This act of injustice, against which we have fulminated the thunder of our resolutions as a heavy crime, as a crime that dishonored the nation, and which measures ought to be taken to redress, this man has the insolence to bring before your Lordships as a set-off against the crimes we charge him with. This outrageous defiance of the House of Commons, this outrageous defiance of all the laws of his country, I hope your Lordships will not countenance. You will not let it pa.s.s for nothing: on the contrary, you will consider it as aggravating heavily his crimes.
And, above all, you will not suffer him to set off this, which we have declared to be injurious to our national honor and credit, and which he himself does not deny to be a breach of the public faith, against other breaches of the public faith with which we charge him,--or to justify one cla.s.s of public crimes by proving that he has committed others.
Your Lordships see that he justifies this crime upon the plea of its being profitable to the Company; but he shall not march off even on this ground with flying colors. My Lords, pray observe in what manner he calculates these profits. Your Lordships will find that he makes up the account of them much in the same manner as he made up the account of n.o.bkissin"s money. There is, indeed, no account which he has ever brought forth that does not carry upon it not only ill faith and national dishonor, but direct proofs of corruption. When Mr. Hastings values himself upon this shocking and outrageous breach of faith, which required nothing but a base and illiberal mind, without either talents, courage, or skill, except that courage which defies all consequences, which defies shame, which defies the judgment and opinion of his country and of mankind, no other talents than may be displayed by the dash of a pen, you will at least expect to see a clear and distinct account of what was gained by it.
In the year 1775, at a period when Mr. Hastings was under an eclipse, when honor and virtue, in the character of General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, sat for a short period at the Council-Board,--during that time, Mr. Hastings"s conduct upon this occasion was called into question. They called for an account of the revenues of the country,--what was received, and what had been paid; and in the account returned they found the amount of the tribute due to the Mogul, 250,000_l._, entered as paid up to October, 1774. Thus far all appeared fair upon the face of it; they took it for granted, as your Lordships would take it for granted, at the first view, that the tribute in reality had been paid up to the time stated. The books were balanced: you find a debtor; you find a creditor; every item posted in as regular a manner as possible. Whilst they were examining this account, a Mr.
Croftes, of whom your Lordships have heard very often, as accountant-general, comes forward and declares that there was a little error in the account. And what was the error? That he had entered the Mogul"s tribute for one year more than it had actually been paid. Here we have the small error of a payment to the Mogul of 250,000_l._ This appeared strange. "Why," says Mr. Croftes, "I never discovered it; nor was it ever intimated to me that it had been stopped from October, 1773, till the other day, when I was informed that I ought not to have made an entry of the last payments." These were his expressions. You will find the whole relation in the Bengal Appendix, printed by the orders of the Court of Directors. When Mr. Croftes was asked a very natural question, "Who first told you of your mistake? who acquainted you with Mr.
Hastings"s orders that the payment should be expunged from the account?"
what is his answer? It is an answer worthy of Mr. Middleton, an answer worthy of Mr. Larkins, or of any of the other white banians of Mr.
Hastings:--"Oh, I have forgotten." Here you have an accountant-general kept in ignorance, or who pretends to be ignorant, of so large a payment as 250,000_l._; who enters it falsely in his account; and when asked who apprised him of his mistake, says that he has really forgotten.
Oh, my Lords, what resources there are in oblivion! what resources there are in bad memory! No genius ever has done so much for mankind as this mental defect has done for Mr. Hastings"s accountants. It was said by one of the ancient philosophers, to a man who proposed to teach people memory,--"I wish you could teach me oblivion; I wish you could teach me to forget." These people have certainly not been taught the art of memory, but they appear perfect masters of the art of forgetting. My Lords, this is not all; and I must request your Lordships" attention to the whole of the account, as it appears in the account of the arrears due to the King, annexed to your minutes. Here is a kind of labyrinth, where fraud runs into fraud. On the credit side you find stated there, eight lacs paid to the Vizier, and to be taken from the Mogul"s tribute, for the support of an army, of which he himself had stipulated to bear the whole expenses. These eight lacs are thus fraudulently accounted for upon the face of the thing; and with respect to eighteen lacs, the remainder of the tribute, there is no account given of it at all. This sum Mr. Hastings must, therefore, have pocketed for his own use, or that of his gang of peculators; and whilst he was pretending to save you eight lacs by one fraud, he committed another fraud of eighteen lacs for himself: and this is the method by which one act of peculation begets another in the economy of fraud.
Thus much of these affairs I think myself bound to state to your Lordships upon this occasion; for, although not one word has been produced by the counsel to support the allegations of the prisoner at your bar, yet, knowing that your Lordships, high as you are, are still but men, knowing also that bold a.s.sertions and confident declarations are apt to make some impression upon all men"s minds, we oppose his allegations. But how do we oppose them? Not by things of the like nature. We oppose them by showing you that the House of Commons, after diligent investigation, has condemned them, and by stating the grounds upon which the House founded its condemnation. We send you to the records of the Company, if you want to pursue this matter further, to enlighten your own minds upon the subject. Do not think, my Lords, that we are not aware how ridiculous it is for either party, the accuser or the accused, to make here any a.s.sertions without producing vouchers for them: we know it; but we are prepared and ready to take upon us the proof; and we should be ashamed to a.s.sert anything that we are not able directly to substantiate by an immediate reference to uncontradicted evidence.
With regard to the merits pleaded by the prisoner, we could efface that plea with a single stroke, by saying there is no evidence before your Lordships of any such merits. But we have done more: we have shown you that the things which he has set up as merits are atrocious crimes, and that there is not one of them which does not, in the very nature and circ.u.mstances of it, carry evidence of base corruption, as well as of flagrant injustice and notorious breach of public faith.
The next thing that he takes credit for is precisely an act of this description. The Mogul had, by solemn stipulation with the Company, a royal domain insured to him, consisting of two provinces, Corah and Allahabad. Of both these provinces Mr. Hastings deprived the Mogul, upon weak pretences, if proved in point of fact, but which were never proved in any sense, against him. I allude particularly to his alleged alliance with the Mahrattas,--a people, by the way, with whom we were not then at war, and with whom he had as good a right as Nudjif Khan to enter into alliance at that time. He takes these domains, almost the last wrecks of empire left to the descendant of Tamerlane, from the man, I say, to whose voluntary grants we owe it that we have put a foot in Bengal. Surely, we ought, at least, to have kept our faith in leaving this last retreat to that unfortunate prince. The House of Commons was of that opinion, and consequently they resolved, "That the transfer of Corah and Allahabad to the Vizier was contrary to policy and good faith." This is what the Commons think of this business which Mr.
Hastings pleads as merits.
But I have not yet done with it. These provinces are estimated as worth twenty-two lacs, or thereabouts, that is, about 220,000_l._, a year. I believe they were improvable to a good deal more. But what does Mr.
Hastings do? Instead of taking them into the Company"s possession for the purpose of preserving them for the Mogul, upon the event of our being better satisfied with his conduct, or of appropriating them to the Company"s advantage, he sells them to the Nabob of Oude, who he knew had the art, above all men, of destroying a country which he was to keep, or which he might fear he was not to keep, permanent possession of. And what do you think he sold them for? He sold them at a little more than two years" purchase. Will any man believe that Mr. Hastings, when he sold these provinces to the Vizier for two years" purchase, and when there was no man that would not have given ten years" purchase for them, did not put the difference between the real and pretended value into his own pocket, and that of his a.s.sociates?
We charge, therefore, first, that this act for which he a.s.sumes merit was in itself a breach of faith; next, that the sale of these provinces was scandalously conducted; and thirdly, that this sale, at one fifth of the real value, was effected for corrupt purposes. Thus an act of threefold delinquency is one of the merits stated with great pomp by his counsel.
Another of his merits is the stoppage of the pension which the Company was under an obligation to pay to Nudjif Khan: a matter which, even if admitted to be a merit, is certainly not worth, as a set-off, much consideration.
But there is another set-off of merit upon which he plumes himself, and sets an exceedingly high value: the sale of the Rohilla nation to that worthless tyrant, the Vizier, their cruel and bitter enemy,--the cruelest tyrant, perhaps, that ever existed, and their most implacable enemy, if we except Mr. Hastings, who appears to have had a concealed degree of animosity, public, private, or political, against them. To this man he sold this whole nation, whose country, cultivated like a garden, was soon reduced, as Mr. Hastings, from the character of the Vizier, knew would be the consequence, to a mere desert, for 400,000_l._ He sent a brigade of our troops to a.s.sist the Vizier in extirpating these people, who were the bravest, the most honorable, and generous nation upon earth. Those who were not left slaughtered to rot upon the soil of their native country were cruelly expelled from it, and sent to publish the merciless and scandalous behavior of Great Britain from one end of India to the other. I believe there is not an honest, ingenuous, or feeling heart upon the face of the globe, I believe there is no man possessing the least degree of regard to honor and justice, humanity and good policy, that did not reprobate this act. The Court of Directors, when they heard of it, reprobated it in the strongest manner; the Court of Proprietors reprobated it in the strongest manner; by the House of Commons, after the most diligent investigation, it was, in a resolution moved by Mr. Dundas, reprobated in the strongest manner: and this is the act which Mr. Hastings brings forward before your Lordships as a merit.
But, again, I can prove that in this, perhaps the most atrocious of all his demerits, there is a most horrid and nefarious secret corruption lurking. I can tell your Lordships that Sir Robert Barker was offered by this Vizier, for about one half of this very country, namely, the country of the Rohillas, a sum of fifty lacs of rupees,--that is, 500,000_l._ Mr. Hastings was informed of this offer by Sir Robert Barker, in his letter of the 24th March, 1773. Still, in the face of this information, Mr. Hastings took for the Company only forty lacs of rupees. I leave your Lordships to draw your own conclusion from these facts. You will judge what became of the difference between the price offered and the price accounted for as taken. Nothing on earth can hide from mankind why Mr. Hastings made this wicked, corrupt bargain for the extermination of a brave and generous people,--why he took 400,000_l._ for the whole of that, for half of which he was offered and knew he might have had 500,000_l._
Your Lordships will observe, that for all these facts there is no evidence, on the one side or on the other, directly before you. Their merits have been insisted upon, in long and laborious details and discussions, both by Mr. Hastings himself and by his counsel. We have answered them for that reason; but we answer them with a direct reference to records and papers, from which your Lordships may judge of them as set-offs and merits. I believe your Lordships will now hardly receive them as merits to set off guilt, since in every one of them there is both guilt in the act, and strong ground for presuming that he had corruptly taken money for himself.
The last act of merit that has been insisted upon by his counsel is the Mahratta peace. They have stated to you the distresses of the Company to justify the unhandsome and improper means that he took of making this peace. Mr. Hastings himself has laid hold of the same opportunity of magnifying the difficulties which, during his government, he had to contend with. Here he displays all his tactics. He spreads all his sails, and here catches every gale. He says, "I found all India confederated against you. I found not the Mahrattas alone; I found war through a hundred hostile states fulminated against you; I found the Peshwa, the Nizam, Hyder Ali, the Rajah of Berar, all combined together for your destruction. I stemmed the torrent: fort.i.tude is my character.
I faced and overcame all these difficulties, till I landed your affairs safe on sh.o.r.e, till I stood the saviour of India."
My Lords, we of the House of Commons have before heard all this; but we cannot forget that we examined into every part of it, and that we did not find a single fact stated by him that was not a ground of censure and reprobation. The House of Commons, in the resolutions to which I have alluded, have declared, that Mr. Hastings, the first author of these proceedings, took advantage of an ambiguous letter of the Court of Directors to break and violate the most solemn, the most advantageous, and useful treaty that the Company had ever made in India; and that this conduct of his produced the strange and unnatural junction which he says he found formed against the Company, and with which he had to combat. I should trouble your Lordships with but a brief statement of the facts; and if I do not enter more at large in observing upon them, it is because I cannot but feel shocked at the indecency and impropriety of your being obliged to hear of that as merit which the House of Commons has condemned in every part. Your Lordships received obliquely evidence from the prisoner at your bar upon this subject; yet, when we came and desired your full inquiry into it, your Lordships, for wise and just reasons, I have no doubt, refused our request. I must, however, again protest on the part of the Commons against your Lordships receiving such evidence at all as relevant to your judgment, unless the House of Commons is fully heard upon it.
But to proceed.--The government of Bombay had offended the Mahratta States by a most violent and scandalous aggression. They afterwards made a treaty of peace with them, honorable and advantageous to the Company.
This treaty was made by Colonel Upton, and is called the Treaty of Poorunder. Mr. Hastings broke that treaty, upon his declared principle, that you are to look in war for the resources of your government. All India was at that time in peace. Hyder Ali did not dare to attack us, because he was afraid that his natural enemies, the Mahrattas, would fall upon him. The Nizam could not attack us, because he was also afraid of the Mahrattas. The Mahratta state itself was divided into such discordant branches as to make it impossible for them to unite in any one object; that commonwealth, which, certainly at that time was the terror of India, was so broken, as to render it either totally ineffective or easy to be resisted. There was not one government in India that did not look up to Great Britain as holding the balance of power, and in a position to control and do justice to every individual party in it. At that juncture Mr. Hastings deliberately broke the treaty of Poorunder; and afterwards, by breaking faith with and attacking all the powers, one after another, he produced that very union which one would hardly have expected that the incapacity or ill faith of any Governor could have effected. Your Lordships shall hear the best and most incontrovertible evidence both of his incapacity and ill faith, and of the consequences which they produced. It is the declaration of one of the latest of their allies concerning all these proceedings. It is contained in a letter from the Rajah of Berar, directly and strongly inculpating Mr. Hastings, upon facts which he has never denied and by arguments which he has never refuted, as being himself the cause of that very junction of all the powers of India against us.
_Letter from Benaram Pundit._
"As the friendship of the English is, at all events, the first and most necessary consideration, I will therefore exert myself in establishing peace: for the power of making peace with all is the best object; to this all other measures are subservient, and will certainly be done by them, the English. You write, that, after having laid the foundation of peace with the Pundit Purdhaun, it is requisite that some troops should be sent with General G.o.ddard against Hyder Naig, and take possession of his country, when all those engagements and proposals may be a.s.sented to. My reason is confounded in discussing this suggestion, at a time when Hyder Naig is in every respect in alliance with the Peshwa, and has a.s.sisted with his soul and life to repel the English. For us to unite our troops with those of the enemy and extirpate him, would not this fix the stamp of infamy upon us forever? Would any prince, for generations to come, ever after a.s.sist us, or unite with the Peshwa? Be yourself the judge, and say whether such a conduct would become a prince or not. Why, then, do you mention it? why do you write it?
"The case is as follows.--At first there was the utmost enmity between Hyder Naig and the Pundit Purdhaun, and there was the fullest intention of sending troops into Hyder Naig"s country; and after the conclusion of the war with Bombay and the capture of Ragonaut Row, it was firmly resolved to send troops into that quarter; and a reliance was placed in the treaty which was entered into by the gentlemen of Bombay before the war. But when Ragonaut again went to them, and General G.o.ddard was ready to commence hostilities,--when no regard was paid to the friendly proposals made by us and the Pundit Peshwa,--when they desisted from coming to Poonah, agreeable to their promise, and a categorical answer was given to the deputies from Poonah,--the ministers of Poonah then consulted among themselves, and, having advised with the Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah, they considered that as enemies were appearing on both sides, and it would be difficult to cope with both, what was to be done? Peace must be made with one of them, and war must be carried on with the other. They wished above all things, in their hearts, to make peace with the English gentlemen, and to unite with them to punish Hyder Naig; but these gentlemen had plainly refused to enter into any terms of reconciliation. It was therefore advisable to accommodate matters with Hyder Naig, although he had been long an enemy. What else could be done? Having nothing left for it, they were compelled to enter into an union with Hyder."
My Lords, this declaration, made to Mr. Hastings himself, was never answered by him. Indeed, answered it could not be; because the thing was manifest, that all the desolation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, all these difficulties upon which he has insisted, the whole of that union by which he was pressed, and against which, as he says, he bore up with such fort.i.tude, was his own work, the consequences of his bad faith, and his not listening to any reasonable terms of peace.
But, my Lords, see what sort of peace he afterwards made. I could prove, if I were called upon so to do, from this paper that they have had the folly and madness to produce to you for other purposes, that he might at any time have made a better treaty, and have concluded a more secure and advantageous peace, than that which at last he acceded to; that the treaty he made was both disadvantageous and dishonorable, inasmuch as we gave up every ally we had, and sacrificed them to the resentment of the enemy; that Mahdajee Sindia gained by it an empire of a magnitude dangerous to our very existence in India; that this chief was permitted to exterminate all the many little gallant nations that stood between us and the Mahrattas, and whose policy led them to guard against the ambitious designs of that government. Almost all these lesser powers, from Central India, quite up to the mountains that divide India from Tartary, almost all these, I say, were exterminated by him, or were brought under a cruel subjection. The peace he made with Mr. Hastings was for the very purpose of doing all this; and Mr. Hastings enabled him, and gave him the means of effecting it.
Advert next, my Lords, to what he did with other allies. By the treaty of Poorunder, made by Colonel Upton, and which he flagitiously broke, we had acquired, what, G.o.d knows, we little merited from the Mahrattas, twelve lacs, (112,000_l._) for the expenses of the war,--and a country of three lacs of annual revenue, the province of Baroach and the isle of Salsette, and other small islands convenient for us upon that coast.
This was a great, useful, and momentous accession of territory and of revenue: and we got it with honor; for not one of our allies were sacrificed by this treaty. We had even obtained from the Mahrattas for Ragonaut Row, our support of whom against that government was a princ.i.p.al cause of the war, an establishment of a thousand horse, to be maintained at their expense, and a jaghire for his other expenses of three lacs of rupees per annum, payable monthly, with leave to reside within their territories, with no other condition than that he should not remove from the place fixed for his residence for the purpose of exciting disturbances against their government. They also stipulated for the pardon, of all his adherents except four; and the only condition they required from us was, that we should not a.s.sist him in case of any future disturbance. But Mr. Hastings, by his treaty, surrendered that country of three lacs of revenue; he made no stipulation for the expenses of the war, nor indemnity for any of the persons whom he had seduced into the rebellion in favor of Ragonaut Row; he gave them all up to the vengeance of their governments, without a stroke of a pen in their favor, to be banished, confiscated, and undone; and as to Ragonaut Row, instead of getting him this honorable and secure retreat, as he was bound to do, this unfortunate man was ordered to retire to his enemy"s (Mahdajee Sindia"s) country, or otherwise he was not to receive a shilling for his maintenance.
I will now ask your Lordships, whether any man but Mr. Hastings would claim a merit with his own country for having broken the treaty of Poorunder? Your Lordships know the opinion of the House of Commons respecting it; his colleagues in Council had remonstrated with him upon it, and had stated the mischiefs that would result from it; and Sir Eyre Coote, the commander of the Company"s forces, writing at the same time from Madras, states, that he thought it would infallibly bring down upon them Hyder Ali, who, they had reason to think, was bent upon the utter destruction of the power of this country in India, and was only waiting for some crisis in our affairs favorable to his designs. This, my Lords, is to be one of the set-offs against all the crimes, against the multiplied frauds, cruelties, and oppressions, all the corrupt practices, prevarications, and swindlings, that we have alleged against him.
My Lords, it would be an endless undertaking, and such as, at this hour of the day, we, as well as your Lordships, are little fitted to engage in, if I were to attempt to search into and unveil all the secret motives, or to expose as it deserves the shameless audacity of this man"s conduct. None of your Lordships can have observed without astonishment the selection of his merits, as he audaciously calls them, which has been brought before you. The last of this selection, in particular, looks as if he meant to revile and spit upon the legislature of his country, because we and you thought it fit and were resolved to publish to all India that we will not countenance offensive wars, and that you felt this so strongly as to pa.s.s the first act of a kind that was ever made, namely, an act to limit the discretionary power of government in making war solely,--and because you have done this solely and upon no other account and for no other reason under heaven than the abuse which that man at your bar has made of it, and for which abuse he now presumes to take merit to himself. I will read this part of the act to your Lordships.
[_Mr. Burke here read 24th Geo. III. cap. 25, sect. 34._]
"And whereas to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honor, and policy of this nation, be it therefore further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful for the Governor-General and Council of Port William aforesaid, without the express command and authority of the said Court of Directors, or of the Secret Committee of the said Court of Directors, in any case, (except where hostilities have actually been commenced, or preparations actually made for the commencement of hostilities, against the British nation in India, or against some of the princes or states dependent thereon, or whose territories the said United Company shall be at such time engaged by any subsisting treaty to defend or guaranty,) either to declare war, or commence hostilities, or enter into any treaty for making war, against any of the country princes or states in India, or any treaty for guarantying the possessions of any country princes or states; and that in such case it shall not be lawful for the said Governor-General and Council to declare war, or commence hostilities, or enter into treaty for making war, against any other prince or state than such as shall be actually committing hostilities or making preparations as aforesaid, or to make such treaty for guarantying the possessions of any prince or state, but upon the consideration of such prince or state actually engaging to a.s.sist the Company against such hostilities commenced or preparations made as aforesaid; and in all cases where hostilities shall be commenced or treaty made, the said Governor-General and Council shall, by the most expeditious means they can devise, communicate the same unto the said Court of Directors, together with a full state of the information and intelligence upon which they shall have commenced such hostilities or made such treaties, and their motives and reasons for the same at large."
It is the first act of the kind that ever was made in this kingdom, the first statute, I believe, that ever was made by the legislature of any nation, upon the subject; and it was made solely upon the resolutions to which we had come against the violent, intemperate, unjust, and perfidious acts of this man at your Lordships" bar, and which acts are now produced before your Lordships as merits.
To show further to your Lordships how necessary this act was, here is a part of his own correspondence, the last thing I shall beg to read to your Lordships, and upon which I shall make no other comment than that you will learn from it how well British faith was kept by this man, and that it was the violation of British faith which prevented our having the most advantageous peace, and brought on all the calamities of war.
It is part of a letter from the minister of the Rajah of Berar, a man called Benaram Pundit, with whom Mr. Hastings was at the time treating for a peace; and he tells him why he might have had peace at that time, and why he had it not,--and that the cause of it was his own ridiculous and even buffoonish perfidiousness, which exposed him to the ridicule of all the princes of India, and with him the whole British nation.
"But afterwards reflecting that it was not advisable for me to be in such haste before I had fully understood all the contents of the papers, I opened them in the presence of the Maha Rajah, when all the kharetas, letters, copies, and treaties were perused with the greatest attention and care. First, they convinced us of your great truth and sincerity, and that you never, from the beginning to this time, were inclined to the present disputes and hostilities; and next, that you have not included in the articles of the treaty any of your wishes or inclinations; and in short, the garden of the treaty appeared to us, in all its parts, green and flourishing: but though the fruit of it was excellent yet they appeared different from those of Colonel Upton"s treaty, (the particulars of which I have frequently written to you,) and, upon tasting them, proved to be bitter and very different, when compared to the former articles. How can any of the old and established obligations be omitted, and new matters agreed to, when it is plain that they will produce losses and damages? Some points which you have mentioned, under the plea of the faith and observance of treaties, are of such a nature that the Poonah ministers can never a.s.sent to them. In all engagements and important transactions, in which the words _but_, and _although_, and _besides_, and _whereas_, and _why_, and other such words of doubt, are introduced, it gives an opening to disputes and misunderstandings. A treaty is meant for the entire removal of all differences, not for increase of them. My departure to Poonah has therefore been delayed."
My Lords, consider to what ironies and insults this nation was exposed, and how necessary it was for us to originate that bill which your Lordships pa.s.sed into an act of Parliament, with his Majesty"s a.s.sent.
The words _but_, _although_, _besides_, _whereas_, and _why_, and such like, are introduced to give an opening, and so on. Then he desires him to send another treaty, fit for him to sign.
"I have therefore kept the treaty with the greatest care and caution in my possession, and, having taken a copy of it, I have added to each article another, which appeared to me proper and advisable, and without any loss or disadvantage to the English, or anything more in favor of the Pundit Purdhaun than what was contained in the former treaties. This I have sent to you, and hope that you will prepare and send a treaty conformable to that, without any _besides_, or _if_, or _why_, or _but_, and _whereas_, that, as soon as it arrives, I may depart for Poonah, and, having united with me Row Mahdajee Sindia, and having brought over the Nabob Nizam ul Dowlah to this business, I may settle and adjust all matters which are in this bad situation. As soon as I have received my dismission from thence, I would set off for Calcutta, and represent to you everything which for a long while I have had on my mind, and by this transaction erect to the view of all the world the standard of the greatness and goodness of the English and of my master, and extinguish the flames of war with the waters of friendship. The compa.s.sing all these advantages and happy prospects depends entirely upon your will and consent; and the power of bringing them to an issue is in your hands alone."
My Lords, you may here see the necessity there was for pa.s.sing the act of Parliament which I have just read to you, in order to prevent in future the recurrence of that want of faith of which Mr. Hastings had been so notoriously guilty, and by which he had not only united all India against us, and had hindered us from making, for a long time, any peace at all, but had exposed the British character to the irony, scorn, derision, and insult of the whole people of that vast continent.
My Lords, in the progress of this impeachment, you have heard our charges; you have heard the prisoner"s plea of merits; you have heard our observations on them. In the progress of this impeachment, you have seen the condition in which Mr. Hastings received Benares; you have seen the condition in which Mr. Hastings received the country of the Rohillas; you have seen the condition in which he received the country of Oude; you have seen the condition in which he received the provinces of Bengal; you have seen the condition of the country when the native government was succeeded by that of Mr. Hastings; you have seen the happiness and prosperity of all its inhabitants, from those of the highest to those of the lowest rank. My Lords, you have seen the very reverse of all this under the government of Mr. Hastings,--the country itself, all its beauty and glory, ending in a jungle for wild beasts.
You have seen flourishing families reduced to implore that pity which the poorest man and the meanest situation might very well call for. You have seen whole nations in the ma.s.s reduced to a condition of the same distress. These things in his government at home. Abroad, scorn, contempt, and derision cast upon and covering the British name, war stirred up, and dishonorable treaties of peace made, by the total prost.i.tution of British faith. Now take, my Lords, together, all the multiplied delinquencies which we have proved, from the highest degree of tyranny to the lowest degree of sharping and cheating, and then judge, my Lords, whether the House of Commons could rest for one moment, without bringing these matters, which have baffled all legislation at various times, before you, to try at last what judgment will do.
Judgment is what gives force, effect, and vigor to laws; laws without judgment are contemptible and ridiculous; we had better have no laws than laws not enforced by judgments and suitable penalties upon delinquents. Revert, my Lords, to all the sentences which have heretofore been pa.s.sed by this high court; look at the sentence pa.s.sed upon Lord Bacon, look at the sentence pa.s.sed upon Lord Macclesfield; and then compare the sentences which your ancestors have given with the delinquencies which were then before them, and you have the measure to be taken in your sentence upon the delinquent now before you. Your sentence, I say, will be measured according to that rule which ought to direct the judgment of all courts in like cases, lessening it for a lesser offence, and aggravating it for a greater, until the measure of justice is completely full.
My Lords, I have done; the part of the Commons is concluded. With a trembling solicitude we consign this product of our long, long labors to your charge. Take it!--take it! It is a sacred trust. Never before was a cause of such magnitude submitted to any human tribunal.
My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labor, that we have been guilty of no prevarication, that we have made no compromise with crime, that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth, with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This war, my Lords, we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has been fought at your Lordships" bar for the last seven years. My Lords, twenty-two years is a great s.p.a.ce in the scale of the life of man; it is no inconsiderable s.p.a.ce in the history of a great nation. A business which has so long occupied the councils and the tribunals of Great Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great revolutions that break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of Nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or less become the concern of posterity,--if we are yet to hope for such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording, retrospective, civilized posterity: but this is in the hands of the great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall be.
My Lords, your House yet stands,--it stands as a great edifice; but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins,--in the midst of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation,--that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself: I mean justice,--that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.
My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not be involved: and if it should so happen that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes which we have seen,--if it should happen that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the n.o.bles, amidst the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you in those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!
My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great consolation it is, which often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dignity. It often happens that the very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced to bear testimony in its favor. I do not like to go for instances a great way back into antiquity. I know very well that length of time operates so as to give an air of the fabulous to remote events, which lessens the interest and weakens the application of examples. I wish to come nearer to the present time. Your Lordships know and have heard (for which of us has not known and heard?) of the Parliament of Paris. The Parliament of Paris had an origin very, very similar to that of the great court before which I stand; the Parliament of Paris continued to have a great resemblance to it in its const.i.tution, even to its fall: the Parliament of Paris, my Lords, WAS; it is gone! It has pa.s.sed away; it has vanished like a dream! It fell, pierced by the sword of the Comte de Mirabeau. And yet I will say, that that man, at the time of his inflicting the death-wound of that Parliament, produced at once the shortest and the grandest funeral oration that ever was or could be made upon the departure of a great court of magistracy. Though he had himself smarted under its lash, as every one knows who knows his history, (and he was elevated to dreadful notoriety in history,) yet, when he p.r.o.nounced the death sentence upon that Parliament, and inflicted the mortal wound, he declared that his motives for doing it were merely political, and that their hands were as pure as those of justice itself, which they administered. A great and glorious exit, my Lords, of a great and glorious body! And never was a eulogy p.r.o.nounced upon a body more deserved. They were persons, in n.o.bility of rank, in amplitude of fortune, in weight of authority, in depth of learning, inferior to few of those that hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that they submitted their necks to the axe; but their honor was unwounded. Their enemies, the persons who sentenced them to death, were lawyers full of subtlety, they were enemies full of malice; yet lawyers full of subtlety, and enemies full of malice, as they were, they did not dare to reproach them with having supported the wealthy, the great, and powerful, and of having oppressed the weak and feeble, in any of their judgments, or of having perverted justice, in any one instance whatever, through favor, through interest, or cabal.
My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But if you stand,--and stand I trust you will, together with the fortune of this ancient monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and ill.u.s.trious kingdom,--may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power!
May you stand, not as a subst.i.tute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue! May you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants! May you stand the refuge of afflicted nations! May you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice!