The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 11 (of 12)

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?