The strictest court of justice, in its proceeding, is not more, perhaps not so much a court of record as the India
Company's executive service is, or ought to be, in all
its proceedings.
Company's executive service is, or ought to be, in all
its proceedings.
Edmund Burke
The servants
have almost universally been sent out to begin their
progress and career in active occupation, and in the
exercise of high authority, at that period of life which,
in all other places, has been employed in the course
of a rigid education. To put the matter in a few
words, -they are transferred from slippery youth to
perilous independence, from perilous independence to
inordinate expectations, from inordinate expectations
to boundless power. School-boys without tutors, minors without guardians, the world is let loose upon them with all its temptations, and they are let loose
upon the world with all the powers that despotism
involves.
It is further remarkable, these servants exercise
what your Lordships are now exercising, high judicial
powers, and they exercise them without the smallest
study of any law, either general or municipal. It is
made a sort of rule in the service, a rule confirmed
even by the attempts that were made to correct it, (I
mean confirmed by Sir Elijah Impey, when, under the
auspices of Mr. Hastings, he undertook to be legislator
for India,) that the judicial character, the last in the
order of legal progress, that to which all professional
men look up as the crown of their labors, that ultimate hope of men grown gray in professional practice, is among the first experimental situations of a Company's servant. It is expressly said in that body of regulations to which I allude, that the office and sit
? ? ? ? 3858 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
uation of a judge of the Dewanny Courts of Adawlut
is to be filled by the junior servants of the Company;
and as the judicial emolument is not substantially
equal to that of other situations, the office of a judge
is to be taken, as it were, in transitu, as a passage
to other offices not of a judicial nature. As soon,
therefore, as a young man has supplied the defects of
his education by the advantage of some experience,
he is immediately translated to a totally different office; and another young man is substituted, to learn,
at the expense of the property of India, to fill a situation which, when he may be qualified to fill, he is
no longer to hold.
It is in a great measure the same with regard to
the other situations. They are the situations of great
statesmen, which, according to the practice of the
world, require, to fill properly, rather a large converse with men and much intercourse in life than
deep study of books, - though that, too, has its eminent service. We know that in the habits of civilized
life, in cultivated society, there is imbibed by men a
good deal of the solid practice of government, of the
true maxims of state, and everything that enables a
man to serve his country. But these men are sent
over to exercise functions at which a statesman here
would tremble, without any theoretical study, and
without any of that sort of experience which, in mixed
societies of business and converse, form men gradually and insensibly to great affairs. Low cunning, intrigue, and stratagem are soon acquired; but manly, durable policy, which never sacrifices the general interest to a partial or momentary advantage, is not so
cheaply formed in the human understanding.
Mr. Hastings, in his defence before the House of
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 359
Commons, and in the defences he has made before
your Lordships, has lamented his own situation in
this particular. It was much to be lamented, indeed.
How far it will furnish justification, extenuation, or
palliation of his conduct, when we come to examine
that conduct, will be seen.
These circumstances in the system have in a great
degree vitiated and perverted what is in reality (and
many things are in reality) excellent in it. They
have rendered the application of all correctives and
remedies to abuse, at best, precarious in their operation. The laws that we have made, the covenants which the Company has obliged its servants to enter
into, the occasional orders that have been given, at
least ostensibly good, all have proved noxious to the
country, instead of beneficial.
To illustrate this point, I beg leave to observe to
your Lordships, that the servants of the Company are
obliged to enter into that service not only with an
impression of the general duty which attaches upon
all servants, but are obliged to engage in a specific
covenant with their masters to perform all the duties
described in that covenant (which are all the duties
of their relation) under heavy penalties. They are
bound to a irepetition of these covenants at every step
of their progress, from writer to factor, from factor to
junior merchant, and from junior merchant to senior
merchant. They ought, according to the rule, to renew these covenants at these times by something (I speak without offence) which may be said to resemble confirmation in the Church. They are obliged
to renew their obligation in particular to receive no
gifts, gratuities, or presents whatsoever.
This scheme of covenants would have been wise
? ? ? ? 360 IMPEACHMELNT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
and proper, if it had belonged to a judicious oider,
and rational, consistent scheme of discipline. The
orders of the Company have forbidden their serl ants
-to take any extraneous emoluments. The act of Parliament has fulminated against them. Clear, positive laws, and clear, positive private engagements, have
no exception of circumstances in them, no difference
quoad majus et minus; but every one who offends
against the law. is liable to the law. The consequence is this: he who has deviated but an inch
from the straight line, he who has taken but one
penny of unlawful emolument, (and all have taken
many pennies of unlawful emolument,) does not
dare to complain of the most abandoned extortion
and cruel oppression in any of his fellow-servants.
He who has taken a trifle, perhaps as the reward of
a good action, is obliged to be silent, when he sees
whole nations desolated'around him. The great
criminal at the head of the service has the laws in
his hand; he is always able to prove the small offence, and crush the person who has committed it.
This is one grand source of Mr. Hastings's power.
After he had got the better of the Parliamentary
commission, no complaint from any part of the service has appeared against Mr. Hastings. ' He is bold enough to state it as one presumption of his merit,
that there has been no such complaint. . No such
complaint, indeed, can exist. The spirit of the corps
would of itself almost forbid it, - to which spirit
an informer is the most odious and detestable of all
characters, and is hunted down, and has always been
hunted down, as a common enemy. But here is a
new security. Who can complain, or dares to accuse? The whole service is irregular: nobody is
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 861
free from small offences; and, as I have said, the
great offender can always crush the small one.
If you examine the correspondence of Mr. Hast-. ings, you would imagine, from many expressions very
deliberately used by him, that the Company's service
was made out of the very filth and dregs of human
corruption; but if you examine his conduct towards
the corrupt body he describes, you would imagine he
had lived in the speculative schemes of visionary per.
fection. He was fourteen years at the head of that
service; and there is not an instance, no, not one
single instance, in which he endeavored to detect corruption, or that he ever, in any one single instance,
attempted to punish it; but the whole service, with
that whole mass of enormity which he attributes to it,
slept, as it were, at once under his terror and his protection: under his protection, if they did not dare to
move against him; under terror, from his power to
pluck out individuals and make a public example of
them, whenever he thought fit. And therefore that
service, under his guidance and influence, was, beyond even what its own nature disposed it to, a service of confederacy, a service of connivance, a service
composed of varibus systems of guilt, of which Mr.
Hastings was the head and the protector. But this
general connivance he did not think sufficient to
secure to: him the general support of the Indian interest. He went further. We shall prove to your
Lordships, that, when the Company were driven by
shame, not by inclination, to order several prosecutions against delinquents in their service, Mr. Hastings, directly contrary to the duty of his office, directly contrary to the express and positive law of the Court of Directors, which law Parliament had
? ? ? ? ,862 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
bound upon him as his rule of action, not satisfied
with his long tacit connivance, ventured, before he
left his government, and among his last acts, to pass
a general act of pardon and indemnity, and at once
ordered the whole body of the prosecutions directed
by his masters, the Company, to be discharged.
Having had fourteen years' lease of connivance to
bestow, and giving at the end a general release of all
suits and actions, he now puts himself at the head of
a vast body enriched by his bounties, connivances, and
indemnities, and expects the support of those whom
he had thus fully rewarded and discharged from the
pursuit of the laws. You will find, in the course of
this business, that, when charges have been brought
against him of any bribery, corruption, or other malversation, his course has been to answer little or nothing to that specific bribery, corruption, or malversation: his way has been to call on the Court of Directors to inquire of every servant who comes to
Europe, and to say whether there was any one man
in it that will give him an ill word. He has put
himself into a situation in which he may always safely call to his character, and will always find himself utterly incapable of justifying his conduct.
So far I have troubled your Lordships with the
system. of confederacy and connivance, which, under
his auspices) was the vital principle of almost the
whole service. There is one member of the service
which I have omitted: but whether I ought to have
put it first, or, as I do now, last, I must confess I
am at some loss; because, though it appears to ba
the lowest (if any regular) part of the service, it is
by far the most considerable and the most efficient,
without a full consideration and explanation of which
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 363
hardly any part of the conduct of Mr. Hastings, and
of many others that may be in his situation, can be
fully understood.
I have given your Lordships an account of writers,
factors, merchants, who exercise the office of judges,
lord chancellors, chancellors of the exchequer, ministers of state, and managers of great revenues. But
there is another description of men, of more importance than them all, a description you have often
heard of, but which has not been sufficiently explained: I mean the banian. When the Company's
service was no more than mercantile, and the servants were generally unacquainted with the country,
they used the intervention of certain factors among
the natives, which were called banians: we called
them so, because they were of the tribe or caste of the
banians or merchants, - the Indians being generally
distributed into trades according to their tribes. The
name still continues, when the functions of the banians are totally altered. The banian is known by
other appellations. He is called dewan, or steward;
and, indeed, this is a term with more propriety applied to him in several of his functions. He is, by
his name of office, the steward of the household of the
European gentleman: he has the management of his
affairs, and the ordering of his servants. He is himself a domestic servant, and generally chosen out of
that class of natives who, by being habituated to misery and subjection, can submit to any orders, and are
fit for any of the basest services. Trained under oppression, (it is the true education,) they are fit to oppress others. They serve an apprenticeship of servitude to qualify them for the trade of tyranny. They know all the devices, all the little frauds, all the arti.
? ? ? ? . 364 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
fices and contrivances, the whole panoply of the defensive armor by which ingenious slavery secures itself against the violence of power. They know all the lurking-holes, all the winding recesses, of the unfortunate; and they hunt out distress and misery even
to their last retreats. They have suffered themselves;
but, far from being taught by those sufferings to abstain from rigor, they have only learned the meithods
of afflicting their fellow-slaves. They have the best
intelligence of what is done in England. The moment a Company's servant arrives in India, and his
English connections are known to be powerful, some
of that class of people immediately take possession
of him, as if he were their inheritance. They have
knowledge of the country and its. affairs; they have
money; they have the arts of making money. The
gentleman who comes from England has none of
these; he enters into that world, as he enters into
the world at large, naked. His portion is great simplicity, great indigence, and a strong disposition to
relieve himself. The banian, once in possession, employs his tyranny, not only over the native people
of his country, but often over the master himself,
who has little other share in the proceedings of his
servant but in giving him the ticket of his name to
mark that he is connected with and supported by an
European who is himself well connected and supported at home. This is a commission which nothing
can resist. From that moment forward it is not the
Englishman, it is the black banian, that is the master.
The nominal master often lives from his hand. We
know how young men are sent out of this country;
we know how happy we are to hear soon that they
are no longer a burden to tlhcir friends and parents.
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 365.
The banian knows it, too. He supplies the young
servant with money. He has him under his power:
first, from the necessity of employing such a mail;
and next, (and this is the more important of the two,)
he has that dreadful power over his master which
every creditor has over his debtor. Actions the most
abhorrent to his nature he must see done before his
face, and thousands and thousands worse are done in
his absence, and he dare not complain. The banian
extorts, robs, plunders, and then gives him just what
proportion of the spoil he pleases. If the master
should murmur, the very power that was sent over to
protect the people of India from these very abuses,
(the best things being perverted, when applied to unknown objects and put into unsuitable situations,)
tlie very laws of England, by making the recovery of
debts more easy, infinitely increase the power of the
banian over his master. Thus the Supreme Court
of Justice, the destined corrector of all abuses, becomes a collateral security for that abominable tyranny exercised by the moneyed banians over Europeans as well as the natives. So that, while we are here
boasting of the British power in the East, we are in
perhaps more than half our service nothing but the
inferior, miserable instruments, of the tyranny which
the lowest part of the natives of India exercise, to
the disgrace of the British' authority, and to the ruin
of all that is respectable among their own countrymen.
They have subverted the first houses, totally ruined
and undone the country, cheated and defrauded the
revenue, -- the master a silent, sometimes a melancholy spectator, until some office of high emolument
has emancipated him. This has often been the true
reason that the Company's servants in India, in or.
? ? ? ? 366 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
der to free themselves from this horrid and atrocious
servitude, are obliged to become instruments of another tyranny, and must prostitute themselves to men
in power, in order to obtain some office that may enable them to escape the servitudes below, and enable
them to pay their debts. And thus many have become
the instruments of Mr. Hastings.
These banians, or dewans, were originally among
the lower castes ill the country. But now, it is true,
that, after seeing the power and profits of these men,
-that there is neither power, profession, nor occupation to be had, which a reputable person call exercise,
but through that channel, -men of higher castes,
and born to better things, have thrown themselves
into that disgraceful servitude, have become menial
servants to Englishmen, that they might rise by their
degradation. But whoever they are, or of whatever
birth, they have equally prostituted their integrity,
they have equally lost their character; and, once entered into that course of life, there is no difference
between the best castes and the worst. That system
Mr. Hastings confirmed, established, increased, and
made the instrument of the most austere tyranny, of
the basest peculations, and the most scandalous and
iniquitous extortions.
In the description I have given of banians a distinction is to be made. Your Lordships must distinguish the banians of the British servants in subordinate situations and the banians who are such to persons in higher authority. In the latter case
the banian is in strict subordination, because he
may always be ruined by his superior; whereas in
the former it is always in his power to ruin his
nominal superior. It was not through fear, but
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 367
voluntarily, and not for the banian's purposes, but
his own, Mr. Hastings has brought forward his banian. He seated him in the houses of the principal
nobility, and invested him with farms of the revenue; he has given him enormous jobs; he has put
him over the heads of a nobility which, for their
grandeur, antiquity, and dignity, might almost be
matched with your Lordships. He has made him
supreme ecclesiastical judge, judge even of the very
castes, in the preservation of the separate rules and
separate privileges of which that people exists. He
who has dominion over the caste has an absolute power over something more than life and fortune.
Such is that first, or last, (I know not which to
call it,) order in the Company's service called a banian. The mutseddies, clerks, accountants, of Calcutta, generally fall under this description; Your Lordships will see hereafter the necessity of giving
you, in the opening the case, an idea of the situation
of a banian. You will see, as no Englishman, properly speaking, acts by himself, that he must be made
responsible for that person called his banian, -- for
the power he either uses under him, or the power he
has acquired over him. The banian escapes, in the
night of his complexion and situation, the inquiry
that a white man cannot stand before in this country.
Through the banians, or other black natives, a bad
servant of the Company receives his bribes. Through
them he decides falsely against the titles of litigants
in the court of castes, or in the offices of public
registry. Through them Mr. Hastings has exercised
oppressions which, I will venture to say, in his own
name, in his own character, daring ashe is, (and he
is the most daring criminal that ever existed,) he
? ? ? ? 368 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
never would dare to practise. Many, if not most, of
the iniquities of his interior bad administration have
been perpetrated through these banians, or other native agents and confidants; and we shall show you
that he is not satisfied with one of them, confiding
few of his secrets to Europeans, and hardly any of
his instruments, either native or European, knowing
the secrets of each other. This is the system of
banianism, and of concealment, which Mr. Hastings,
instead of eradicating out of the service, has propagated by example and by support, and enlarged by
converting even Europeans into that dark and insidious character.
I have explained, or endeavored to explain, to your
Lordships these circumstances of the true spirit, genius, and character, more than the ostensible institutions of hile Company's service: I now shall beg leave to bring before you one institution, taken from the
mercantile constitution of the Company, so excellent,
that I will venture to say that human wisdom has
never exceeded it. In this excellent institutioii the
counting-house gave lessons to the state. The active,'awakened, and enlightened principle of self-inlterlc, t
will provide a better system for the guard of tll:l
interest than the cold, drowsy wisdom of those w1o
provide for a good out of themselves ever contrived.
for the public. The plans sketched by private prudence for private interest, the regulations by mercalltile men for their mercantile purposes, when they call be applied to the discipline and order of the state,
produce a discipline and order which no state should
be ashamed to copy. The Company's mercantile regulations are admirably fitted for the government of a
remote, large, disjointed empire. As merchants, hav
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 369
ing factors abroad in distant parts of the world, they
have obliged them to a minuteness and strictness of
register, and to a regularity of correspondence, which
no state has ever used in the same degree with regard
to its public ministers. The Company has made it
a fundamental part of their constitution, that almost
their whole government shall be a written government. Your Lordships will observe, in the course
of the proceeding, the propriety of opening fully to
you this circumstance in the government of India, --
that is, that the Company's government is a government of writing, a government of record.
The strictest court of justice, in its proceeding, is not more, perhaps not so much a court of record as the India
Company's executive service is, or ought to be, in all
its proceedings.
In the first place, they oblige their servants to keep
a journal or diary of all their transactions, public and
private: they are bound to do this by an express
covenant. They oblige them, as a corrective upon
that diary, to keep a letter-book, in which all their
letters are to be regularly entered. And they are
bound by the same covenant to produce all those
books upon requisition, although they should be
mixed with affairs concerning their own private
negotiations and transactions of commerce, or their
closest and most retired concerns in private life.
But as the great corrective of all, they have contrived that every proceeding in public council shall
be written,- no debates merely verbal. The arguments, first or last, are to be in writing, and recorded.
All other bodies, the Houses of Lords, Commons, Privy
Council, Cabinet Councils for secret state deliberations, enter only resolves, decisions, and final resoluVOL. IX. 24
? ? ? ? 370 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
tions of affairs: the argument, the discussion, the dissent, does very rarely, if at all, appear. But the Comrn
pany has proceeded much further, and done much
more wisely, because they proceeded upon mercantile principles; and they have provided, either by orders or course of office, that all shall be written,the proposition, the argument, the dissent. This is not confined to their great Council; but this order
ought to be observed, as I conceive, (and I see considerable traces of it in practice,) in every Provincial
Council, whilst the Provincial Councils existed, and
even down to the minutest ramification of their service. These books, in a progression from the lowest
Councils to the highest Presidency, are ordered to be
transmitted, duplicate and triplicate, by every ship
that sails to Europe. On this system an able servant
of the Company, and high in their service, has recorded his opinion, and strongly expressed his sentiments. Writing to the Court of Directors, he says,
"It ought to be remembered, that the basis upon
which you rose to power, and have been able to stand
the shock of repeated convulsions, has been the accuracy and simplicity of mercantile method, which
makes every transaction in your service and every
expenditure a matter of record. "
My Lords, this method not only must produce to
them, if strictly observed, a more accurate idea of the
nature of their affairs and the nature of their expenditures, but it must afford them no trivial opportunity
and means of knowing the true characters of their
servants, their capacities, their ways of thinking, the
turn and bias of their minds. If well employed, and
but a little improved, the East India Company possessed an advantage unknown before to the chief of a
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -- FIRST DAY. 371
remote government. In the most remote parts of the
world, and in the minutest parts of a remote service,
everything came before the principal with a domestic
accuracy and local familiarity. It was in the power
of a Directors sitting in London, to form an accurate
judgment of every incident that happened upon the
Ganges and the Gogra.
The use of this recorded system did not consist
only in the facility of discovering what the nature of
their affairs and the character and capacity of their
servants was, but it furnished the means of detecting their misconduct, frequently of proving it too,
and of producing the evidence of it judicially under
their own hands. For your Lordships must have
observed that it is rare indeed, that, in a continued
course of evil practices, any uniform method of proceeding will serve the purposes of the delinquent.
Innocence is plain, direct, and simple: guilt is a
crooked, intricate, inconstant, and various thing.
The iniquitous job of to-day may be covered by
specious reasons; but when the job of iniquity of
to-morrow succeeds, the reasons that have colored
the first crime may expose the second malversation.
The man of fraud falls into contradiction, prevarication, confusion. This hastens, this facilitates, conviction. Besides,. time is not allowed for corrupting the records. They are flown out of their hands, they are
in Europe, they are safe in the registers of the Company, perhaps they are under the eye of Parliament,
before the writers of them have time to invent an
excuse for a direct contrary conduct to that to which
their former pretended principles applied. This is a
great, a material part of the constitution of the Company. My Lords, I do not think it to be much apolo
? ? ? ? 372 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
gized for, if I repeat, that this is the fundamental reg.
ulation of that service, and which, if preserved in the
first instance, as it ought to be, in official practice in
India, and then used as it ought to be in England,
would afford such a mode of governing a great, foreign, dispersed empire, as; I will venture to say, few
countries ever possessed, even in governing the most
limited and narrow jurisdiction.
It was the great business of Mr. Hastings's policy to
subvert this great political edifice. His first mode of
subverting it was by commanding the public ministers, paid by the Company, to deliver their correspondence upon the most critical and momentous affairs to him, in order to be suppressed and destroyed at his pleasure. To support him in this plan of
spoliation, he has made a mischievous distinction in
public business between public and private corre
spondence. The Company's orders and covenants
made none. There are, readily I admit, thousands
of occasions in which it is not proper to divulge promiscuously a private correspondence, though on public affairs, to the world; but there is no occasion in
which it is not a necessary duty, on requisition, to
communicate your correspondence to those who form
the paramount government, on whose interests and
on whose concerns and under whose authority this
correspondence has been carried on. The very- same
reasons which require secrecy with regard to others
demand the freest communication to them. But Mr.
Hastings has established principles of confidence and
secrecy towards himself which have cut off all confidence between the Directors and their ministers, and
effectually kept them at least out of the secret of their
own affairs.
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 373
Without entering into all the practices by which
he has attempted to maim the Company's records,
I shall state one more to your Lordships, - that is,
his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents,
who shall carry on the real state business, while there
are public and ostensible agents who are not in the
secret. The correspondence of those private agents
he holds in his own hands, communicates as he
thinks proper, but most commonly withholds. There
remains nothing for the Directors but the shell and
husk of a dry, formal, official correspondence, which
neither means anything nor was intended to mean
anything.
These are some of the methods by which he has
defeated the purposes of the excellent institution of
a recorded administration. But there are cases to be
brought before this court in which he has laid the axe
at once to the root, -- which was, by delegating out
of his own hands a great department of the powers of
the Company, which he was himself bound to execute, to a board which was not bound to record their deliberations with the same strictness as he himself
was bound. He appointed of his own usurped authority a board for the administration of the revenue, the members of which were expressly dispensed from
recording their dissents, until they chose it; and in
that office, as in a great gulf, a most important part
of the Company's transactions has been buried.
Notwithstanding his unwearied pains in the work
of spoliation, some precious fragments are left, which
we ought infinitely to value, --by which we may
learn, -and lament, the loss of what he has destroyed.
If it were not for those inestimable fragments and
w ecks of the recorded government which have been
? ? ? ? 374 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
saved from the destruction which Mr. Hastings in
tended for them all, the most shameful enormities
that have ever disgraced a government or harassed
a people would only be known in this country by secret whispers and unauthenticated anecdotes; the disgracers of government, the vexers and afflicters of
mankind, instead of being brought before an awful
public tribunal, might have been honored with the
highest distinctions and rewards their country has
to bestow; and sordid bribery, base peculation, ironhanded extortion, fierce, unrelenting tyranny, might
themselves have been invested with those sacred robes
of justice before which this day they have cause to
tremble.
Mr. Hastings, sensible of what he suffers from this
register of acts and opinions, has endeavored to discredit and ruin what remains of it. He refuses, in
his defence to the House of Commons, in letters
to the Court of Directors, in various writings and
declarations, he refuses to be tried by his own recorded declarations; he refuses to be bound by his
own opinions, delivered under his own hand. He
knows that he and the record cannot exist together.
He knows that what remains of the written constitution which he has not destroyed is enough to destroy
him. He claims a privilege of systematic inconstancy, a privilege of prevarication, a privilege of contradiction, -a privilege of not only changing his conduct, but the principles of his conduct, whenever it suits his occasions. But I hope your Lordships will
show the destroyers of that wise constitution, and
the destroyers of those records which are to be the
securities against malversation in office, the discoverers and avengers of it, that whoever'destroys the dis
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 375
coverer establishes the iniquity; that, therefore, your
Lordships will bind him to his own declarations, given on record under his own hand; that you will say to this unfaithful servant of the Company, what was
said to another unfaithful person upon a far less occasion by a far greater authority, " Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. "
Having gone through what I have been instructed
might be necessary to state to your Lordships concerning the Company's constitution, (I mean the real' inside, and not the shell of its constitution,) - having
stated the abuses that existed in it,- having stated
how Mr. Hastings endeavored to perpetuate and to
increase and to profit of the abuse, and how he has
systematically endeavored to destroy, and has in some
instances in fact destroyed, many things truly excellent in that constitution, -if I have not wasted your time inll explanation of matters that you are already
well acquainted with, I shall next beg leave to state
to you the abuse in some particulars of the other
part of the public authority which the Company acquired over the natives of India, in virtue of the royal charter of the present Mogul emperor, in the year
~1766 [ 1765? ].
My Lords, that you may the better judge of the
abuse Mr. Hastings has made of the powers vested in
him, it will be expedient to consider a little who the
people are to whose prejudice he has abused these
powers. I shall explain this point with as much brevity as is consistent with the distinctness with which I mean to bring the whole before your Lordships; and
I beg to observe to you that this previous discourse,
rather explanatory than accusatorial, (if I may use
? ? ? ? 376 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
the expression,) is meant rather to elucidate the nature of the matter to come before you in regular charges than as proof of the charges themselves.
I know that a good deal of latitude is allowed to
advocates, when opening a cause in a private court,
to indulge themselves in their narratives leading to
the charges they intend to bring. They are not always called to the strictest account for such prefatory matter, because the court, when it comes to judge,
sifts and' distinguishes it from the points to be strictly
proved, and on whose merits the cause relies. But
I wish your Lordships to know, that, with the high
opinion I have of your gravity, (and it is impossible
for a man to conceive a higher,) and sensible of the
weight of those I represent at this place, namely,
the Commons of Great Britain, I should be sorry
that any one substantial fact, even in this explanatory opening, or even the color of the fact, should be alleged, which, when called upon, I should not be
ready to make good to you by proof, -I meanl, by
proof adapted to its nature: public opinion, by evidence of public opinion; by record, that to which record is applicable; by oral testimony, things to
which oral testimony alone can be produced; and,
last of all, that which is matter of historic proof, by
historic evidence. This I hope to do with the usual
allowance to errors and mistakes, which is the claim
of human infirmity.
Then, my Lords, two distinct people inhabit India.
Two sorts of people inhabit the same country, as totally distinct from each other, in characters, lives, opinions, prejudices, and manners, as the inhabitants
of countries most remote from each other. For both
of these descriptions Mr. Hastings was bound to pro
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 377
vide equally, agreeable to the terms of the charter
which the Company received from the lawful governing power of that country: a charter received at its
own solicitation; a charter not forced upon us by a
superior power, but given at the immediate solicitation of the principal servants belonging to the Company; a charter solemnly accepted by the Company, and by them, I am very sorry to say, little regarded,
- or, at least, little regarded by their principal servants.
My Lords, the first description of people who are
subjected virtually to the British empire through
those mediums which I have described to you are
the original inhabitants of Hindostan, who have in
all time, and beyond all the eras which we use, (I
mean always the two grand eras excepted,) been the
aboriginal inhabitants and proprietors of that country, - with manners, religion, customs, and usages
appropriated to themselves, and little resembling
those of the rest of mankind. This description' of
men is commonly called Gentoos. ' The system and
prificiple of that government is locality. Their laws,
their manners, their religion are all local.
Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was
is a matter lost in the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading principle of his
policy to connect the people with their soil. Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger
acquaintance with our species daily discovers, and
which perhaps an attentive reflection might explain
in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of India,
- who are the softest in their manners of any of our
race, approaching almost to feminine tenderness,who are formed constitutionally benevolent, and, in
? ? ? ? 378 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
many particulars, made to fill a larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in, --who extefid their
good-will to the whole animal creation, - these people
are, of all nations, the most unalliable to any other
part of mankind. They cannot, the highest orders of
them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any other. That bond which is one of the chief instruments
of society, and which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no existence with them: I
mean the convivial bond. That race can be held to no
other by that great link of life. No iEindoo can mix
at meals even with those on whom he depends for the
meat he eats. This circumstance renders it difficult
for us to enter with due sympathy into their concerns,
or for them to enter into ours, even when we meet
on the same ground. But there are other circumstances which render our intercourse, in our mutual
relation, very full of difficulty. The sea is between
us. The mass of that element, which, by appearing
to disconnect, unites mankind, is to them a forbidden
road. It is a great gulf fixed between you and them,
- not so much that elementary gulf, but that gulf
which manners, opinions, and laws have radicated in
the very nature of the people. None of their high
castes, without great danger to his situation, religion,
rank, and estimation, can ever pass the sea; and this
forbids, forever, all direct communication between that
country and this. That material and affecting circumstance, my Lords, makes it ten times more necessary, since they cannot come to us, to keep a strict eye upon all persons who go to them. It imposes upon us a stricter duty to guard with a firm and powerful vigilance those whose principles of conscience weaken their principles of self-defence. If we. un
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -- FIRST DAY. 379
dertake to govern the inhabitants of such a country, we must govern them upon their own principles
and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think
to force them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we
must extend ours to take in their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result from
both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have more versatility of character and
manners, and it is we who must conform. We know
what the empire of opinion is in human nature. I
had almost said that the law of opinion was human
nature itself. It is, however, the strongest principle
in the composition of the frame of the human mind;
and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put together. But if such is the empire of opinion even amongst us, it has a pure,
unrestrained, complete, and despotic power amongst
them. The variety of balanced opinions in our minds
weakens the force of each: for in Europe, sometimes,
the laws of religion differ from the laws of the land;
sometimes the laws of the land differ from our laws
of honor; our laws of honor are full of caprice, differing from those other laws, and sometimes differing from themselves: but there the laws of religion, the laws of the land, and the laws of honor are all
united and consolidated in one invariable system, and
bind men by eternal and indissoluble bonds to the
rules of what, amongst them, is called his caste.
It may be necessary just to state to your Lordships
what a caste is. The Gentoo people, from the oldest
time, have been distributed into various orders, all
of them hereditary: these family orders are called
castes; these castes are the fundamental part of tlhe
? ? ? ? 380 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
constitution of the Gentoo commonwealth, both in
their church and in their state.
Your Lordships are born to hereditary honors in
the chief of your houses; the rest mix with the people. With the Gentoos, they who are born noble can never fall into any second rank. They are divided
into four orders, --the Brahmins, the Chittery, the
Bice, and the Soodur, with many subdivisions in each.
An eternal barrier is placed between them. The
higher cannot pass into the lower; the lower cannot
rise into the higher. They have all their appropriated rank, place, and situation, and their appropriated religion too, which is essentially different in its rites
and ceremnonies, sometimes in its object, in each of
those castes. A manll who is born in the highest caste,
which at once unites what would be tantamount in
this country to the dignity of the peerage and the
ennobled sanctity of the episcopal character, -the
Brahmin, who sustains these characters, if he loses
his caste, does not fall into an inferior order, the
Chittery, the Bice, or the Soodur, but he is thrown at
once out of all ranks of society. He is precipitated
from the proudest elevation of respect and honor to a
bottomless abyss of contempt, - from glory to infamy,
- from purity to pollution,- from sanctity to profanation. No honest occupation is open to him; his children are no longer his children; their parent loses
that name; the conjugal bond is dissolved. Few survive this most terrible of all calamities. To speak to an Indian of his caste is to speak to him of his all.
But the rule of caste has, with them, given one
power more to fortune than the manners of any other
nation were ever known to do. For it is singular,
the caste may be lost, not only by certain voluntary
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 381
crimes, but by certain involuntary sufferings, disgraces, and pollutions, that are utterly out of their
power to prevent. Those who have patiently submitted to imprisonment, - those who have not flinched
from the scourge, - those who have been as unmoved
as marble under torture, -- those who have laughed
at the menaces of death itself, - have instantly given
way, when it has been attempted to subject them to
ally of those pollutions by which they lose caste. To
this caste they are bound by all laws of all descriptions,
human and divine; and inveterate usage has radicated it in them to a depth and with all adhesion with
which no other known prejudice has been known to
exist. Tyranny is therefore armed against them with
a greater variety of weapons than are found in its
ordinary stores.
This, amongst a thousand other considerations,
speaks to us in very authoritative language with what
care and circumspection we ought to handle people
so delicate. In the course of this trial your Lordships will see with horror the use which Mr. Hastings made, through several of his wicked and abominable instruments, chosen from the natives themselves, of these superadded means of oppression. I shall prove, in the course of this trial, that he has
put his own menial domestic servant, -a wretch totally dependent, - a wretch grossly ignorant, -the
common instrument of his bribery and peculation, -
he has enthroned him, I say, on the first seat of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which was to decide upon
the castes of all those people, including their rank,
their family, their honor, and their happiness here,
and, in their judgment, their salvation hereafter.
Under the awe of this power, no man dared to breathe
? ? ? ? 382 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
a murmur against his tyranny. Fortified in this security, he says, "W Mho complains of me? " -" No, none of us dare complain of you," says the trembling Gentoo. " No! your menial servant has my caste in his power. " -- I shall not trouble your Lordships with
mentioning others; it was enough that Cantoo Baboo,
and Giiiga Govind Sing, names to which your Lordships are to be familiarized hereafter,- it is. enough
that those persons had the caste and character of all
the people of Bengal in their hands. Through them
he has taken effectual security against all complaint.
Your Lordships will hence discern how very necessary
it is become that some other personage should intervene, should take upon him their representation, and by his freedom and his power should supply the defects arising from their servitude and their impotence. The Commons of Great Britain charge themselves with
this character.
My Lords, these Gentoo people are the original
people of Hindostan. They are still, beyond comparison, the most numerous.
have almost universally been sent out to begin their
progress and career in active occupation, and in the
exercise of high authority, at that period of life which,
in all other places, has been employed in the course
of a rigid education. To put the matter in a few
words, -they are transferred from slippery youth to
perilous independence, from perilous independence to
inordinate expectations, from inordinate expectations
to boundless power. School-boys without tutors, minors without guardians, the world is let loose upon them with all its temptations, and they are let loose
upon the world with all the powers that despotism
involves.
It is further remarkable, these servants exercise
what your Lordships are now exercising, high judicial
powers, and they exercise them without the smallest
study of any law, either general or municipal. It is
made a sort of rule in the service, a rule confirmed
even by the attempts that were made to correct it, (I
mean confirmed by Sir Elijah Impey, when, under the
auspices of Mr. Hastings, he undertook to be legislator
for India,) that the judicial character, the last in the
order of legal progress, that to which all professional
men look up as the crown of their labors, that ultimate hope of men grown gray in professional practice, is among the first experimental situations of a Company's servant. It is expressly said in that body of regulations to which I allude, that the office and sit
? ? ? ? 3858 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
uation of a judge of the Dewanny Courts of Adawlut
is to be filled by the junior servants of the Company;
and as the judicial emolument is not substantially
equal to that of other situations, the office of a judge
is to be taken, as it were, in transitu, as a passage
to other offices not of a judicial nature. As soon,
therefore, as a young man has supplied the defects of
his education by the advantage of some experience,
he is immediately translated to a totally different office; and another young man is substituted, to learn,
at the expense of the property of India, to fill a situation which, when he may be qualified to fill, he is
no longer to hold.
It is in a great measure the same with regard to
the other situations. They are the situations of great
statesmen, which, according to the practice of the
world, require, to fill properly, rather a large converse with men and much intercourse in life than
deep study of books, - though that, too, has its eminent service. We know that in the habits of civilized
life, in cultivated society, there is imbibed by men a
good deal of the solid practice of government, of the
true maxims of state, and everything that enables a
man to serve his country. But these men are sent
over to exercise functions at which a statesman here
would tremble, without any theoretical study, and
without any of that sort of experience which, in mixed
societies of business and converse, form men gradually and insensibly to great affairs. Low cunning, intrigue, and stratagem are soon acquired; but manly, durable policy, which never sacrifices the general interest to a partial or momentary advantage, is not so
cheaply formed in the human understanding.
Mr. Hastings, in his defence before the House of
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 359
Commons, and in the defences he has made before
your Lordships, has lamented his own situation in
this particular. It was much to be lamented, indeed.
How far it will furnish justification, extenuation, or
palliation of his conduct, when we come to examine
that conduct, will be seen.
These circumstances in the system have in a great
degree vitiated and perverted what is in reality (and
many things are in reality) excellent in it. They
have rendered the application of all correctives and
remedies to abuse, at best, precarious in their operation. The laws that we have made, the covenants which the Company has obliged its servants to enter
into, the occasional orders that have been given, at
least ostensibly good, all have proved noxious to the
country, instead of beneficial.
To illustrate this point, I beg leave to observe to
your Lordships, that the servants of the Company are
obliged to enter into that service not only with an
impression of the general duty which attaches upon
all servants, but are obliged to engage in a specific
covenant with their masters to perform all the duties
described in that covenant (which are all the duties
of their relation) under heavy penalties. They are
bound to a irepetition of these covenants at every step
of their progress, from writer to factor, from factor to
junior merchant, and from junior merchant to senior
merchant. They ought, according to the rule, to renew these covenants at these times by something (I speak without offence) which may be said to resemble confirmation in the Church. They are obliged
to renew their obligation in particular to receive no
gifts, gratuities, or presents whatsoever.
This scheme of covenants would have been wise
? ? ? ? 360 IMPEACHMELNT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
and proper, if it had belonged to a judicious oider,
and rational, consistent scheme of discipline. The
orders of the Company have forbidden their serl ants
-to take any extraneous emoluments. The act of Parliament has fulminated against them. Clear, positive laws, and clear, positive private engagements, have
no exception of circumstances in them, no difference
quoad majus et minus; but every one who offends
against the law. is liable to the law. The consequence is this: he who has deviated but an inch
from the straight line, he who has taken but one
penny of unlawful emolument, (and all have taken
many pennies of unlawful emolument,) does not
dare to complain of the most abandoned extortion
and cruel oppression in any of his fellow-servants.
He who has taken a trifle, perhaps as the reward of
a good action, is obliged to be silent, when he sees
whole nations desolated'around him. The great
criminal at the head of the service has the laws in
his hand; he is always able to prove the small offence, and crush the person who has committed it.
This is one grand source of Mr. Hastings's power.
After he had got the better of the Parliamentary
commission, no complaint from any part of the service has appeared against Mr. Hastings. ' He is bold enough to state it as one presumption of his merit,
that there has been no such complaint. . No such
complaint, indeed, can exist. The spirit of the corps
would of itself almost forbid it, - to which spirit
an informer is the most odious and detestable of all
characters, and is hunted down, and has always been
hunted down, as a common enemy. But here is a
new security. Who can complain, or dares to accuse? The whole service is irregular: nobody is
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 861
free from small offences; and, as I have said, the
great offender can always crush the small one.
If you examine the correspondence of Mr. Hast-. ings, you would imagine, from many expressions very
deliberately used by him, that the Company's service
was made out of the very filth and dregs of human
corruption; but if you examine his conduct towards
the corrupt body he describes, you would imagine he
had lived in the speculative schemes of visionary per.
fection. He was fourteen years at the head of that
service; and there is not an instance, no, not one
single instance, in which he endeavored to detect corruption, or that he ever, in any one single instance,
attempted to punish it; but the whole service, with
that whole mass of enormity which he attributes to it,
slept, as it were, at once under his terror and his protection: under his protection, if they did not dare to
move against him; under terror, from his power to
pluck out individuals and make a public example of
them, whenever he thought fit. And therefore that
service, under his guidance and influence, was, beyond even what its own nature disposed it to, a service of confederacy, a service of connivance, a service
composed of varibus systems of guilt, of which Mr.
Hastings was the head and the protector. But this
general connivance he did not think sufficient to
secure to: him the general support of the Indian interest. He went further. We shall prove to your
Lordships, that, when the Company were driven by
shame, not by inclination, to order several prosecutions against delinquents in their service, Mr. Hastings, directly contrary to the duty of his office, directly contrary to the express and positive law of the Court of Directors, which law Parliament had
? ? ? ? ,862 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
bound upon him as his rule of action, not satisfied
with his long tacit connivance, ventured, before he
left his government, and among his last acts, to pass
a general act of pardon and indemnity, and at once
ordered the whole body of the prosecutions directed
by his masters, the Company, to be discharged.
Having had fourteen years' lease of connivance to
bestow, and giving at the end a general release of all
suits and actions, he now puts himself at the head of
a vast body enriched by his bounties, connivances, and
indemnities, and expects the support of those whom
he had thus fully rewarded and discharged from the
pursuit of the laws. You will find, in the course of
this business, that, when charges have been brought
against him of any bribery, corruption, or other malversation, his course has been to answer little or nothing to that specific bribery, corruption, or malversation: his way has been to call on the Court of Directors to inquire of every servant who comes to
Europe, and to say whether there was any one man
in it that will give him an ill word. He has put
himself into a situation in which he may always safely call to his character, and will always find himself utterly incapable of justifying his conduct.
So far I have troubled your Lordships with the
system. of confederacy and connivance, which, under
his auspices) was the vital principle of almost the
whole service. There is one member of the service
which I have omitted: but whether I ought to have
put it first, or, as I do now, last, I must confess I
am at some loss; because, though it appears to ba
the lowest (if any regular) part of the service, it is
by far the most considerable and the most efficient,
without a full consideration and explanation of which
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 363
hardly any part of the conduct of Mr. Hastings, and
of many others that may be in his situation, can be
fully understood.
I have given your Lordships an account of writers,
factors, merchants, who exercise the office of judges,
lord chancellors, chancellors of the exchequer, ministers of state, and managers of great revenues. But
there is another description of men, of more importance than them all, a description you have often
heard of, but which has not been sufficiently explained: I mean the banian. When the Company's
service was no more than mercantile, and the servants were generally unacquainted with the country,
they used the intervention of certain factors among
the natives, which were called banians: we called
them so, because they were of the tribe or caste of the
banians or merchants, - the Indians being generally
distributed into trades according to their tribes. The
name still continues, when the functions of the banians are totally altered. The banian is known by
other appellations. He is called dewan, or steward;
and, indeed, this is a term with more propriety applied to him in several of his functions. He is, by
his name of office, the steward of the household of the
European gentleman: he has the management of his
affairs, and the ordering of his servants. He is himself a domestic servant, and generally chosen out of
that class of natives who, by being habituated to misery and subjection, can submit to any orders, and are
fit for any of the basest services. Trained under oppression, (it is the true education,) they are fit to oppress others. They serve an apprenticeship of servitude to qualify them for the trade of tyranny. They know all the devices, all the little frauds, all the arti.
? ? ? ? . 364 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
fices and contrivances, the whole panoply of the defensive armor by which ingenious slavery secures itself against the violence of power. They know all the lurking-holes, all the winding recesses, of the unfortunate; and they hunt out distress and misery even
to their last retreats. They have suffered themselves;
but, far from being taught by those sufferings to abstain from rigor, they have only learned the meithods
of afflicting their fellow-slaves. They have the best
intelligence of what is done in England. The moment a Company's servant arrives in India, and his
English connections are known to be powerful, some
of that class of people immediately take possession
of him, as if he were their inheritance. They have
knowledge of the country and its. affairs; they have
money; they have the arts of making money. The
gentleman who comes from England has none of
these; he enters into that world, as he enters into
the world at large, naked. His portion is great simplicity, great indigence, and a strong disposition to
relieve himself. The banian, once in possession, employs his tyranny, not only over the native people
of his country, but often over the master himself,
who has little other share in the proceedings of his
servant but in giving him the ticket of his name to
mark that he is connected with and supported by an
European who is himself well connected and supported at home. This is a commission which nothing
can resist. From that moment forward it is not the
Englishman, it is the black banian, that is the master.
The nominal master often lives from his hand. We
know how young men are sent out of this country;
we know how happy we are to hear soon that they
are no longer a burden to tlhcir friends and parents.
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 365.
The banian knows it, too. He supplies the young
servant with money. He has him under his power:
first, from the necessity of employing such a mail;
and next, (and this is the more important of the two,)
he has that dreadful power over his master which
every creditor has over his debtor. Actions the most
abhorrent to his nature he must see done before his
face, and thousands and thousands worse are done in
his absence, and he dare not complain. The banian
extorts, robs, plunders, and then gives him just what
proportion of the spoil he pleases. If the master
should murmur, the very power that was sent over to
protect the people of India from these very abuses,
(the best things being perverted, when applied to unknown objects and put into unsuitable situations,)
tlie very laws of England, by making the recovery of
debts more easy, infinitely increase the power of the
banian over his master. Thus the Supreme Court
of Justice, the destined corrector of all abuses, becomes a collateral security for that abominable tyranny exercised by the moneyed banians over Europeans as well as the natives. So that, while we are here
boasting of the British power in the East, we are in
perhaps more than half our service nothing but the
inferior, miserable instruments, of the tyranny which
the lowest part of the natives of India exercise, to
the disgrace of the British' authority, and to the ruin
of all that is respectable among their own countrymen.
They have subverted the first houses, totally ruined
and undone the country, cheated and defrauded the
revenue, -- the master a silent, sometimes a melancholy spectator, until some office of high emolument
has emancipated him. This has often been the true
reason that the Company's servants in India, in or.
? ? ? ? 366 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
der to free themselves from this horrid and atrocious
servitude, are obliged to become instruments of another tyranny, and must prostitute themselves to men
in power, in order to obtain some office that may enable them to escape the servitudes below, and enable
them to pay their debts. And thus many have become
the instruments of Mr. Hastings.
These banians, or dewans, were originally among
the lower castes ill the country. But now, it is true,
that, after seeing the power and profits of these men,
-that there is neither power, profession, nor occupation to be had, which a reputable person call exercise,
but through that channel, -men of higher castes,
and born to better things, have thrown themselves
into that disgraceful servitude, have become menial
servants to Englishmen, that they might rise by their
degradation. But whoever they are, or of whatever
birth, they have equally prostituted their integrity,
they have equally lost their character; and, once entered into that course of life, there is no difference
between the best castes and the worst. That system
Mr. Hastings confirmed, established, increased, and
made the instrument of the most austere tyranny, of
the basest peculations, and the most scandalous and
iniquitous extortions.
In the description I have given of banians a distinction is to be made. Your Lordships must distinguish the banians of the British servants in subordinate situations and the banians who are such to persons in higher authority. In the latter case
the banian is in strict subordination, because he
may always be ruined by his superior; whereas in
the former it is always in his power to ruin his
nominal superior. It was not through fear, but
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 367
voluntarily, and not for the banian's purposes, but
his own, Mr. Hastings has brought forward his banian. He seated him in the houses of the principal
nobility, and invested him with farms of the revenue; he has given him enormous jobs; he has put
him over the heads of a nobility which, for their
grandeur, antiquity, and dignity, might almost be
matched with your Lordships. He has made him
supreme ecclesiastical judge, judge even of the very
castes, in the preservation of the separate rules and
separate privileges of which that people exists. He
who has dominion over the caste has an absolute power over something more than life and fortune.
Such is that first, or last, (I know not which to
call it,) order in the Company's service called a banian. The mutseddies, clerks, accountants, of Calcutta, generally fall under this description; Your Lordships will see hereafter the necessity of giving
you, in the opening the case, an idea of the situation
of a banian. You will see, as no Englishman, properly speaking, acts by himself, that he must be made
responsible for that person called his banian, -- for
the power he either uses under him, or the power he
has acquired over him. The banian escapes, in the
night of his complexion and situation, the inquiry
that a white man cannot stand before in this country.
Through the banians, or other black natives, a bad
servant of the Company receives his bribes. Through
them he decides falsely against the titles of litigants
in the court of castes, or in the offices of public
registry. Through them Mr. Hastings has exercised
oppressions which, I will venture to say, in his own
name, in his own character, daring ashe is, (and he
is the most daring criminal that ever existed,) he
? ? ? ? 368 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
never would dare to practise. Many, if not most, of
the iniquities of his interior bad administration have
been perpetrated through these banians, or other native agents and confidants; and we shall show you
that he is not satisfied with one of them, confiding
few of his secrets to Europeans, and hardly any of
his instruments, either native or European, knowing
the secrets of each other. This is the system of
banianism, and of concealment, which Mr. Hastings,
instead of eradicating out of the service, has propagated by example and by support, and enlarged by
converting even Europeans into that dark and insidious character.
I have explained, or endeavored to explain, to your
Lordships these circumstances of the true spirit, genius, and character, more than the ostensible institutions of hile Company's service: I now shall beg leave to bring before you one institution, taken from the
mercantile constitution of the Company, so excellent,
that I will venture to say that human wisdom has
never exceeded it. In this excellent institutioii the
counting-house gave lessons to the state. The active,'awakened, and enlightened principle of self-inlterlc, t
will provide a better system for the guard of tll:l
interest than the cold, drowsy wisdom of those w1o
provide for a good out of themselves ever contrived.
for the public. The plans sketched by private prudence for private interest, the regulations by mercalltile men for their mercantile purposes, when they call be applied to the discipline and order of the state,
produce a discipline and order which no state should
be ashamed to copy. The Company's mercantile regulations are admirably fitted for the government of a
remote, large, disjointed empire. As merchants, hav
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 369
ing factors abroad in distant parts of the world, they
have obliged them to a minuteness and strictness of
register, and to a regularity of correspondence, which
no state has ever used in the same degree with regard
to its public ministers. The Company has made it
a fundamental part of their constitution, that almost
their whole government shall be a written government. Your Lordships will observe, in the course
of the proceeding, the propriety of opening fully to
you this circumstance in the government of India, --
that is, that the Company's government is a government of writing, a government of record.
The strictest court of justice, in its proceeding, is not more, perhaps not so much a court of record as the India
Company's executive service is, or ought to be, in all
its proceedings.
In the first place, they oblige their servants to keep
a journal or diary of all their transactions, public and
private: they are bound to do this by an express
covenant. They oblige them, as a corrective upon
that diary, to keep a letter-book, in which all their
letters are to be regularly entered. And they are
bound by the same covenant to produce all those
books upon requisition, although they should be
mixed with affairs concerning their own private
negotiations and transactions of commerce, or their
closest and most retired concerns in private life.
But as the great corrective of all, they have contrived that every proceeding in public council shall
be written,- no debates merely verbal. The arguments, first or last, are to be in writing, and recorded.
All other bodies, the Houses of Lords, Commons, Privy
Council, Cabinet Councils for secret state deliberations, enter only resolves, decisions, and final resoluVOL. IX. 24
? ? ? ? 370 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
tions of affairs: the argument, the discussion, the dissent, does very rarely, if at all, appear. But the Comrn
pany has proceeded much further, and done much
more wisely, because they proceeded upon mercantile principles; and they have provided, either by orders or course of office, that all shall be written,the proposition, the argument, the dissent. This is not confined to their great Council; but this order
ought to be observed, as I conceive, (and I see considerable traces of it in practice,) in every Provincial
Council, whilst the Provincial Councils existed, and
even down to the minutest ramification of their service. These books, in a progression from the lowest
Councils to the highest Presidency, are ordered to be
transmitted, duplicate and triplicate, by every ship
that sails to Europe. On this system an able servant
of the Company, and high in their service, has recorded his opinion, and strongly expressed his sentiments. Writing to the Court of Directors, he says,
"It ought to be remembered, that the basis upon
which you rose to power, and have been able to stand
the shock of repeated convulsions, has been the accuracy and simplicity of mercantile method, which
makes every transaction in your service and every
expenditure a matter of record. "
My Lords, this method not only must produce to
them, if strictly observed, a more accurate idea of the
nature of their affairs and the nature of their expenditures, but it must afford them no trivial opportunity
and means of knowing the true characters of their
servants, their capacities, their ways of thinking, the
turn and bias of their minds. If well employed, and
but a little improved, the East India Company possessed an advantage unknown before to the chief of a
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -- FIRST DAY. 371
remote government. In the most remote parts of the
world, and in the minutest parts of a remote service,
everything came before the principal with a domestic
accuracy and local familiarity. It was in the power
of a Directors sitting in London, to form an accurate
judgment of every incident that happened upon the
Ganges and the Gogra.
The use of this recorded system did not consist
only in the facility of discovering what the nature of
their affairs and the character and capacity of their
servants was, but it furnished the means of detecting their misconduct, frequently of proving it too,
and of producing the evidence of it judicially under
their own hands. For your Lordships must have
observed that it is rare indeed, that, in a continued
course of evil practices, any uniform method of proceeding will serve the purposes of the delinquent.
Innocence is plain, direct, and simple: guilt is a
crooked, intricate, inconstant, and various thing.
The iniquitous job of to-day may be covered by
specious reasons; but when the job of iniquity of
to-morrow succeeds, the reasons that have colored
the first crime may expose the second malversation.
The man of fraud falls into contradiction, prevarication, confusion. This hastens, this facilitates, conviction. Besides,. time is not allowed for corrupting the records. They are flown out of their hands, they are
in Europe, they are safe in the registers of the Company, perhaps they are under the eye of Parliament,
before the writers of them have time to invent an
excuse for a direct contrary conduct to that to which
their former pretended principles applied. This is a
great, a material part of the constitution of the Company. My Lords, I do not think it to be much apolo
? ? ? ? 372 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
gized for, if I repeat, that this is the fundamental reg.
ulation of that service, and which, if preserved in the
first instance, as it ought to be, in official practice in
India, and then used as it ought to be in England,
would afford such a mode of governing a great, foreign, dispersed empire, as; I will venture to say, few
countries ever possessed, even in governing the most
limited and narrow jurisdiction.
It was the great business of Mr. Hastings's policy to
subvert this great political edifice. His first mode of
subverting it was by commanding the public ministers, paid by the Company, to deliver their correspondence upon the most critical and momentous affairs to him, in order to be suppressed and destroyed at his pleasure. To support him in this plan of
spoliation, he has made a mischievous distinction in
public business between public and private corre
spondence. The Company's orders and covenants
made none. There are, readily I admit, thousands
of occasions in which it is not proper to divulge promiscuously a private correspondence, though on public affairs, to the world; but there is no occasion in
which it is not a necessary duty, on requisition, to
communicate your correspondence to those who form
the paramount government, on whose interests and
on whose concerns and under whose authority this
correspondence has been carried on. The very- same
reasons which require secrecy with regard to others
demand the freest communication to them. But Mr.
Hastings has established principles of confidence and
secrecy towards himself which have cut off all confidence between the Directors and their ministers, and
effectually kept them at least out of the secret of their
own affairs.
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 373
Without entering into all the practices by which
he has attempted to maim the Company's records,
I shall state one more to your Lordships, - that is,
his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents,
who shall carry on the real state business, while there
are public and ostensible agents who are not in the
secret. The correspondence of those private agents
he holds in his own hands, communicates as he
thinks proper, but most commonly withholds. There
remains nothing for the Directors but the shell and
husk of a dry, formal, official correspondence, which
neither means anything nor was intended to mean
anything.
These are some of the methods by which he has
defeated the purposes of the excellent institution of
a recorded administration. But there are cases to be
brought before this court in which he has laid the axe
at once to the root, -- which was, by delegating out
of his own hands a great department of the powers of
the Company, which he was himself bound to execute, to a board which was not bound to record their deliberations with the same strictness as he himself
was bound. He appointed of his own usurped authority a board for the administration of the revenue, the members of which were expressly dispensed from
recording their dissents, until they chose it; and in
that office, as in a great gulf, a most important part
of the Company's transactions has been buried.
Notwithstanding his unwearied pains in the work
of spoliation, some precious fragments are left, which
we ought infinitely to value, --by which we may
learn, -and lament, the loss of what he has destroyed.
If it were not for those inestimable fragments and
w ecks of the recorded government which have been
? ? ? ? 374 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
saved from the destruction which Mr. Hastings in
tended for them all, the most shameful enormities
that have ever disgraced a government or harassed
a people would only be known in this country by secret whispers and unauthenticated anecdotes; the disgracers of government, the vexers and afflicters of
mankind, instead of being brought before an awful
public tribunal, might have been honored with the
highest distinctions and rewards their country has
to bestow; and sordid bribery, base peculation, ironhanded extortion, fierce, unrelenting tyranny, might
themselves have been invested with those sacred robes
of justice before which this day they have cause to
tremble.
Mr. Hastings, sensible of what he suffers from this
register of acts and opinions, has endeavored to discredit and ruin what remains of it. He refuses, in
his defence to the House of Commons, in letters
to the Court of Directors, in various writings and
declarations, he refuses to be tried by his own recorded declarations; he refuses to be bound by his
own opinions, delivered under his own hand. He
knows that he and the record cannot exist together.
He knows that what remains of the written constitution which he has not destroyed is enough to destroy
him. He claims a privilege of systematic inconstancy, a privilege of prevarication, a privilege of contradiction, -a privilege of not only changing his conduct, but the principles of his conduct, whenever it suits his occasions. But I hope your Lordships will
show the destroyers of that wise constitution, and
the destroyers of those records which are to be the
securities against malversation in office, the discoverers and avengers of it, that whoever'destroys the dis
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 375
coverer establishes the iniquity; that, therefore, your
Lordships will bind him to his own declarations, given on record under his own hand; that you will say to this unfaithful servant of the Company, what was
said to another unfaithful person upon a far less occasion by a far greater authority, " Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. "
Having gone through what I have been instructed
might be necessary to state to your Lordships concerning the Company's constitution, (I mean the real' inside, and not the shell of its constitution,) - having
stated the abuses that existed in it,- having stated
how Mr. Hastings endeavored to perpetuate and to
increase and to profit of the abuse, and how he has
systematically endeavored to destroy, and has in some
instances in fact destroyed, many things truly excellent in that constitution, -if I have not wasted your time inll explanation of matters that you are already
well acquainted with, I shall next beg leave to state
to you the abuse in some particulars of the other
part of the public authority which the Company acquired over the natives of India, in virtue of the royal charter of the present Mogul emperor, in the year
~1766 [ 1765? ].
My Lords, that you may the better judge of the
abuse Mr. Hastings has made of the powers vested in
him, it will be expedient to consider a little who the
people are to whose prejudice he has abused these
powers. I shall explain this point with as much brevity as is consistent with the distinctness with which I mean to bring the whole before your Lordships; and
I beg to observe to you that this previous discourse,
rather explanatory than accusatorial, (if I may use
? ? ? ? 376 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
the expression,) is meant rather to elucidate the nature of the matter to come before you in regular charges than as proof of the charges themselves.
I know that a good deal of latitude is allowed to
advocates, when opening a cause in a private court,
to indulge themselves in their narratives leading to
the charges they intend to bring. They are not always called to the strictest account for such prefatory matter, because the court, when it comes to judge,
sifts and' distinguishes it from the points to be strictly
proved, and on whose merits the cause relies. But
I wish your Lordships to know, that, with the high
opinion I have of your gravity, (and it is impossible
for a man to conceive a higher,) and sensible of the
weight of those I represent at this place, namely,
the Commons of Great Britain, I should be sorry
that any one substantial fact, even in this explanatory opening, or even the color of the fact, should be alleged, which, when called upon, I should not be
ready to make good to you by proof, -I meanl, by
proof adapted to its nature: public opinion, by evidence of public opinion; by record, that to which record is applicable; by oral testimony, things to
which oral testimony alone can be produced; and,
last of all, that which is matter of historic proof, by
historic evidence. This I hope to do with the usual
allowance to errors and mistakes, which is the claim
of human infirmity.
Then, my Lords, two distinct people inhabit India.
Two sorts of people inhabit the same country, as totally distinct from each other, in characters, lives, opinions, prejudices, and manners, as the inhabitants
of countries most remote from each other. For both
of these descriptions Mr. Hastings was bound to pro
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. - FIRST DAY. 377
vide equally, agreeable to the terms of the charter
which the Company received from the lawful governing power of that country: a charter received at its
own solicitation; a charter not forced upon us by a
superior power, but given at the immediate solicitation of the principal servants belonging to the Company; a charter solemnly accepted by the Company, and by them, I am very sorry to say, little regarded,
- or, at least, little regarded by their principal servants.
My Lords, the first description of people who are
subjected virtually to the British empire through
those mediums which I have described to you are
the original inhabitants of Hindostan, who have in
all time, and beyond all the eras which we use, (I
mean always the two grand eras excepted,) been the
aboriginal inhabitants and proprietors of that country, - with manners, religion, customs, and usages
appropriated to themselves, and little resembling
those of the rest of mankind. This description' of
men is commonly called Gentoos. ' The system and
prificiple of that government is locality. Their laws,
their manners, their religion are all local.
Their legislator, whoever he was, (for who he was
is a matter lost in the mists of a most obscure antiquity,) had it as a great leading principle of his
policy to connect the people with their soil. Accordingly, by one of those anomalies which a larger
acquaintance with our species daily discovers, and
which perhaps an attentive reflection might explain
in the nature of man, this aboriginal people of India,
- who are the softest in their manners of any of our
race, approaching almost to feminine tenderness,who are formed constitutionally benevolent, and, in
? ? ? ? 378 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
many particulars, made to fill a larger circle of benevolence than our morals take in, --who extefid their
good-will to the whole animal creation, - these people
are, of all nations, the most unalliable to any other
part of mankind. They cannot, the highest orders of
them, at least, cannot, come into contact with any other. That bond which is one of the chief instruments
of society, and which, supporting the individual, connects the species, can have no existence with them: I
mean the convivial bond. That race can be held to no
other by that great link of life. No iEindoo can mix
at meals even with those on whom he depends for the
meat he eats. This circumstance renders it difficult
for us to enter with due sympathy into their concerns,
or for them to enter into ours, even when we meet
on the same ground. But there are other circumstances which render our intercourse, in our mutual
relation, very full of difficulty. The sea is between
us. The mass of that element, which, by appearing
to disconnect, unites mankind, is to them a forbidden
road. It is a great gulf fixed between you and them,
- not so much that elementary gulf, but that gulf
which manners, opinions, and laws have radicated in
the very nature of the people. None of their high
castes, without great danger to his situation, religion,
rank, and estimation, can ever pass the sea; and this
forbids, forever, all direct communication between that
country and this. That material and affecting circumstance, my Lords, makes it ten times more necessary, since they cannot come to us, to keep a strict eye upon all persons who go to them. It imposes upon us a stricter duty to guard with a firm and powerful vigilance those whose principles of conscience weaken their principles of self-defence. If we. un
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -- FIRST DAY. 379
dertake to govern the inhabitants of such a country, we must govern them upon their own principles
and maxims, and not upon ours. We must not think
to force them into the narrow circle of our ideas; we
must extend ours to take in their system of opinions and rites, and the necessities which result from
both: all change on their part is absolutely impracticable. We have more versatility of character and
manners, and it is we who must conform. We know
what the empire of opinion is in human nature. I
had almost said that the law of opinion was human
nature itself. It is, however, the strongest principle
in the composition of the frame of the human mind;
and more of the happiness and unhappiness of mankind resides in that inward principle than in all external circumstances put together. But if such is the empire of opinion even amongst us, it has a pure,
unrestrained, complete, and despotic power amongst
them. The variety of balanced opinions in our minds
weakens the force of each: for in Europe, sometimes,
the laws of religion differ from the laws of the land;
sometimes the laws of the land differ from our laws
of honor; our laws of honor are full of caprice, differing from those other laws, and sometimes differing from themselves: but there the laws of religion, the laws of the land, and the laws of honor are all
united and consolidated in one invariable system, and
bind men by eternal and indissoluble bonds to the
rules of what, amongst them, is called his caste.
It may be necessary just to state to your Lordships
what a caste is. The Gentoo people, from the oldest
time, have been distributed into various orders, all
of them hereditary: these family orders are called
castes; these castes are the fundamental part of tlhe
? ? ? ? 380 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
constitution of the Gentoo commonwealth, both in
their church and in their state.
Your Lordships are born to hereditary honors in
the chief of your houses; the rest mix with the people. With the Gentoos, they who are born noble can never fall into any second rank. They are divided
into four orders, --the Brahmins, the Chittery, the
Bice, and the Soodur, with many subdivisions in each.
An eternal barrier is placed between them. The
higher cannot pass into the lower; the lower cannot
rise into the higher. They have all their appropriated rank, place, and situation, and their appropriated religion too, which is essentially different in its rites
and ceremnonies, sometimes in its object, in each of
those castes. A manll who is born in the highest caste,
which at once unites what would be tantamount in
this country to the dignity of the peerage and the
ennobled sanctity of the episcopal character, -the
Brahmin, who sustains these characters, if he loses
his caste, does not fall into an inferior order, the
Chittery, the Bice, or the Soodur, but he is thrown at
once out of all ranks of society. He is precipitated
from the proudest elevation of respect and honor to a
bottomless abyss of contempt, - from glory to infamy,
- from purity to pollution,- from sanctity to profanation. No honest occupation is open to him; his children are no longer his children; their parent loses
that name; the conjugal bond is dissolved. Few survive this most terrible of all calamities. To speak to an Indian of his caste is to speak to him of his all.
But the rule of caste has, with them, given one
power more to fortune than the manners of any other
nation were ever known to do. For it is singular,
the caste may be lost, not only by certain voluntary
? ? ? ? SPEECH IN OPENING. -FIRST DAY. 381
crimes, but by certain involuntary sufferings, disgraces, and pollutions, that are utterly out of their
power to prevent. Those who have patiently submitted to imprisonment, - those who have not flinched
from the scourge, - those who have been as unmoved
as marble under torture, -- those who have laughed
at the menaces of death itself, - have instantly given
way, when it has been attempted to subject them to
ally of those pollutions by which they lose caste. To
this caste they are bound by all laws of all descriptions,
human and divine; and inveterate usage has radicated it in them to a depth and with all adhesion with
which no other known prejudice has been known to
exist. Tyranny is therefore armed against them with
a greater variety of weapons than are found in its
ordinary stores.
This, amongst a thousand other considerations,
speaks to us in very authoritative language with what
care and circumspection we ought to handle people
so delicate. In the course of this trial your Lordships will see with horror the use which Mr. Hastings made, through several of his wicked and abominable instruments, chosen from the natives themselves, of these superadded means of oppression. I shall prove, in the course of this trial, that he has
put his own menial domestic servant, -a wretch totally dependent, - a wretch grossly ignorant, -the
common instrument of his bribery and peculation, -
he has enthroned him, I say, on the first seat of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which was to decide upon
the castes of all those people, including their rank,
their family, their honor, and their happiness here,
and, in their judgment, their salvation hereafter.
Under the awe of this power, no man dared to breathe
? ? ? ? 382 IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.
a murmur against his tyranny. Fortified in this security, he says, "W Mho complains of me? " -" No, none of us dare complain of you," says the trembling Gentoo. " No! your menial servant has my caste in his power. " -- I shall not trouble your Lordships with
mentioning others; it was enough that Cantoo Baboo,
and Giiiga Govind Sing, names to which your Lordships are to be familiarized hereafter,- it is. enough
that those persons had the caste and character of all
the people of Bengal in their hands. Through them
he has taken effectual security against all complaint.
Your Lordships will hence discern how very necessary
it is become that some other personage should intervene, should take upon him their representation, and by his freedom and his power should supply the defects arising from their servitude and their impotence. The Commons of Great Britain charge themselves with
this character.
My Lords, these Gentoo people are the original
people of Hindostan. They are still, beyond comparison, the most numerous.
