The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume XI Part 20

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will remember that the counsel at the bar have said that they undertook the defence of Warren Hastings, not in order to defend him, but to rescue the British character from the imputations which have been laid upon it by the Commons of Great Britain. They have said that the Commons of Great Britain have slandered their country, and have misrepresented its character; while, on the contrary, the servants of the Company have sustained and maintained the dignity of the English character, have kept its public faith inviolate, preserved the people from oppression, reconciled every government to it in India, and have made every person under it prosperous and happy.

My Lords, you see what this man says himself, when endeavoring to prove his own innocence. Instead of proving it by the facts alleged by his counsel, he declares that by preserving good faith you might have conquered India, the most glorious conquest that was ever made in the world; that all the people want our a.s.sistance, but dread our connection. Why? Because our whole conduct has been one perpetual tissue of perfidy and breach of faith with every person who has been in alliance with us, in any mode whatever. Here is the man himself who says it. Can we bear that this man should now stand up in this place as the a.s.sertor of the honor of the British nation against us, who charge this dishonor to have fallen upon us by him, through him, and during his government?

But all the mischief, he goes on to a.s.sert, was in the previous system, in the formation of which he had no share,--the system of 1775, when the first treaty with the Nabob was made. "That system," says he, "is not mine; it was made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr.

Francis." So it was, my Lords. It did them very great honor, and I believe it ever will do them honor, in the eyes of the British nation, that they took an opportunity, without the violation of faith, without the breach of any one treaty, and without injury to any person, to do great and eminent services to the Company. But Mr. Hastings disclaims it, unnecessarily disclaims it, for no one charges him with it. What we charge him with is the abuse of that system. To one of these abuses I will now call your Lords.h.i.+ps' attention. Finding, soon after his appointment to the office of Governor-General, that the Nabob was likely to get into debt, he turns him into a va.s.sal, and resolves to treat him as such. You will observe that this is not the only instance in which, upon a failure of payment, the defaulter becomes directly a va.s.sal. You remember how Durbege Sing, the moment he fell into an arrear of tribute, became a va.s.sal, and was thrown into prison, without any inquiry into the causes which occasioned that arrear. With respect to the Nabob of Oude, we a.s.sert, and can prove, that his revenue was 3,600,000_l._ at the day of his father's death; and if the revenue fell off afterwards, there was abundant reason to believe that he possessed in abundance the means of paying the Company every farthing.

Before I quit this subject, your Lords.h.i.+ps will again permit me to reprobate the malicious insinuations by which Mr. Hastings has thought proper to slander the virtuous persons who are the authors of that system which he complains of. They are men whose characters this country will ever respect, honor, and revere, both the living and the dead,--the dead for the living, and the living for the dead. They will altogether be revered for a conduct honorable and glorious to Great Britain, whilst their names stand as they now do, unspotted by the least imputation of oppression, breach of faith, perjury, bribery, or any other fraud whatever. I know there was a faction formed against them upon that very account. Be corrupt, you have friends; stem the torrent of corruption, you open a thousand venal mouths against you. Men resolved to do their duty must be content to suffer such opprobrium, and I am content; in the name of the living and of the dead, and in the name of the Commons, I glory in our having appointed some good servants at least to India.

But to proceed. "This system was not," says he, "of my making." You would, then, naturally imagine that the persons who made this abominable system had also made some tyrannous use of it. Let us see what use they made of it during the time of their majority in the Council. There was an arrear of subsidy due from the Nabob. How it came into arrear we shall consider hereafter. The Nabob proposed to pay it by taxing the jaghires of his family, and taking some money from the Begum. This was consented to by Mr. Bristow, at that time Resident for the Company in Oude; and to this arrangement Asoph ul Dowlah and his advisers lent a willing ear. What did Mr. Hastings then say of this transaction? He called it a violent a.s.sumption of power on the part of the Council. He did not, you see, then allow that a bad system justified any persons whatever in an abuse of it. He contended that it was a violent attack upon the rights and property of the parties from whom the money was to be taken, that it had no ground or foundation in justice whatever, and that it was contrary to every principle of right and equity.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will please to bear in mind, that afterwards, by his own consent, and the consent of the rest of the Council, this business was compromised between the son, the mother, and their relations. A very great sum of money, which was most useful to the Company at that period, was raised by a family compact and arrangement among themselves. This proceeding was sanctioned by the Company, Mr. Hastings himself consenting; and a pledge was given to the Begums and family of the Nabob, that this should be the last demand made upon them,--that it should be considered, not as taken compulsively, but as a friendly and amicable donation. They never admitted, nor did the Nabob ever contend, that he had any right at all to take this money from them. At that time it was not Mr. Hastings's opinion that the badness of the system would justify any violence as a consequence of it; and when the advancement of the money was agreed to between the parties, as a family and amicable compact, he was as ready as anybody to propose and sanction a regular treaty between the parties, that all claims on one side and all kind of uneasiness on the other should cease forever, under the guardians.h.i.+p of British faith.

Mr. Hastings, as your Lords.h.i.+ps remember, has conceded that British faith is the support of the British empire; that, if that empire is to be maintained, it is to be maintained by good faith; that, if it is to be propagated, it is to be propagated by public faith; and that, if the British empire falls, it will be through perfidy and violence. These are the principles which he a.s.sumes, when he chooses to reproach others. But when he has to defend his own perfidy and breaches of faith, then, as your Lords.h.i.+ps will find set forth in his defence before the House of Commons on the Benares charge, he denies, or at least questions, the validity of any treaty that can at present be made with India. He declares that he considers all treaties as being weakened by a considerable degree of doubt respecting their validity and their binding force, in such a state of things as exists in India.

Whatever was done, during that period of time to which I have alluded, by the majority of the Council, Mr. Hastings considered himself as having nothing to do with, on the plea of his being a dissentient member: a principle which, like other principles, I shall take some notice of by-and-by. Colonel Monson and General Clavering died soon after, and Mr. Hastings obtained a majority in the Council, and was then, as he calls it, restored to his authority; so that any evil that could be done by evil men under that evil system could have lasted but for a very short time indeed. From that moment, Mr. Hastings, in my opinion, became responsible for every act done in Council, while he was there, which he did not resist, and for every engagement which he did not oppose. For your Lords.h.i.+ps will not bear that miserable jargon which you have heard, shameful to office and to official authority, that a man, when, he happens not to find himself in a majority upon any measure, may think himself excusable for the total neglect of his duty; that in such a situation he is not bound to propose anything that it might be proper to propose, or to resist anything that it might be proper to resist. What would be the inference from such an a.s.sumption?

That he can never act in a commission; that, unless a man has the supreme power, he is not responsible for anything he does or neglects to do. This is another principle which your Lords.h.i.+ps will see constantly a.s.serted and constantly referred to by Mr. Hastings. Now I do contend, that, notwithstanding his having been in a minority, if there was anything to be done that could prevent oppressive consequences, he was bound to do that thing; and that he was bound to propose every possible remedial measure. This proud, rebellious proposition against the law, that any one individual in the Council may say that he is responsible for nothing, because he is not the whole Council, calls for your Lords.h.i.+ps' strongest reprobation.

I must now beg leave to observe to you, that the treaty was made (and I wish your Lords.h.i.+ps to advert to dates) in the year 1775; Mr. Hastings acquired the majority in something more than a year afterwards; and therefore, supposing the acts of the former majority to have been ever so iniquitous, their power lasted but a short time. From the year 1776 to 1784 Mr. Hastings had the whole government of Oude in himself, by having the majority in the Council. My Lords, it is no offence that a Governor-General, or anybody else, has the majority in the Council. To have the government in himself is no offence. Neither was it any offence, if you please, that the Nabob was virtually a va.s.sal to the Company, as he contends he was. For the question is not, what a Governor-General _may_ do, but what Warren Hastings did do. He who has a majority in Council, and records his own acts there, may justify these acts as legal: I mean the mode is legal. But as he executes whatever he proposes as Governor-General, he is solely responsible for the _nature_ of the acts themselves.

I shall now show your Lords.h.i.+ps that Mr. Hastings, finding, as he states, the Nabob to be made by the treaty in 1775 eventually a va.s.sal to the Company, has thought proper to make him a va.s.sal to himself, for his own private purposes. Your Lords.h.i.+ps will see what corrupt and iniquitous purposes they were. In the first place, in order to annihilate in effect the Council, and to take wholly from them their control in the affairs of Oude, he suppressed (your Lords.h.i.+ps will find the fact proved in your minutes) the Persian correspondence, which was the whole correspondence of Oude. This whole correspondence was secreted by him, and kept from the Council. It was never communicated to the Persian translator of the Company, Mr. Colebrooke, who had a salary for executing that office. It was secreted, and kept in the private cabinet of Mr. Hastings; from the period of 1781 to 1785 no part of it was communicated to the Council. There is nothing, as your Lords.h.i.+ps have often found in this trial, that speaks for the man like himself; there is nothing will speak for his conduct like the records of the Company.

"_Fort William, 19th February, 1785._

"At a Council: present, the Honorable John Macpherson, Esquire, Governor-General, President, and John Stables, Esquire.

"The Persian Translator, attending in obedience to the Board's orders, reports, that, since the end of the year 1781, there have been no books of correspondence kept in his office, because, from that time until the late Governor-General's departure, he was employed but once by the Governor-General to manage the correspondence, during a short visit which Major Davy, the military Persian interpreter, paid by the Governor's order to Lucknow; that, during that whole period of three years, he remained entirely ignorant of the correspondence, as he was applied to on no occasion, except for a few papers sometimes sent to him by the secretaries, which he always returned to them as soon as translated.

"The Persian Translator has received from Mr. Scott, since the late Governor-General's departure, a trunk containing English draughts and translations and the Persian originals of letters and papers, with three books in the Persian language containing copies of letters written between August, 1782, and January, 1785; and if the Board should please to order the secretaries of the general department to furnish him with copies of all translations and draughts recorded in their Consultations between the 1st of January, 1782, and the 31st of January, 1785, he thinks that he should be able, with what he has found in Captain Scott's trunk, to make up the correspondence for that period.

(Signed) "EDWARD COLEBROOKE, "_Persian Translator._"

Hear, then, my Lords, what becomes of the records of the Company, which were to be the vouchers for every public act,--which were to show whether, in the Company's transactions, agreements, and treaties with the native powers, the public faith was kept or not. You see them all crammed into Mr. Scott's trunk: a trunk into which they put what they please, take out what they please, suppress what they please, or thrust in whatever will answer their purpose. The records of the Governor-General and Council of Bengal are kept in Captain Jonathan Scott's trunk; this trunk is to be considered as the real and true channel of intelligence between the Company and the country powers. But even this channel was not open to any member of the Council, except Mr.

Hastings; and when the Council, for the first time, daring to think for themselves, call upon the Persian Translator, he knows nothing about it.

We find that it is given into the hands of a person nominated by Mr.

Hastings,--Major Davy. What do the Company know of him? Why, he was Mr.

Hastings's private secretary. In this manner the Council have been annihilated during all these transactions, and have no other knowledge of them than just what Mr. Hastings and his trunk-keeper thought proper to give them. All, then, that we know of these transactions is from the miserable, imperfect, garbled correspondence.

But even if these papers contained a full and faithful account of the correspondence, what we charge is its not being delivered to the Council as it occurred from time to time. Mr. Hastings kept the whole government of Oude in his own hands; so that the Council had no power of judging his acts, of checking, controlling, advising, or remonstrating. It was totally annihilated by him; and we charge, as an act of treason and rebellion against the act of Parliament by which he held his office, his depriving the Council of their legitimate authority, by shutting them out from the knowledge of all affairs,--except, indeed, when he thought it expedient, for his own justification, to have their nominal concurrence or subsequent acquiescence in any of his more violent measures.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps see Mr. Hastings's system, a system of concealment, a system of turning the va.s.sals of the Company into his own va.s.sals, to make them contributory, not to the Company, but to himself. He has avowed this system in Benares; he has avowed it in Oude. It was his constant practice. Your Lords.h.i.+ps see in Oude he kept a correspondence with Mr. Markham for years, and did alone all the material acts which ought to have been done in Council. He delegated a power to Mr. Markham which he had not to delegate; and you will see he has done the same in every part of India.

We first charge him not only with acting without authority, but with a strong presumption, founded on his concealment, of intending to act mischievously. We next charge his concealing and withdrawing correspondence, as being directly contrary to the orders of the Court of Directors, the practice of his office, and the very nature and existence of the Council in which he was appointed to preside. We charge this as a substantive crime, and as the forerunner of the oppression, desolation, and ruin of that miserable country.

Mr. Hastings having thus rendered the Council blind and ignorant, and consequently fit for subserviency, what does he next do? I am speaking, not with regard to the time of his particular acts, but with regard to the general spirit of the proceedings. He next flies in the face of the Company upon the same principle on which he removed Mr. Fowke from Benares. "I removed _him_ on political grounds," says he, "against the orders of the Court of Directors, because I thought it necessary that the Resident should be a man of my own nomination and confidence." At Oude he proceeds on the same principle. Mr. Bristow had been nominated to the office of Resident by the Court of Directors. Mr. Hastings, by an act of Parliament, was ordered to obey the Court of Directors. He positively refuses to receive Mr. Bristow, for no other reason that we know of but because he was nominated by the Court of Directors; he defies the Court, and declares in effect that they shall not govern that province, but that he will govern it by a Resident of his own.

Your Lords.h.i.+ps will mark his progress in the establishment of that new system, which, he says, he had been obliged to adopt by the evil system of his predecessors. First, he annihilates the Council, formed by an act of Parliament, and by order of the Court of Directors. In the second place, he defies the order of the Court, who had the undoubted nomination of all their own servants, and who ordered him, under the severest injunction, to appoint Mr. Bristow to the office of Resident in Oude. He for some time refused to nominate Mr. Bristow to that office; and even when he was forced, against his will, to permit him for a while to be there, he sent Mr. Middleton and Mr. Johnson, who annihilated Mr.

Bristow's authority so completely that no one public act pa.s.sed through his hands.

After he had ended this conflict with the Directors, and had entirely shook off their authority, he resolved that the native powers should know that they were not to look to the Court of Directors, but to look to his arbitrary will in all things; and therefore, to the astonishment of the world, and as if it were designedly to expose the nakedness of the Parliament of Great Britain, to expose the nakedness of the laws of Great Britain, and the nakedness of the authority of the Court of Directors to the country powers, he wrote a letter, which your Lords.h.i.+ps will find in page 795 of the printed Minutes. In this letter the secret of his government is discovered to the country powers. They are given to understand, that, whatever exaction, whatever oppression or ruin they may suffer, they are to look nowhere for relief but to him: not to the Council, not to the Court of Directors, not to the sovereign authority of Great Britain, but to him, and him only.

Before we proceed to this letter, we will first read to you the Minute of Council by which he dismissed Mr. Bristow upon a former occasion, (it is in page 507 of the printed Minutes,) that your Lords.h.i.+ps may see his audacious defiance of the laws of the country. We wish, I say, before we show you the horrible and fatal effects of this his defiance, to impress continually upon your Lords.h.i.+ps' minds that this man is to be tried by the laws of the country, and that it is not in his power to annihilate their authority and the authority of his masters. We insist upon it, that every man under the authority of this country is bound to obey its laws. This minute relates to his first removal of Mr. Bristow: I read it in order to show that he dared to defy the Court of Directors so early as the year 1776.

"Resolved, That Mr. John Bristow be recalled to the Presidency from the court of the Nabob of Oude, and that Mr. Nathaniel Middleton be restored to the appointment of Resident at that court, subject to the orders and authority of the Governor-General and Council, conformably to the motion of the Governor-General."

I will next read to your Lords.h.i.+ps the orders of the Directors for his reinstatement, on the 4th of July, 1777.

"Upon the most careful perusal of your proceedings upon the 2d of December, 1776, relative to the recall of Mr. Bristow from the court of the Nabob of Oude, and the appointment of Mr. Nathaniel Middleton to that station, we must declare our strongest disapprobation of the whole of that transaction. We observe that the Governor-General's motion for the recall of Mr. Bristow includes that for the restoration of Mr.

Nathaniel Middleton; but as neither of those measures appear to us necessary, or even justifiable, they cannot receive our approbation.

With respect to Mr. Bristow, we find no shadow of charge against him. It appears that he has executed his trust to the entire satisfaction even of those members of the Council who did not concur in his appointment.

You have unanimously recommended him to our notice; attention to your recommendation has induced us to afford him marks of our favor, and to reannex the emoluments affixed by you to his appointment, which had been discontinued by our order; and as we must be of opinion that a person of acknowledged abilities, whose conduct has thus gained him the esteem of his superiors, ought not to be degraded without just cause, we do not hesitate to interpose in his behalf, and therefore direct that Mr.

Bristow do forthwith return to his station of Resident at Oude, from which he has been so improperly removed."

Upon the receipt of these orders by the Council, Mr. Francis, then a member of the Council, moves, "That, in obedience to the Company's orders, Mr. Bristow be forthwith appointed and directed to return to his station of Resident at Oude, and that Mr. Purling be ordered to deliver over charge of the office to Mr. Bristow immediately on his arrival, and return himself forthwith to the Presidency; also that the Governor-General be requested to furnish Mr. Bristow with the usual letter of credence to the Nabob Vizier."

Upon this motion being made, Mr. Hastings entered the following minute.

"I will ask, who is Mr. Bristow, that a member of the administration should at such a time hold him forth as an instrument for the degradation of the first executive member of this government? What are the professed objects of his appointment? What are the merits and services, or what the qualifications, which ent.i.tle him to such an uncommon distinction? Is it for his superior integrity, or from his eminent abilities, that he is to be dignified, at such hazards of every consideration that ought to influence members of this administration? Of the former I know no proofs; I am sure that it is not an evidence of it, that he has been enabled to make himself the princ.i.p.al in such a compet.i.tion; and for the test of his abilities, I appeal to the letter which he has dared to write to this board, and which, I am ashamed to say, we have suffered. I desire that a copy of it may be inserted in this day's proceedings, that it may stand before the eyes of every member of the board, when he shall give his vote upon a question for giving their confidence to a man, their servant, who has publicly insulted them, his masters, and the members of the government, to whom he owes his obedience; who, a.s.suming an a.s.sociation with the Court of Directors, and erecting himself into a tribunal, has arraigned them for disobedience of orders, pa.s.sed judgment upon them, and condemned or acquitted them as their magistrate and superior. Let the board consider whether a man possessed of so independent a spirit, who has already shown such a contempt of their authority, who has shown himself so wretched an advocate for his own cause and negotiator for his own interest, is fit to be trusted with the guardians.h.i.+p of their honor, the execution of their measures, and as their confidential manager and negotiator with the princes of India."

My Lords, you here see an instance of what I have before stated to your Lords.h.i.+ps, and what I shall take the liberty of recommending to your constant consideration. You see that a tyrant and a rebel is one and the same thing. You see this man, at the very time that he is a direct rebel to the Company, arbitrarily and tyrannically displacing Mr. Bristow, although he had previously joined in the approbation of his conduct, and in voting him a pecuniary reward. He is ordered by the Court of Directors to restore that person, who desires, in a suppliant, decent, proper tone, that the Company's orders should produce their effect, and that the Council would have the goodness to restore him to his situation.

My Lords, you have seen the audacious insolence, the tyrannical pride, with which he dares to treat this order. You have seen the recorded minute which he has dared to send to the Court of Directors; and in this you see, that, when he cannot directly asperse a man's conduct, and has nothing to say against it, he maliciously, I should perhaps rather say enviously, insinuates that he had unjustly made his fortune. "You are," says he, "to judge from the independence of his manner and style, whether he could or no have got that without some unjust means." G.o.d forbid I should ever be able to invent anything that can equal the impudence of what this man dares to write to his superiors, or the insolent style in which he dares to treat persons who are not his servants!

Who made the servants of the Company the master of the servants of the Company? The Court of Directors are their fellow-servants; they are all the servants of this kingdom. Still the claim of a fellow-servant to hold an office which the Court of Directors had legally appointed him to is considered by this audacious tyrant as an insult to him. By this you may judge how he treats not only the servants of the Company, but the natives of the country, and by what means he has brought them into that abject state of servitude in which they are ready to do anything he wishes and to sign anything he dictates. I must again beg your Lords.h.i.+ps to remark what this man has had the folly and impudence to place upon the records of the Council of which he was President; and I will venture to a.s.sert that so extraordinary a performance never before appeared on the records of any court, Eastern or European. Because Mr. Bristow claims an office which is his right and his freehold as long as the Company chooses, Mr. Hastings accuses him of being an accomplice with the Court of Directors in a conspiracy against him; and because, after long delays, he had presented an humble pet.i.tion to have the Court of Directors' orders in his favor carried into execution, he says "he has erected himself into a tribunal of justice; that he has arraigned the Council for disobedience of orders, pa.s.sed judgment upon them, and condemned or acquitted them as their magistrate and superior."

Let us suppose his Majesty to have been pleased to appoint any one to an office in the gift of the crown, what should we think of the person whose business it was to execute the King's commands, if he should say to the person appointed, when he claimed his office, "You shall not have it, you a.s.sume to be my superior, and you disgrace and dishonor me"?

Good G.o.d! my Lords, where was this language learned? in what country, and in what barbarous nation of Hottentots was this jargon picked up?

For there is no Eastern court that I ever heard of (and I believe I have been as conversant with the manners and customs of the East as most persons whose business has not directly led them into that country) where such conduct would have been tolerated. A bashaw, if he should be ordered by the Grand Seignior to invest another with his office, puts the letter upon his head, and obedience immediately follows.

But the obedience of a barbarous magistrate should not be compared to the obedience which a British subject owes to the laws of his country.

Mr. Hastings receives an order which he should have instantly obeyed. He is reminded of this by the person who suffers from his disobedience; and this proves that person to be possessed of too independent a spirit. Ay, my Lords, here is the grievance;--no man can dare show in India an independent spirit. It is this, and not his having shown such a contempt of their authority, not his having shown himself so wretched an advocate for his own cause and so had a negotiator for his own interest, that makes him unfit to be trusted with the guardians.h.i.+p of their honor, the execution of their measures, and to be their confidential manager and negotiator with the princes of India.

But, my Lords, what is this want of skill which Mr. Bristow has shown in negotiating his own affairs? Mr. Hastings will inform us. "He should have pocketed the letter of the Court of Directors; he should never have made the least mention of it. He should have come to my banian, Cantoo Baboo; he should have offered him a bribe upon the occasion. That would have been the way to succeed with me, who am a public-spirited taker of bribes and nuzzers. But this base fool, this man, who is but a vile negotiator for his own interest, has dared to accept the patronage of the Court of Directors. He should have secured the protection of Cantoo Baboo, their more efficient rival. This would have been the skilful mode of doing the business." But this man, it seems, had not only shown himself an unskilful negotiator, he had likewise afforded evidence of his want of integrity. And what is this evidence? His having "enabled himself to become the _princ.i.p.al_ in such a compet.i.tion." That is to say, he had, by his meritorious conduct in the service of his masters, the Directors, obtained their approbation and favor. Mr. Hastings then contemptuously adds, "And for the test of his abilities, I appeal to the letter which he has dared to write to the board, and which I am ashamed to say we have suffered." Whatever that letter may be, I will venture to say there is not a word or syllable in it that tastes of such insolence and arbitrariness with regard to the servants of the Company, his fellow-servants, of such audacious rebellion with regard to the laws of his country, as are contained in this minute of Mr. Hastings.

But, my Lords, why did he choose to have Mr. Middleton appointed Resident? Your Lords.h.i.+ps have not seen Mr. Bristow: you have only heard of him as a humble suppliant to have the orders of the Company obeyed.

But you have seen Mr. Middleton. You know that Mr. Middleton is a good man to keep a secret: I describe him no further. You know what qualifications Mr. Hastings requires in a favorite. You also know why he was turned out of his employment, with the approbation of the Court of Directors: that it was princ.i.p.ally because, when Resident in Oude, he positively, audaciously, and rebelliously refused to lay before the Council the correspondence with the country powers. He says he gave it up to Mr. Hastings. Whether he has or has not destroyed it we know not; all we know of it is, that it is not found to this hour. We cannot even find Mr. Middleton's trunk, though Mr. Jonathan Scott did at last produce his. The whole of the Persian correspondence, during Mr.

Middleton's Residence, was refused, as I have said, to the board at Calcutta and to the Court of Directors,--was refused to the legal authorities; and Mr. Middleton, for that very refusal, was again appointed by Mr. Hastings to supersede Mr. Bristow, removed without a pretence of offence; he received, I say, this appointment from Mr.

Hastings, as a reward for that servile compliance by which he dissolved every tie between himself and his legal masters.

The matter being now brought to a simple issue, whether the Governor-General is or is not bound to obey his superiors, I shall here leave it with your Lords.h.i.+ps; and I have only to beg your Lords.h.i.+ps will remark the course of events as they follow each other,--keeping in mind that the prisoner at your bar declared Mr. Bristow to be a man of suspected integrity, on account of his independence, and deficient in ability, because he did not know how best to promote his own interest.

I must here state to your Lords.h.i.+ps, that it was the duty of the Resident to transact the money concerns of the Company, as well as its political negotiations. You will now see how Mr. Hastings divided that duty, after he became apprehensive that the Court of Directors might be inclined to a.s.sert their own authority, and to a.s.sert it in a proper manner, which they so rarely did. When, therefore, his pa.s.sion had cooled, when his resentment of those violent indignities which had been offered to him, namely, the indignity of being put in mind that he had any superior under heaven, (for I know of no other,) he adopts the expedient of dividing the Residency into two offices; he makes a fair compromise between himself and the Directors; he appoints Mr. Middleton to the management of the money concerns, and Mr. Bristow to that of the political affairs. Your Lords.h.i.+ps see that Mr. Bristow, upon whom he had fixed the disqualification for political affairs, was the very person appointed to that department; and to Mr. Middleton, the man of his confidence, he gives the management of the money transactions. He discovers plainly where his heart was: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. This private agent, this stifler of correspondence, a man whose costive retention discovers no secret committed to him, and whose slippery memory is subject to a diarrhoea which permits everything he did know to escape,--this very man he places in a situation where his talents could only be useful for concealment, and where concealment could only be used to cover fraud; while Mr.

Bristow, who was by his official engagement responsible to the Company for fair and clear accounts, was appointed superintendent of political affairs, an office for which Mr. Hastings declared he was totally unfit.

My Lords, you will judge of the designs which the prisoner had in contemplation, when he dared to commit this act of rebellion against the Company; you will see that it could not have been any other than getting the money transactions of Oude into his own hands. The presumption of a corrupt motive is here as strong as, I believe, it possibly can be.