Volume 10 — SPEECH ON THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE. THIRD DAY: TUESDAY, MAY 5, 1789.

My Lords,—Agreeably to your Lordships' proclamation, which I have just heard, and the duty enjoined me by the House of Commons, I come forward to make good their charge of high crimes and misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Governor-General of Bengal, and now a prisoner at your bar.

My Lords, since I had last the honor of standing in this place before your Lordships, an event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent. My Lords, I have been disavowed by those who sent me here to represent them. My Lords, I have been disavowed in a material part of that engagement which I had pledged myself to this House to perform. My Lords, that disavowal has been followed by a censure. And yet, my Lords, so censured and so disavowed, and by such an authority, I am sent here again, to this the place of my offence, under the same commission, by the same authority, to make good the same charge, against the same delinquent.

My Lords, the situation is new and awful: the situation is such as, I believe, and I am sure, has nothing like it on the records of Parliament, nor, probably, in the history of mankind. My Lords, it is not only new and singular, but, I believe, to many persons, who do not look into the true interior nature of affairs, it may appear that it would be to me as mortifying as it is unprecedented. But, my Lords, I have in this situation, and upon the consideration of all the circumstances, something more to feed my mind with than mere consolation; because, my Lords, I look upon the whole of these circumstances, considered together, as the strongest, the most decisive, and the least equivocal proof which the Commons of Great Britain can give of their sincerity and their zeal in this prosecution. My Lords, is it from a mistaken tenderness or a blind partiality to me, that, thus censured, they have sent me to this place? No, my Lords, it is because they feel, and recognize in their own breasts, that active principle of justice, that zeal for the relief of the people of India, that zeal for the honor of Great Britain, which characterizes me and my excellent associates, that, in spite of any defects, in consequence of that zeal which they applaud, and while they censure its mistakes, and, because they censure its mistakes, do but more applaud, they have sent me to this place, instructed, but not dismayed, to pursue this prosecution against Warren Hastings, Esquire. Your Lordships will therefore be pleased to consider this, as I consider it, not as a thing honorable to me, in the first place, but as honorable to the Commons of Great Britain, in whose honor the national glory is deeply concerned; and I shall suffer myself with pleasure to be sacrificed, perhaps, in what is dearer to me than my life, my reputation, rather than let it be supposed that the Commons should for one moment have faltered in their duty. I, my Lords, on the one hand, feeling myself supported and encouraged, feeling protection and countenance from this admonition and warning which has been given to me, will show myself, on the other hand, not unworthy so great and distinguished a mark of the favor of the Commons,—a mark of favor not the consequence of flattery, but of opinion. I shall feel animated and encouraged by so noble a reward as I shall always consider the confidence of the Commons to be: the only reward, but a rich reward, which I have received for the toils and labors of a long life.

The Commons, then, thus vindicated, and myself thus encouraged, I shall proceed to make good the charge in which the honor of the Commons, that is, the national honor, is so deeply concerned. For, my Lords, if any circumstance of weakness, if any feebleness of nerve, if any yielding to weak and popular opinions and delusions were to shake us, consider what the situation of this country would be. This prosecution, if weakly conceived, ill digested, or intemperately pursued, ought never to have been brought to your Lordships' bar: but being brought to your Lordships' bar, the nation is committed to it, and the least appearance of uncertainty in our minds would disgrace us forever. Esto perpetua, has been said. To the glory of this nation, much more be it said, Esto perpetua; and I will say, that, as we have raised and exhibited a theatre of justice which has excited the admiration of all Europe, there would be a sort of lustre in our infamy, and a splendor in the disgrace that we should bring upon ourselves, if we should, just at that moment, turn that theatre of our glory into a spectacle of dishonor beyond what has ever happened to any country of the world.

The Commons of Great Britain, whilst willing to keep a strong and firm hand over all those who represent them in any business, do at the same time encourage them in the prosecution of it, by allowing them a just discretion and latitude wherever their own orders have not marked a distinction. I shall therefore go on with the more cheerful confidence, not only for the reasons that I have stated, but for another and material reason. I know and am satisfied, that, in the nobleness of your judgment, you will always make a distinction between the person that gives the order and the organ that is to execute it. The House of Commons know no such thing as indiscretion, imprudence, or impropriety: it is otherwise with their instruments. Your Lordships very well know, that, if you hear anything that shall appear to you to be regular, apt to bring forward the charge, just, prudent, cogent, you are to give it to the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled; if you should hear from me (and it must be from me alone, and not from any other member of the Committee) anything that is unworthy of that situation, that comes feeble, weak, indigested, or ill-prepared, you are to attribute that to the instrument. Your Lordships' judgment would do this without my saying it. But whilst I claim it on the part of the Commons for their dignity, I claim for myself the necessary indulgence that must be given to all weakness. Your Lordships, then, will impute it where you would have imputed it without my desire. It is a distinction you would naturally have made, and the rather because what is alleged by us at the bar is not the ground upon which you are to give judgment. If not only I, but the whole body of managers, had made use of any such expressions as I made use of,—even if the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, if the collective body of Parliament, if the voice of Europe, had used them,—if we had spoken with the tongues of men and angels, you, in the seat of judicature, are not to regard what we say, but what we prove; you are to consider whether the charge is well substantiated, and proof brought out by legal inference and argument. You know, and I am sure the habits of judging which your Lordships have acquired by sitting in judgment must better inform you than any other men, that the duties of life, in order to be well performed, must be methodized, separated, arranged, and harmonized in such a manner that they shall not clash with one another, but each have a department assigned and separated to itself. My Lords, in that manner it is that we, the prosecutors, have nothing to do with the principles which are to guide the judgment, that we have nothing to do with the defence of the prisoner. Your Lordships well know, that, when we come before you, you hear a party; that, when the accused come before you, you hear a party: that it is for you to doubt, and wait till you come to the close, before you decide; that it is for us, the prosecutors, to have decided before we came here. To act as prosecutors, we ought to have no doubt or hesitation, nothing trembling or quivering in our minds upon the occasion. We ought to be fully convinced of guilt, before we come to you. It is, then, our business to bring forward the proofs,—to enforce them with all the clearness, illustration, example, that we can bring forward,—that we are to show the circumstances that can aggravate the guilt,—that we are to go further, show the mischievous consequences and tendency of those crimes to society,—and that we are, if able so to do, to arouse and awaken in the minds of all that hear us those generous and noble sympathies which Providence has planted in the breasts of all men, to be the true guardians of the common rights of humanity. Your Lordships know that this is the duty of the prosecutors, and that therefore we are not to consider the defence of the party, which is wisely and properly left to himself; but we are to press the accusation with all the energy of which it is capable, and to come with minds perfectly convinced before an august and awful tribunal which at once tries the accuser and the accused.

Having stated thus much with respect to the Commons, I am to read to your Lordships the resolution which the Commons have come to upon this great occasion, and upon which I shall take the liberty to say a very few words.

My Lords, the Commons have resolved last night, and I did not see the resolution till this morning, "that no direction or authority was given by this House to the committee appointed to manage the impeachment against Warren Hastings, Esquire, to make any charge or allegation against the said Warren Hastings respecting the condemnation or execution of Nundcomar; and that the words spoken by the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, one of the said managers, videlicet, that he (meaning Mr. Hastings) murdered that man (meaning Nundcomar) by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey, ought not to have been spoken."

My Lords, this is the resolution of the House of Commons. Your Lordships well know and remember my having used such or similar words, and the end and purpose for which I used them. I owe a few words of explanation to the Commons of Great Britain, who attend in a committee of the whole House to be the observers and spectators of my conduct. I owe it to your Lordships, I owe it to this great auditory, I owe it to the present times and to posterity, to make some apology for a proceeding which has drawn upon me the disavowal of the House which I represent. Your Lordships will remember that this charge which I have opened to your Lordships is primarily a charge founded upon the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar; and consequently I thought myself obliged, I thought it a part of my duty, to support the credit of that person, who is the principal evidence to support the direct charge that is brought before your Lordships. I knew that Mr. Hastings, in his anticipated defence before the House of Commons, had attempted to shake the credit of that witness. I therefore thought myself justified in informing your Lordships, and in warning him, that, if he did attempt to shake the credit of an important witness against him by an allegation of his having been condemned and executed for a forgery, I would endeavor to support his credit by attacking that very prosecution which brought on that condemnation and that execution; and that I did consider it, and would lay grounds before your Lordships to prove it, to be a murder committed, instead of a justification set up, or that ought to be set up.

Now, my Lords, I am ordered by the Commons no longer to persist in that declaration; and I, who know nothing in this place, and ought to know nothing in this place, but obedience to the Commons, do mean, when Mr. Hastings makes that objection (if he shall be advised to make it) against the credit of Rajah Nundcomar, not thus to support that credit; and therefore that objection to the credit of the witness must go unrefuted by me. My Lords, I must admit, perhaps against my private judgment, (but that is of no consideration for your Lordships, when opposed to the judgment of the House of Commons,) or, at least, not contest, that a first minister of state, in a great kingdom, who had the benefit of the administration, and of the entire and absolute command of a revenue of fifteen hundred thousand pounds a year, had been guilty of a paltry forgery in Calcutta; that this man, who had been guilty of this paltry forgery, had waited for his sentence and his punishment, till a body of English judges, armed with an English statute, came to Calcutta; and that this happened at the very happy nick and moment when he was accusing Mr. Hastings of the bribery with which we now in the name of the Commons charge him; that it was owing to an entirely fortuitous concurrence of circumstances, in which Mr. Hastings had no share, or that it was owing to something beyond this, something that is rather pious than fortuitous, namely, that, as Mr. Hastings tells you himself, "all persuasions of men were impressed with a superstitious belief that a fortunate influence directed all my actions to their destined ends." I, not being at that time infected with the superstition, and considering what I thought Mr. Hastings's guilt to be, and what I must prove it to be as well as I can, did not believe that Providence did watch over Mr. Hastings, so as in the nick of time, like a god in a machine, to come down to save him in the moment of his imminent peril and distress: I did not think so, but I must not say so.

But now, to show that it was not weakly, loosely, or idly, that I took up this business, or that I anticipated a defence which it was not probable for Mr. Hastings to make, (and I wish to speak to your Lordships in the first instance, but to the Commons in the next,) I will read part of Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons: it is in evidence before your Lordships. He says,—"My accuser" (meaning myself, then acting as a private member of Parliament) "charges me with 'the receipt of large sums of money, corruptly taken before the promulgation of the Regulating Act of 1773, contrary to my covenants with the Company, and with the receipt of very large sums taken since, in defiance of that law, and contrary to my declared sense of its provisions.' And he ushers in this charge in the following pompous diction: 'That in March, 1775, the late Rajah Nundcomar, a native Hindoo of the highest caste in his religion, and of the highest rank in society, by the offices which he had held under the country government, did lay before the Council an account of various sums of money,' &c. It would naturally strike every person ignorant of the character of Nundcomar, that an accusation made by a person of the highest caste in his religion and of the highest rank by his offices demanded particular notice, and acquired a considerable degree of credit, from a prevalent association of ideas that a nice sense of honor is connected with an elevated rank of life: but when this honorable House is informed that my accuser knew (though he suppressed the facts) that this person, of high rank and high caste, had forfeited every pretension to honor, veracity, and credit,—that there are facts recorded on the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, (independent of the forgery for which he suffered death,) of the most deliberate treachery to the state, for which he was confined, by the orders of the Court of Directors, to the limits of the town of Calcutta, in order to prevent his dangerous intrigues, and of having violated every principle of common honesty in private life,—I say, when this honorable House is acquainted it is from mutilated and garbled assertions, founded on the testimony of such an evidence, without the whole matter being fairly stated, I do hope and trust it will be sufficient for them to reject now these vague and unsupported charges, in like manner as they were before rejected by the Court of Directors and his Majesty's ministers, when they were first made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis.—I must here interrupt the course of my defence to explain on what grounds I employed or had any connection with a man of so flagitious a character as Nundcomar."

My Lords, I hope this was a good and reasonable ground for me to anticipate the defence which Mr. Hastings would make in this House,—namely, on the known, recognized, infamous character of Nundcomar, with regard to certain proceedings there charged at large, with regard to one forgery for which he suffered and two other forgeries with which Mr. Hastings charged him. I, who found that the Commons of Great Britain had received that very identical charge of Nundcomar, and given it to me in trust to make it good, did naturally, I hope excusably, (for that is the only ground upon which I stand,) endeavor to support that credit upon which the House acted. I hope I did so; and I hope that the goodness of that intention may excuse me, if I went a little too far on that occasion. I would have endeavored to support that credit, which it was much Mr. Hastings's interest to shake, and which he had before attempted to shake.

Your Lordships will have the goodness to suppose me now making my apology, and by no manner of means intending to persist either in this, or in anything which the House of Commons shall desire me not to declare in their name. But the House of Commons has not denied me the liberty to make you this just apology: God forbid they should! for they would be guilty of great injustice, if they did. The House of Commons, whom I represent, will likewise excuse me, their representative, whilst I have been endeavoring to support their characters in the face of the world, and to make an apology, and only an humble apology, for my conduct, for having considered that act in the light that I represented it,—and which I did merely from my private opinion, without any formal instruction from the House. For there is no doubt that the House is perfectly right, inasmuch as the House did neither formally instruct me nor at all forbid my making use of such an argument; and therefore I have given your Lordships the reason why it was fit to make use of such argument,—if it was right to make use of it. I am in the memory of your Lordships that I did conceive it to be relevant, and it was by the poverty of the language I was led to express my private feelings under the name of a murder. For, if the language had furnished me, under the impression of those feelings, with a word sufficient to convey the complicated atrocity of that act, as I felt it in my mind, I would not have made use of the word murder. It was on account of the language furnishing me with no other I was obliged to use that word. Your Lordships do not imagine, I hope, that I used that word in any other than a moral and popular sense, or that I used it in the legal and technical sense of the word murder. Your Lordships know that I could not bring before this bar any commoner of Great Britain on a charge for murder. I am not so ignorant of the laws and constitution of my country. I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime. What led me into that error? Nine years' meditation upon that subject.

My Lords, the prisoner at the bar in the year 1780 sent a petition to the House of Commons complaining of that very chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey. The House of Commons, who then had some trust in me, as they have some trust still, did order me, along with persons more wise and judicious than myself, several of whom stand near me, to make an inquiry into the state of the justice of that country. The consequence of that inquiry was, that we began to conceive a very bad opinion both of the complainant and defendant in that business,—that we found the English justice to be, as we thought it, and reported it to the House, a grievance, instead of a redress, to the people of India. I could bring before your Lordships, if I did not spare your patience, whole volumes of reports, whole bodies of evidence, which, in the progress we have made in the course of eight or nine years, brought to my mind such a conviction as will never be torn from my heart but with my life; and I should have no heart that was fit to lodge any honest sentiment, if I departed from my opinion upon that occasion. But when I declare my own firm opinion upon it,—when I declare the reasons that led me to it,—when I mention the long meditation that preceded my founding a judgment upon it, the strict inquiry, the many hours and days spent in consideration, collation, and comparison,—I trust that infirmity which could be actuated by no malice to one party or the other may be excused; I trust that I shall meet with this indulgence, when your Lordships consider, that, as far as you know me, as far as my public services for many years account for me, I am a man of a slow, laborious, inquisitive temper, that I do seldom leave a pursuit without leaving marks, perhaps of my weakness, but leaving marks of that labor, and that, in consequence of that labor, I made that affirmation, and thought the nature of the cause obliged me to support and substantiate it. It is true that those who sent me here have sagacity to decide upon the subject in a week; they can in one week discover the errors of my labors for nine years.

Now that I have made this apology to you, I assure you, you shall never hear me, either in my own name here, much less in the name of the Commons, urge one thing to you in support of the credit of Nundcomar grounded upon that judgment, until the House shall instruct and order me otherwise; because I know, that, when I can discover their sentiments, I ought to know nothing here but what is in strict and literal obedience to them.

My Lords, another thing might make me, perhaps, a little willing to be admitted to the proof of what I advanced, and that is, the very answer of Mr. Hastings to this charge, which the House of Commons, however, have adopted, and therefore in some degree purified. "To the malicious part of this charge, which is the condemnation of Nundcomar for a forgery, I do declare, in the most solemn and unreserved manner, that I had no concern, either directly or indirectly, in the apprehending, prosecuting, or executing of Nundcomar. He suffered for a crime of forgery which he had committed in a private trust that was delegated to him, and for which he had been prosecuted in the dewanny courts of the country before the institution of the Supreme Court of Judicature. To adduce this circumstance, therefore, as a confirmation of what was before suspicious from his general depravity of character, is just as reasonable as to assert that the accusations of Empson and Dudley were confirmed because they suffered death for their atrocious acts."

My Lords, this was Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons, and it is now in evidence before your Lordships. In this defence, he supposes the charge which was made originally before the Commons, and which the Commons voted, (though afterwards, for the convenience of shortening it, the affair was brought before your Lordships in the way in which it is,)—he supposes, I say, the whole to proceed from a malicious intention; and I hope your Lordships will not think, and I hope the Commons, reconsidering this matter, will not think, that, when such an imputation of malice was made for the purpose of repelling this corroborating argument which was used in the House of Commons to prove his guilt, I was wrong in attempting to support the House of Commons against his imputation of malice.

I must observe where I am limited and where I am not. I am limited, strictly, fully, (and your Lordships and my country, who hear me, will judge how faithfully I shall adhere to that limitation,) not to support the credit of Nundcomar by any allegation against Mr. Hastings respecting his condemnation or execution; but I am not at all limited from endeavoring to support his credit against Mr. Hastings's charges of other forgeries, and from showing you, what I hope to show you clearly in a few words, that Nundcomar cannot be presumed guilty of forgery with more probability than Mr. Hastings is guilty of bringing forward a light and dangerous (for I use no other words than a light and dangerous) charge of forgery, when it serves his purpose. Mr. Hastings charges Nundcomar with two other forgeries. "These two forgeries," he says, "are facts recorded in the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, and of a letter from the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah"; and therefore he infers malice in those who impute anything improper to him, knowing that the proof stood so. Here he asserts that there are records before the House of Commons, and on the Company's Proceedings and Consultations, proving Nundcomar to have been guilty of these two forgeries. Turn over the next page of his printed defence, and you find a very extraordinary thing. You would have imagined that this forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, which, he says, is recognized and proved on the Journals, was a forgery charged by Munny Begum herself, or by somebody on her part, or some person concerned in this business. There is no other charge of it whatever, but the charge of Warren Hastings himself. He wants you to discredit a man for forgery upon no evidence under heaven but that of his own, who thinks proper, without any sort of authority, without any sort of reference, without any sort of collateral evidence, to charge a man with that very direct forgery. "You are," he says, "well informed of the reasons which first induced me to give any share of my confidence to Nundcomar, with whose character I was acquainted by an experience of many years. The means which he himself took to acquire it were peculiar to himself. He sent a messenger to me at Madras, on the first news of my appointment to this Presidency, with pretended letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, the brother of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khân, filled with bitter invectives against Mahomed Reza Khân, and of as warm recommendations, as I recollect, of Nundcomar. I have been since informed by the Begum that the letter which bore her seal was a complete forgery, and that she was totally unacquainted with the use which had been made of her name till I informed her of it. Juggut Chund, Nundcomar's son-in-law, was sent to her expressly to entreat her not to divulge it. Mr. Middleton, whom she consulted on the occasion, can attest the truth of this story."

Mr. Middleton is dead, my Lords. This is not the Mr. Middleton whom your Lordships have heard and know well in this House, but a brother of that Mr. Middleton, who is since dead. Your Lordships find, when we refer to the records of the Company for the proof of this forgery, that there is no other than the unsupported assertion of Mr. Hastings himself that he was guilty of it. Now that was bad enough; but then hear the rest. Mr. Hastings has charged this unhappy man, whom we must not defend, with another forgery; he has charged him with a forgery of a letter from Yeteram ul Dowlah to Mr. Hastings. Now you would imagine that he would have given his own authority at least for that assertion, which he says was proved. He goes on and says, "I have not yet had the curiosity to inquire of the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah whether his letter was of the same stamp; but I cannot doubt it."

Now here he begins, in this very defence which is before your Lordships, to charge a forgery upon the credit of Munny Begum, without supporting it even by his own testimony,—and another forgery in the name of Yeteram ul Dowlah, which he said he had not even the curiosity to inquire into, and yet desires you, at the same time, to believe it to be proved. Good God! in what condition do men of the first character and situation in that country stand, when we have here delivered to us, as a record of the Company, Mr. Hastings's own assertions, saying that these forgeries were proved, though you have for the first nothing but his own unsupported assertion, and for the second his declaration only that he had not the curiosity to inquire into it! I am not forbidden by the Commons to state how and on what slight grounds Warren Hastings charges the natives of the country with forgery; neither am I forbidden to bring forward the accusation which Mr. Hastings made against Nundcomar for a conspiracy, nor the event of it, nor any circumstance relative to it. I shall therefore proceed in the best manner I can. There was a period, among the revolutions of philosophy, when there was an opinion, that, if a man lost one limb or organ, the strength of that which was lost retired into what was left. My Lords, if we are straitened in this, then our vigor will be redoubled in the rest, and we shall use it with double force. If the top and point of the sword is broken off, we shall take the hilt in our hand, and fight with whatever remains of the weapon against bribery, corruption, and peculation; and we shall use double diligence under any restraint which the wisdom of the Commons may lay upon us, or your Lordships' wisdom may oblige us to submit to.

Having gone through this business, and shown in what manner I am restrained, where I am not to repel Mr. Hastings's defence, and where I am left at large to do it, I shall submit to the strict injunction with the utmost possible humility, and enjoy the liberty which is left to me with vigor, with propriety, and with discretion, I trust.

My Lords, when the circumstance happened which has given occasion to the long parenthesis by which my discourse has been interrupted, I remember I was beginning to open to your Lordships the second period of Mr. Hastings's scheme and system of bribery. My Lords, his bribery is so extensive, and has had such a variety in it, that it must be distinguished not only with regard to its kind, but must be likewise distinguished according to the periods of bribery and the epochas of peculation committed by him. In the first of those periods we shall prove to your Lordships, I believe, without the aids that we hoped for, (your Lordships allowing, as I trust you will do, a good deal for our situation,)—we shall be able, I say, to prove that Mr. Hastings took, as a bribe for appointing Munny Begum, three lac and an half of rupees; we shall prove the taking at the same time the Rajeshaye bribes. Mr. Hastings at that time followed bribery in a natural manner: he took a bribe; he took it as large as he could; he concealed it as well as he could; and he got out of it by artifice or boldness, by use of trick or use of power, just as he was enabled: he acted like a wild, natural man, void of instruction, discipline, and art.

The second period opened another system of bribery. About this time he began to think (from what communication your Lordships may guess) of other means by which, when he could no longer conceal any bribe that he had received, he not only might exempt himself from the charge and the punishment of guilt, but might convert it into a kind of merit, and, instead of a breaker of laws, a violator of his trust, a receiver of scandalous bribes, a peculator of the first magnitude, might make himself to be considered as a great, distinguishing, eminent financier, a collector of revenue in new and extraordinary ways, and that we should thus at once praise his diligence, industry, and ingenuity. The scheme he set on foot was this: he pretended that the Company could not exist upon principles of strict justice, (for so he expresses it,) and that their affairs, in many cases, could not be so well accommodated by a regular revenue as by privately taking money, which was to be applied to their service by the person who took it, at his discretion. This was the principle he laid down. It would hardly be believed, I imagine, unless strong proof appeared, that any man could be so daring as to hold up such a resource to a regular government, which had three million of known, avowed, a great part of it territorial, revenue. But it is necessary, it seems, to piece out the lion's skin with a fox's tail,—to tack on a little piece of bribery and a little piece of peculation, in order to help out the resources of a great and flourishing state; that they should have in the knavery of their servants, in the breach of their laws, and in the entire defiance of their covenants, a real resource applicable to their necessities, of which they were not to judge, but the persons who were to take the bribes; and that the bribes thus taken were, by a mental reservation, a private intention in the mind of the taker, unknown to the giver, to be some time or other, in some way or other, applied to the public service. The taking such bribes was to become a justifiable act, in consequence of that reservation in the mind of the person who took them; and he was not to be called to account for them in any other way than as he thought fit.

My Lords, an act of Parliament passed in the year 1773, the whole drift of which, I may say, was to prevent bribery, peculation, and extortion in the Company's servants; and the act was penned, I think, with as much strictness and rigor as ever act was penned. The 24th clause of Chap. 63, 13 Geo. III., has the following enactment: "And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that, from and after the first day of August, 1774, no person holding or exercising any civil or military office under the crown, or the said United Company, in the East Indies, shall accept, receive, or take, directly or indirectly, by himself, or any other person or persons on his behalf, or for his use or benefit, of and from any of the Indian princes or powers, or their ministers or agents, or any of the natives of Asia, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, upon any account, or on any pretence whatsoever, or any promise or engagement for any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward: and if any person, holding or exercising any such civil or military office, shall be guilty of any such offence, and shall be thereof legally convicted," &c., &c. It then imposes the penalties: and your Lordships see that human wisdom cannot pen an act more strongly directed against taking bribes upon any pretence whatever.

This act of Parliament was in affirmance of the covenant entered into by the servants of the Company, and of the explicit orders of the Company, which forbid any person whatever in trust, "directly or indirectly, to accept, take, or receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive, any gift, reward, gratuity, allowance, donation, or compensation, in money, effects, jewels, or otherwise howsoever, from any of the Indian princes, sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants, or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees, &c., &c. And that he, the said Warren Hastings, shall and will convey, assign, and make over to the said United Company, for their sole and proper use and benefit, all and every such gifts, rewards, gratuities, allowances, donations, or compensations whatsoever, which, contrary to the true intent and meaning of these presents, shall come into the hands, possession, or power of the said Warren Hastings, or any other person or persons in trust for him or for his use."

The nature of the covenant, the act of Parliament, and the Company's orders are clear. First, they have not forbidden their Governor-General, nor any of their Governors, to take and accept from the princes of the country, openly and publicly, for their use, any territories, lands, sums of money, or other donations, which may be offered in consequence of treaty or otherwise. It was necessary to distinguish this from every other species of acceptance, because many occasions occurred in which fines were paid to the Company in consequence of treaties; and it was necessary to authorize the receipt of the same in the Company's treasury, as an open and known proceeding. It was never dreamed that this should justify the taking of bribes, privately and clandestinely, by the Governor, or any other servant of the Company, for the purpose of its future application to the Company's use. It is declared that all such bribes and money received should be the property of the Company. And why? As a means of recovering them out of the corrupt hands that had taken them. And therefore this was not a license for bribery, but a prohibitory and penal clause, providing the means of coercion, and making the prohibition stronger. Now Mr. Hastings has found out that this very coercive clause, which was made in order to enable his superiors to get at him and punish him for bribery, is a license for him to receive bribes. He is not only a practitioner of bribery, but a professor, a doctor upon the subject. His opinion is, that he might take presents or bribes to himself; he considers the penal clause which the Company attached to their prohibition, and by which all such bribes are constructively declared to be theirs, in order to recover them out of his hands, as a license to receive bribes, to extort money; and he goes with the very prohibition in his hand, the very means by which he was to be restrained, to exercise an unlimited bribery, peculation, and extortion over the unhappy natives of the country.

The moment he finds that the Company has got a scent of any one of his bribes, he comes forward and says, "To be sure, I took it as a bribe; I admit the party gave me it as a bribe: I concealed it for a time, because I thought it was for the interest of the Company to conceal it; but I had a secret intention, in my own mind, of applying it to their service: you shall have it; but you shall have it as I please, and when I please; and this bribe becomes sanctified the moment I think fit to apply it to your service." Now can it be supposed that the India Company, or that the act of Parliament, meant, by declaring that the property taken by a corrupt servant, contrary to the true intent of his covenant, was theirs, to give a license to take such property,—and that one mode of obtaining a revenue was by the breach of the very covenants which were meant to prevent extortion, peculation, and corruption? What sort of body is the India Company, which, coming to the verge of bankruptcy by the robbery of half the world, is afterwards to subsist upon the alms of peculation and bribery, to have its strength recruited by the violation of the covenants imposed upon its own servants? It is an odd sort of body to be so fed and so supported. This new constitution of revenue that he has made is indeed a very singular contrivance. It is a revenue to be collected by any officer of the Company, (for they are all alike forbidden, and all alike permitted,)—to be collected by any person, from any person, at any time, in any proportion, by any means, and in any way he pleases; and to be accounted for, or not to be accounted for, at the pleasure of the collector, and, if applied to their use, to be applied at his discretion, and not at the discretion of his employers. I will venture to say that such a system of revenue never was before thought of. The next part is an exchequer, which he has formed, corresponding with it. You will find the board of exchequer made up of officers ostensibly in the Company's service, of their public accountant and public treasurer, whom Mr. Hastings uses as an accountant and treasurer of bribes, accountable, not to the Company, but to himself, acting in no public manner, and never acting but upon his requisition, concealing all his frauds and artifices to prevent detection and discovery. In short, it is an exchequer in which, if I may be permitted to repeat the words I made use of on a former occasion, extortion is the assessor, in which fraud is the treasurer, confusion the accountant, oblivion the remembrancer. That these are not mere words, I will exemplify as I go through the detail: I will show you that every one of the things I have stated are truths, in fact, and that these men are bound by the condition of their recognized fidelity to Mr. Hastings to keep back his secrets, to change the accounts, to alter the items, to make him debtor or creditor at pleasure, and by that means to throw the whole system of the Company's accounts into confusion.

I have shown the impossibility of the Company's having intended to authorize such a revenue, much less such a constitution of it as Mr. Hastings has drawn from the very prohibitions of bribery, and such an exchequer as he has formed upon the principles I have stated. You will not dishonor the legislature or the Company, be it what it may, by thinking that either of them could give any sanction to it. Indeed, you will not think that such a device could ever enter into the head of any rational man. You are, then, to judge whether it is not a device to cover guilt, to prevent detection by destroying the means of it; and at the same time your Lordships will judge whether the evidence we bring you to prove that revenue is a mere pretext be not stronger than the strange, absurd reasons which he has produced for forming this new plan of an exchequer of bribery.

My Lords, I am now going to read to you a letter in which Mr. Hastings declares his opinion upon the operation of the act, which he now has found the means, as he thinks, of evading. My Lords, I will tell you, to save you a good deal of reading, that there was certain prize-money given by Sujah ul Dowlah to a body of the Company's troops serving in the field,—that this prize-money was to be distributed among them; but upon application being made to Mr. Hastings for his opinion and sanction in the distribution, Mr. Hastings at first seemed inclined to give way to it, but afterwards, upon reading and considering the act of Parliament, before he allowed the soldiery to receive this public donation, he thus describes his opinion of the operation of the act.

Extract of a Letter from Mr. Hastings to Colonel Champion, 31 August, 1774.

"Upon a reference to the new act of Parliament, I was much disappointed and sorry to find that our intentions were entirely defeated by a clause in the act, (to be in force after the 1st of August, 1774,) which divests us of the power to grant, and expressly prohibits the army to receive, the Nabob's intended donation. Agreeable to the positive sense of this clause, notwithstanding it is expressed individually, there is not a doubt but the army is included with all other persons in the prohibition from receiving presents or donations; a confirmation of which is, that in the clause of exceptions, wherein 'counsellors-at-law, physicians, surgeons, and chaplains are permitted to receive the fees annexed to their profession,' no mention whatever is made of any latitude given to the army, or any circumstances wherein it would be allowable for them to receive presents.... This unlucky discovery of an exclusion by act of Parliament, which admits of no abatement or evasion wherever its authority extends, renders a revisal of our proceedings necessary, and leaves no option to our decision. It is not like the ordinances of the Court of Directors, where a favorable construction may be put, and some room is left for the interposition of the authority vested in ourselves,—but positive and decisive, admitting neither of refinement nor misconstruction. I should be happy, if in this instance a method could be devised of setting the act aside, which I should most willingly embrace; but, in my opinion, an opposition would be to incur the penalty."

Your Lordships see, Mr. Hastings considered this act to be a most unlucky discovery: indeed, as long as it remained in force, it would have been unlucky for him, because it would have destroyed one of the principal sources of his illegal profits. Why does he consider it unlucky? Because it admits of no reservation, no exception, no refinement whatever, but is clear, positive, decisive. Now in what case was it that Mr. Hastings made this determination? In the case of a donation publicly offered to an army serving in the field by a prince then independent of the Company. If ever there was a circumstance in which any refinement, any favorable construction of the act could be used, it was in favor of a body of men serving in the field, fighting for their country, spilling their blood for it, suffering all the inconveniences of that climate. It was undoubtedly voluntarily offered to them by the party, in the height of victory, and enriched by the plunder of whole provinces. I believe your Lordships will agree with me, that, if any relaxation, any evasion, of an act of Parliament could be allowed, if the intention of the legislature could for a moment be trifled with, or supposed for a moment doubtful, it was in this instance; and yet, upon the rigor of the act, Mr. Hastings refuses that army the price of their blood, money won solely almost by their arms for a prince who had acquired millions by their bravery, fidelity, and sufferings. This was the case in which Mr. Hastings refused a public donation to the army; and from that day to this they have never received it.

If the receipt of this public donation could be thus forbidden, whence has Mr. Hastings since learned that he may privately take money, and take it not only from princes, and persons in power, and abounding in wealth, but, as we shall prove, from persons in a comparative degree of penury and distress? that he could take it from persons in office and trust, whose power gave them the means of ruining the people for the purpose of enabling themselves to pay it? Consider in what a situation the Company must be, if the Governor-General can form such a secret exchequer of direct bribes, given eo nomine as bribes, and accepted as such, by the parties concerned in the transaction, to be discovered only by himself, and with only the inward reservation that I have spoken of.

In the first place, if Mr. Hastings should die without having made a discovery of all his bribes, or if any other servant of the Company should imitate his example without his heroic good intentions in doing such villanous acts, how is the Company to recover the bribe-money? The receivers need not divulge it till they think fit; and the moment an informer comes, that informer is ruined. He comes, for instance, to the Governor-General and Council, and charges, say, not Mr. Hastings, but the head of the Board of Revenue, with receiving a bribe. "Receive a bribe? So I did; but it was with an intention of applying it to the Company's service. There I nick the informer: I am beforehand with him: the bribe is sanctified by my inward jesuitical intention. I will make a merit of it with the Company. I have received 40,000l. as a bribe; there it is for you: I am acquitted; I am a meritorious servant: let the informer go and seek his remedy as he can." Now, if an informer is once instructed that a person who receives bribes can turn them into merit, and take away his action from him, do you think that you ever will or can discover any one bribe? But what is still worse, by this method disclose but one bribe, and you secure all the rest that you possibly can receive upon any occasion. For instance, strong report prevails that a bribe of 40,000l. has been given, and the receiver expects that information will be laid against him. He acknowledges that he has received a bribe of 40,000l., but says that it was for the service of the Company, and that it is carried to their account. And thus, by stating that he has taken some money which he has accounted for, but concealing from whom that money came, which is exactly Mr. Hastings's case, if at last an information should be laid before the Company of a specific bribe having been received of 40,000l., it is said by the receiver, "Lord! this is the 40,000l. I told you of: it is broken into fragments, paid by instalments; and you have taken it and put it into your own coffers."

Again, suppose him to take it through the hand of an agent, such as Gunga Govind Sing, and that this agent, who, as we have lately discovered, out of a bribe of 40,000l., which Mr. Hastings was to have received, kept back half of it, falls into their debt like him: I desire to know what the Company can do in such a case. Gunga Govind Sing has entered into no covenants with the Company. There is no trace of his having this money, except what Mr. Hastings chooses to tell. If he is called upon to refund it to the Company, he may say he never received it, that he was never ordered to extort this money from the people; or if he was under any covenant not to take money, he may set up this defence: "I am forbidden to receive money; and I will not make a declaration which will subject me to penalties": or he may say in India, before the Supreme Court, "I have paid the bribe all to Mr. Hastings"; and then there must be a bill and suit there, a bill and suit here, and by that means, having one party on one side the water and the other party on the other, the Company may never come to a discovery of it. And that in fact this is the way in which one of his great bribe-agents has acted I shall prove to your Lordships by evidence.

Mr. Hastings had squeezed out of a miserable country a bribe of 40,000l., of which he was enabled to bring to the account of the Company only 20,000l., and of which we should not even have known the existence, if the inquiries pursued with great diligence by the House of Commons had not extorted the discovery: and even now that we know the fact, we can never get at the money; the Company can never receive it; and before the House had squeezed out of him that some such money had been received, he never once told the Court of Directors that his black bribe-agent, whom he recommended to their service, had cheated both them and him of 20,000l. out of the fund of the bribe-revenue. If it be asked, Where is the record of this? Record there is none. In what office is it entered? It is entered in no office; it is mentioned as privately received for the Company's benefit: and you shall now further see what a charming office of receipt and account this new exchequer of Mr. Hastings's is.

For there is another and a more serious circumstance attending this business. Every one knows, that, by the law of this, and, I believe, of every country, any money which is taken illegally from any person, as every bribe or sum of money extorted or paid without consideration is, belongs to the person who paid it, and he may bring his action for it, and recover it. Then see how the Company stands. The Company receives a bribe of 40,000l. by Mr. Hastings; it is carried to its account; it turns bribery into a revenue; it sanctifies it. In the mean time, the man from whom this money is illegally taken sues Mr. Hastings. Must not he recover of Mr. Hastings? Then, if so, must not Mr. Hastings recover it again from the Company? The Company undoubtedly is answerable for it. And here is a revenue which every man who has paid it may drag out of the treasury again. Mr. Hastings's donations of his bribes to the treasury are liable to be torn from it at pleasure by every man who gives the money. First it may be torn from him who receives it; and then he may recover it from the treasury, to which he has given it.

But admitting that the taking of bribes can be sanctified by their becoming the property of the Company, it may still be asked, For what end and purpose has the Company covenanted with Mr. Hastings that money taken extorsively shall belong to the Company? Is it that satisfaction and reparation may be awarded against the said Warren Hastings to the said Company for their own benefit? No: it is for the benefit of the injured persons; and it is to be carried to the Company's account, "but in trust, nevertheless, and to the intent that the said Company may and do render and pay over the moneys received or recovered by them to the parties injured or defrauded, which the said Company accordingly hereby agree and covenant to do." Now here is a revenue to be received by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use, applied at his discretion to that use, and which the Company has previously covenanted to restore to the persons that are injured and damaged. This is a revenue which is to be torn away by the action of any person,—a revenue which they must return back to the person complaining, as they in justice ought to do: for no nation ever avowed making a revenue out of bribery and peculation. They are, then, to restore it back again. But how can they restore it? Mr. Hastings has applied it: he has given it in presents to princes,—laid it out in budgeros,—in pen, ink, and wax,—in salaries to secretaries: he has laid it out just in any way he pleased: and the India Company, who have covenanted to restore all this money to the persons from whom it came, are deprived of all means of performing so just a duty. Therefore I dismiss the idea that any man so acting could have had a good intention in his mind: the supposition is too weak, senseless, and absurd. It was only in a desperate cause that he made a desperate attempt: for we shall prove that he never made a disclosure without thinking that a discovery had been previously made or was likely to be made, together with an exposure of all the circumstances of his wicked and abominable concealment.

You will see the history of this new scheme of bribery, by which Mr. Hastings contrived by avowing some bribes to cover others, attempted to outface his delinquency, and, if possible, to reconcile a weak breach of the laws with a sort of spirited observance of them, and to become infamous for the good of his country.

The first appearance of this practice of bribery was in a letter of the 29th of November, 1780. The cause which led to the discovery was a dispute between him and Mr. Francis at the board, in consequence of a very handsome offer made by Mr. Hastings to the board relative to a measure proposed by him, to which he found one objection to be the money that it would cost. He made the most generous and handsome offer, as it stands upon record, that perhaps any man ever made,—namely, that he would defray the expense out of his own private cash, and that he had deposited with the treasurer two lac of rupees. This was in June, 1780, and Mr. Francis soon after returned to Europe. I need not inform your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings had before this time been charged with bribery and peculation by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis. He suspected that Mr. Francis, then going to Europe, would confirm this charge by the suspicious nature and circumstances of this generous offer; and this suspicion was increased by the connection which he supposed, and which we can prove he thought, Mr. Francis had with Cheyt Sing. Apprehending, therefore, that he might discover and bring the bribe to light some way or other, he resolved to anticipate any such discovery by declaring, upon the 29th of November, that this money was not his own. I will mention to your Lordships hereafter the circumstances of this money. He says, "My present reason for adverting to my conduct," (that is, his offer of two lac of rupees out of his own private cash for the Company's service, upon the 26th of June, 1780,) "on the occasion I have mentioned, is to obviate the false conclusions or purposed misrepresentations which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation or as the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into your possession, was not my own,—that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means which were at that instant afforded me of accepting and converting it to the property and use of the Company: and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."

My Lords, you see what an account Mr. Hastings has given of some obscure transaction by which he contradicts the record. For, on the 26th of June, he generously, nobly, full of enthusiasm for their service, offers to the Company money of his own. On the 29th of November he tells the Court of Directors that the money he offered on the former day was not his own,—that his assertion was totally false,—that the money was not his,—that he had no right to receive it,—and that he would not have received it, but for the occasion, which prompted him to avail himself of the accidental means which at that instant offered.

Such is the account sent by their Governor in India, acting as an accountant, to the Company,—a company with whom everything is matter of account. He tells them, indeed, that the sum he had offered was not his own,—that he had no right to it,—and that he would not have taken it, if he had not been greatly tempted by the occasion; but he never tells them by what means he came at it, the person from whom he received it, the occasion upon which he received it, (whether justifiable or not,) or any one circumstance under heaven relative to it. This is a very extraordinary account to give to the public of a sum which we find to be somewhere above twenty thousand pounds, taken by Mr. Hastings in some way or other. He set the Company blindly groping in the dark by the very pretended light, the ignis-fatuus, which he held out to them: for at that time all was in the dark, and in a cloud: and this is what Mr. Hastings calls information communicated to the Company on the subject of these bribes.

You have heard of obscurity illustrated by a further obscurity,—obscurum per obscurius. He continues to tell them,—"Something of affinity to this anecdote may appear in the first aspect of another transaction, which I shall proceed to relate, and of which it is more immediately my duty to inform you." He then tells them that he had contrived to give a sum of money to the Rajah of Berar, and the account he gives of that proceeding is this. "We had neither money to spare, nor, in the apparent state of that government in its relation to ours, would it have been either prudent or consistent with our public credit to have afforded it. It was, nevertheless, my decided opinion that some aid should be given, not less as a necessary relief than as an indication of confidence, and a return for the many instances of substantial kindness which we had within the course of the two last years experienced from the government of Berar. I had an assurance that such a proposal would receive the acquiescence of the board; but I knew that it would not pass without opposition, and it would have become public, which might have defeated its purpose. Convinced of the necessity of the expedient, and assured of the sincerity of the government of Berar, from evidences of stronger proof to me than I could make them appear to the other members of the board, I resolved to adopt it and take the entire responsibility of it upon myself. In this mode a less considerable sum would suffice. I accordingly caused three lac of rupees to be delivered to the minister of the Rajah of Berar resident in Calcutta. He has transmitted it to Cuttack. Two thirds of this sum I have raised by my own credit, and shall charge it in my official accounts; the other third I have supplied from the cash in my hands belonging to the Honorable Company."

Your Lordships see in this business another mode which he has of accounting with the Company, and informing them of his bribe. He begins his account of this transaction by saying that it has something of affinity to the last anecdote,—meaning the account of the first bribe. An anecdote is made a head of an account; and this, I believe, is what none of your Lordships ever have heard of before,—and I believe it is yet to be learned in this commercial nation, a nation of accurate commercial account. The account he gives of the first is an anecdote; and what is his account of the second? A relation of an anecdote: not a near relation, but something of affinity,—a remote relation, cousin three or four times removed, of the half-blood, or something of that kind, to this anecdote: and he never tells them any circumstance of it whatever of any kind, but that it has some affinity to the former anecdote. But, my Lords, the thing which comes to some degree of clearness is this, that he did give money to the Rajah of Berar. And your Lordships will be so good as to advert carefully to the proportions in which he gave it. He did give him two lac of rupees of money raised by his own credit, his own money; and the third he advanced out of the Company's money in his hands. He might have taken the Company's money undoubtedly, fairly, openly, and held it in his hands, for a hundred purposes; and therefore he does not tell them that even that third was money he had obtained by bribery and corruption. No: he says it is money of the Company's, which he had in his hand. So that you must get through a long train of construction before you ascertain that this sum was what it turns out to be, a bribe, which he retained for the Company. Your Lordships will please to observe, as I proceed, the nature of this pretended generosity in Mr. Hastings. He is always generous in the same way. As he offered the whole of his first bribe as his own money, and afterward acknowledged that no part of it was his own, so he is now generous again in this latter transaction,—in which, however, he shows that he is neither generous nor just. He took the first money without right, and he did not apply it to the very service for which it was pretended to be taken. He then tells you of another anecdote, which, he says, has an affinity to that anecdote, and here he is generous again. In the first he appears to be generous and just, because he appears to give his own money, which he had a right to dispose of; then he tells you he is neither generous nor just, for he had taken money he had no right to, and did not apply it to the service for which he pretended to have received it. And now he is generous again, because he gives two lac of his own money,—and just, because he gives one lac which belonged to the Company; but there is not an idea suggested from whom he took it.

But to proceed, my Lords. In this letter he tells you he had given two thirds his own money and one third the Company's money. So it stood upon the 29th of November, 1780. On the 5th of January following we see the business take a totally different turn; and then Mr. Hastings calls for three Company's bonds, upon two different securities, antedated to the 1st and 2d of October, for the three lac, which he before told them was two thirds his own money and one third the Company's. He now declares the whole of it to be his own, and he thus applies by letter to the board, of which he himself was a majority.

"Honorable Sir and Sirs,—Having had occasion to disburse the sum of three lacs of sicca rupees on account of secret services, which having been advanced from my own private cash, I request that the same may be repaid to me in the following manner.

"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the second loan, bearing date from 1st October, for one lac of sicca rupees.

"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the first loan, bearing date from 1st October, for one lac of sicca rupees."

"A bond to be granted me upon the terms of the first loan, bearing date from the 2d October, for one lac of sicca rupees."

Here are two accounts, one of which must be directly and flatly false: for he could not have given two thirds his own, and have supplied the other third from money of the Company's, and at the same time have advanced the whole as his own. He here goes the full length of the fraud: he declares that it is all his own,—so much his own that he does not trust the Company with it, and actually takes their bonds as a security for it, bearing an interest to be paid to him when he thinks proper.

Thus it remained from the 5th of January, 1781, till 16th December, 1782, when this business takes another turn, and in a letter of his to the Company these bonds become all their own. All the money advanced is now, all of it, the Company's money. First he says two thirds were his own; next, that the whole is his own; and the third account is, that the whole is the Company's, and he will account to them for it.

Now he has accompanied this account with another very curious one. For when you come to look into the particulars of it, you will find there are three bonds declared to be the Company's bonds, and which refer to the former transactions, namely, the money for which he had taken the bonds; but when you come to look at the numbers of them, you will find that one of the three bonds which he had taken as his own disappears, and another bond, of another date, and for a much larger sum, is substituted in its place, of which he had never mentioned anything whatever. So that, taking his first account, that two thirds is his own money, then that it is all his own, in the third that it is all the Company's money, by a fourth account, given in a paper describing the three bonds, you will find that there is one lac which he does not account for, but substitutes in its place a bond before taken as his own. He sinks and suppresses one bond, he gives two bonds to the Company, and to supply the want of the third, which he suppresses, he brings forward a bond for another sum, of another date, which he had never mentioned before. Here, then, you have four different accounts: if any one of them is true, every one of the other three is totally false. Such a system of cogging, such a system of fraud, such a system of prevarication, such a system of falsehood, never was, I believe, before exhibited in the world.

In the first place, why did he take bonds at all from the Company for the money that was their own? I must be cautious how I charge a legal crime. I will not charge it to be forgery, to take a bond from the Company for money which was their own. He was employed to make out bonds for the Company, to raise money on their credit. He pretends he lent them a sum of money, which was not his to lend: but he gives their own money to them as his own, and takes a security for it. I will not say that it is a forgery, but I am sure it is an offence as grievous, because it is as much a cheat as a forgery, with this addition to it, that the person so cheating is in a trust; he violates that trust, and in so doing he defrauds and falsifies the whole system of the Company's accounts.

I have only to show what his own explanation of all these actions was, because it supersedes all observation of mine. Hear what prevaricating guilt says for the falsehood and delusion which had been used to cover it; and see how he plunges deeper and deeper upon every occasion. This explanation arose out of another memorable bribe, which I must now beg leave to state to your Lordships.

About the time of the receipt of the former bribes, good fortune, as good things seldom come singly, is kind to him; and when he went up and had nearly ruined the Company's affairs in Oude and Benares, he received a present of 100,000l. sterling, or thereabouts. He received bills for it in September, 1781, and he gives the Company an account of it in January, 1782. Remark in what manner the account of this money was given, and the purposes for which he intends to apply it. He says, in this letter, "I received the offer of a considerable sum of money, both on the Nabob's part and that of his ministers, as a present to myself, not to the Company: I accepted it without hesitation, and gladly, being entirely destitute both of means and credit, whether for your service or the relief of my own necessities." My Lords, upon this you shall hear a comment, made by some abler persons than me. This donation was not made in species, but in bills upon the house of Gopaul Doss, who was then a prisoner in the hands of Cheyt Sing. After mentioning that he took this present for the Company, and for their exigencies, and partly for his own necessities, and in consequence of the distress of both, he desires the Company, in the moment of this their greatest distress, to award it to him, and therefore he ends, "If you should adjudge the deposit to me, I shall consider it as the most honorable approbation and reward of my labors: and I wish to owe my fortune to your bounty. I am now in the fiftieth year of my life: I have passed thirty-one years in the service of the Company, and the greatest part of that time in employments of the highest trust. My conscience allows me boldly to claim the merit of zeal and integrity; nor has fortune been unpropitious to their exertions. To these qualities I bound my pretensions. I shall not repine, if you shall deem otherwise of my services; nor ought your decision, however it may disappoint my hope of a retreat adequate to the consequence and elevation of the office which I now possess, to lessen my gratitude for having been so long permitted to hold it, since it has at least enabled me to lay up a provision with which I can be contented in a more humble station."

And here your Lordships will be pleased incidentally to remark the circumstance of his condition of life and his fortune, to which he appeals, and upon account of which he desires this money. Your Lordships will remember that in 1773 he said, (and this I stated to you from himself,) that, if he held his then office for a very few years, he should be enabled to lay by an ample provision for his retreat. About nine years after that time, namely, in the month of January, 1782, he finds himself rather pinched with want, but, however, not in so bad a way but that the holding of his office had enabled him to lay up a provision with which he could be contented in a more humble station. He wishes to have affluence; he wishes to have dignity; he wishes to have consequence and rank: but he allows that he has competence. Your Lordships will see afterwards how miserably his hopes were disappointed: for the Court of Directors, receiving this letter from Mr. Hastings, did declare, that they could not give it to him, because the act had ordered that "no fees of office, perquisites, emoluments, or advantages whatsoever, should be accepted, received, or taken by such Governor-General and Council, or any of them, in any manner or on any account or pretence whatsoever"; "and as the same act further directs, 'that no Governor-General, or any of the Council, shall directly take, accept, or receive, of or from any person or persons, in any manner or on any account whatsoever, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, or any promise or engagement for any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward,' we cannot, were we so inclined, decree the amount of this present to the Governor-General. And it is further enacted, 'that any such present, gift, gratuity, donation, or reward, accepted, taken, or received, shall be deemed and construed to have been received to and for the sole use of the Company.'" And therefore they resolved, most unjustly and most wickedly, to keep it to themselves. The act made it in the first instance the property of the Company, and they would not give it him. And one should think this, with his own former construction of the act, would have made him cautious of taking bribes. You have seen what weight it had with him to stop the course of bribes which he was in such a career of taking in every place and with both hands.

Your Lordships have now before you this hundred thousand pounds, disclosed in a letter from Patna, dated the 20th January, 1782. You find mystery and concealment in every one of Mr. Hastings's discoveries. For (which is a curious part of it) this letter was not sent to the Court of Directors in their packet regularly, but transmitted by Major Fairfax, one of his agents, to Major Scott, another of his agents, to be delivered to the Company. Why was this done? Your Lordships will judge, from that circuitous mode of transmission, whether he did not thereby intend to leave some discretion in his agent to divulge it or not. We are told he did not; but your Lordships will believe that or not, according to the nature of the fact. If he had been anxious to make this discovery to the Directors, the regular way would have been to send his letter to the Directors immediately in the packet: but he sent it in a box to an agent; and that agent, upon due discretion, conveyed it to the Court of Directors. Here, however, he tells you nothing about the persons from whom he received this money, any more than he had done respecting the two former sums.

On the 2d of May following the date of this Patna letter he came down to Calcutta with a mind, as he himself describes it, greatly agitated. All his hope of plundering Benares had totally failed. The produce of the robbing of the Begums, in the manner your Lordships have heard, was all dissipated to pay the arrears of the armies: there was no fund left. He felt himself agitated and full of dread, knowing that he had been threatened with having his place taken from him several times, and that he might be called home to render an account. He had heard that inquiries had begun in a menacing form in Parliament; and though at that time Bengal was not struck at, there was a charge of bribery and peculation brought against the Governor of Madras. With this dread, with a mind full of anxiety and perturbation, he writes a letter, as he pretends, on the 22d of May, 1782. Your Lordships will remark, that, when he came down to Calcutta from his expedition up the country, he did not till the 22d of May give any account whatever of these transactions,—and that this letter, or pretended letter, of the 22d of May was not sent till the 16th of December following. We shall clearly prove that he had abundant means of sending it, and by various ways, before the 16th of December, 1782, when he inclosed in another letter that of the 22d of May. This is the letter of discovery; this is the letter by which his breast was to be laid open to his employers, and all the obscurity of his transactions to be elucidated. Here are indeed new discoveries, but they are like many new-discovered lands, exceedingly inhospitable, very thinly inhabited, and producing nothing to gratify the curiosity of the human mind.

This letter is addressed to the Honorable the Court of Directors, dated Fort William, 22d May, 1782. He tells them he had promised to account for the ten lacs of rupees which he had received, and this promise, he says, he now performs, and that he takes that opportunity of accounting with them likewise for several other sums which he had received. His words are,—

"This promise I now perform, and, deeming it consistent with the spirit of it, I have added such other sums as have been occasionally converted to the Company's property through my means, in consequence of the like original destination. Of the second of these sums you have already been advised in a letter which I had the honor to address the Honorable Court of Directors, dated 29th November, 1780. Both this and the third article were paid immediately to the treasury, by my order to the sub-treasurer to receive them on the Company's account, but never passed through my hands. The three sums for which bonds were granted were in like manner paid to the Company's treasury, without passing through my hands, but their application was not specified. The sum of 50,000 current rupees was received while I was on my journey to Benares, and applied as expressed in the account.

"As to the manner in which these sums have been expended, the reference which I have made of it in the accompanying account, to the several accounts in which they are credited, renders any other specification of it unnecessary,—besides that these accounts either have or will have received a much stronger authentication than any that I could give to mine."

I wish your Lordships to attend to the next paragraph, which is meant by him to explain why he took bribes at all,—why he took bonds for some of them, as moneys of his own, and not moneys of the Company,—why he entered some upon the Company's accounts, and why of the others he renders no account at all. Light, however, will beam upon you as we proceed.

"Why these sums were taken by me,—why they were, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use,—why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest,—might, were this matter exposed to the view of the public, furnish a variety of conjectures, to which it would be of little use to reply. Were your Honorable Court to question me on these points, I would answer, that the sums were taken for the Company's benefit, at times when the Company very much needed them,—that I either chose to conceal the first receipts from public curiosity by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design which my memory could at this distance of time verify, and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest. I trust, Honorable Sirs, to your breasts for a candid interpretation of my actions,—and assume the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such an occasion, entitled to it."

Lofty, my Lords! You see, that, after the Directors had expected an explanation for so long a time, he says, "Why these sums were taken by me, and, except the second, quietly transferred to the Company's use, I cannot tell; why bonds were taken for the first, and not for the rest, I cannot tell: if this matter were exposed to view, it would furnish a variety of conjectures." Here is an account which is to explain the most obscure, the most mysterious, the most evidently fraudulent transactions. When asked how he came to take these bonds, how he came to use these frauds, he tells you he really does not know,—that he might have this motive for it, that he might have another motive for it,—that he wished to conceal it from public curiosity,—but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. "You foolish Court of Directors may conjecture and conjecture on. You are asking me why I took bonds to myself for money of yours, why I have cheated you, why I have falsified my account in such a manner. I will not tell you."

In the satisfaction which he had promised to give them he neither mentions the persons, the times, the occasions, or motives for any of his actions. He adds, "I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the rest." For some purposes, he thought it necessary to use the most complicated and artful concealments; for some, he could not tell what his motives were; and for others, that it was mere carelessness. Here is the exchequer of bribery!—have I falsified any part of my original stating of it?—an exchequer in which the man who ought to pay receives, the man who ought to give security takes it, the man who ought to keep an account says he has forgotten; an exchequer in which oblivion was the remembrancer; and, to sum up the whole, an exchequer into the accounts of which it was useless to inquire. This is the manner in which the account of near two hundred thousand pounds is given to the Court of Directors. You can learn nothing in this business that is any way distinct, except a premeditated design of a concealment of his transactions. That is avowed.

But there is a more serious thing behind. Who were the instruments of his concealment? No other, my Lords, than the Company's public accountant. That very accountant takes the money, knowing it to be the Company's, and that it was only pretended to be advanced by Mr. Hastings for the Company's use. He sees Mr. Hastings make out bonds to himself for it, and Mr. Hastings makes him enter him as creditor, when in fact he was debtor. Thus he debauches the Company's accountant, and makes him his confederate. These fraudulent and corrupt acts, covered by false representations, are proved to be false not by collation with anything else, but false by a collation with themselves. This, then, is the account, and his explanation of it; and in this insolent, saucy, careless, negligent manner, a public accountant like Mr. Hastings, a man bred up a book-keeper in the Company's service, who ought to be exact, physically exact, in his account, has not only been vicious in his own account, but made the public accounts vicious and of no value.

But there is in this account another curious circumstance with regard to the deposit of this sum of money, to which he referred in his first paragraph of his letter of the 29th of November, 1780. He states that this deposit was made and passed into the hands of Mr. Larkins on the 1st of June. It did so; but it is not entered in the Company's accounts till November following. Now in all that intermediate space where was it? what account was there of it? It was entirely a secret between Mr. Larkins and Mr. Hastings, without a possibility of any one discovering any particular relative to it. Here is an account of two hundred thousand pounds received, juggled between the accountant and him, without a trace of it appearing in the Company's books. Some of those committees, to whom, for their diligence at least, I must say the public have some obligation, and in return for which they ought to meet with some indulgence, examining into all these circumstances, and having heard that Mr. Hastings had deposited a sum of money in the hands of the Company's sub-treasurer in the month of June, sent for the Company's books. They looked over those books, but they did not find the least trace of any such sum of money, and not any account of it: nor could there be, because it was not paid to the Company's account till the November following. The accountant had received the money, but never entered it from June till November. Then, at last, have we an account of it. But was it even then entered regularly upon the Company's accounts? No such thing: it is a deposit carried to the Governor-General's credit.

[The entry of the several species in which this deposit was made was here read from the Company's General Journal of 1780 and 1781.]

My Lords, when this account appears at last, when this money does emerge in the public accounts, whose is it? Is it the Company's? No: Mr. Hastings's. And thus, if, notwithstanding this obscure account in November, the Directors had claimed and called for this affinity to an anecdote,—if they had called for this anecdote and examined the account,—if they had said, "We observe here entered two lac and upwards; come, Mr. Hastings, let us see where this money is,"—they would find that it is Mr. Hastings's money, not the Company's; they would find that it is carried to his credit. In this manner he hands over this sum, telling them, on the 22d of May, 1782, that not only the bonds were a fraud, but the deposit was a fraud, and that neither bonds nor deposit did in reality belong to him. Why did he enter it at all? Then, afterwards, why did he not enter it as the Company's? Why make a false entry, to enter it as his own? And how came he, two years after, when he does tell you that it was the Company's and not his own, to alter the public accounts? But why did he not tell them at that time, when he pretends to be opening his breast to the Directors, from whom he received it, or say anything to give light to the Company respecting it? who, supposing they had the power of dispensing with an act of Parliament, or licensing bribery at their pleasure, might have been thereby enabled to say, "Here you ought to have received it,—there it might be oppressive and of dreadful example."

I have only to state, that, in this letter, which was pretended to be written on the 22d of May, 1782, your Lordships will observe that he thinks it his absolute duty (and I wish to press this upon your Lordships, because it will be necessary in a comparison which I shall have hereafter to make) to lay open all their affairs to them, to give them a full and candid explanation of his conduct, which he afterwards confesses he is not able to do. The paragraph has been just read to you. It amounts to this: "I have taken many bribes,—have falsified your accounts,—have reversed the principle of them in my own favor; I now discover to you all these my frauds, and think myself entitled to your confidence upon this occasion." Now all the principles of diffidence, all the principles of distrust, nay, more, all the principles upon which a man may be convicted of premeditated fraud, and deserve the severest punishment, are to be found in this case, in which he says he holds himself to be entitled to their confidence and trust. If any of your Lordships had a steward who told you he had lent you your own money, and had taken bonds from you for it, and if he afterwards told you that that money was neither yours nor his, but extorted from your tenants by some scandalous means, I should be glad to know what your Lordships would think of such a steward, who should say, "I will take the freedom to add, that I think myself, on such a subject, on such an occasion, entitled to your confidence and trust." You will observe his cavalier mode of expression. Instead of his exhibiting the rigor and severity of an accountant and a book-keeper, you would think that he had been a reader of sentimental letters; there is such an air of a novel running through the whole, that it adds to the ridicule and nausea of it: it is an oxymel of squills; there is something to strike you with horror for the villany of it, something to strike you with contempt for the fraud of it, and something to strike you with utter disgust for the vile and bad taste with which all these base ingredients are assorted.

Your Lordships will see, when the account which is subjoined to this unaccountable letter comes before you, that, though the Company had desired to know the channels through which he got those sums, there is not (except by a reference that appears in another place to one of the articles) one single syllable of explanation given from one end to the other, there is not the least glimpse of light thrown upon these transactions. But we have since discovered from whom he got these bribes; and your Lordships will be struck with horror, when you hear it.

I have already remarked to you, that, though this letter is dated upon the 22d of May, it was not dispatched for Europe till December following; and he gets Mr. Larkins, who was his agent and instrument in falsifying the Company's accounts, to swear that this letter was written upon the 22d of May, and that he had no opportunity to send it, but by the "Lively" in December. On the 16th of that month he writes to the Directors, and tells them that he is quite shocked to find he had no earlier opportunity of making this discovery, which he thought himself bound to make; though this discovery, respecting some articles of it, had now been delayed nearly two years, and though it since appears that there were many opportunities, and particularly by the "Resolution," of sending it. He was much distressed, and found himself in an awkward situation, from an apprehension that the Parliamentary inquiry, which he knew was at this time in progress, might have forced from him this notable discovery. He says, "I do not fear the consequences of any Parliamentary process." Indeed, he needed not to fear any Parliamentary inquiry, if it produced no further discovery than that which your Lordships have in the letter of the 22d of May, and in the accounts subjoined to it. He says, that "the delay is of no public consequence; but it has produced a situation which, with respect to myself, I regard as unfortunate, because it exposes me to the meanest imputation, from the occasion which the late Parliamentary inquiries have since furnished."

Now here is a very curious letter, that I wish to have read for some other reasons, which will afterwards appear, but principally at present for the purpose of showing you that he held it to be his duty and thought it to the last degree dishonorable not to give the Company an account of those secret bribes: he thought it would reflect upon him, and ruin his character forever, if this account did not come voluntarily from him, but was extorted by terror of Parliamentary inquiry. In this letter of the 16th December, 1782, he thus writes.