a private spy there in another person.

The spies employed by the native powers had by some means come to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings's clandestine and wicked intentions towards this unhappy man, Cheyt Sing, and his unhappy country, and of his designs for the destruction and the utter ruin of both. He has himself told you, and he has got Mr. Anderson to vouch it, that he had received proposals for the sale of this miserable man and his country. And from whom did he receive these proposals, my Lords? Why, from the Nabob Asoph ul Dowlah, to whom he threatened to transfer both the person of the Rajah and his zemindary, if he did not redeem himself by some pecuniary sacrifice. Now Asoph ul Dowlah, as appears by the minutes on your Lords.h.i.+ps' table, was at that time a bankrupt. He was in debt to the Company tenfold more than he could pay, and all his revenues were sequestered for that debt. He was a person of the last degree of indolence with the last degree of rapacity,--a man of whom Mr. Hastings declared, that he had wasted and destroyed by his misgovernment the fairest provinces upon earth, that not a person in his dominions was secure from his violence, and that even his own father could not enjoy his life and honor in safety under him. This avaricious bankrupt tyrant, who had beggared and destroyed his own subjects, and could not pay his debts to the English government, was the man with whom Mr. Hastings was in treaty to deliver up Cheyt Sing and his country, under pretence of his not having paid regularly to the Company those customary payments which the tyrant would probably have never paid at all, if he had been put in possession of the country. This I mention to ill.u.s.trate Mr.

Hastings's plans of economy and finance, without considering the injustice and cruelty of delivering up a man to the hereditary enemy of his family.