Kitabı oku: «The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)», sayfa 26

Upon the plan which I laid down, and to which I beg leave to return, I was considering the conduct of the Company to those nations which are indirectly subject to their authority. The most considerable of the dependent princes is the Nabob of Oude. My right honorable friend, ⁵⁷ to whom we owe the remedial bills on your table, has already pointed out to you, in one of the reports, the condition of that prince, and as it stood in the time he alluded to. I shall only add a few circumstances that may tend to awaken some sense of the manner in which the condition of the people is affected by that of the prince, and involved in it,—and to show you, that, when we talk of the sufferings of princes, we do not lament the oppression of individuals,—and that in these cases the high and the low suffer together.

In the year 1779, the Nabob of Oude represented, through the British resident at his court, that the number of Company's troops stationed in his dominions was a main cause of his distress,—and that all those which he was not bound by treaty to maintain should be withdrawn, as they had greatly diminished his revenue and impoverished his country. I will read you, if you please, a few extracts from these representations.

He states, "that the country and cultivation are abandoned, and this year in particular, from the excessive drought of the season, deductions of many lacs having been allowed to the farmers, who are still left unsatisfied"; and then he proceeds with a long detail of his own distress, and that of his family and all his dependants; and adds, "that the new-raised brigade is not only quite useless to my government, but is, moreover, the cause of much loss both in revenues and customs. The detached body of troops under European officers bring nothing but confusion to the affairs of my government, and are entirely their own masters." Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings's confidential resident, vouches for the truth of this representation in its fullest extent. "I am concerned to confess that there is too good ground for this plea. The misfortune hat been general throughout the whole of the vizier's [the Nabob of Oude] dominions, obvious to everybody; and so fatal have been its consequences, that no person of either credit or character would enter into engagements with government for farming the country." He then proceeds to give strong instances of the general calamity, and its effects.

It was now to be seen what steps the Governor-General and Council took for the relief of this distressed country, long laboring under the vexations of men, and now stricken by the hand of God. The case of a general famine is known to relax the severity even of the most rigorous government.—Mr. Hastings does not deny or show the least doubt of the fact. The representation is humble, and almost abject. On this representation from a great prince of the distress of his subjects, Mr. Hastings falls into a violent passion,—such as (it seems) would be unjustifiable in any one who speaks of any part of his conduct. He declares "that the demands, the tone in which they were asserted, and the season in which they were made, are all equally alarming, and appear to him to require an adequate degree of firmness in this board in opposition to them." He proceeds to deal out very unreserved language on the person and character of the Nabob and his ministers. He declares, that, in a division between him and the Nabob, "the strongest must decide." With regard to the urgent and instant necessity from the failure of the crops, he says, "that perhaps expedients may be found for affording a gradual relief from the burden of which he so heavily complains, and it shall be my endeavor to seek them out": and lest he should be suspected of too much haste to alleviate sufferings and to remove violence, he says, "that these must be gradually applied, and their complete effect may be distant; and this, I conceive, is all he can claim of right."

This complete effect of his lenity is distant indeed. Rejecting this demand, (as he calls the Nabob's abject supplication,) he attributes it, as he usually does all things of the kind, to the division in their government, and says, "This is a powerful motive with me (however inclined I might be, upon any other occasion, to yield to somepart of his demand) to give them an absolute and unconditional refusal upon the present,—and even to bring to punishment, if my influence can produce that effect, those incendiaries who have endeavored to make themselves the instruments of division between us."

Here, Sir, is much heat and passion,—but no more consideration of the distress of the country, from a failure of the means of subsistence, and (if possible) the worse evil of an useless and licentious soldiery, than if they were the most contemptible of all trifles. A letter is written, in consequence, in such a style of lofty despotism as I believe has hitherto been unexampled and unheard of in the records of the East. The troops were continued. The gradual relief, whose effect was to be so distant, has never been substantially and beneficially applied,—and the country is ruined.

Mr. Hastings, two years after, when it was too late, saw the absolute necessity of a removal of the intolerable grievance of this licentious soldiery, which, under pretence of defending it, held the country under military execution. A new treaty and arrangement, according to the pleasure of Mr. Hastings, took place; and this new treaty was broken in the old manner, in every essential article. The soldiery were again sent, and again set loose. The effect of all his manoeuvres, from which it seems he was sanguine enough to entertain hopes, upon the state of the country, he himself informs us,—"The event has proved the reverse of these hopes, and accumulation of distress, debasement, and dissatisfaction to the Nabob, and disappointment and disgrace to me.—Every measure [which he had himself proposed] has been so conducted as to give him cause of displeasure. There are no officers established by which his affairs could be regularly conducted: mean, incapable, and indigent men have been appointed. A number of the districts without authority, and without the means of personal protection; some of them have been murdered by the zemindars, and those zemindars, instead of punishment, have been permitted to retain their zemindaries, with independent authority; all the other zemindars suffered to rise up in rebellion, and to insult the authority of the sircar, without any attempt made to suppress them; and the Company's debt, instead of being discharged by the assignments and extraordinary sources of money provided for that purpose, is likely to exceed even the amount at which it stood at the time in which the arrangement with his Excellency was concluded." The House will smile at the resource on which the Directors take credit as such a certainty in their curious account.

This is Mr. Hastings's own narrative of the effects of his own settlement. This is the state of the country which we have been told is in perfect peace and order; and, what is curious, he informs us, that every part of this was foretold to him in the order and manner in which it happened, at the very time he made his arrangement of men and measures.

The invariable course of the Company's policy is this: either they set up some prince too odious to maintain himself without the necessity of their assistance, or they soon render him odious by making him the instrument of their government. In that case troops are bountifully sent to him to maintain his authority. That he should have no want of assistance, a civil gentleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court, who, under pretence of providing duly for the pay of these troops, gets assignments on the revenue into his hands. Under his provident management, debts soon accumulate; new assignments are made for these debts; until, step by step, the whole revenue, and with it the whole power of the country, is delivered into his hands. The military do not behold without a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the civil department. They feel that in a country driven to habitual rebellion by the civil government the military is necessary; and they will not permit their services to go unrewarded. Tracts of country are delivered over to their discretion. Then it is found proper to convert their commanding officers into farmers of revenue. Thus, between the well-paid civil and well-rewarded military establishment, the situation of the natives may be easily conjectured. The authority of the regular and lawful government is everywhere and in every point extinguished. Disorders and violences arise; they are repressed by other disorders and other violences. Wherever the collectors of the revenue and the farming colonels and majors move, ruin is about them, rebellion before and behind them. The people in crowds fly out of the country; and the frontier is guarded by lines of troops, not to exclude an enemy, but to prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

By these means, in the course of not more than four or five years, this once opulent and flourishing country, which, by the accounts given in the Bengal consultations, yielded more than three crore of sicca rupees, that is, above three millions sterling, annually, is reduced, as far as I can discover, in a matter purposely involved in the utmost perplexity, to less than one million three hundred thousand pounds, and that exacted by every mode of rigor that can be devised. To complete the business, most of the wretched remnants of this revenue are mortgaged, and delivered into the hands of the usurers at Benares (for there alone are to be found some lingering remains of the ancient wealth of these regions) at an interest of near thirty per cent per annum.

The revenues in this manner failing, they seized upon the estates of every person of eminence in the country, and, under the name of resumption, confiscated their property. I wish, Sir, to be understood universally and literally, when I assert that there is not left one man of property and substance for his rank in the whole of these provinces, in provinces which are nearly the extent of England and Wales taken together: not one landholder, not one banker, not one merchant, not one even of those who usually perish last, the ultimum moriens in a ruined state, not one farmer of revenue.

One country for a while remained, which stood as an island in the midst of the grand waste of the Company's dominion. My right honorable friend, in his admirable speech on moving the bill, just touched the situation, the offences, and the punishment of a native prince, called Fizulla Khân. This man, by policy and force, had protected himself from the general extirpation of the Rohilla chiefs. He was secured (if that were any security) by a treaty. It was stated to you, as it was stated by the enemies of that unfortunate man, "that the whole of his country is what the whole country of the Rohillas was, cultivated like a garden, without one neglected spot in it." Another accuser says,—"Fyzoolah Khan, though a bad soldier, [that is the true source of his misfortune,] has approved himself a good aumil,—having, it is supposed, in the course of a few years, at least doubled the population and revenue of his country." In another part of the correspondence he is charged with making his country an asylum for the oppressed peasants who fly from the territories of Oude. The improvement of his revenue, arising from this single crime, (which Mr. Hastings considers as tantamount to treason,) is stated at an hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.

Dr. Swift somewhere says, that he who could make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before was a greater benefactor to the human race than all the politicians that ever existed. This prince, who would have been deified by antiquity, who would have been ranked with Osiris, and Bacchus, and Ceres, and the divinities most propitious to men, was, for those very merits, by name attacked by the Company's government, as a cheat, a robber, a traitor. In the same breath in which he was accused as a rebel, he was ordered at once to furnish five thousand horse. On delay, or (according to the technical phrase, when any remonstrance is made to them) "on evasion," he was declared a violator of treaties, and everything he had was to be taken from him. Not one word, however, of horse in this treaty.

The territory of this Fizulla Khân, Mr. Speaker, is less than the County of Norfolk. It is an inland country, full seven hundred miles from any seaport, and not distinguished for any one considerable branch of manufacture whatsoever. From this territory several very considerable sums had at several times been paid to the British resident. The demand of cavalry, without a shadow or decent pretext of right, amounted to three hundred thousand a year more, at the lowest computation; and it is stated, by the last person sent to negotiate, as a demand of little use, if it could be complied with,—but that the compliance was impossible, as it amounted to more than his territories could supply, if there had been no other demand upon him. Three hundred thousand pounds a year from an inland country not so large as Norfolk!

The thing most extraordinary was to hear the culprit defend himself from the imputation of his virtues, as if they had been the blackest offences. He extenuated the superior cultivation of his country. He denied its population. He endeavored to prove that he had often sent back the poor peasant that sought shelter with him.—I can make no observation on this.

After a variety of extortions and vexations, too fatiguing to you, too disgusting to me, to go through with, they found "that they ought to be in a better state to warrant forcible means"; they therefore contented themselves with a gross sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for their present demand. They offered him, indeed, an indemnity from their exactions in future for three hundred thousand pounds more. But he refused to buy their securities,—pleading (probably with truth) his poverty; but if the plea were not founded, in my opinion very wisely: not choosing to deal any more in that dangerous commodity of the Company's faith; and thinking it better to oppose distress and unarmed obstinacy to uncolored exaction than to subject himself to be considered as a cheat, if he should make a treaty in the least beneficial to himself.

Thus they executed an exemplary punishment on Fizulla Khân for the culture of his country. But, conscious that the prevention of evils is the great object of all good regulation, they deprived him of the means of increasing that criminal cultivation in future, by exhausting his coffers; and that the population of his country should no more be a standing reproach and libel on the Company's government, they bound him by a positive engagement not to afford any shelter whatsoever to the farmers and laborers who should seek refuge in his territories from the exactions of the British residents in Oude. When they had done all this effectually, they gave him a full and complete acquittance from all charges of rebellion, or of any intention to rebel, or of his having originally had any interest in, or any means of, rebellion.

These intended rebellions are one of the Company's standing resources. When money has been thought to be heaped up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once. The money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends. It is so settled a resource, that I rather wonder how it comes to be omitted in the Directors' account; but I take it for granted this omission will be supplied in their next edition.

The Company stretched this resource to the full extent, when they accused two old women, in the remotest corner of India, (who could have no possible view or motive to raise disturbances,) of being engaged in rebellion, with an intent to drive out the English nation, in whose protection, purchased by money and secured by treaty, rested the sole hope of their existence. But the Company wanted money, and the old women must be guilty of a plot. They were accused of rebellion, and they were convicted of wealth. Twice had great sums been extorted from them, and as often had the British faith guarantied the remainder. A body of British troops, with one of the military farmers-general at their head, was sent to seize upon the castle in which these helpless women resided. Their chief eunuchs, who were their agents, their guardians, protectors, persons of high rank according to the Eastern manners, and of great trust, were thrown into dungeons, to make them discover their hidden treasures; and there they lie at present. The lands assigned for the maintenance of the women were seized and confiscated. Their jewels and effects were taken, and set up to a pretended auction in an obscure place, and bought at such a price as the gentlemen thought proper to give. No account has ever been transmitted of the articles or produce of this sale. What money was obtained is unknown, or what terms were stipulated for the maintenance of these despoiled and forlorn creatures: for by some particulars it appears as if an engagement of the kind was made.

Let me here remark, once for all, that though the act of 1773 requires that an account of all proceedings should be diligently transmitted, that this, like all the other injunctions of the law, is totally despised, and that half at least of the most important papers are intentionally withheld.

I wish you, Sir, to advert particularly, in this transaction, to the quality and the numbers of the persons spoiled, and the instrument by whom that spoil was made. These ancient matrons, called the Begums, or Princesses, were of the first birth and quality in India: the one mother, the other wife, of the late Nabob of Oude, Sujah Dowlah, a prince possessed of extensive and flourishing dominions, and the second man in the Mogul Empire. This prince (suspicious, and not unjustly suspicious, of his son and successor) at his death committed his treasures and his family to the British faith. That family and household consisted of two thousand women, to which were added two other seraglios of near kindred, and said to be extremely numerous, and (as I am well informed) of about fourscore of the Nabob's children, with all the eunuchs, the ancient servants, and a multitude of the dependants of his splendid court. These were all to be provided, for present maintenance and future establishment, from the lands assigned as dower, and from the treasures which he left to these matrons, in trust for the whole family.

So far as to the objects of the spoil. The instrument chosen by Mr. Hastings to despoil the relict of Sujah Dowlah was her own son, the reigning Nabob of Oude. It was the pious hand of a son that was selected to tear from his mother and grandmother the provision of their age, the maintenance of his brethren, and of all the ancient household of his father. [Here a laugh, from some young members.] The laugh is seasonable, and the occasion decent and proper.

By the last advices, something of the sum extorted remained unpaid. The women, in despair, refuse to deliver more, unless their lands are restored, and their ministers released from prison; but Mr. Hastings and his council, steady to their point, and consistent to the last in their conduct, write to the resident to stimulate the son to accomplish the filial acts he had brought so near to their perfection. "We desire," say they in their letter to the resident, (written so late as March last,) "that you will inform us if any, and what means, have been taken for recovering the balance due from the Begum [Princess] at Fyzabad; and that, if necessary, you recommend it to the vizier to enforce the most effectual means for that purpose."

What their effectual means of enforcing demands on women of high rank and condition are I shall show you, Sir, in a few minutes, when I represent to you another of these plots and rebellions, which always in India, though so rarely anywhere else, are the offspring of an easy condition and hoarded riches.

Benares is the capital city of the Indian religion. It is regarded as holy by a particular and distinguished sanctity; and the Gentoos in general think themselves as much obliged to visit it once in their lives as the Mahometans to perform their pilgrimage to Mecca. By this means that city grew great in commerce and opulence; and so effectually was it secured by the pious veneration of that people, that in all wars and in all violences of power there was so sure an asylum both for poverty and wealth, (as it were under a divine protection,) that the wisest laws and best assured free constitution could not better provide for the relief of the one or the safety of the other; and this tranquillity influenced to the greatest degree the prosperity of all the country, and the territory of which it was the capital. The interest of money there was not more than half the usual rate in which it stood in all other places. The reports have fully informed you of the means and of the terms in which this city and the territory called Ghazipoor, of which it was the head, came under the sovereignty of the East India Company.

If ever there was a subordinate dominion pleasantly circumstanced to the superior power, it was this. A large rent or tribute, to the amount of two hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year, was paid in monthly instalments with the punctuality of a dividend at the Bank. If ever there was a prince who could not have an interest in disturbances, it was its sovereign, the Rajah Cheit Sing. He was in possession of the capital of his religion, and a willing revenue was paid by the devout people who resorted to him from all parts. His sovereignty and his independence, except his tribute, was secured by every tie. His territory was not much less than half of Ireland, and displayed in all parts a degree of cultivation, ease, and plenty, under his frugal and paternal management, which left him nothing to desire, either for honor or satisfaction.

This was the light in which this country appeared to almost every eye. But Mr. Hastings beheld it askance. Mr. Hastings tells us that it was reported of this Cheit Sing, that his father left him a million sterling, and that he made annual accessions to the hoard. Nothing could be so obnoxious to indigent power. So much wealth could not be innocent. The House is fully acquainted with the unfounded and unjust requisitions which were made upon this prince. The question has been most ably and conclusively cleared up in one of the reports of the select committee, and in an answer of the Court of Directors to an extraordinary publication against them by their servant, Mr. Hastings. But I mean to pass by these exactions as if they were perfectly just and regular; and having admitted them, I take what I shall now trouble you with only as it serves to show the spirit of the Company's government, the mode in which it is carried on, and the maxims on which it proceeds.

Mr. Hastings, from whom I take the doctrine, endeavors to prove that Cheit Sing was no sovereign prince, but a mere zemindar, or common subject, holding land by rent. If this be granted to him, it is next to be seen under what terms he is of opinion such a landholder, that is a British subject, holds his life and property under the Company's government. It is proper to understand well the doctrines of the person whose administration has lately received such distinguished approbation from the Company. His doctrine is,—"That the Company, or the person delegated by it, holds an absolute authority over such zemindars;—that he [such a subject] owes an implicit and unreserved obedience to its authority, at the forfeiture even of his life and property, at the DISCRETION of those who held or fully represented the sovereign authority;—and that these rights are fully delegated to him, Mr. Hastings."

Such is a British governor's idea of the condition of a great zemindar holding under a British authority; and this kind of authority he supposes fully delegated to him,—though no such delegation appears in any commission, instruction, or act of Parliament. At his discretion he may demand of the substance of any zemindar, over and above his rent or tribute, even, what he pleases, with a sovereign authority; and if he does not yield an implicit, unreserved obedience to all his commands, he forfeits his lands, his life, and his property, at Mr. Hastings's discretion. But, extravagant, and even frantic, as these positions appear, they are less so than what I shall now read to you; for he asserts, that, if any one should urge an exemption from more than a stated payment, or should consider the deeds which passed between him and the Board "as bearing the quality and force of a treaty between equal states," he says, "that such an opinion is itself criminal to the state of which he is a subject; and that he was himself amenable to its justice, if he gave countenance to such a belief." Here is a new species of crime invented, that of countenancing a belief,—but a belief of what? A belief of that which the Court of Directors, Hastings's masters, and a committee of this House, have decided as this prince's indisputable right.

But supposing the Rajah of Benares to be a mere subject, and that subject a criminal of the highest form; let us see what course was taken by an upright English magistrate. Did he cite this culprit before his tribunal? Did he make a charge? Did he produce witnesses? These are not forms; they are parts of substantial and eternal justice. No, not a word of all this. Mr. Hastings concludes him, in his own mind, to be guilty: he makes this conclusion on reports, on hearsays, on appearances, on rumors, on conjectures, on presumptions; and even these never once hinted to the party, nor publicly to any human being, till the whole business was done.

But the Governor tells you his motive for this extraordinary proceeding, so contrary to every mode of justice towards either a prince or a subject, fairly and without disguise; and he puts into your hands the key of his whole conduct:—"I will suppose, for a moment, that I have acted with unwarrantable rigor towards Cheit Sing, and even with injustice.—Let my MOTIVE be consulted. I left Calcutta, impressed with a belief that extraordinary means were necessary, and those exerted with a steady hand, to preserve the Company's interests from sinking under the accumulated weight which oppressed them. I saw a political necessity for curbing the overgrown power of a great member of their dominion, and for making it contribute to the relief of their pressing exigencies." This is plain speaking; after this, it is no wonder that the Rajah's wealth and his offence, the necessities of the judge and the opulence of the delinquent, are never separated, through the whole of Mr. Hastings's apology. "The justice and policy of exacting a large pecuniary mulct." The resolution "to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distresses." His determination "to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to execute a severe vengeance for past delinquency." That "as his wealth was great, and the Company's exigencies pressing, he thought it a measure of justice and policy to exact from him a large pecuniary mulct for their relief."—"The sum" (says Mr. Wheler, bearing evidence, at his desire, to his intentions) "to which the Governor declared his resolution to extend his fine was forty or fifty lacs, that is, four or five hundred thousand pounds; and that, if he refused, he was to be removed from his zemindary entirely; or by taking possession of his forts, to obtain, out of the treasure deposited in them, the above sum for the Company."

Crimes so convenient, crimes so politic, crimes so necessary, crimes so alleviating of distress, can never be wanting to those who use no process, and who produce no proofs.

But there is another serious part (what is not so?) in this affair. Let us suppose that the power for which Mr. Hastings contends, a power which no sovereign ever did or ever can vest in any of his subjects, namely, his own sovereign authority, to be conveyed by the act of Parliament to any man or body of men whatsoever; it certainly was never given to Mr. Hastings. The powers given by the act of 1773 were formal and official; they were given, not to the Governor-General, but to the major vote of the board, as a board, on discussion amongst themselves, in their public character and capacity; and their acts in that character and capacity were to be ascertained by records and minutes of council. The despotic acts exercised by Mr. Hastings were done merely in his private character; and, if they had been moderate and just, would still be the acts of an usurped authority, and without any one of the legal modes of proceeding which could give him competence for the most trivial exertion of power. There was no proposition or deliberation whatsoever in council, no minute on record, by circulation or otherwise, to authorize his proceedings; no delegation of power to impose a fine, or to take any step to deprive the Rajah of Benares of his government, his property, or his liberty. The minutes of consultation assign to his journey a totally different object, duty, and destination. Mr. Wheler, at his desire, tells us long after, that he had a confidential conversation with him on various subjects, of which this was the principal, in which Mr. Hastings notified to him his secret intentions; "and that he bespoke his support of the measures which he intended to pursue towards him (the Rajah)." This confidential discourse, and bespeaking of support, could give him no power, in opposition to an express act of Parliament, and the whole tenor of the orders of the Court of Directors.