Page images
PDF
EPUB

Bagshot or Hounslow. In such a state of generous irresolution did Mr. Hastings proceed to Benares and Oude. At Benares he failed in his pecuniary object. Then, and not till then, not on account of any ancient enmities shown by the Begums; not in resentment for any old disturbances; but because he had failed in one place and had but two in prospect, did he conceive the base expedient of plundering those aged women. He had no pretence, he had no excuse; he had nothing but the arrogant and obstinate determination to govern India by his own corrupt will, to plead for his conduct. Inflamed by disappointment in his first project, he hastened to the fortress of Chunar, to meditate the more atrocious design of instigating a son against his mother, of sacrificing female dignity and distress to parricide and plunder. At Chunar was that infamous treaty concerted, in which, among other articles, Mr. Hastings stipulated with one whom he called an independent prince, "That, as great distress had arisen to the Nabob's government from the military power and dominion assumed by the Jaghiredars, he be permitted to resume such of their lands as he may deem to be necessary.

No sooner was this foundation of iniquity established, in violation of the pledged faith and solemn guarantee of the British government; no sooner had Mr. Hastings determined to invade the substance of justice, than he resolved to avail himself of her judicial forms; and accordingly despatched a messenger for the chief justice of India, to assist him in perpetrating the violations he had projected. Sir Elijah Impey being arrived, Mr. Hastings with much art proposed a question of opinion, involving an unsubstantiated fact, in order to obtain a surreptitious approbation of the measure he had predetermined to adopt. "The Begums being in actual rebellion, might not the nabob confiscate their property? Most undoubtedly," was the ready answer, of the friendly judge. Not a syllable of inquiry intervened as to the existence of the imputed rebellion; not a moment's pause as to the

ill purposes to which the decision of a chief justice might be perverted. It is not, sir, the office of a friend to mix the grave caution and cold circumspection of a judge with an opinion taken under such circum stances; and sir Elijah did previously declare, that he gave his advice, not as a judge, but as a friend. It is curious to reflect on the whole of sir Elijah's circuit at this perilous time. He stated his desire of relaxing from the fatigues of office, and of unbending his mind in a party of health and pleasure: yet wisely ap prehending, that too sudden relaxation might defeat its object; he had contrived to mix some concerns of business with his amusements. In his little airing of nine hundred miles, great part of which he travel led post, escorted by an army, he selected those very situations where insurrection subsisted, and rebellion was threatened. He not only delivered his deep and curious researches into the laws of nations and treaties, in the capacity of the Oriental Grotius, whom Mr. Hastings was to study, but also appeared in the humbler and more practical situation of a collector of ex parte evidence. In the former quality, his opinion was the premature sanction for the plundering the Begums. In the latter character, he became the posthumous supporter of the expul. sion and pillage of the Raja Cheit Sing. Acting on an unproved fact, he did not hesitate in the first instance to lend his authority to an unlimited persecu tion. In the latter, he did not disdain to scud about India, like an itenerant informer, with a pedlar's pack of garbled evidence and surreptitious affidavits. With a generous oblivion of duty and honour, with a proud sense of having authorized all future rapacity, and sanctioned all past oppression, this friendly judge proceeded on his circuit of health and ease. the governour general issued his orders to plunder the Begums of their treasure, sir Elijah pursued his progress, and explored a country, that presented a speaking picture of hunger and nakedness, in quest of objects best suited to his feelings; in anxious

While

search of calamities most akin to his invalid imagination. Thus, at the same moment that the sword of government was turned to an assassin's dagger, the pure ermine of justice was stained and soiled with the basest contamination. Such were the circumstances, under which Mr. Hastings completed the treaty of Chunar; a treaty, which might challenge all the treaties that ever existed, for containing in the smallest compass the most extensive treachery.

Nor did Mr. Hastings consent to that treaty, till he had received from the Nabob a present, or rather a bribe, of 100,000l. The circumstances of this present, sir, are as extraordinary as the present itself. Four months afterwards, and not till then, Mr. Hastings communicated it to the company, at the same time observing, that "the present was of a magnitude not to be concealed." The whole transaction, I aver, had its rise in a principle of rank corruption. And what was the consideration for this extraordinary bribe? No less than the withdrawing from Oude, not only all the Englishmen in official situations, but the whole of the English army, and that at the very moment when he had himself stated the whole country of Oude to be in open rebellion. At the very moment that he pocketed the extorted spoils of the Nabob, he said to the English gentlemen, with his usual grave hypocrisy and cant, "Go, you oppressive rascals! Go from this worthy unhappy man, whom you have plundered, and leave him to my protection! You have robbed him, you have plundered him, you have taken advantage of his accumulated distresses. But, please God, he shall in future be at rest; for I have promised him that he shall never see the face of an Englishman again." This, however, was the only part of the treaty, that he even affected to fulfil. In all its other articles, we learn from himself, that at the very moment he made it, he meant to deceive the Nabob. Accordingly, he advised the general instead of the partial resumption of the Jaghires, for the express purpose of defeating the first views of that prince; and, instead 3 E

VOL. I.

of giving instant and unqualified effect to all the artícles of the treaty, he perpetually qualified, explained, and varied them with new diminutions and reservations. I call on all who hear me to say if there be any theory in Machiavel, any treachery upon record, any cold Italian fraud, which can in any degree be put in comparison with the disgusting hypocrisy and unequalled baseness, which Mr. Hastings has shown upon this occasion?

I recollect to have heard it advanced by some of those admirers of Mr. Hastings, who were not so implicit as to give unqualified applause to his crimes, that they found an apology for the atrocity of them in the greatness of his mind. To estimate, sir, the solidity of such a defence, it is sufficient merely to consider in what it is that this prepossessing distinction, this captivating characteristick consists. Is it not solely to be traced in great actions directed to great ends? In them only are we to search for true magnanimity. To them only can we affix the splendour and the honours of true greatness. There is indeed another species of greatness, which displays itself in boldly conceiving a bad measure, and undauntedly pursuing it to its accomplishment. Has Mr. Hastings the merit of exhibiting either of these? I see nothing great, nothing magnanimous, nothing open, nothing direct, in his measures or his mind. On the contrary, he pursues the worst objects by the worst means. His course is an eternal deviation from rectitude. At one time he tyrannizes over the will, and at another times deludes the understanding. He is by turns a Dionysius and a Scapin. As well might the writhing obliquity of the serpent be compared to the direct path of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings's ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all is shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little. Nothing simple, nothing unmixed; all affected plainness, and actual dissimulation. He is an heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities, with nothing great but his crimes, and those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once de

note his profligacy and his meanness, and mark him for a traitor and a juggler. In his style of writing, I perceive the same mixture of vicious contrarieties. The most grovelling ideas he conveys in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low ca vils, and uttering quibbles in heroicks; so that his compositions disgust the taste and the understanding, as much as his actions excite the abhorrence of the soul. The same character may be traced through almost every department of his government. Alike in the military and the political line, we might observe auctioneering ambassadours and trading generals. We saw a revolution brought about by an affidavit; an army employed in executing an arrest ; a town besieged on a note of hand; and a prince dethroned for the balance of an account. Thus it was that a government was exhibited, uniting the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre, and the little traffick of a merchant's counting house; wielding a truncheon with one hand, and picking a pocket with the other. From the facts I have stated, I infer, that the Begums did not give disturbance to the government, that they did not excite the zemidars to revolt, and that they were not concerned in the insurrection of Benares. Their treasures were their treason. Asoph ul Dowla thought, therefore, sir, like an unwise prince, when he blamed his father for leaving him so little wealth. His father acted with true policy, in leaving his son with no temptations about him to excite acts of violence from the rapacious. He prudently cloathed him with poverty as with a shield, and armed him with necessity as with a sword.

But let us examine the further apology which Mr. Hastings has suggested for his conduct. "The Begums had resisted the resumption of the jaghires." If, sir, they had done so, they would have been guilty of no crime. But the contrary is the fact, Can any thing be more absurd than the very idea of such an apology? Mr. Hastings, when he returned to Calcutta, states the resistance of the Begums to the resumption in January 1782, as

« PreviousContinue »