Observe, my Lords, the person that put Durbege Sing in prison was Mr.
Markham; while the complaint in the arzee is, that Mr. Markham was himself the cause of the very failure for which he imprisoned him. Now what was the conduct of Mr. Hastings as judge? He has two persons before him: the one in the ostensible care of the revenue of the country; the other his own agent, acting under his authority. The first is accused by the second of default in his payments; the latter is complained of by the former, who says that the occasion of the accusation had been furnished by him, the accuser. The judge, instead of granting redress, dismisses the complaints against Mr. Markham with reprehension, and sends the complainant to rot in prison, without making one inquiry, or giving himself the trouble of stating to Mr. Markham the complaints against him, and desiring him to clear himself from them. My Lords, if there were nothing but this to mark the treacherous and perfidious nature of his conduct, this would be sufficient.
In this state of things, Mr. Hastings thus writes.
"To Mr. Markham. The measures which you have taken with Baboo Durbege Sing are perfectly right and proper, so far as they go; and we now direct that you exact from him, with the utmost rigor, every rupee of the collections which it shall appear that he has made and not brought to account, and either confine him at Benares, or send him prisoner to Chunar, and keep him in confinement until he shall have discharged the whole of the amount due from him."
He here employs the very person against whom the complaint is made to imprison the complainant. He approves the conduct of his agent without having heard his defence, and leaves him, at his option, to keep his victim a prisoner at Benares, or to imprison him in the fortress of Chunar, the infernal place to which he sends the persons whom he has a mind to extort money from.
Your Lordships will be curious to know how this debt of Durbege Sing stood at the time of his imprisonment. I will state the matter to your Lordships briefly, and in plain language, referring you for the particulars of the account to the papers which are in your Minutes. It appears from them, that, towards the end of the yearly account in 1782, a kist or payment of eight lacs (about 80,000_l._), the balance of the annual tribute, was due. In part of this kist, Durbege Sing paid two lacs (20,000_l._). Of the remaining six lacs (60,000_l._), the outstanding debts in the country due to the revenue, but not collected by the Naib, amounted to four lacs (40,000_l._). Thus far the account is not controverted by the accusing party. But Mr. Markham a.s.serts that he _shall_ be able to prove that the Naib had also actually received the other two lacs (20,000_l._), and consequently was an actual defaulter to that amount, and had, upon the whole, suffered the annual tribute to fall six lacs in arrear. The Naib denies the receipt of the two lacs just mentioned, and challenges inquiry; but no inquiries appear to have been made, and to this hour Mr. Markham has produced no proof of the fact. With respect to the arrear of the tribute money which appeared on the balance of the whole account, the Naib defended himself by alleging the distresses of the country, the diminution of his authority, and the want of support from the supreme government in the collection of the revenues; and he a.s.serts that he has a.s.sets sufficient, if time and power be allowed him for collecting them, to discharge the whole balance due to the Company. The immediate payment of the whole balance was demanded, and Durbege Sing, unable to comply with the demand, was sent to prison. Thus stood the business, when Mr. Markham, soon after he had sent the Naib to prison, quitted the Residency. He was succeeded by Mr.
Benn, who acted exactly upon the same principle. He declares that the six lacs demanded were not demanded upon the principle of its having been actually collected by him, but upon the principle of his having agreed to pay it. "We have," say Mr. Hastings"s agents to the Naib, "we have a Jew"s bond. If it is in your bond, we will have it, or we will have a pound of your flesh: whether you have received it or not is no business of ours." About this time some hopes were entertained by the Resident that the Naib"s personal exertions in collecting the arrears of the tribute might be useful. These hopes procured him a short liberation from his confinement. He was let out of prison, and appears to have made another payment of half a lac of rupees. Still the terms of the bond were insisted on, although Mr. Hastings had allowed that these terms were extravagant, and only one lac and a half of the money which had been actually received remained unpaid. One would think that common charity, that common decency, that common regard to the decorum of life would, under such circ.u.mstances, have hindered Mr. Hastings from imprisoning him again. But, my Lords, he was imprisoned again; he continued in prison till Mr. Hastings quitted the country; and there he soon after died,--a victim to the enormous oppression which has been detailed to your Lordships.
It appears that in the mean time the Residents had been using other means for recovering the balance due to the Company. The family of the Rajah had not been paid one shilling of the 60,000_l._, allowed for their maintenance. They were obliged to mortgage their own hereditary estates for their support, while the Residents confiscated all the property of Durbege Sing. Of the money thus obtained what account has been given? None, my Lords, none. It must therefore have been disposed of in some abominably corrupt way or other, while this miserable victim of Mr. Hastings was left to perish in a prison, after he had been elevated to the highest rank in the country.
But, without doubt, they found abundance of effects after his death? No, my Lords, they did not find anything. They ransacked his house; they examined all his accounts, every paper that he had, in and out of prison. They searched and scrutinized everything. They had every penny of his fortune, and I believe, though I cannot with certainty know, that the man died insolvent; and it was not pretended that he had ever applied to his own use any part of the Company"s money.
Thus Durbege Sing is gone; this tragedy is finished; a second Rajah of Benares has been destroyed. I do not speak of that miserable puppet who was said by Mr. Hastings to be in a state of childhood when arrived at manhood, but of the person who represented the dignity of the family. He is gone; he is swept away; and in his name, in the name of this devoted Durbege Sing, in the name of his afflicted family, in the name of the people of the country thus oppressed by an usurped authority, in the name of all these, respecting whom justice has been thus outraged, we call upon your Lordships for justice.
We are now at the commencement of a new order of things. Mr. Markham had been authorized to appoint whoever he pleased as Naib, with the exception of Ussaun Sing. He accordingly exercises this power, and chooses a person called Jagher Deo Seo. From the time of the confinement of Durbege Sing to the time of this man"s being put into the government, in whose hands were the revenues of the country? Mr. Markham himself has told you, at your bar, that they were in his hands,--that he was the person who not only named this man, but that he had the sole management of the revenues; and he was, of course, answerable for them all that time. The nominal t.i.tle of Zemindar was still left to the miserable pageant who held it; but even the very name soon fell entirely out of use. It is in evidence before your Lordships that his name is not even so much as mentioned in the proceedings of the government; and that the person who really governed was not the ostensible Jagher Deo Seo, but Mr. Markham. The government, therefore, was taken completely and entirely out of the hands of the person who had a legal right to administer it,--out of the hands of his guardians,--out of the hands of his mother,--out of the hands of his nearest relations,--and, in short, of all those who, in the common course of things, ought to have been intrusted with it. From all such persons, I say, it was taken: and where, my Lords, was it deposited? Why, in the hands of a man of whom we know nothing, and of whom we never heard anything, before we heard that Mr. Markham, of his own usurped authority, authorized by the usurped authority of Mr. Hastings, without the least communication with the Council, had put him in possession of that country.
Mr. Markham himself, as I have just said, administered the revenues alone, without the smallest authority for so doing, without the least knowledge of the Council, till Jagher Deo Seo was appointed Naib. Did he then give up his authority? No such thing. All the measures of Jagher Deo Seo"s government were taken with the concurrence and joint management of Mr. Markham. He conducted the whole; the settlements were made, the leases and agreements with farmers all regulated by him. I need not tell you, I believe, that Jagher Deo Seo was not a person of very much authority in the case: your Lordships would laugh at me, if I said he was. The revenue arrangements were, I firmly believe, regulated and made by Mr. Markham. But whether they were or were not, it comes to the same thing. If they were improperly made and improperly conducted, Mr. Hastings is responsible for the whole of the mismanagement; for he gave the entire control to a person who had little experience, who was young in the world (and this is the excuse I wish to make for a gentleman of that age). He appointed him, and gave him at large a discretionary authority to name whom he pleased to be the ostensible Naib; but we know that he took the princ.i.p.al part himself in all his settlements and in all his proceedings.
Soon after the Naib had been thus appointed and instructed by Mr.
Markham, he settled, under his directions, the administration of the country. Mr. Markham then desires leave from Mr. Hastings to go down to Calcutta. I imagine he never returned to Benares; he comes to Europe; and here end the acts of this viceroy and delegate.
Let us now begin the reign of Mr. Benn and Mr. Fowke. These gentlemen had just the same power delegated to them that Mr. Markham possessed,--not one jot less, that I know of; and they were therefore responsible, and ought to have been called to an account by Mr. Hastings for every part of their proceedings. I will not give you my own account of the reign of these gentlemen; but I will read to you what Mr.
Hastings has thought proper to represent the state of the people to be under their government. This course will save your Lordships time and trouble; for it will nearly supersede all observations of mine upon the subject. I hold in my hand Mr. Hastings"s representation of the effects produced by a government which was conceived by himself, carried into effect by himself, and illegally invested by him with illegal powers, without any security or responsibility of any kind. Hear, I say, what an account Mr. Hastings gave, when he afterwards went up to Benares upon another wicked project, and think what ought to have been his feelings as he looked upon the ruin he had occasioned. Think of the condition in which he saw Benares the first day he entered it. He then saw it beautiful, ornamented, rich,--an object that envy would have shed tears over for its prosperity, that humanity would have beheld with eyes glistening with joy for the comfort and happiness which were there enjoyed by man: a country flourishing in cultivation to such a degree that the soldiers were obliged to march in single files through the fields of corn, to avoid damaging them; a country in which Mr. Stables has stated that the villages were thick beyond all expression; a country where the people pressed round their sovereign, as Mr. Stables also told you, with joy, triumph, and satisfaction. Such was the country; and in such a state and under such a master was it, when he first saw it. See what it now is under Warren Hastings; see what it is under the British government; and then judge whether the Commons are or are not right in pressing the subject upon your Lordships for your decision, and letting you and all this great auditory know what sort of a criminal you have before you, who has had the impudence to represent to your Lordships at your bar that Benares is in a flourishing condition, in defiance of the evidence which we have under his own hands, and who, in all the false papers that have been circulated to debauch the public opinion, has stated that we, the Commons, have given a false representation as to the state of the country under the English government.
_Lucknow, the 2d of April, 1784. Addressed to the Honorable Edward Wheler, Esq., &c. Signed Warren Hastings. It is in page 306 of the printed Minutes._
"Gentlemen,--Having contrived, by making forced stages, while the troops of my escort marched at the ordinary rate, to make a stay of five days at Benares, I was thereby furnished with the means of acquiring some knowledge of the state of the province, which I am anxious to communicate to you: indeed, the inquiry, which was in a great degree obtruded upon me, affected me with very mortifying reflections on my own inability to apply it to any useful purpose.
"From the confines of Buxar to Benares I was followed and fatigued by the clamors of the discontented inhabitants. It was what I expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of it. The distresses which were produced by the long continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed princ.i.p.ally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration. Of a mult.i.tude of pet.i.tions which were presented to me, and of which I took minutes, every one that did not relate to a personal grievance contained the representation of one and the same species of oppression, which is in its nature of an influence most fatal to the future cultivation.
The practice to which I allude is this. It is affirmed that the aumils and renters exact from the proprietors of the actual harvest a large increase in kind on their stipulated rent: that is, from those who hold their pottahs by the tenure of paying one half of the produce of their crops, either the whole without a subterfuge, or a large proportion of it by false measurement or other pretexts; and from those whose engagements are for a fixed rent in money the half or a greater proportion is taken in kind. This is in effect a tax upon the industry of the inhabitants; since there is scarcely a field of grain in the province, I might say not one, which has not been preserved by the incessant labor of the cultivator, by digging wells for their supply, or watering them from the wells of masonry with which this country abounds, or from the neighboring tanks, rivers, and nullahs. The people who imposed on themselves this voluntary and extraordinary labor, and not unattended with expense, did it in the expectation of reaping the profits of it; and it is certain that they would not have done it, if they had known that their rulers, from whom they were ent.i.tled to an indemnification, would take from them what they had so hardly earned. If the same administration continues, and the country shall again labor under a want of the natural rains, every field will be abandoned, the revenue fail, and thousands perish, through the want of subsistence: for who will labor for the sole benefit of others, and to make himself the subject of vexation? These practices are not to be imputed to the aumils employed in the districts, but to the Naib himself. The avowed principle on which he acts, and which he acknowledged to myself, is, that the whole sum fixed for the revenue of the province must be collected, and that for this purpose the deficiency arising in places where the crops have failed, or which have been left uncultivated, must be supplied from the resources of others, where the soil has been better suited to the season, or the industry of the cultivators more successfully exerted: a principle which, however specious and plausible it may at first appear, certainly tends to the most pernicious and destructive consequences.
If this declaration of the Naib had been made only to myself, I might have doubted my construction of it; but it was repeated by him to Mr. Anderson, who understood it exactly in the same sense. In the management of the customs, the conduct of the Naib, or of the officers under him, was forced also upon my attention. The exorbitant rates exacted by an arbitrary valuation of the goods, the practice of exacting duties twice on the same goods, first from the seller and afterwards from the buyer, and the vexatious disputes and delays drawn on the merchants by these oppressions, were loudly complained of; and some instances of this kind were said to exist at the very time when I was in Benares. Under such circ.u.mstances, we are not to wonder, if the merchants of foreign countries are discouraged from resorting to Benares, and if the commerce of that province should annually decay.
"Other evils, or imputed evils, have accidentally come to my knowledge, which I will not now particularize, as I hope that with the a.s.sistance of the Resident they may be in part corrected: one, however, I must mention, because it has been verified by my own observation, and is of that kind which reflects an unmerited reproach on our general and national character. When I was at Buxar, the Resident at my desire enjoined the Naib to appoint creditable people to every town through which our route lay, to persuade and encourage the inhabitants to remain in their houses, promising to give them guards as I approached, and they required it for their protection; and that he might perceive how earnest I was for his observance of this precaution, (which I am certain was faithfully delivered,) I repeated it to him in person, and dismissed him, that he might precede me for that purpose: but, to my great disappointment, I found every place through which I pa.s.sed abandoned; nor had there been a man left in any of them for their protection. I am sorry to add, that, from Buxar to the opposite boundary, I have seen nothing but the traces of complete devastation in every village, whether caused by the followers of the troops which have lately pa.s.sed, for their natural relief, (and I know not whether my own may not have had their share,) or from the apprehension of the inhabitants left to themselves, and of themselves deserting their houses. I wish to acquit my own countrymen of the blame of these unfavorable appearances, and in my own heart I do acquit them: for at one encampment, near a large village called Derrara, in the purgunnah of Zemaneea, a crowd of people came to me, complaining that their former aumil, who was a native of the place, and had long been established in authority over them, and whose custom it had been, whenever any troops pa.s.sed, to remain in person on the spot for their protection, having been removed, the new aumil, on the approach of any military detachment, himself first fled from the place, and the inhabitants, having no one to whom they could apply for redress, or for the representation of their grievances, and being thus remediless, fled also; so that their houses and effects became a prey to any person who chose to plunder them. The general conclusion appeared to me an inevitable consequence from such a state of facts,--and my own senses bore testimony to it in this specific instance; nor do I know how it is possible for any officer commanding a military party, how attentive soever he may be to the discipline and forbearance of his people, to prevent disorders, when there is neither opposition to hinder nor evidence to detect them. These and many other irregularities I impute solely to the Naib; and I think it my duty to recommend his instant removal. I would myself have dismissed him, had the control of this province come within the line of my powers, and have established such regulations and checks as would have been most likely to prevent the like irregularities. I have said checks, because, unless there is some visible influence, and a powerful and able one, impended over the head of the manager, no system can avail. The next appointed may prove, from some defect, as unfit for the office as the present; for the choice is limited to few, without experience to guide it. The first was of my own nomination; his merits and qualifications stood in equal balance with my knowledge of those who might have been the candidates for the office; but he was the father of the Rajah, and the affinity sunk the scale wholly in his favor: for who could be so fit to be intrusted with the charge of his son"s interest, and the new credit of the rising family? He deceived my expectations. Another was recommended by the Resident, and at my instance the board appointed him. This was Jagher Deo Seo, the present Naib. I knew him not, and the other members of the board as little. While Mr. Markham remained in office, of whom, as his immediate patron, he may have stood in awe, I am told that he restrained his natural disposition, which has been described to me as rapacious, unfeeling, haughty, and to an extreme vindictive.
"I cannot avoid remarking, that, excepting the city of Benares itself, the province depending upon it is in effect without a government, the Naib exercising only a dependent jurisdiction without a princ.i.p.al. The Rajah is without authority, and even his name disused in the official instruments issued or taken by the manager. The representation of his situation shall be the subject of another letter; I have made this already too long, and shall confine it to the single subject for the communication of which it was begun. This permit me to recapitulate. The administration of the province is misconducted, and the people oppressed; trade discouraged, and the revenue, though said to be exceeded in the actual collections by many lacs, (for I have a minute account of it, which states the net amount, including jaghires, as something more than fifty-one lacs,) in danger of a rapid decline, from the violent appropriation of its means; the Naib or manager is unfit for his office; a new manager is required, and a system of official control,--in a word, a const.i.tution: for neither can the board extend its superintending powers to a district so remote from its observation, nor has it delegated that authority to the Resident, who is merely the representative of government, and the receiver of its revenue in the last process of it; nor, indeed, would it be possible to render him wholly so, for reasons which I may hereafter detail."
My Lords, you have now heard--not from the Managers, not from records of office, not from witnesses at your bar, but from the prisoner himself--the state of the country of Benares, from the time that Mr.
Hastings and his delegated Residents had taken the management of it. My Lords, it is a proof, beyond all other proof, of the melancholy state of the country, in which, by attempting to exercise usurped and arbitrary power, all power and all authority become extinguished, complete anarchy takes place, and nothing of government appears but the means of robbing and ravaging, with an utter indisposition to take one step for the protection of the people.
Think, my Lords, what a triumphal progress it was for a British governor, from one extremity of the province to the other, (for so he has stated it,) to be pursued by the cries of an oppressed and ruined people, where they dared to appear before him,--and when they did not dare to appear, flying from every place, even the very magistrates being the first to fly! Think, my Lords, that, when these unhappy people saw the appearance of a British soldier, they fled as from a pestilence; and then think, that these were the people who labored in the manner which you have just heard, who dug their own wells, whose country would not produce anything but from the indefatigable industry of its inhabitants; and that such a meritorious, such an industrious people, should be subjected to such a cursed anarchy under pretence of revenue, to such a cursed tyranny under the pretence of government!
"But Jagher Deo Seo was unfit for his office."--"How dared you to appoint a man unfit for his office?"--"Oh, it signified little, without their having a const.i.tution."--"Why did you destroy the official const.i.tution that existed before? How dared you to destroy those establishments which enabled the people to dig wells and to cultivate the country like a garden, and then to leave the whole in the hands of your arbitrary and wicked Residents and their instruments, chosen without the least idea of government and without the least idea of protection?"
G.o.d has sometimes converted wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason, that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked. The human faculties and reason are in such cases deranged; and therefore this man has been dragged by the just vengeance of Providence to make his own madness the discoverer of his own wicked, perfidious, and cursed machinations in that devoted country.
Think, my Lords, of what he says respecting the military. He says there is no restraining them,--that they pillage the country wherever they go.
But had not Mr. Hastings himself just before encouraged the military to pillage the country? Did he not make the people"s resistance, when the soldiers attempted to pillage them, one of the crimes of Cheyt Sing? And who would dare to obstruct the military in their abominable ravages, when they knew that one of the articles of Cheyt Sing"s impeachment was his having suffered the people of the country, when plundered by these wicked soldiers, to return injury for injury and blow for blow? When they saw, I say, that these were the things for which Cheyt Sing was sacrificed, there was manifestly nothing left for them but flight.--What! fly from a Governor-General? You would expect he was bearing to the country, upon his balmy and healing wings, the cure of all its disorders and of all its distress. No: they knew him too well; they knew him to be the destroyer of the country; they knew him to be the destroyer of their sovereign, the destroyer of the persons whom he had appointed to govern under him; they knew that neither governor, sub-governor, nor subject could enjoy a moment"s security while he possessed supreme power. This was the state of the country; and this the Commons of England call upon your Lordships to avenge.
Let us now see what is next done by the prisoner at your bar. He is satisfied with simply removing from his office Jagher Deo Seo, who is accused by him of all these corruptions and oppressions. The other poor, unfortunate man, who was not even accused of malversations in such a degree, and against whom not one of the accusations of oppression was regularly proved, but who had, in Mr. Hastings"s eye, the one unpardonable fault of not having been made richer by his crimes, was twice imprisoned, and finally perished in prison. But we have never heard one word of the imprisonment of Jagher Deo Seo, who, I believe, after some mock inquiry, was acquitted.
Here, my Lords, I must beg you to recollect Mr. Hastings"s proceeding with Gunga Govind Sing, and to contrast his conduct towards these two peculators with his proceeding towards Durbege Sing. Such a comparison will let your Lordships into the secret of one of the prisoner"s motives of conduct upon such occasions. When you will find a man pillaging and desolating a country, in the manner Jagher Deo Seo is described by Mr.
Hastings to have done, but who takes care to secure to himself the spoil, you will likewise find that such a man is safe, secure, unpunished. Your Lordships will recollect the desolation of Dinagepore.
You will recollect that the rapacious Gunga Govind Sing, (the coadjutor of Mr. Hastings in peculation,) out of 80,000_l._ which he had received on the Company"s account, retained 40,000_l._ for his own use, and that, instead of being turned out of his employment and treated with rigor and cruelty, he was elevated in Mr. Hastings"s grace and favor, and never called upon for the restoration of a penny. Observe, my Lords, the difference in his treatment of men who have wealth to purchase impunity, or who have secrets to reveal, and of another who has no such merit, and is poor and insolvent.
We have shown your Lordships the effects of Mr. Hastings"s government upon the country and its inhabitants; and although I have before suggested to you some of its effects upon the army of the Company, I will now call your attention to a few other observations on that subject. Your Lordships will, in the first place, be pleased to attend to the character which he gives of this army. You have heard what he tells you of the state of the country in which it was stationed, and of the terror which it struck into the inhabitants. The appearance of an English soldier was enough to strike the country people with affright and dismay: they everywhere, he tells you, fled before them. And yet they are the officers of this very army who are brought here as witnesses to express the general satisfaction of the people of India. To be sure, a man who never calls Englishmen to an account for any robbery or injury whatever, who acquits them, upon their good intentions, without any inquiry, will in return for this indemnity have their good words. We are not surprised to find them coming with emulation to your bar to declare him possessed of all virtues, and that n.o.body has or can have a right to complain of him. But we, my Lords, protest against these indemnities; we protest against their good words; we protest against their testimonials; and we insist upon your Lordships trying him, not upon what this or that officer says of his good conduct, but upon the proved result of the actions tried before you. Without ascribing, perhaps, much guilt to men who must naturally wish to favor the person who covers their excesses, who suffers their fortunes to be made, you will know what value to set upon their testimony. The Commons look on those testimonies with the greatest slight, and they consider as nothing all evidence given by persons who are interested in the very cause,--persons who derive their fortunes from the ruin of the very people of the country, and who have divided the spoils with the man whom we accuse. Undoubtedly these officers will give him their good word.
Undoubtedly the Residents will give him their good word. Mr. Markham, and Mr. Benn, and Mr. Fowke, if he had been called, every servant of the Company, except some few, will give him the same good word, every one of them; because, my Lords, they have made their fortunes under him, and their conduct has not been inquired into.
But to return to the observations we were making upon the ruinous effects in general of the successive governments which had been established at Benares by the prisoner at your bar. These effects, he would have you believe, arose from the want of a const.i.tution. Why, I again ask, did he destroy the const.i.tution which he found established there, or suffer it to be destroyed? But he had actually authorized Mr.
Markham to make a new, a regular, an official const.i.tution. Did Mr.
Markham make it? No: though he professed to do it; it never was done: and so far from there being any regular, able, efficient const.i.tution, you see there was an absolute and complete anarchy in the country. The native inhabitants, deprived of their ancient government, were so far from looking up to their new masters for protection, that, the moment they saw the face of a soldier or of a British person in authority, they fled in dismay, and thought it more eligible to abandon their houses to robbery than to remain exposed to the tyranny of a British governor. Is this what they call British dominion? Will you sanction by your judicial authority transactions done in direct defiance of your legislative authority? Are they so injuriously mad as to suppose your Lordships can be corrupted to betray in your judicial capacity (the most sacred of the two) what you have ordained in your legislative character?
My Lords, I am next to remind you what this man has had the insolence and audacity to state at your bar. "In fact," says he, "I can adduce very many gentlemen now in London to confirm my a.s.sertions, that the countries of Benares and Gazipore were never within the memory of Englishmen so well protected, so peaceably governed, or more industriously cultivated than at the present moment."
Your Lordships know that this report of Mr. Hastings which has been read was made in the year 1784. Your Lordships know that no step was taken, while Mr. Hastings remained in India, for the regulation and management of the country. If there was, let it be shown. There was no const.i.tution framed, nor any other means taken for the settlement of the country, except the appointment of Ajeet Sing in the room of Durbege Sing, to reign like him, and like him to be turned out. Mr. Hastings left India in February, 1785; he arrived here, as I believe, in June or July following. Our proceedings against him commenced in the sessions of 1786; and this defence was given, I believe, in the year 1787. Yet at that time, when he could hardly have received any account from India, he was ready, he says, to produce the evidence (and no doubt might have done so) of many gentlemen whose depositions would have directly contradicted what he had himself deposed of the state in which he, so short a time before, had left the country. Your Lordships cannot suppose that it could have recovered its prosperity within that time. We know you may destroy that in a day which will take up years to build; we know a tyrant can in a moment ruin and oppress: but you cannot restore the dead to life; you cannot in a moment restore fields to cultivation; you cannot, as you please, make the people in a moment restore old or dig new wells: and yet Mr. Hastings has dared to say to the Commons that he would produce persons to refute the account which we had fresh from himself. We will, however, undertake to show you that the direct contrary was the fact.
I will first refer you to Mr. Barlow"s account of the state of trade.
Your Lordships will there find a full exposure of the total falsehood of the prisoner"s a.s.sertions. You will find that Mr. Hastings himself had been obliged to give orders for the change of almost every one of the regulations he had made. Your Lordships may there see the madness and folly of tyranny attempting to regulate trade. In the printed Minutes, page 2830, your Lordships will see how completely Mr. Hastings had ruined the trade of the country. You will find, that, wherever he pretended to redress the grievances which he had occasioned, he did not take care to have any one part of his pretended redress executed. When you consider the anarchy in which he states the country through which he pa.s.sed to have been, you may easily conceive that regulations for the protection of trade, without the means of enforcing them, must be nugatory.
Mr. Barlow was sent, in the years 1786 and 1787, to examine into the state of the country. He has stated the effect of all those regulations, which Mr. Hastings has had the a.s.surance to represent here as prodigies of wisdom. At the very time when our charge was brought to this House, (it is a remarkable period, and we desire your Lordships to advert to it,) at that time, I do not know whether it was not on the very same day that we brought our charge to your bar, Mr. Duncan was sent by Lord Cornwallis to examine into the state of that province. Now, my Lords, you have Mr. Duncan"s report before you, and you will judge whether or not, by any regulation which Mr. Hastings had made, or whether through _any_ means used by him, that country had recovered or was recovering.
Your Lordships will there find other proofs of the audacious falsehood of his representation, that all which he had done had operated on the minds of the inhabitants very greatly in favor of British integrity and good government. Mr. Duncan"s report will not only enable you to decide upon what he has said himself, it will likewise enable you to judge of the credit which is due to the gentlemen now in London whom he can produce to confirm his a.s.sertions, that the country of Benares and Gazipore were never, within the memory of Englishmen, so well protected and cultivated as at the present moment.
Instead, therefore, of a speech from me, you shall hear what the country says itself, by the report of the last commissioner who was sent to examine it by Lord Cornwallis. The perfect credibility of his testimony Mr. Hastings has established out of Lord Cornwallis"s mouth, who, being asked the character of Mr. Jonathan Duncan, has declared that there is nothing he can report of the state of the country to which you ought not to give credit. Your Lordships will now see how deep the wounds are which tyranny and arbitrary power must make in a country where their existence is suffered; and you will be pleased to observe that this statement was made at a time when Mr. Hastings was amusing us with _his_ account of Benares.
_Extract of the Proceedings of the Resident at Benares, under date the 16th February, 1788, at the Purgunnah of Gurrah Dehmah, &c.
Printed Minutes, page 2610._
"The Resident, having arrived in this purgunnah of Gurrah Dehmah from that of Mohammedabad, is very sorry to observe that it seems about one third at least uncultivated, owing to the mismanagement of the few last years. The Rajah, however, promises that it shall be by next year in a complete state of cultivation; and Tobarck Hossaine, his aumeen, aumil, or agent, professes his confidence of the same happy effects, saying, that he has already brought a great proportion of the land, that lay fallow when he came into the purgunnah in the beginning of the year, into cultivation, and that, it being equally the Rajah"s directions and his own wish, he does not doubt of being successful in regard to the remaining part of the waste land."
_Report, dated the 18th of February, at the Purgunnah of Bulleah._
"The Resident, having come yesterday into this purgunnah from that of Gurrah Dehmah, finds its appearance much superior to that purgunnah in point of cultivation; yet it is on the decline so for that its collectible jumma will not be so much this year as it was last, notwithstanding all the efforts of Reazel Husn, the agent of Khulb Ali Khan, who has farmed this purgunnah upon a three years"
lease, (of which the present is the last,) during which his, that is, the head farmer"s, management cannot be applauded, as the funds of the purgunnah are very considerably declined in his hands: indeed, Reazel Husn declares that this year there was little or no _khereef_, or first harvest, in the purgunnah, and that it has been merely by the greatest exertions that he has prevailed on the ryots to cultivate the _rubby_ crop, which is now on the ground and seems plentiful."
_Report, dated the 20th of February, at the Purgunnah of Khereed._
"The Resident, having this day come into the purgunnah of Khereed, finds that part of it laying between the frontiers of Bulleah, the present station, and Bansdeah, (which is one of the _tuppahs_, or subdivisions, of Khereed,) exceedingly wasted and uncultivated. The said tuppah is sub-farmed by Gobind Ram from Kulub Ali Bey, and Gobind Ram has again under-rented it to the zemindars."
_Report, dated the 23d February, at the Purgunnah of Sekunderpoor._
"The Resident is set out for Sekunderpoor, and is sorry to observe, that, for about six or seven coss that he had further to pa.s.s through the purgunnah of Kereebs, the whole appeared one continued waste, as far as the eye could reach, on both sides of the road. The purgunnah Sekunderpoor, beginning about a coss before he reached the village, an old fort of that name, appeared to a little more advantage; but even here the crops seem very scanty, and the ground more than half fallow."