The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12)

XXVIII. That the said Warren Hastings, on a reconciliation with Mr. Francis, one of the Council-General, who made it a condition thereof that certain of the Company's orders should be obeyed, and that Mahomed Reza Khân should be restored to his offices, did, a considerable time after, notwithstanding the pretended reluctance of the Nabob, and his pretended freedom, make, for his convenience in the said accommodation, the arrangement which he had unwarrantably and illegally refused to the orders of the Court of Directors, and did of his own authority and that of the board restore Mahomed Reza Khân to his offices.

XXIX. That soon after the departure of the said Mr. Francis he did again deprive the said Mahomed Reza Khân of his said offices, and did make several great changes in the constitution of the criminal justice in the said country; and after having, under pretence of the Nabob's sufficiency for the management of his own affairs, displaced, without any specific charge, trial, or inquiry whatsoever, the said Mahomed Reza Khân, he did submit the said Nabob to the entire direction, in all parts of his concerns, of a Resident of his own nomination, Sir John D'Oyly, Baronet, and did order an account of the most minute parts of his domestic economy to be made out, and to be delivered to the said Sir John D'Oyly, in the following words, contained in a paper by him intituled, INSTRUCTIONS from the Governor-General to the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah respecting his conduct in the management of his affairs. "You will be pleased to direct your mutseddies to form an account of the fixed sums of your monthly expenses, such as servants' wages in the different departments, pensions, and other allowances, as well as of the estimated amount of variable expenses, to be delivered to Sir John D'Oyly for my inspection. I have given such orders to Sir John D'Oyly as will enable him to propose to you such reductions of the pensions and other allowances, and such a distribution of the variable expenses, as shall be proportionable to the total sum of your monthly income; and I must request you will conform to it." And he did, in the subsequent articles of his said instructions, order the whole management to be directed by Sir John D'Oyly, subject to his own directions as aforesaid; and did even direct what company he should keep; and did throw reflections on some persons, in places the nearest to him, as of bad character and base origin,—persons whom he should decline to name as such, "unless he heard that they still availed themselves of his goodness to retain the places which they improperly hold near his person." And he did particularly order the said Nabob not to admit any English, but such as the said Sir John D'Oyly should approve, to his presence; and did repeat the said order in the following peremptory manner: "You must forbid any person of that nation to be intruded into your presence without his introduction." And he did require his obedience in the following authoritative style: "I shall think myself obliged to interfere in another manner, if you neglect it."

XXX. That he, the said Warren Hastings, did insult the captive condition of the said Nabob by informing him, in his imperious instructions aforesaid, that this total, blind, and implicit obedience, in every respect whatsoever, to Sir John D'Oyly and himself personally, and without any reference to the board, "was the very conditions of the compliance of the Governor-General and Council with his late requisition"; which requisition was, that he should enjoy the free and uncontrolled management of his own affairs. And though the said captive did offer, as he, the said Hastings, himself admits, four lacs of his stipend, at that time reduced to sixteen lac, for the free use of the remainder, yet he did place him, the said Nabob, in the state of servitude in the said instructions laid down but a very short time after he had assumed and used the said Nabob's independent rights as a ground for refusing to obey the Company's orders,—and although he has declared, or pretended, on another occasion, which he would have thought similar, that any attempt to limit the household expenses of the Nabob of Oude was an indignity, "which no man living, however mean his rank in life, or dependent his condition in it, would permit to be exercised by any other, without the want or forfeiture of every manly principle."

XXXI. That the said Warren Hastings did order the said stipend (which was to be distributed, in the minutest particular, according to the said Hastings's personal directions) to be paid monthly, not to any officer of the Nabob, but to the said Resident, Sir John D'Oyly. And whereas the Governor-General and Council did, on the appointment of Mahomed Reza Khân, according to their duty, instruct him, that "he do conform to the orders of the Company, which direct that an annual account of the Nabob's expenses be transmitted through the Resident at the Durbar, for the inspection of this board" the said Hastings, in making his new establishment in favor of his Resident, did wholly omit the said instruction, and did confine the said communication to himself, privately. And in fact it does not appear that any account whatsoever of the disposition of the said large sum, exceeding 160,000l. sterling a year, has been laid before the board, or at least that any such account has been transmitted to the Court of Directors; and it is not fitting that any British servant of the Company should have the management of any public money, much less of so great a sum, without a public well-vouched account of the specific expenditure thereof.

XXXII. That the Court of Directors did, on the 17th of May, 1766, propose certain rules for regulating the correspondence of the Resident with the Nabob of Bengal, in which they did direct, as a principle for the said regulations, as follows (paragraph 16th). "We would have his correspondence to be carried on with the Select Committee through the channel of the President: he should keep a diary of all his transactions. His correspondence with the natives must be publicly conducted: copies of all his letters, sent and received, be transmitted monthly to the Presidency, with duplicates and triplicates to be transmitted home in our general packet by every ship."

XXXIII. That the President and Select Committee (Lord Clive being then President) did approve of the whole substantial part of the said regulation (the diary excepted); and the principle, in all matters of account, ought to have been strictly adhered to, whatever limitations may have been given to the office of Resident. Yet he, the said Warren Hastings, in defiance of the aforesaid good rules, orders, and late precedent in conformity to the same, did not only withhold any order for the purpose, but, in order to carry on the business of the said durbar in a clandestine manner for his own purposes, did, as aforesaid, exclude all English from an intercourse with the Nabob, who might carry complaints or representations to the board, or the Court of Directors, of his condition, or the conduct of the Resident,—and did further, to defeat all possible publicity, insinuate to him to give the preference to verbal communication above letters, in the words following, of the ninth article of his instructions to the Nabob: "Although I desire to receive your letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur which cannot be so easily explained by letters as by conversation, I desire that you will on such occasions give your orders to him respecting such points as you may desire to have imparted to me; and I, postponing every other concern, will give an immediate and the most satisfactory reply concerning them." Accordingly, no relation whatsoever has been received by the Court of Directors of the said Nabob's affairs, nor any account of the money monthly paid, except from public fame, which reports that his affairs are in groat disorder, his servants unpaid, and many of them dismissed, and all the Mussulmen dependent on his family in a state of indigence.

XVIII.—THE MOGUL DELIVERED UP TO THE MAHRATTAS

I. That Shah Allum, the prince commonly called the Great Mogul, or, by eminence, The King, is, or lately was, in the possession of the ancient capital of Hindostan, and though without any considerable territory, and without a revenue sufficient to maintain a moderate state, he is still much respected and considered, and the custody of his person is eagerly sought by many of the princes in India, on account of the use to be made of his title and authority; and it was for the interest of the East India Company, that, while on one hand no wars shall be entered into in support of his pretensions, on the other no steps should be taken which may tend to deliver him into the hands of any of the powerful states of that country, but that he should be treated with friendship, good faith, and respectful attention.

II. That Warren Hastings, in contradiction to this safe, just, and honorable policy, strongly prescribed and enforced by the orders of the Court of Directors, did, at a time when he was engaged in a negotiation the declared purpose of which was to give peace to India, concur with the captain-general of the Mahratta state, called Mahdajee Sindia, in hostile designs against the few remaining territories of that same Mogul emperor, by virtue of whose grant the Company actually possess the government and enjoy the revenues of great provinces, and also against the possessions of a Mahomedan chief called Nudjif Khân, a person of much merit with the East India Company, in acknowledgment of which they had granted him a pension, included in the tribute due to the king, and, together with that tribute, taken from him by the said Warren Hastings, though expressly guarantied to him by the Company. With both these powers the Company had been in friendship, and were actually at peace at the time of the said clandestine concurrence in a design against them; and the said Hastings hath since declared, that the right of one of them, namely, "the right of the Mogul emperor, to our assistance, has been constantly acknowledged."

III. That the said Warren Hastings, at the time of his treacherous concurrence in a design against a power which he was himself of opinion we were bound to assist, and against whom there was no doubt he was bound neither to form nor to concur in any hostile attempt, did give a caution to Colonel Muir, to whom the negotiation aforesaid was intrusted on the part of the Company, against "inserting anything in the treaty which might expressly mark our knowledge of his [the Mahratta general's] views, or concurrence in them." Which said transaction was full of duplicity and fraud; and the crime of the said Hastings therein is aggravated by his having some years before withheld the tribute which by treaty was solemnly agreed to be paid to the said king, on pretence that he had thrown himself, for the recovery of his city of Delhi, on the protection of the Mahrattas, whom the said Warren Hastings then called the natural enemies of the Company, and the growth of whose power he then alleged to be highly dangerous to the interests of this kingdom in India.

IV. That, after having concurred, in the manner before mentioned, in a design of the Mahrattas against the Mogul, and notwithstanding he, the said Warren Hastings, had formerly declared, "that with him [the Mogul] our connection had been a long time suspended, and he wished never to see it renewed, as it had proved a fatal drain to the wealth of Bengal and the treasury of the Company, without yielding one advantage or possible resource, even of remote benefits, in return," the said Warren Hastings did nevertheless, on or about the month of March, 1783, with the privity and consent of the members of the board, but by no authoritative act, dispatch, as agents of him, the Governor-General only, and not as agents of the Governor-General and Council, as they ought to have been, certain persons, among whom were Major Browne and Major Davy, to the court of the king at Delhi, and did there enter into certain engagements with the said king by the means of those agents, and did carry on certain private and dangerous intrigues for various purposes, particularly for making war in favor of the said king against some powers or princes not precisely described, but which, as may be inferred from a subsequent correspondence, were certain Mahomedan princes in the neighborhood of Delhi in amity with the Company, and some of them at that time in the actual service and in the apparent confidence and favor of the said Mogul; and he did order Major Browne to offer to the Mogul king to provide for the entire expense of any troops the Shah [the said king] might require; and the proposal was accordingly accepted, with the conditions annexed: by which proposal and acceptance thereof the East India Company was placed in a situation of great and perplexing difficulty; since either they were to engage, at an unlimited expense, in new wars, contrary to their orders, contrary to their general declared policy, and contrary to the published resolutions of the House of Commons, and wholly incompatible with the state of their finances, or, to preserve peace, they must risk the imputation of a new violation of faith, by departing from an agreement made on the voluntary proposal of their own government,—the agent of the said Hastings having declared, in his letter to the said Hastings, by him communicated to the board, "that the business of assisting the Shah [the Mogul emperor] can and must go on, if we wish to be secure in India, or regarded as a nation of faith and honor."

V. That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 20th day of January, 1784, send in circulation to the other members of the Council a letter to him from his agent, Major Browne, dated at Delhi, on the 30th of December, 1783, viz., that letter to which the foregoing references are made, in which the said Browne did directly press, and indirectly (though sufficiently and strongly) suggest, several highly dangerous measures for realizing the general offers and engagements of the said Warren Hastings,—proposing, that, besides a proportion of field artillery, and a train of battering cannon for the purpose of sieges, six regiments of sepoys in the Company's service should be transferred to that of the said king, and that certain other corps should also be raised for the said service in the English provinces and dependencies, to be immediately under the king's [the Mogul's] orders, and to be maintained by assignments of territorial revenue within the province of Oude, a dependent member of the British government, but with a caution against having any British officer with the same; the said Major Browne expressing his caution as followeth: "If any European officer be with this corps, a very nice judgment indeed must direct the choice; for scarce any are in the smallest degree fit for such employ, but much more likely to do harm than good." And the letter aforesaid being without any observation thereon, or any disavowal of the matters of fact or of the counsels so strongly and authoritatively delivered therein by the said Warren Hastings's agent, and without any mark of disapprobation of any part of his plan, whether that of the assignment of territory belonging to the Company's allies for the maintenance of troops which were to be by that plan put under the orders of a foreign independent power, or that of employing the said troops without any British officer with them, or for his alarming observation by him entered on the Company's records, which, if not an implied censure on the nature of the service in which British officers are supposed improper to be trusted, is a strong reflection on the character of the British officers, which was to render them unfit to be employed in an honorable service,—the said Warren Hastings did thereby give a countenance to the said unwarrantable and dangerous proposals and reflections.

VI. That a considerable time before the production and circulation of Major Browne's letter, the said Hastings did enter a Minute of Consultation containing a proposition similar in the general intent to that in the said letter contained for assisting the Mogul with a military force; but the other members of the board did disagree thereto, and, being alarmed at the disposition so strongly shown by the said Hastings to engage in new wars and dangerous foreign connections, and possibly having intelligence of the proceedings of his agent, did call upon him to produce his instructions to Major Browne; and he did, on the 5th of October, 1783, and not before, enter on the Consultations a certain paper purporting to be the instructions which he had given to Major Browne the preceding March, the time of his, the said Browne's, appointment, in which pretended instructions no direction whatsoever was given to the effect of his, the said Hastings's, Minute of Consultation propounded: that is to say, no power was given in the said instructions to make a direct offer of military aid to the Mogul, or to form the arrangements stated by the said Browne, in his letter to the said Hastings, as having been made by the express authority of the said Hastings himself; but the said instructions contained nothing further on that subject but a conditional direction, that, in case a military force should be required for the Mogul's aid or protection, the Major is to know the service on which it is to be employed, and the resources from whence it is to be paid; and the instructions produced as his real instructions by the said Hastings are so guarded as to caution the said Browne against taking any part in the intrigues of those who are about the King's person. By which letters, instructions, and transactions, compared with each other, it appears that the said Warren Hastings, after six months' delay in entering of (contrary to the Company's order) any instructions to the said Browne, did at last enter a false paper as the true, or that he did give other secret instructions, totally different from, and even opposite to, his public ostensible instructions, thereby to deceive the Council, and to carry on with less obstruction dark and dangerous intrigues, contrary to the orders of the Court of Directors, to the true policy of this kingdom, and to the safety of the British possessions in the East.

VII. That the said letter from Major Browne was by the said Warren Hastings transmitted to the Court of Directors, without being accompanied by any part of the previous correspondence; by which wilful concealment the said Warren Hastings is guilty of an high and criminal disrespect to the Court of Directors, and of a most flagrant breach and violation of their orders, which he was bound by an act of Parliament to obey.

VIII. That the said Hastings having early in the year 1784 procured to himself a deputation to act in the upper provinces, the Council, being well aware of his disposition to engage in unwarrantable designs against the neighboring states, did expressly confine his powers to the circumstance of his actual residence within the Company's provinces. But it appears that ways were found out by which he hoped to defeat the precautions of the board: for the said Warren Hastings did write from Lucknow, the capital of the country of Oude, to the Court of Directors, a certain postscript of a letter, dated the 4th of May, 1784, in which he informs the Court that the son and heir-apparent of the Great Mogul had taken refuge with him and the Nabob of Oude; that he had a conference with that prince on the 10th of the same month of May, "no person being either present or within hearing" during the same; and that in the said conference the prince had informed him of the distresses of his father, and his wish for the relief of the king and the restoration of the dominions of his house, as well as to rescue him from the power of certain persons not named, who degraded him into a mere instrument of their interested and sordid designs, and that, on a failure of his application to him, he would either return to his father, or proceed to Calcutta, and thence to England; and that the said Warren Hastings did give him an answer to the following effect: "That our [the British] government had just obtained relief from a state of universal warfare, and required a term of repose; that our whole nation was weary of war, and dreaded the renewal of it, and would he equally alarmed at any movement of which it could not see the issue or progress, but which might eventually tend to create new hostilities; that he came hither [to Lucknow] with a limited authority, and could not, if he chose it, engage in a business of that nature without the concurrence of his colleagues in office, who he believed would be adverse to it; that he would represent the same to the joint members of his own government, and wait their determination. In the mean time he advised the prince to make advances to Mahdajee Sindia, both because our government was in intimate and sworn connection with him, and because he was the effectual head of the Mahratta state; besides that he [the said Warren Hastings] feared his [Sindia's] taking the other side of the question, unless he was early prevented."

IX. That in the statement of this discourse there is much criminal reserve towards the Court of Directors,—it not appearing distinctly what the objects were, nor who the persons concerned, nor what the side was which he apprehended the Mahrattas might take, if not prevented by his advances; and in the discourse itself there were many particulars highly criminal, namely,—for that in the said conversation, in which he describes himself as declining a compliance with the request of the prince on account of the aversion (therein strongly expressed) of his colleagues, of the Company, and of the whole British nation, to engage in any measures which might even "eventually lead to hostilities," he spoke to the prince as if he had been entirely ignorant of the offers which but five months before had been made to the king, his father, on the part of that very government, (whose repugnance to such measures he then for the first time chose to profess, but which he always had known,) through Major Browne, the Company's representative at the court of Delhi, "to provide for the entire expense of any troops which the Shah [the king] might require," and that this was "what the Resident had always proposed to the king and his confidential ministers,"—the said Browne further declaring, "that, if, in consequence of the said proposals, certain arrangements for the Shah's service by troops were not immediately ordered, in his opinion all our [English government's] offers and promises will be considered as false and insidious." This being the known state of the business, as represented by the said Hastings's own agent, and this the public opinion of it, although to impose on the ignorance of the prince with regard to the proceedings at his father's court would have been unworthy in itself, yet he, the said Warren Hastings, could not hope to succeed in such imposition, as in the postscript aforesaid he represents the said prince (who was the king's eldest son, and thirty-six years of age) as a person of considerable qualifications, and perfectly acquainted with the transactions at his father's court, and as one who had long held the principal and most active part in the little that remained of the administration of Shah Allum. And the said Hastings conferring with a prince so well instructed, without making the slightest allusions to his said positive and recent engagements, or without giving any explanation with regard to them, the said Warren Hastings must appear to the said prince either as a person not only contracting engagements, but actually being the first mover and proposer of them, without any authority from his colleagues, and against theirs and the general inclination of the British nation, and on that ground not to be trusted, or that he had used this plea of disagreement between him and his Council as a pretence, set up without color or decency, for a gross violation of his own engagements, leaving the princes and states of the country no solid ground on which they can or ought to contract with the Company, to the utter destruction of all public confidence, and to the equal disgrace of the national candor, integrity, and wisdom.

X. That in a letter dated from the same place, Lucknow, the 16th of the following June, 1784, the said Warren Hastings informs the Court of Directors, that Major Browne, their agent to the Mogul, had arrived there in the character also of agent from the Mogul, with two sets of instructions from two opposite parties in his ministry, which instructions were directly contrary to each other: the first, which were the ostensible instructions, being to engage the said Hastings, in the Mogul's name, to enter into a treaty of mutual alliance with a chief of the country, then minister to the said Mogul, called Afrasaib Khân; the second were from another principal person, called Mudjed ul Dowlah, also a minister of the said Mogul, (but styled in the said letter confidential, for distinction,) which were directly destructive of the former; and the said latter instructions, to which it seems credence was to be given, were sent "under the most solemn adjurations of secrecy." The purpose of these latter and secret instructions was to require the Company's aid in freeing the Mogul from the oppressions of his servants, namely, from the oppressions of the said Afrasaib, between whom and the Company Major Browne (at once agent to that Company, and to two opposite factions in the Mogul's court) accepted a power to make a treaty of mutual alliance under the sanction of his sovereign. And it does not appear that he, Warren Hastings, did discountenance the double-dealing and fraudulent agencies of his and the Company's minister at that court, or did disavow any particular in the letter from him, the said Browne, of the 30th of December, 1783, stating the offers made on his part to the Mogul, so contradictory to his late declarations to the heir-apparent of that monarch, or did give any reprimand to the said Browne, or did show any mark of displeasure against him, as having acted without orders, but did again send him, with renewed confidence, to the court aforesaid.

XI. That the said Warren Hastings, still pursuing his said evil designs, did apply to the Council for discretionary powers relative to the intrigues and factions in the Mogul's court, giving assurances of his resolution not to proceed against their sense; but the said Council, being fully aware of his disposition, and having Major Browne's letter, recorded by himself, the said Warren Hastings, before them, did refuse to grant the said discretionary powers, but, on the contrary, did exhort him "most sedulously and cautiously to avoid, in his correspondence with the different princes in India, whatever may commit, or be strained into an interpretation of committing the Company, either as to their army or treasure,"—observing, "that the Company's orders are positive against their interference in the objects of dispute between the country powers."

XII. That, in order to subvert the plain and natural interpretation given by the Council to the orders of the Court of Directors, and to justify his dangerous intrigues, the said Warren Hastings, in his letter of the 16th June, 1784, to the said Court, did, in a most insolent and contemptuous manner, endeavor to persuade them of their ignorance of the true sense of their own orders, and to limit their prohibition of interference with the disputes of the country powers to such country powers as are permanent,—expressing himself as follows: "The faction which now surrounds the throne [the Mogul's throne] is widely different from the idea which your commands are intended to convey by the expressions to which you have generally applied them, of country powers, to which that of permanency is a necessary adjunct, and which may be more properly compared to a splendid bubble, which the slightest breath of opposition may dissipate with every trace of its existence." By which construction the said Hastings did endeavor to persuade the Court of Directors that they meant to confine their prohibition of sinister intrigues to those powers only who could not be easily hurt by them, and whose strength was such that their resentment of such clandestine interference was to be dreaded; but that, where the powers were weak and fragile, such intrigues might be allowed.

XIII. That the said Hastings, further to persuade the Court of Directors to involve themselves in the affairs of the Mogul, and to reconcile this measure with his former conduct and declared opinions, did write to them to the following effect: That "at that former period to which the ancient policy with regard to the Mogul applied, the king's authority was sufficiently respected" (which he knew not to be true,—having himself declared, in his minute of the 25th of October, 1774, "that he remained at Delhi, the ancient capital of the empire, a mere cipher in the administration of it") to maintain itself against common vicissitudes; that he would not have advised interference, if the king himself retained the exercise of it, however feeble, in his own hands; that, if it [the Mogul's authority] is suffered to receive its final extinction, it is impossible to foresee what power may arise out of its ruins, or what events may be linked in the same chain of revolution with it: but your interests may suffer by it, your reputation certainly will, as his right to our assistance has been constantly acknowledged, and by a train of consequences to which our government has not intentionally given birth, but most especially by the movements which its influence, by too near an approach, has excited, it has unfortunately become the efficient instrument of a great portion of the king's present distresses and dangers,—intimating (as well as the studied obscurity of his expressions will permit anything to be discerned) that his own late intrigues had been among the causes of the distresses and dangers, which by new intrigues he did pretend to remove: and he did conclude this part of his letter with some loose general expressions of his caution not to affect the Company's interests or revenues by any measures he might at that time take.