The excuse for this bribe, fabricated by Mr. Hastings, and taught to Munny Begum, when he found that she was obliged to prove it against him, was, that it was given to him for his entertainment, according to some pretended custom, at the rate of 200l. sterling a day, whilst he remained at Moorshedabad. My Lords, this leads me to a few reflections on the apology or defence of this bribe. We shall certainly, I hope, render it clear to your Lordships that it was not paid in this manner as a daily allowance, but given in a gross sum. But take it in his own way, it was no less illegal, and no less contrary to his covenant; but if true under the circumstances, it was an horrible aggravation of his crime. The first thing that strikes is, that visits from Mr. Hastings are pretty severe things, and hospitality at Moorshedabad is an expensive virtue, though for provision it is one of the cheapest countries in the universe. No wonder that Mr. Hastings lengthened his visit, and made it extend near three months. Such hosts and such guests cannot be soon parted. Two hundred pounds a day for a visit! It is at the rate of 78,000l. a year for himself; and as I find his companion was put on the same allowance, it will be 146,000l. a year for hospitality to two English gentlemen. I believe that there is not a prince in Europe who goes to such expensive hospitality of splendor.
But that you may judge of the true nature of this hospitality of corruption, I must bring before you the business of the visitor and the condition of the host, as stated by Mr. Hastings himself, who best knows what he was doing. He was, then, at the old capital of Bengal at the time of this expensive entertainment, on a business of retrenchment, and for the establishment of a most harsh, rigorous, and oppressive economy. He wishes the task were assigned to spirits of a less gentle kind. By Mr. Hastings's account, he was giving daily and hourly wounds to his humanity in depriving of their sustenance hundreds of persons of the ancient nobility of a great fallen kingdom. Yet it was in the midst of this galling duty, it was at that very moment of his tender sensibility, that, from the collected morsels plucked from the famished mouths of hundreds of decayed, indigent, and starving nobility, he gorged his ravenous maw with 200l. a day for his entertainment. In the course of all this proceeding your Lordships will not fail to observe he is never corrupt, but he is cruel; he never dines with comfort, but where he is sure to create a famine. He never robs from the loose superfluity of standing greatness; he devours the fallen, the indigent, the necessitous. His extortion is not like the generous rapacity of the princely eagle, who snatches away the living, struggling prey; he is a vulture, who feeds upon the prostrate, the dying, and the dead. As his cruelty is more shocking than his corruption, so his hypocrisy has something more frightful than his cruelty; for whilst his bloody and rapacious hand signs proscriptions, and now sweeps away the food of the widow and the orphan, his eyes overflow with tears, and he converts the healing balm that bleeds from wounded humanity into a rancorous and deadly poison to the race of man.
Well, there was an end to this tragic entertainment, this feast of Tantalus. The few left on the pension-list, the poor remnants that had escaped, were they paid by his administratrix and deputy, Munny Begum? Not a shilling. No fewer than forty-nine petitions, mostly from the widows of the greatest and most splendid houses of Bengal, came before the Council, praying in the most deplorable manner for some sort of relief out of the pittance assigned them. His colleagues, General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, men who, when England is reproached for the government of India, will, I repeat it, as a shield be held up between this nation and infamy, did, in conformity to the strict orders of the Directors, appoint Mahomed Reza Khân to his old offices, that is, to the general superintendency of the household and the administration of justice, a person who by his authority might keep some order in the ruling family and in the state. The Court of Directors authorized them to assure those offices to him, with a salary reduced indeed to 30,000l. a year, during his good behavior. But Mr. Hastings, as soon as he obtained a majority by the death of the two best men ever sent to India, notwithstanding the orders of the Court of Directors, in spite of the public faith solemnly pledged to Mahomed Reza Khân, without a shadow of complaint, had the audacity to dispossess him of all his offices, and appoint his bribing patroness, the old dancing-girl, Munny Begum, once more to the viceroyalty and all its attendant honors and functions.
The pretence was more insolent and shameless than the act. Modesty does not long survive innocence. He brings forward the miserable pageant of the Nabob, as he called him, to be the instrument of his own disgrace, and the scandal of his family and government. He makes him to pass by his mother, and to petition us to appoint Munny Begum once more to the administration of the viceroyalty. He distributed Mahomed Reza Khân's salary as a spoil.
When the orders of the Court to restore Mahomed Reza Khân, with their opinion on the corrupt cause of his removal, and a second time to pledge to him the public faith for his continuance, were received, Mr. Hastings, who had been just before a pattern of obedience, when the despoiling, oppressing, imprisoning, and persecuting this man was the object, yet, when the order was of a beneficial nature, and pleasant to a well-formed mind, he at once loses all his old principles, he grows stubborn and refractory, and refuses obedience. And in this sullen, uncomplying mood he continues, until, to gratify Mr. Francis, in an agreement on some of their differences, he consented to his proposition of obedience to the appointment of the Court of Directors. He grants to his arrangement of convenience what he had refused to his duty, and replaces that magistrate. But mark the double character of the man, never true to anything but fraud and duplicity. At the same time that he publicly replaces this magistrate, pretending compliance with his colleague and obedience to his masters, he did, in defiance of his own and the public faith, privately send an assurance to the Nabob, that is, to Munny Begum,—informs her that he was compelled by necessity to the present arrangement in favor of Mahomed Reza Khân, but that on the first opportunity he would certainly displace him again. And he kept faith with his corruption; and to show how vainly any one sought protection in the lawful authority of this kingdom, he displaced Mahomed Reza Khân from the lieutenancy and controllership, leaving him only the judicial department miserably curtailed.
But does he adhere to his old pretence of freedom to the Nabob? No such thing. He appoints an absolute master to him under the name of Resident, a creature of his personal favor, Sir John D'Oyly, from whom there is not one syllable of correspondence and not one item of account. How grievous this yoke was to that miserable captive appears by a paper of Mr. Hastings, in which he acknowledges that the Nabob had offered, out of the 160,000l. payable to him yearly, to give up to the Company no less than 40,000l. a year, in order to have the free disposal of the rest. On this all comment is superfluous. Your Lordships are furnished with a standard by which you may estimate his real receipt from the revenue assigned to him, the nature of the pretended Residency, and its predatory effects. It will give full credit to what was generally rumored and believed, that substantially and beneficially the Nabob never received fifty out of the one hundred and sixty thousand pounds; which will account for his known poverty and wretchedness, and that of all about him.
Thus by his corrupt traffic of bribes with one scandalous woman he disgraced and enfeebled the native Mahomedan government, captived the person of the sovereign, and ruined and subverted the justice of the country. What is worse, the steps taken for the murder of Nundcomar, his accuser, have confirmed and given sanction not only to the corruptions then practised by the Governor-General, but to all of which he has since been guilty. This will furnish your Lordships with some general idea which will enable you to judge of the bribe for which he sold the country government.
Under this head you will have produced to you full proof of his sale of a judicial office to a person called Khân Jehan Khân, and the modes he took to frustrate all inquiry on that subject, upon a wicked and false pretence, that, according to his religious scruples, he could not be sworn.
The great end and object I have in view is to show the criminal tendency, the mischievous nature of these crimes, and the means taken to elude their discovery. I am now giving your Lordships that general view which may serve to characterize Mr. Hastings's administration in all the other parts of it.
It was not true in fact, as Mr. Hastings gives out, that there was nothing now against him, and that, when he had got rid of Nundcomar and his charge, he got rid of the whole. No such thing. An immense load of charges of bribery remained. They were coming afterwards