if it were so, why should such a business have been transacted by Mr. Hastings alone, without the assistance of the Company's servants? Above all things, why should Mr. Hastings have withheld the knowledge of it from Mr. Anderson, his most confidential friend, and whom he had recently placed at the head of the revenue department? If he originally meant to bring this money to account, what occasion had he to conceal the receipt of it? He might have taken it publicly as a fine. He says, that "he was more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of receiving money for his own use from the farmers." Why? "Because he had interdicted the receipt of presents from that class of men to his inferiors." He was conscious then that the example was dangerous; he knew and in effect has admitted, that a corrupt governor has no power to restrain the corruption of others. But Mr. Hastings's intentions were innocent; he meant the public service, and nothing else; then why should be conceal his actions? There could be no dishonour to him; there could be no danger in the example, but from the possible discovery of that conduct which he endeavoured to conceal. Between his receiving money openly for the public, and his interdicting the receipt of presents to his inferiors, there would have been no contradiction. At all events, he should have provided some voucher to prove his original intention. He should have secured some witnesses to answer for the truth of his present declarations. The whole transaction on the face of it is illegal, clandestine, and fraudulent. Will you allow him to plead his intentions in opposition to his actions, and will you take his single word for his intentions? By Mr. Larkins's letter it is admitted that, out of nine lacks and a half received under the title of peshcush, Gunga Govind Sing has cheated the Company of three lacks. Perhaps it may be thought that the remainder at least was a clear gain to Government. The fact is, that all the farmers, who gave money privately to Mr. Hastings, repaid themselves with large interest out of the public revenue. Kelleram and Cullian Sing, who gave him four lacks, were in arrear at the end of the first year, to the amount of seven lacks and a half; Nundolol to the amount of five lacks. In Burdwan the balance of the first year was 1,64,000 rupees, and 2,71,000 of the second. In Nuddea the zemindar, who had given Mr. Hastings three lacks, incurred so large a balance in the two first years, that Mr. Hastings was compelled to dispossess him also, as well as the other three. In the mean time, the power of the farmers over the people was unlimited; and they used it, as temporary power in the hands of low men is always used. Having no permanent interest in the country, they plundered it rapidly, without judgment or mercy. Mr. Young tells you, "that the farmers of Bahar assumed the administration of justice: that they made the settlement in the country with the zemindars, talookdars, and ryots, in an arbitrary manner, by compelling many of them to give a large increase upon the engagements they had previously entered into with the Patna council. Restraint and confinement were used to effect it, even with the first zemindars of the country, and it was exacted with the utmost rigour, and, he believes, in some instances, by corporal punishment." Such are the natural, unavoidable abuses of servile authority; and such were the instruments employed by Mr. Hastings to afflict and dishonour all the noble families of the country. It is not in human nature that he whose mind has been degraded by slavery, should exercise power with moderation. Servility and tyranny, though remote in their condition, have a close affinity of character; and the former is a dangerous preparative for the latter. In the mind of a slave, to inflict disgrace is a compensation for having suffered it; to display an insulting dominion, is to balance the degradation of an overacted submission. The exactions of Devy Sing and Nundolol, in Dinagepore and Radshi, and the effects they produced, have been stated to you already. And how could it be otherwise? Did Mr. Hastings expect that they who bribed him, would not reimburse themselves? Was he at liberty to restrain them in the exercise of a power, which he had sold to them? The thing they bought of him was a privilege to plunder. They paid for it, and they used it. You have it in evidence, that Kelleram told the Phousdar, or chief criminal magistrate of Bahar, whose jurisdiction he had invaded, "that he did not fear the nabob himself, for that he had settled every thing very securely before he came up;" that is, with Mr. Hastings at Calcutta. You now have the whole transaction before you. Mr. Hastings takes upon him to raise money privately, by what he calls a Peshçush. Of the sum discovered his agent keeps a third; the farmers run in arrear to double the amount of the whole, the people are oppressed, and the country depopulated. What he received from all the provinces is still a secret. According to Mr. Hastings, the peshcush belongs to the public. If it does, you have a public revenue, levied without public authority; of which no public account is kept; for the collection of which there is no public officer; and for the receipt of which there is no public treasurer. What reason have you to be satisfied that a revenue, so imposed and so collected, has been, or ever will be brought to account? These were the real reasons for which Mr. Hastings abolished the provincial councils, and established the committee of revenue. The pretended object of the change was to improve the revenues. Your select committee observe with great truth, "that, when any new change is projected in the revenue system of Bengal, an increase of revenue is generally held out to the India Company, as the most likely means to insure their approbation to the measure." [6th Rep. p. 27]. Accordingly Mr. Hastings concludes his defence with a general assertion, that the revenues had been considerably increased under the management of the committee; that is, under the management of a set of men, who tell you themselves, that to "pretend to say, that they really executed the business, would be folly and falsehood." If the assertion were true, I would not allow it to be a proof of the wisdom and utility of the measure, unless I knew by what means the increase was obtained. The power of that government over the natives is despotic. If you can discover that they have any property left, you may certainly extort it from them. They may try to conceal, but they have no means of defending it. Mr. Hastings, 1 know, looks for ultimate shelter and security in the avarice of this country. He promises himself that profitable crimes will never be condemned in England; and that, if he can persuade you that he has augmented your revenues, you will never ask him by what means. But I shall not leave him even that profligate resource. It is not true that the revenues were considerably increased under the management of the committee of revenue. I meet him with contradiction. I am at issue with him on the fact; and though the burthen of the proof belongs to the party that asserts, I undertake to prove that the assertion is false. Let us see, what it was he promised to effect by the change in 1781, and how much he has performed. In order to reconcile the Company to the measure, he promised them that it would produce a specific annual gain of 51,09,673 rupees, [Vide his Estimate, 6th Report, p. 28.] which, in four years, ending in April 1785, would amount to 204,38,692 sicca rupees. If he performed his promise, there must have been an increase of revenue, beyond the average of the collections of former years, to that amount. Now it appears from the accounts on the table, that the average amount of collections of the nine first years of his government was 200,60,219 sicca rupees per annum; and that the average of the four succeeding years, under the committee of revenue, was only 187,80,020 rupees. The annual difference or decrease is 12,80,199, which, in four years, amounts to 51,20,796 rupees. On one side, then, he promises an increase; on the other, he falls short of the former amount. Put the promise and the performance together, and you will find, that he has imposed a deceit on the Company to the amount of 255,59,488 sicca rupees, or about three millions sterling, in the first four years of the committee's management, the whole of which we have a right to presume was exacted from the country. In the fifth year, the collections fell con. siderably short even of the average of the four preceding years; and for this too I hold him answerable, though he had quitted the government, since it arose from the continued operation of his own measure. In May 1786, the Governorgeneral and Council abolished the committee. I know it is impossible for you to judge of the accuracy of these calculations without an inspection of the accounts. All I can say is, that I am ready to esta blish it in any manner that may be required of me. The collection of the five last years of the revenues of Bengal, failing as it has done to so great an amount, and charged as it is by me with the grossest frauds, waste, and embezzlement, deserves to be examined by a special committee. When Mr. Hastings asserted, that he had considerably increased the revenues, he ought to have produced a specific account and a comparative view of the collections. He was bound to prove the truth of his assertion. This he has not done; and, after all, if the assertion were true, it would be no proof of the merit be pretends to. Admitting that he had increased the public revenue, I would ask Him, has he improved it? A mere augmentation of revenue supposes nothing but an act of power, and might have been effected, for a time at least, without industry, judgment, or economy. But Mr. Hastings, we are told, is a great financier; he has the sole exclusive merit of reviving and establishing a monopoly of salt and opium. One would think he had made some wonderful discovery in the mystery of taxation. The language of his admirers, on this subject, would lead you to conclude, that the possibility of raising a great supply, by a monopoly of one of the necessaries of life in the hands of an arbitrary government, was a secret reserved for the genius of Mr. Hastings. He speaks of it himself, as if he had invented it. [Vide his Review, p. 126.] I cannot allow him the credit of the discovery. The monopoly of salt existed in Bengal before his government, and was suppressed by orders from home. But, if there be any merit in reviving a mode of exaction reprobated by every wise government, and particularly prohibited by the East India Company, I admit that Mr. Hastings has a claim to it. If it be a ri-gorous monopoly, undoubtedly it will be productive. If you take proper measures to exclude foreign salt, the price of own will rise of course. These are no great secrets in finance. But, is the fit real? is it entire? is there not a proportionate loss in the land revenue of the salt districts? and, if the plan were ever so profitable, is it fit that the necessaries of life should be monopolized in Bengal ? Will you give the sanction of Parliament to that system of taxation? The objects to which it may be applied, are not exhausted. Sir, I am firm in declaring, that the manufacture of salt should be left with the owners of the lands, and that the revenue to be raised from it should be only by a duty. Mr. Hastings himself was once of that opinion. [Appendix to 9th Report, No. 89, 90.] But I know I shall be told that, when he established this monopoly in the year 1780, the Government was in distress. It certainly was, and he alone was the author of it. His defence as a financier makes him criminal as a governor. There never was an example of so rapid a decline from prosperity to distress, from wealth to indigence, as that which took place in the government of Bengal in two years only, in 1779 and 1780. By his own account, the Company's your pro treasury was full in April 1779. [Vide his Minute of 10th August 1778. In 1780 you find him reduced to the necessity of raising money by monopolizing one of the necessaries of life. With respect to the monopoly of opium, it is not pretended that much was gained by it. You have heard it avowed, when it could not be denied, that the opium contracts were always considered in Bengal as a fund of favour and patronage, and the House has resolved to impeach Mr. Hastings for the contract he gave to Mr. Sullivan. This monopoly then I charge as an iniquitous oppression of the natives, without the plea of public profit to excuse it. In the name of God and Justice, what is to become of the people of that country, if you suffer your governors first to tax the lands, and then to engross the produce? These he calls his merits; these I call his crimes. The details of oppression, with which this monopoly in particular has been accompanied, are horrible. I know it to be true, that the ryots have been forced by a powerful contractor to cut down large tracts of green corn to make way for a plantation of poppy. [Vide 9th Report, p. 37, Appendix to ditto, p. 69.] He would not even wait until the corn was ripe. There would be no occasion to force the cultivation of this destructive drug, if the hands that raise it were at liberty to sell it. The profit on opium is immoderate; but in the profit they have no share. Instead of being allowed to carry it to an open market, they are compelled to sell to a single person, armed with the power of government, and, if they refuse the price he offers them, they cannot sell at all. The government, which ought to judge and protect, is party against them. For what purpose is all this wickedness committed? not for the India Company; they get nothing by it. Avowedly then for job and patronage, to make the fortune of a favourite in an hour. I now submit to the determination of the committee, whether this series of facts and the inferences drawn from them make good the charge, that the internal government of Bengal, under the administration of Mr. Hastings, was from first to last a uniform system of tyranny, fraud and peculation; that it was profligate in its principle, arbitrary in its means, and oppressive in all its effects; and that the final predominant purpose, to which it was at all times and in all manner of $ labouring for the profit of a single master. The various ranks and orders into which that great population was divided by the ancient institutions of the country, and the relations in which those ranks and orders stood to each other, present to the mind a perfect scheme of domestic policy and civil government;-a sovereign, or the representative of a sovereign, at the summit; a splendid nobility; a venerable hierarchy; a rank of gentlemen; of broad, and (but for external violence) on the stable foundation of a numerous peasantry, innocent, industrious, and contented. Such was the noble fabrick, which has been crushed into a confused mass by the weight of British oppression. The structure is in ruins, but the materials remain. To restore so many millions of people to their rights, would be a glorious exercise of your power, and is in effect no less your interest than your duty. If it were possible for you to persuade yourselves, that the lands of Bengal are your property, not theirs, common prudence would instruct you to leave it, where you found it, in the hands which alone can make it productive. You may partake in the produce of their labour; but be assured it will shrink and escape from the grasp that endeavours to engross it. If motives such as these make no impression; if the creatures subject to your power have no resource in their own rights, or in your benevolence; if they have nothing to hope from compact or compassion, or even from the care of your own interest rightly understood, their lot is deplorable; their only refuge is in death. changes invariably directed, was, to glut and satiate the most abandoned rapacity. Such a multiplicity and variety of crimes, such a chaos of indefatigable wickedness, sometimes involved in obscurity, at others aclaciously regardless of detection, was never yet exhibited in the conduct of one man. You cannot repair the wrongs or retrieve the mischiefs he has done, but you may protect the natives of India from future oppression. That essential object can no way be obtained but by the punish-yeomanry: the whole raised upon the ment of Mr. Hastings. If you neglect or o refuse to make an example of this great criminal, you share in his guilt, and will be answerable for the crimes and the cruelties committed hereafter in the government of India. If you are careless of the public revenue, let future governors squander it as Mr. Hastings has done. Abandon, if you will, the property of the India Company to fraud and embezzle=ment. Let future governors, instructed by the example and encouraged by the impunity of Mr. Hastings, disobey the orders and defy the authority of their superiors; let them violate, as he has done, the laws of their country. Dispense, if you will, with every obligation, which you can yourselves create or impose. But let it never be reproached to a British Parliament, that they have publicly pardoned and deliberately authorised a systematical violation of the first duties of humanity. You are the legislators of a people not only placed at an immense distance from the centre of your empire, but divided from you by every circumstance that constitutes separation among the nations of the world. Establish and sanctify your claim to power, whatever it may be, by the use you make of it. Take care that you protect the people, whom you pretend to govern. It is in vain to correct abuses, if no proper measures be taken to prevent them. It is not an inconsiderable object, that appears to your justice and solicits your compassion. Bengal and its dependencies, not very long before they fell under the dominion of England, formed a regular well-ordered kingdom, cultivated by industry, enriched by manufactures, adorned by arts, protected by laws, softened and civilized by manners, and moralized by religion. The people numerous in proportion to the fertility of the soil, to the mildness of the climate and to the facility of subsistence, were not a mere indiscriminate multitude of human creatures, obedient to the command, and My particular labour is at an end. An unremitting perseverance, for thirteen years together, in the same pursuit, has at last succeeded. The author of these mischiefs must be impeached. In arriving at that great public object, I have accomplished every personal purpose I ever had in view in persisting so long in this unthankful office. The reputation of general Clavering, colonel Monson, and my own, is secure. Whatever may be the fate of the question before you, the charges already voted are sufficient to show that there are public grounds, of unquestionable criminality, for the impeachment of Mr. Hastings. Your votes are my authority. The House of Commons are my compurgators. The only victory I ever aimed at is obtained. The only triumph which a man of honour would solicit or accept of, in such a question, is decreed. I never had a thought of succeeding to his office by driving him from it, or of sharing in the spoils of his fortune. My only personal object was, to clear my character from foul aspersion, and to establish, as I trust I have done, the integrity of my conduct in the estimamation of my country. I now move that it may be resolved, "That this committee, having considered the fifteenth Article of Charge, and examined evidence thereupon, is of opinion, that there is ground for impeaching Warren Hastings, esq. of high crimes and misdemeanors, upon the matter of the said Article." Major Scott rose and said: At so late an hour it would be unpardonable in me to follow the hon. gentleman through the vast range that he has taken; I shall therefore content myself with replying to the only points that can at all affect Mr. Hastings in this charge, after having said a word or two upon the hon. gentleman's exordium. He is pleased to say, that he has been attacked in pamphlets and prints; this is rather an extraordinary complaint from so great a pamphlet-writer as the hon. gentleman has been. The difference between him and me is, that I have generally signed my name to what I have written; but I do assure him, that if there is any anonymous publication that the hon. gentleman will state as offensive to him, I will very readily avow myself to be the author of it, provided it is one that I have written. The hon. gentleman has told you, and truly, that very soon after my arrival in England, I applied to him to know if he had written a certain pamphlet, and that he told me he did write it but does the hon. gentleman mean, by relating this anecdote, to impress an opinion upon the minds of gentlemen in this House, that he wrote no other pamphlet since that time? [Here Mr. Francis shook his head]. If the hon. gentleman does not mean this, I know not for what purpose he mentioned the circumstance; but I affirm, upon full conviction, that he has written three pamphlets in the course of this and the last year, all since this inquiry commenced; the first, "Observations on Mr. Hastings's Narrative;" the second, "Observations on his Letter relative to Presents;" and the last, "Observations on his Defence;" upon all of which I have stated my opinion in very plain terms; and I was last year authorised to state the opinion of a noble earl, to whom one of those pamphlets was sent under a blank cover, upon the scandalous indecency of such a proceeding, pending such an inquiry: yet the hoa. gentleman, who actually began this system of pamphlet-writing before I had put pen to paper, and has continued it ever since, complains of the injury that he has sustained by anonymous publications. The hon. gentleman has, this night, as usual, been very severe upon the Court of Directors, though not one gentleman of that body was present at the time. He says they shut their doors against him on his return to England; but, Mr. St. John, they opened their purse-strings to him before he went out. They advanced him a sum of money to enable him to go out, which is a single instance of indulgence to a servant of his rank; and surely it would be but fair to set the one against the other, and then it would appear that he is under very great obligations to the Court of Directors. I shall now proceed to the charge. It is with the utmost astonishment that I see it stated in the charge, and heard it dwelt upon by the hon. gentleman, that Mr. Hastings had set up the whole nobility, &c. to public auction, and that he had deprived the zemindars of their estates. Sir, I affirm, that there is not a shadow of foundation for this charge, and the hon. gentleman knows it. Mr. Hastings did, by the orders of the Court of Directors, throughout Bengal, what had always been done throughout the province of Burdwan, and the twenty-four Pergunnahs, from the time we acquired them: he let the lands to the highest bidder. I should be very glad to ask the hon. gentleman if Mahomed Riza Khan and the resident at the Durbar did not always do the same thing annually at the Puna? If the zemindar of a district did not offer what was deemed a fair price by government, the land was regularly given in farm, and the zemindar received his moshaira, or per-centage upon the amount of the jumma. The practice has been constant; the Company themselves recommended the farming system; and why? Because they knew the flourish. ing state of Burdwan, where the lands had always been let in farm, and a very great part of them to Calcutta banyans; and every gentleman who knows any thing of India must know, that Burdwan, from 1765 to 1772, was a garden' when |