The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)

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.