FOOTNOTES:

[95] Institutes of Timour, p. 165.

[96] Hedaya, Vol. II. p. 34.

[97] Hedaya, Vol. II. pp. 247, 248.



SPEECH

IN

GENERAL REPLY.

SECOND DAY: FRIDAY, MAY 30, 1794.

My lords,—On the last day of the sitting of this court, when I had the honor of appearing before you by the order of my fellow Managers, I stated to you their observations and my own upon two great points: one the demeanor of the prisoner at the bar during his trial, and the other the principles of his defence. I compared that demeanor with the behavior of some of the greatest men in this kingdom, who have, on account of their offences, been brought to your bar, and who have seldom escaped your Lordships' justice. I put the decency, humility, and propriety of the most distinguished men's behavior in contrast with the shameless effrontery of this prisoner, who has presumptuously made a recriminatory charge against the House of Commons, and answered their impeachment by a counter impeachment, explicitly accusing them of malice, oppression, and the blackest ingratitude.

My Lords, I next stated that this recriminatory charge consisted of two distinct parts,—injustice and delay. To the injustice we are to answer by the nature and proof of the charges which we have brought before you; and to the delay, my Lords, we have answered in another place. Into one of the consequences of the delay, the ruinous expense which the prisoner complains of, we have desired your Lordships to make an inquiry, and have referred you to facts and witnesses which will remove this part of the charge.

With regard to ingratitude, there will be a proper time for animadversion on this charge. For in considering the merits that are intended to be set off against his crimes, we shall have to examine into the nature of those merits, and to ascertain how far they are to operate, either as the prisoner designs they shall operate in his favor, as presumptive proofs that a man of such merits could not be guilty of such crimes, or as a sort of set-off to be pleaded in mitigation of his offences. In both of these lights we shall consider his services, and in this consideration we shall determine the justice of his charge of ingratitude.

My Lords, we have brought the demeanor of the prisoner before you for another reason. We are desirous that your Lordships may be enabled to estimate, from the proud presumption and audacity of the criminal at your bar, when he stands before the most awful tribunal in the world, accused by a body representing no less than the sacred voice of his country, what he must have been when placed in the seat of pride and power. What must have been the insolence of that man towards the natives of India, who, when called here to answer for enormous crimes, presumes to behave, not with the firmness of innocence, but with the audacity and hardness of guilt!

It may be necessary that I should recall to your Lordships' recollection the principles of the accusation and of the defence. Your Lordships 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 assign 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 Lordships 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 Lordships' 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 Lordships' bar for judgment. This is our table of the law. Your Lordships shall now be shown the table by which he claims to be judged. But I will first beg your Lordships 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 assumed 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 pronounce," and so on. This is the manner in which he treats an act of Parliament! In the place of acts of Parliament he substitutes 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 Institutes 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 Lordships 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 Lordships 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 Lordships 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 assert that the direct contrary of this is true. And to prove our assertion we have referred you to the Institutes 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. God 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 God 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 Lordships are to try the prisoner at your bar.

Let me remind your Lordships 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 Nobkissin 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 tittle 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 Institutes, either in their general spirit or in any particular passage to which he has had the impudence to appeal, in the assumption 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 Institutes 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 assumed 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 institutions, the mildness of their laws, and the equity of their government. Even if these conquerors had promulgated arbitrary institutes 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 assertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative of that sovereignty in India.

In opposition to this assertion 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 assume 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 assumption 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 assumption, 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 Institutes of Timour, to the Institutes of Akbar, to the institutes 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 Lordships 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 Lordships 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 passions, 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 passion 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 passion, is perverted from its proper end, the false principle will be substituted 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 passions and unbridled appetites 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 circumstances 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 furnishing cavalry, the Rajah has asserted, and his assertion 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 Lordships 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 Lordships 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 pass 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 Lordships, 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 500,000l., 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 ambassadors and native spies, did he either from ambassadors 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 vassal, 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 500,000l., (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 Lordships 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 Lordships 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 500,000l. 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 lust 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 Lordships 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 distinguishing character of a judge; and I think your Lordships, 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 Lordships 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 Institutes 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 God! 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 Lordships, or of us, were to be fined for assault 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 500,000l. 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 quantity 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, assumed 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 500,000l. 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 Coke (and these learned gentlemen, I dare say, will remember the passage; it is too striking not to be remembered) as "the damned and damnable proceedings of a judge in hell"? 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 Lordships, 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 ambassadors; they have their place in the durbar; and their business, as authorized spies, is as well known there as that of ambassadors 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 Lordships' 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 illustrate 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.

It is known, my Lords, that Mr. Hastings, besides having received proposals for delivering up the beautiful country of Benares, that garden of God, as it is styled in India, to that monster, that rapacious tyrant, Asoph ul Dowlah, who with his gang of mercenary troops had desolated his own country like a swarm of locusts, had purposed likewise to seize Cheyt Sing's own patrimonial forts, which was nothing less than to take from him the residence of his women and his children, the seat of his honor, the place in which the remaining treasures and last hopes of his family were centred. By the Gentoo law, every lord or supreme magistrate is bound to construct and to live in such a fort. It is the usage of India, and is a matter of state and dignity, as well as of propriety, reason, and defence. It was probably an apprehension of being injured in this tender point, as well as a knowledge of the proposal made by the Nabob, which induced Cheyt Sing to offer to buy himself off; although it does not appear from any part of the evidence that he assigned any other reason than that of Mr. Hastings intending to exact from him six lacs of rupees over and above his other exactions.

Mr. Hastings, indeed, almost acknowledges the existence of this plot against the Rajah, and his being the author of it. He says, without any denial of the fact, that the Rajah suspected some strong acts to be intended against him, and therefore asked Mr. Markham whether he could not buy them off and obtain Mr. Hastings's favor by the payment of 200,000l. Mr. Markham gave as his opinion, that 200,000l. was not sufficient; and the next day the Rajah offered 20,000l. more, in all 220,000l. The negotiation, however, broke off; and why? Not, as Mr. Markham says he conjectured, because the Rajah had learned that Mr. Hastings had no longer an intention of imposing these six lacs, or something to that effect, and therefore retracted his offer, but because that offer had been rejected by Mr. Hastings.

Let us hear what reason the man who was in the true secret gives for not accepting the Rajah's offer. "I rejected," says Mr. Hastings, "the offer of twenty lacs, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late." My Lords, he best knows what the motives of his own actions were. He says, the offer was made "when it was too late." Had he previously told the Rajah what sum of money he would be required to pay in order to buy himself off, or had he required him to name any sum which he was willing to pay? Did he, after having refused the offer made by the Rajah, say, "Come and make me a better offer, or upon such a day I shall declare that your offers are inadmissible"? No such thing appears. Your Lordships will further remark, that Mr. Hastings refused the 200,000l. at a time when the exigencies of the Company were so pressing that he was obliged to rob, pilfer, and steal upon every side,—at a time when he was borrowing 40,000l. from Mr. Sulivan in one morning, and raising by other under-jobs 27,000l. more. In the distress [in?] which his own extravagance and prodigality had involved him, 200,000l. would have been a weighty benefit, although derived from his villany; but this relief he positively refused, because, says he, "the offer came too late." From these words, my Lords, we may infer that there was a time when the offer would not have been "too late,"—a period at which it would have been readily accepted. No such thing appears. There is not a trace upon your minutes, not a trace in the correspondence of the Company, to prove that the Rajah would at any time have been permitted to buy himself off from this complicated tyranny.

I have already stated a curious circumstance in this proceeding, to which I must again beg leave to direct your Lordships' attention. Does it anywhere appear in that correspondence, or in the testimony of Mr. Benn, of Mr. Markham, or of any human being, that Mr. Hastings had ever told Cheyt Sing with what sum he should be satisfied? There is evidence before you directly in proof that they did not know the amount. Not one person knew what his intention was, when he refused this 200,000l. For when he met Mr. Markham at Boglipore, and for the first time mentioned the sum of 500,000l. as the fine he meant to exact, Mr. Markham was astonished and confounded at its magnitude. He tells you this himself. It appears, then, that neither Cheyt Sing nor the Resident at Benares (who ought to have been in the secret, if upon such an occasion secrecy is allowable) ever knew what the terms were. The Rajah was in the dark; he was left to feel, blindfold, how much money could relieve him from the iniquitous intentions of Mr. Hastings; and at last he is told that his offer comes too late, without having ever been told the period at which it would have been well-timed, or the amount it was proposed to take from him. Is this, my Lords, the proper way to adjudge a fine?

Your Lordships will now be pleased to advert to the manner in which he defends himself and these proceedings. He says, "I rejected this offer of twenty lacs, with which the Rajah would have compromised for his guilt when it was too late." If by these words he means too late to answer the purpose for which he has said the fine was designed, namely, the relief of the Company, the ground of his defence is absolutely false; for it is notorious that at the time referred to the Company's affairs were in the greatest distress.

I will next call your Lordships' attention to the projected sale of Benares to the Nabob of Oude. "If," says Mr. Hastings, "I ever talked of selling the Company's sovereignty over Benares to the Nabob of Oude, it was but in terrorem; and no subsequent act of mine warrants the supposition of my having seriously intended it." And in another place he says, "If I ever threatened" (your Lordships will remark, that he puts hypothetically a matter the reality of which he has got to be solemnly declared on an affidavit, and in a narrative to the truth of which he has deposed upon oath)—"if I ever threatened," says he, "to dispossess the Rajah of his territories, it is no more than what my predecessors, without rebuke from their superiors, or notice taken of the expression, had wished and intended to have done to his father, even when the Company had no pretensions to the sovereignty of the country. It is no more than such a legal act of sovereignty as his behavior justified, and as I was justified in by the intentions of my predecessors. If I pretended to seize upon his forts, it was in full conviction that a dependant on the Company, guarantied, maintained, and protected in his country by the Company's arms, had no occasion for forts, had no right to them, and could hold them for no other than suspected and rebellious purposes. None of the Company's other zemindars are permitted to maintain them; and even our ally, the Nabob of the Carnatic, has the Company's troops in all his garrisons. Policy and public safety absolutely require it. What state could exist that allowed its inferior members to hold forts and garrisons independent of the superior administration? It is a solecism in government to suppose it."

Here, then, my Lords, he first declares that this was merely done in terrorem; that he never intended to execute the abominable act. And will your Lordships patiently endure that such terrific threats as these shall be hung by your Governor in India over the unhappy people that are subject to him and protected by British faith? Will you permit, that, for the purpose of extorting money, a Governor shall hold out the terrible threat of delivering a tributary prince and his people, bound hand and foot, into the power of their perfidious enemies?

The terror occasioned by threatening to take from him his forts can only be estimated by considering, that, agreeably to the religion and prejudices of Hindoos, the forts are the places in which their women are lodged, in which, according to their notions, their honor is deposited, and in which is lodged all the wealth that they can save against an evil day to purchase off the vengeance of an enemy. These forts Mr. Hastings says he intended to take, because the Rajah could hold them for no other than rebellious and suspected purposes. Now I will show your Lordships that the man who has the horrible audacity to make this declaration did himself assign to the Rajah these very forts. He put him in possession of them, and, when there was a dispute about the Nabob's rights to them on the one side and the Company's on the other, did confirm them to this man. The paper shall be produced, that you may have before your eyes the gross contradictions into which his rapacity and acts of arbitrary power have betrayed him. Thank God, my Lords, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. I repeat it, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. In their defence of one crime they are sure to meet the ghost of some former defence, which, like the spectre in Virgil, drives them back. The prisoner at your bar, like the hero of the poet, when he attempts to make his escape by one evasion, is stopped by the appearance of some former contradictory averment. If he attempts to escape by one door, there his criminal allegations of one kind stop him; if he attempts to escape at another, the facts and allegations intended for some other wicked purpose stare him full in the face.

Quacunque viam sibi fraude petivit, Successum Dea dira negat.

The paper I hold in my hand contains Nundcomar's accusation of Mr. Hastings. It consists of a variety of charges; and I will first read to you what is said by Nundcomar of these forts, which it is pretended could be held for none but suspicious and rebellious purposes.

"At the time Mr. Hastings was going to Benares, he desired me to give him an account in writing of any lands which, though properly belonging to the Subah of Bahar, might have come under the dominion of Bulwant Sing, that they might be recovered from his son, Rajah Cheyt Sing. The purgunnahs of Kera, Mungrora, and Bidjegur were exactly in this situation, having been usurped by Bulwant Sing from the Subah of Bahar. I accordingly delivered to Mr. Hastings the accounts of them, from the entrance of the Company upon the dewanny to the year 1179 of the Fusseli era, stated at twenty-four lacs. Mr. Hastings said, 'Give a copy of this to Roy Rada Churn, that, if Cheyt Sing is backward in acknowledging this claim, Rada Churn may answer and confute him.' Why Mr. Hastings, when he arrived at Benares, and had called Rajah Cheyt Sing before him, left these countries still in the Rajah's usurpations it remains with Mr. Hastings to explain."

This is Nundcomar's charge. Here follows Mr. Hastings's reply.

"I recollect an information given me by Nundcomar concerning the pretended usurpations made by the Rajah of Benares, of the purgunnahs of Kera, Mungrora, and Bidjegur." (Your Lordships will recollect that Bidjegur is one of those very forts which he declares could not be held but for suspicious and rebellious purposes.) "I do not recollect his mentioning it again, when I set out for Benares; neither did I ever intimate the subject, either to Cheyt Sing or his ministers, because I knew I could not support the claim; and to have made it and dropped it would have been in every sense dishonorable. Not that I passed by it with indifference or inattention. I took pains to investigate the foundation of this title, and recommended it to the particular inquiry of Mr. Vansittart, who was the Chief of Patna, at the time in which I received the first intimation. The following letter and voucher, which I received from him, contain a complete statement of this pretended usurpation."

These vouchers will answer our purpose, fully to establish that in his opinion the claim of the English government upon those forts was at that time totally unfounded, and so absurd that he did not even dare to mention it. This fort of Bidjegur, the most considerable in the country, and of which we shall have much to say hereafter, is the place in which Cheyt Sing had deposited his women and family. That fortress did Mr. Hastings himself give to this very man, deciding in his favor as a judge, upon an examination and after an inquiry: and yet he now declares that he had no right to it, and that he could not hold it but for wicked and rebellious purposes. But, my Lords, when he changed this language, he had resolved to take away these forts,—to destroy them,—to root the Rajah out of every place of refuge, out of every secure place in which he could hide his head, or screen himself from the rancor, revenge, avarice, and malice of his ruthless foe. He was resolved to have them, although he had, upon the fullest conviction of the Rajah's right, given them to this very man, and put him into the absolute possession of them.

Again, my Lords, did he, when Cheyt Sing, in 1775, was put in possession by the pottah of the Governor-General and Council, which contains an enumeration of the names of all the places which were given up to him, and consequently of this among the rest,—did he, either before he put the question in Council upon that pottah, or afterwards, tell the Council they were going to put forts into the man's hands to which he had no right, and which could be held only for rebellious and suspected purposes? We refer your Lordships to the places in which all these transactions are mentioned, and you will there find Mr. Hastings took no one exception whatever against them; nor, till he was resolved upon the destruction of this unhappy man, did he ever so much as mention them. It was not till then that he discovers the possession of these forts by the Rajah to be a solecism in government.

After quoting the noble examples of Sujah Dowlah, and the other persons whom I have mentioned to you, he proceeds to say, that some of his predecessors, without any pretensions to sovereign authority, endeavored to get these forts into their possession; and "I was justified," says he, "by the intention of my predecessors." Merciful God! if anything can surpass what he has said before, it is this: "My predecessors, without any title of sovereignty, without any right whatever, wished to get these forts into their power; I therefore have a right to do what they wished to do; and I am justified, not by the acts, but by the intentions of my predecessors." At the same time he knows that these predecessors had been reprobated by the Company for this part of their proceedings; he knew that he was sent there to introduce a better system, and to put an end to this state of rapacity. Still, whatever his predecessors wished, however unjust and violent it might be, when the sovereignty came into his hands, he maintains that he had a right to do all which they were desirous of accomplishing. Thus the enormities formerly practised, which the Company sent him to correct, became a sacred standard for his imitation.

Your Lordships will observe that he slips in the word sovereignty and forgets compact; because it is plain, and your Lordships must perceive it, that, wherever he uses the word sovereignty, he uses it to destroy the authority of all compacts; and accordingly in the passage now before us he declares that there is an invalidity in all compacts entered into in India, from the nature, state, and constitution of that empire. "From the disorderly form of its government," says he, "there is an invalidity in all compacts and treaties whatever." "Persons who had no treaty with the Rajah wished," says he, "to rob him: therefore I, who have a treaty with him, and call myself his sovereign, have a right to realize all their wishes."

But the fact is, my Lords, that his predecessors never did propose to deprive Bulwant Sing, the father of Cheyt Sing, of his zemindary. They, indeed, wished to have had the dewanny transferred to them, in the manner it has since been transferred to the Company. They wished to receive his rents, and to be made an intermediate party between him and the Mogul emperor, his sovereign. These predecessors had entered into no compact with the man: they were negotiating with his sovereign for the transfer of the dewanny or stewardship of the country, which transfer was afterwards actually executed; but they were obliged to give the country itself back again to Bulwant Sing, with a guaranty against all the pretensions of Sujah Dowlah, who had tyrannically assumed an arbitrary power over it. This power the predecessors of Mr. Hastings might also have wished to assume; and he may therefore say, according to the mode of reasoning which he has adopted,—"Whatever they wished to do, but never succeeded in doing, I may and ought to do of my own will. Whatever fine Sujah Dowlah would have exacted I will exact. I will penetrate into that tiger's bosom, and discover the latent seeds of rapacity and injustice which lurk there, and I will make him the subject of my imitation."

These are the principles upon which, without accuser, without judge, without inquiry, he resolved to lay a fine of 500,000l. on Cheyt Sing!

In order to bind himself to a strict fulfilment of this resolution, he has laid down another very extraordinary doctrine. He has laid it down as a sort of canon, (in injustice and corruption,) that, whatever demand, whether just or unjust, a man declares his intention of making upon another, he should exact the precise sum which he has determined upon, and that, if he takes anything less, it is a proof of corruption. "I have," says he, "shown by this testimony that I never intended to make any communication to Cheyt Sing of taking less than the fifty lacs which in my own mind I had resolved to exact." And he adds,—"I shall make my last and solemn appeal to the breast of every man who shall read this, whether it is likely, or morally possible, that I should have tied down my own future conduct to so decided a process and series of acts, if I had secretly intended to threaten, or to use a degree of violence, for no other purpose than to draw from the object of it a mercenary atonement for my own private emolument, and suffer all this tumult to terminate in an ostensible and unsubstantial submission to the authority which I represented."

He had just before said, "If I ever talked of selling the Company's sovereignty to the Nabob of Oude, it was only in terrorem." In the face of this assertion, he here gives you to understand he never held out anything in terrorem, but what he intended to execute. But we will show you that in fact he had reserved to himself a power of acting pro re nata, and that he intended to compound or not, just as answered his purposes upon this occasion. "I admit," he says, "that I did not enter it [the intention of fining Cheyt Sing] on the Consultations, because it was not necessary; even this plan itself of the fine was not a fixed plan, but to be regulated by circumstances, both as to the substantial execution of it and the mode." Now here is a man who has given it in a sworn narrative, that he did not intend to have a farthing less. Why? "Because I should have menaced and done as in former times has been done,—made great and violent demands which I reduce afterwards for my own corrupt purposes." Yet he tells you in the course of the same defence, but in another paper, that he had no fixed plan, that he did not know whether he should exact a fine at all, or what should be his mode of executing it.

My Lords, what shall we say to this man, who declares that it would be a proof of corruption not to exact the full sum which he had threatened to exact, but who, finding that this doctrine would press hard upon him, and be considered as a proof of cruelty and injustice, turns round and declares he had no intention of exacting anything? What shall we say to a man who thus reserves his determination, who threatens to sell a tributary prince to a tyrant, and cannot decide whether he should take from him his forts and pillage him of all he had, whether he should raise 500,000l. upon him, whether he should accept the 220,000l. offered, (which, by the way, we never knew of till long after the whole transaction,) whether he should do any or all of those things, and then, by his own account, going up to Benares without having resolved anything upon this important subject?

My Lords, I will now assume the hypothesis that he at last discovered sufficient proof of rebellious practices; still even this gave him no right to adduce such rebellion in justification of resolutions which he had taken, of acts which he had done, before he knew anything of its existence. To such a plea we answer, and your Lordships will every one of you answer,—"You shall not by a subsequent discovery of rebellious practices, which you did not know at the time, and which you did not even believe, as you have expressly told us here, justify your conduct prior to that discovery." If the conspiracy which he falsely imputes to Cheyt Sing, if that wild scheme of driving the English out of India, had existed, think in what miserable circumstances we stand as prosecutors, and your Lordships as judges, if we admit a discovery to be pleaded in justification of antecedent acts founded upon the assumed existence of that which he had no sort of proof, knowledge, or belief of!

My Lords, we shall now proceed to another circumstance, not less culpable in itself, though less shocking to your feelings, than those to which I have already called your attention: a circumstance which throws a strong presumption of guilt upon every part of the prisoner's conduct. Having formed all these infernal plots in his mind, but uncertain which of them he should execute, uncertain what sums of money he should extort, whether he should deliver up the Rajah to his enemy or pillage his forts, he goes up to Benares; but he first delegates to himself all the powers of government, both civil and military, in the countries which he was going to visit.

My Lords, we have asserted in our charge that this delegation and division of power was illegal. He invested himself with this authority; for he was the majority in the Council: Mr. Wheler's consent or dissent signifying nothing. He gave himself powers which the act of Parliament did not give him. He went up to Benares with an illegal commission, civil and military; and to prove this I shall beg leave to read the provisions of the act of Parliament. I shall show what the creature ought to be, by showing the law of the creator: what the legislature of Great Britain meant that Governor Hastings should be, not what he made himself.

[Mr. Burke then read the seventh section of the act.]

Now we do deny that there is by this act given, or that under this act there can be given, to the government of India, a power of dividing its unity into two parts, each of which shall separately be a unity and possess the power given to the whole. Yet, my Lords, an agreement was made between him and Mr. Wheler, that he (Mr. Hastings) should have every power, civil and military, in the upper provinces, and that Mr. Wheler should enjoy equal authority in the lower ones.

Now, to show you that it is impossible for such an agreement to be legal, we must refer you to the constitution of the Company's government. The whole power is vested in the Council, where all questions are to be decided by a majority of voices, and the members are directed to record in the minutes of their proceedings not only the questions decided, but the grounds upon which each individual member founds his vote. Now, although the Council is competent to delegate its authority for any specific purpose to any servant of the Company, yet to admit that it can delegate its authority generally, without reserving the means of deliberation and control, would be to change the whole constitution. By such a proceeding the government may be divided into a number of independent governments, without a common deliberative Council and control. This deliberative capacity, which is so strictly guarded by the obligation of recording its consultations, would be totally annihilated, if the Council divided itself into independent parts, each acting according to its own discretion. There is no similar instance in law, there is no similar instance in policy. The conduct of these men implies a direct contradiction; and you will see, by the agreement they made to support each other, that they were themselves conscious of the illegality of this proceeding.

After Mr. Hastings had conferred absolute power upon himself during his stay in the upper provinces by an order of Council, (of which Council he was himself a majority,) he entered the following minute in the Consultations. "The Governor-General delivers in the following minute. In my minute which I laid before the court on the 21st May, I expressed the satisfaction with which I could at this juncture leave the Presidency, from the mutual confidence which was happily established between Mr. Wheler and me. I now readily repeat that sentiment, and observe with pleasure that Mr. Wheler confirms it. Before my departure, it is probable that we shall in concert have provided at the board for almost every important circumstance that can eventually happen during my absence; but if any should occur for which no previous provision shall have been made in the resolutions of the board, Mr. Wheler may act with immediate decision, and with the fullest confidence of my support, in all such emergencies, as well as in conducting the ordinary business of the Presidency, and in general in all matters of this government, excepting those which may specially or generally be intrusted to me. Mr. Wheler during my absence may consider himself as possessed of the full powers of the Governor-General and Council of this government, as in effect he is by the constitution; and he may be assured, that, so far as my sanction and concurrence shall be, or be deemed, necessary to the confirmation of his measures, he shall receive them."

Now here is a compact of iniquity between these two duumvirs. They each give to the other the full, complete, and perfect powers of the government; and in order to secure themselves against any obstacles that might arise, they mutually engage to ratify each other's acts: and they say this is not illegal, because Lord Cornwallis has had such a deputation. I must first beg leave to observe that no man can justify himself in doing any illegal act by its having been done by another; much less can he justify his own illegal act by pleading an act of the same kind done subsequently to his act, because the latter may have been done in consequence of his bad example. Men justify their acts in two ways,—by law and by precedent; the former asserts the right, the latter presumes it from the example of others. But can any man justify an act, because ten or a dozen years after another man has done the same thing? Good heavens! was there ever such a doctrine before heard? Suppose Lord Cornwallis to have done wrong; suppose him to have acted illegally; does that clear the prisoner at your bar? No: on the contrary, it aggravates his offence; because he has afforded others an example of corrupt and illegal conduct. But if even Lord Cornwallis had preceded, instead of following him, the example would not have furnished a justification. There is no resemblance in the cases. Lord Cornwallis does not hold his government by the act of 1773, but by a special act made afterwards; and therefore to attempt to justify acts done under one form of appointment by acts done under another form is to the last degree wild and absurd. Lord Cornwallis was going to conduct a war of great magnitude, and was consequently trusted with extraordinary powers. He went in the two characters of governor and commander-in-chief; and yet the legislature was sensible of the doubtful validity of a Governor-General's carrying with him the whole powers of the Council. But Mr. Hastings was not commander-in-chief, when he assumed the whole military as well as civil power. Lord Cornwallis, as I have just said, was not only commander-in-chief, but was going to a great war, where he might have occasion to treat with the country powers in a civil capacity; and yet so doubtful was the legislature upon this point, that they passed a special act to confirm that delegation, and to give him a power of acting under it.

My Lords, we do further contend that Mr. Hastings had no right to assume the character of commander-in-chief; for he was no military man, nor was he appointed by the Company to that trust. His assumption of the military authority was a gross usurpation. It was an authority to which he would have had no right, if the whole powers of government were vested in him, and he had carried his Council with him on his horse. If, I say, Mr. Hastings had his Council on his crupper, he could neither have given those powers to himself nor made a partition of them with Mr. Wheler. Could Lord Cornwallis, for instance, who carried with him the power of commander-in-chief, and authority to conclude treaties with all the native powers, could he, I ask, have left a Council behind him in Calcutta with equal powers, who might have concluded treaties in direct contradiction to those in which he was engaged? Clearly he could not; therefore I contend that this partition of power, which supposes an integral authority in each counsellor, is a monster that cannot exist. This the parties themselves felt so strongly that they were obliged to have recourse to a stratagem scarcely less absurd than their divided assumption of power. They entered into a compact to confirm each other's acts, and to support each other in whatever they did: thus attempting to give their separate acts a legal form.

I have further to remark to your Lordships, what has just been suggested to me, that it was for the express purpose of legalizing Lord Cornwallis's delegation that he was made commander-in-chief as well as Governor-General by the act.

The next plea urged by Mr. Hastings is conveniency. "It was convenient," he says, "for me to do this." I answer, No person acting with delegated power can delegate that power to another. Delegatus non potest delegare is a maxim of law. Much less has he a right to supersede the law, and the principle of his own delegation and appointment, upon any idea of convenience. But what was the conveniency? There was no one professed object connected with Mr. Hastings's going up to Benares which might not as well have been attained in Calcutta. The only difference would have been, that in the latter case he must have entered some part of his proceedings upon the Consultations, whether he wished it or not. If he had a mind to negotiate with the Vizier, he had a resident at his court, and the Vizier had a resident in Calcutta. The most solemn treaties had often been made without any Governor-General carrying up a delegation of civil and military power. If it had been his object to break treaties, he might have broken them at Calcutta, as he broke the treaty of Chunar. Is there an article in that treaty that he might not as well have made at Calcutta? Is there an article that he broke (for he broke them all) that he could not have broken at Calcutta? So that, whether pledging or breaking the faith of the Company, he might have done both or either without ever stirring from the Presidency.

I can conceive a necessity so urgent as to supersede all laws; but I have no conception of a necessity that can require two governors-general, each forming separately a supreme council. Nay, to bring the point home to him,—if he had a mind to make Cheyt Sing to pay a fine, as he called it, he could have made him do that at Calcutta as well as at Benares. He had before contrived to make him pay all the extra demands that were imposed upon him; and he well knew that he could send Colonel Camac, or somebody else, to Benares, with a body of troops to enforce the payment. Why, then, did he go to try experiments there in his own person? For this plain reason: that he might be enabled to put such sums in his own pocket as he thought fit. It was not and could not be for any other purpose; and I defy the wit of man to find out any other.

He says, my Lords, that Cheyt Sing might have resisted, and that, if he had not been there, the Rajah might have fled with his money, or raised a rebellion for the purpose of avoiding payment. Why, then, we ask, did he not send an army? We ask, whether Mr. Markham, with an army under the command of Colonel Popham, or Mr. Fowke, or any other Resident, was not much more likely to exact a great sum of money than Mr. Hastings without an army? My Lords, the answer must be in the affirmative; it is therefore evident that no necessity could exist for his presence, and that his presence and conduct occasioned his being defeated in this matter.

We find this man, armed with an illegal commission, undertaking an enterprise which he has since said was perilous, which proved to be perilous, and in which, as he has told us himself, the existence of the British empire in India was involved. The talisman, (your Lordships will remember his use of the word,) that charm which kept all India in order, which kept mighty and warlike nations under the government of a few Englishmen, would, I verily believe, have been broken forever, if he, or any other Governor-General, good or bad, had been killed. Infinite mischiefs would have followed such an event. The situation in which he placed himself, by his own misconduct, was pregnant with danger; and he put himself in the way of that danger without having any armed force worth mentioning, although he has acknowledged that Cheyt Sing had then an immense force. In fact, the demand of two thousand cavalry proves that he considered the Rajah's army to be formidable; yet, notwithstanding this, with four companies of sepoys, poorly armed and ill provisioned, he went to invade that fine country, and to force from its sovereign a sum of money, the payment of which he had reason to think would be resisted. He thus rashly hazarded his own being and the being of all his people.

"But," says he, "I did not imagine the Rajah intended to go into rebellion, and therefore went unarmed." Why, then, was his presence necessary? Why did he not send an order from Calcutta for the payment of the money? But what did he do, when he got there? "I was alarmed," says he; "for the Rajah surrounded my budgero with two thousand men: that indicated a hostile disposition." Well, if he did so, what precaution did Mr. Hastings take for his own safety? Why, none, my Lords, none. He must therefore have been either a madman, a fool, or a determined declarer of falsehood. Either he thought there was no danger, and therefore no occasion for providing against it, or he was the worst of governors, the most culpably improvident of his personal safety, of the lives of his officers and men, and of his country's honor.

The demand of 500,000l. was a thing likely to irritate the Rajah and to create resistance. In fact, he confesses this. Mr. Markham and he had a discourse upon that subject, and agreed to arrest the Rajah, because they thought the enforcing this demand might drive him to his forts, and excite a rebellion in the country. He therefore knew there was danger to be apprehended from this act of violence. And yet, knowing this, he sent one unarmed Resident to give the orders, and four unarmed companies of sepoys to support him. He provokes the people, he goads them with every kind of insult added to every kind of injury, and then rushes into the very jaws of danger, provoking a formidable foe by the display of a puny, insignificant force.

In expectation of danger, he seized the person of the Rajah, and he pretends that the Rajah suffered no disgrace from his arrest. But, my Lords, we have proved, what was stated by the Rajah, and was well known to Mr. Hastings, that to imprison a person of elevated station, in that country, is to subject him to the highest dishonor and disgrace, and would make the person so imprisoned utterly unfit to execute the functions of government ever after.

I have now to state to your Lordships a transaction which is worse than his wantonly playing with the safety of the Company, worse than his exacting sums of money by fraud and violence. My Lords, the history of this transaction must be prefaced by describing to your Lordships the duty and privileges attached to the office of Naib. A Naib is an officer well known in India, as the administrator of the affairs of any government, whenever the authority of the regular holder is suspended. But, although the Naib acts only as a deputy, yet, when the power of the principal is totally superseded, as by imprisonment or otherwise, and that of the Naib is substituted, he becomes the actual sovereign, and the principal is reduced to a mere pensioner. I am now to show your Lordships whom Mr. Hastings appointed as Naib to the government of the country, after he had imprisoned the Rajah.

Cheyt Sing had given him to understand through Mr. Markham, that he was aware of the design of suspending him, and of placing his government in the hands of a Naib whom he greatly dreaded. This person was called Ussaun Sing; he was a remote relation of the family, and an object of their peculiar suspicion and terror. The moment Cheyt Sing was arrested, he found that his prophetic soul spoke truly; for Mr. Hastings actually appointed this very man to be his master. And who was this man? We are told by Mr. Markham, in his evidence here, that he was a man who had dishonored his family,—he was the disgrace of his house,—that he was a person who could not be trusted; and Mr. Hastings, in giving Mr. Markham full power afterwards to appoint Naibs, expressly excepted this Ussaun Sing from all trust whatever, as a person totally unworthy of it. Yet this Ussaun Sing, the disgrace and calamity of his family, an incestuous adulterer, and a supposed issue of a guilty connection, was declared Naib. Yes, my Lords, this degraded, this wicked and flagitious character, the Rajah's avowed enemy, was, in order to heighten the Rajah's disgrace, to embitter his ruin, to make destruction itself dishonorable as well as destructive, appointed this [his?] Naib. Thus, when Mr. Hastings had imprisoned the Rajah, in the face of his subjects, and in the face of all India, without fixing any term for the duration of his imprisonment, he delivered up the country to a man whom he knew to be utterly undeserving, a man whom he kept in view for the purpose of frightening the Rajah, and whom he was obliged to depose on account of his misconduct almost as soon as he had named him, and to exclude specially from all kind of trust. We have heard of much tyranny, avarice, and insult in the world; but such an instance of tyranny, avarice, and insult combined has never before been exhibited.

We are now come to the last scene of this flagitious transaction. When Mr. Hastings imprisoned the Rajah, he did not renew his demand for the 500,000l., but he exhibited a regular charge of various pretended delinquencies against him, digested into heads, and he called on him, in a dilatory, irregular way of proceeding, for an answer. The man, under every difficulty and every distress, gave an answer to every particular of the charge, as exact and punctilious as could have been made to articles of impeachment in this House.

I must here request your Lordships to consider the order of these proceedings. Mr. Hastings, having determined upon the utter ruin and destruction of this unfortunate prince, endeavored, by the arrest of his person, by a contemptuous disregard to his submissive applications, by the appointment of a deputy who was personally odious to him, and by the terror of still greater insults, he endeavored, I say, to goad him on to the commission of some acts of resistance sufficient to give a color of justice to that last dreadful extremity to which he had resolved to carry his malignant rapacity. Failing in this wicked project, and studiously avoiding the declaration of any terms upon which the Rajah might redeem himself from these violent proceedings, he next declared his intention of seizing his forts, the depository of his victim's honor, and of the means of his subsistence. He required him to deliver up his accounts and accountants, together with all persons who were acquainted with the particulars of his effects and treasures, for the purpose of transferring those effects to such persons as he (Mr. Hastings) chose to nominate.

It was at this crisis of aggravated insult and brutality that the indignation which these proceedings had occasioned in the breasts of the Rajah's subjects burst out into an open flame. The Rajah had retired to the last refuge of the afflicted, to offer up prayers to his God and our God, when a vile chubdar, or tipstaff, came to interrupt and insult him. His alarmed and loyal subjects felt for a beloved sovereign that deep interest which we should all feel, if our sovereign were so treated. What man with a spark of loyalty in his breast, what man regardful of the honor of his country, when he saw his sovereign imprisoned, and so notorious a wretch appointed his deputy, could be a patient witness of such wrongs? The subjects of this unfortunate prince did what we should have done,—what all who love their country, who love their liberty, who love their laws, who love their property, who love their sovereign, would have done on such an occasion. They looked upon him as their sovereign, although degraded. They were unacquainted with any authority superior to his, and the phantom of tyranny which performed these oppressive acts was unaccompanied by that force which justifies submission by affording the plea of necessity. An unseen tyrant and four miserable companies of sepoys executed all the horrible things that we have mentioned. The spirit of the Rajah's subjects was roused by their wrongs, and encouraged by the contemptible weakness of their oppressors. The whole country rose up in rebellion, and surely in justifiable rebellion. Every writer on the Law of Nations, every man that has written, thought, or felt upon the affairs of government, must write, know, think, and feel, that a people so cruelly scourged and oppressed, both in the person of their chief and in their own persons, were justified in their resistance. They were roused to vengeance, and a short, but most bloody war followed.

We charge the prisoner at your bar with all the consequences of this war. We charge him with the murder of our sepoys, whom he sent unarmed to such a dangerous enterprise. We charge him with the blood of every man that was shed in that place; and we call him, as we have called him, a tyrant, an oppressor, and a murderer. We call him murderer in the largest and fullest sense of the word; because he was the cause of the murder of our English officers and sepoys, whom he kept unarmed, and unacquainted with the danger to which they would be exposed by the violence of his transactions. He sacrificed to his own nefarious views every one of those lives, as well as the lives of the innocent natives of Benares, whom he designedly drove to resistance by the weakness of the force opposed to them, after inciting them by tyranny and insult to that display of affection towards their sovereign which is the duty of all good subjects.

My Lords, these are the iniquities which we have charged upon the prisoner at your bar; and I will next call your Lordships' attention to the manner in which these iniquities have been pretended to be justified. You will perceive a great difference in the manner in which this prisoner is tried, and of which he so much complains, and the manner in which he dealt with the unfortunate object of his oppression. The latter thus openly appeals to his accuser. "You are," says he, "upon the spot. It is happy for me that you are so. You can now inquire into my conduct." Did Mr. Hastings so inquire? No, my Lords, we have not a word of any inquiry; he even found fresh matter of charge in the answer of the Rajah, although, if there is any fault in this answer, it is its extremely humble and submissive tone. If there was anything faulty in his manner, it was his extreme humility and submission. It is plain he would have almost submitted to anything. He offered, in fact, 220,000l. to redeem himself from greater suffering. Surely no man going into rebellion would offer 220,000l. of the treasure which would be so essential to his success; nor would any government that was really apprehensive of rebellion call upon the suspected person to arm and discipline two thousand horse. My Lords, it is evident no such apprehensions were entertained; nor was any such charge made until punishment had commenced. A vague accusation was then brought forward, which was answered by a clear and a natural defence, denying some parts of the charge, evading and apologizing for others, and desiring the whole to be inquired into. To this request the answer of the Governor-General was, "That won't do; you shall have no inquiries." And why? "Because I have arbitrary power, you have no rights, and I can and will punish you without inquiry." I admit, that, if his will is the law, he may take [make?] the charge before punishment or the punishment before the charge, or he may punish without making any charge. If his will is the law, all I have been saying amounts to nothing. But I have endeavored to let your Lordships see that in no country upon the earth is the will of a despot law. It may produce wicked, flagitious, tyrannical acts; but in no country is it law.

The duty of a sovereign in cases of rebellion, as laid down in the Hedaya, agrees with the general practice in India. It was usual, except in cases of notorious injustice and oppression, whenever a rebellion or a suspicion of a rebellion existed, to admonish the rebellious party and persuade him to return to his duty. Causes of complaint were removed and misunderstandings explained, and, to save the effusion of blood, severe measures were not adopted until they were rendered indispensable. This wise and provident law is or ought to be the law in all countries: it was in fact the law in that country, but Mr. Hastings did not attend to it. His unfortunate victim was goaded to revolt and driven from his subjects, although he endeavored by message after message to reconcile this cruel tyrant to him. He is told in reply, "You have shed the blood of Englishmen, and I will never be reconciled to you." Your Lordships will observe that the reason he gives for such an infernal determination (for it cannot be justly qualified by any other word) is of a nature to make tyranny the very foundation of our government. I do not say here upon what occasion people may or may not resist; but surely, if ever there was an occasion on which people, from love to their sovereign and regard to their country, might take up arms, it was this. They saw a tyrant violent in his demands and weak in his power. They saw their prince imprisoned and insulted, after he had made every offer of submission, and had laid his turban three times in the lap of his oppressor. They saw him, instead of availing himself of the means he possessed of cutting off his adversary, (for the life of Mr. Hastings was entirely in his power,) betaking himself to flight. They then thronged round him, took up arms in his defence, and shed the blood of some of his insulters. Is this resistance, so excited, so provoked, a plea for irreconcilable vengeance?