that the right of the vizier, under the treaty, was at best "but a precarious and unserviceable right; "and that he thought 15 lacks, or £. 150,000 "and upwards, an ample equivalent," (or, according to the expression of Major Palmer, an excellent bargain,) as in truth it was, "for expunging an article of such a tenour, and so loosely worded." And finally, that the said Hastings did give the following description of the general character, disposition, and circumstances of the Nabob Fyzoola Khân. 66 66 "The rumours, which had been spread of his "hostile designs against the vizier, were totally "groundless, and if he had been inclined, he had "not the means, to make himself formidable; on "the contrary, being in the decline of life, and possessing a very fertile and prosperous jaghire, "it is more natural to suppose, that Fyzoola "Khan wishes to spend the remainder of his days "in quietness, than that he is preparing to em"bark in active and offensive scenes, which must "end in his own destruction." V. Yet that, notwithstanding this virtual and implied crimination of his whole conduct toward the Nabob Fyzoola Khân, and after all the aforesaid acts systematically prosecuted in open violation of a positive treaty against a prince, who had an hereditary right to more than he actually possessed, for whose protection the faith of the company and the nation was repeatedly pledged, and who had deserved and obtained the publick thanks of the British government, when, in allusion to certain of the said acts, the court of directors had expressed to the said Hastings their wishes" to be "considered rather as the guardians of the honour and property of the native powers, than as the instruments of oppression;" he, the said Hastings, in reply to the said directors, his masters, did conclude his official account of the final settlement with Fyzoola Khân, with the following indecent, because unjust, exultation; 66 "Such are the measures, which we shall ever "wish to observe towards our allies or dependants upon our frontiers." As the Letter referred to in the VIIIth and XVIth Articles of Charge is not contained in any of the Appendixes to the Reports of the Select Committee, it has been thought necessary to annex it as an Appendix to these Charges. APPENDIX TO THE VIIITH AND XVITH CHARGES. Copy of a LETTER from Warren Hastings, Esquire, to William Devaynes, Esq. Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, dated Cheltenham, 11th of July 1785; and printed by Order of the House of Commons. To William Devaynes, Esquire, Chairman of the Honourable the Court of Directors. SIR, THE honourable court of directors, in their general letter to Bengal, by the Surprise, dated the 16th March 1784, were pleased to express their desire, that I should inform them of the periods when each sum of the presents, mentioned in my address of the 22d May 1782, was received, what were my motives for withholding the several receipts froin the knowledge of the council, or of the court of directors, and what were my reasons for taking bonds for part of these sums, and for paying other sums into the treasury as deposits on my own account. I I have been kindly apprized, that the information required as above is yet expected from me. hope, that the circumstances of my past situation, when considered, will plead my excuse for having thus long withheld it. The fact is, that I was not at the presidency when the Surprise arrived; and when I returned to it, my time and attention were so entirely engrossed to the day of my final departure from it by a variety of other more important occupations, of which, Sir, I may safely appeal to your testimony, grounded on the large portion contributed by myself of the volumes, which compose our consultations of that period, that the submission, which my respect would have enjoined me to pay to the command imposed on me, was lost to my recollection, perhaps from the stronger impression, which the first and distant perusal of it had left on my mind, that it was rather intended as a reprehension for something, which had given offence in my report of the original transaction, | employed against Madajee Scindia, under the than as expressive of any want of a further elucidation of it. I will now endeavour to reply to the different questions, which have been stated to me, in as explicit a manner as I am able. To such information as I can give, the honourable court is fully entitled, and where that shall prove defective I will point out the easy means, by which it may be rendered more complete. First, I believe I can affirm with certainty, that the several sums mentioned in the account transmitted with my letter, above mentioned, were received at or within a very few days of the dates, which are prefixed to them in the account; but as this contains only the gross sums, and each of these was received in different payments, though at no great distance of time, I cannot therefore assign a greater degree of accuracy to the account. Perhaps the honourable court will judge this sufficient for any purpose, to which their enquiry was directed; but if it should not be so, I will beg leave to refer for a more minute information, and for the means of making any investigation, which they may think it proper to direct, respecting the particulars of this transaction, to Mr. Larkins, your accomptant-general, who was privy to every process of it, and possesses, as I believe, the original paper, which contained the only account, that I ever kept of it. In this each receipt was, as I recollect, specifically inserted, with the name of the person by whom it was made; and I shall write to him to desire, that he will furnish you with the paper itself, if it is still in being, and in his hands, or with whatever he can distinctly recollect concerning it. For my motives for withholding the several receipts from the knowledge of the council, or of the court of directors, and for taking bonds for part of these sums, and paying others into the treasury as deposits on my own account, I have generally accounted in my letter to the honourable the court of directors of the 22d May 1782; namely, that "I either chose to con"ceal the first receipts from publick curiosity, "by receiving bonds for the amount, or possibly acted without any studied design, which my memory, at that distance of time, could verify; and that I did not think it worth my care to observe the same means with the "rest." It will not be expected, that I should be able to give a more correct explanation of my intentions after a lapse of three years, having declared at the time, that many particulars had escaped my remembrance; neither shall I attempt to add more than the clearer affirmation of the facts implied in that report of them, and such inferences as necessarily, or with a strong probability, follow them. I have said, that the three first sums of the account were paid into the company's treasury without passing through my hands. The second of these was forced into notice by its destination and application to the expence of a detachment, which was formed and command of Lieutenant-Colonel Camac, as I particularly apprized the court of directors, in my letter of the 29th November 1780. The other two were certainly not intended, when I received them, to be made publick, though intended for publick service, and actually applied to it. The exigencies of the government were at that time my own, and every pressure upon it rested with its full weight upon my mind. Wherever I could find allowable means of relieving those wants, I eagerly seized them; but neither could it occur to me as necessary to state on our proceedings every little aid, which I could thus procure, nor do I know how I could have stated it, without appearing to court favour by an ostentation, which I disdain, nor without the chance of exciting the jealousy of my colleagues by the constructive assertion of a separate and unparticipated merit, derived from the influence of my station, to which they might have laid an equal claim. I should have deemed it particularly dishonourable to receive for my own use money tendered by men of a certain class, from whom I had interdicted the receipt of presents to my inferiours, and bound them by oath not to receive them. I was therefore more than ordinarily cautious to avoid the suspicion of it, which would scarcely have failed to light upon me, had I suffered the money to be brought directly to my own house, or to that of any person known to be in trust for me; for these reasons I caused it to be transported immediately to the treasury. There, you well know, Sir, it could not be received without being passed to some credit, and this could only be done by entering it as a loan, or as a deposit; the first was the least liable to reflection, and therefore I had obviously recourse to it. Why the second sum was entered as a deposit, I am utterly ignorant; possibly it was done without any special direction from me; possibly because it was the simplest mode of entry, and therefore preferred, as the transaction itself did not require concealment, having been already avowed. Although I am firmly persuaded, that these were my sentiments on the occasion, yet I will not affirm that they were. Though I feel their impression as the remains of a series of thoughts retained on my memory, I am not certain, that they may not have been produced by subsequent reflection on the principal fact, combining with it the probable motives of it. Of this I am certain, that it was my design originally to have concealed the receipt of all the sums, except the second, even from the knowledge of the court of directors. They had answered my purpose of publick utility, and I had almost totally dismissed them from my remembrance. But when fortune threw a cum in my way of a magnitude, which could not be concealed, and the peculiar delicacy of my situation at the time, in which I received it, made me more circumspect of appearances, I chose to apprize my employers of it, which I did hastily and generally; hastily, perhaps to prevent the dency, in the middle of the year 1781, in order to guard against their becoming a claim on the company, as part of my estate, in the event of my death occurring in the course of the service, on which I was then entering. This, Sir, is the plain history of the transaction. should be ashamed to request, that you would communicate it to the honourable court of directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favour of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect, which is due to them as a body, and to the assurances, which I derive from your experienced civilities, that you will kindly overlook the trouble imposed by it. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your very humble and most obedient servant, WARREN HASTINGS. It being my wish to clear up every doubt upon this transaction, which either my own mind could suggest, or which may have been suggested by others, I beg leave to suppose another question, and to state the terms of it in my reply, by informing you, that the endorsement on the bonds was made about the period of my leaving the presi- | 11th July 1785. (Signed) Cheltenham, LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ. OCCASIONED BY THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN A NEWSPAPER OF THE SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, BY MY DEAR SIR, Beaconsfield, May 26, 1795. | (as I hear he did, in three or four speeches made I HAVE been told of the voluntary, which, for the entertainment of the house of lords, has been lately played by his Grace the **** of ******* a great deal at my expence, and a little at his own. I confess I should have liked the composition rather better, if it had been quite new. But every man has his taste, and his Grace is an admirer of ancient musick. There may be sometimes too much even of a good thing. A toast is good, and a bumper is not bad; but the best toast may be so often repeated as to disgust the palate, and ceaseless rounds of bumpers may nauseate and overload the stomach. The ears of the most steady-voting politicians may at last be stunned with "three times three." I am sure I have been very grateful for the flattering remembrance made of me in the toasts of the Revolution Society, and of other clubs formed on the same laudable plan. After giving the brimming honours to citizen Thomas Paine, and to citizen Dr. Priestley, the gentlemen of these clubs seldom failed to bring me forth in my turn, and to drink, "Mr. Burke, and thanks to him for the dis"cussion he has provoked." I found myself elevated with this honour; for, even by the collision of resistance, to be the means of striking out sparkles of truth, if not merit, is at least felicity. Here I might have rested. But when I found that the great advocate, Mr. Erskine, condescended to resort to these bumper toasts, as the pure and exuberant fountains of politicks and of rhetorick, in defence of certain worthy citizens,) I was rather let down a little. Though still somewhat proud of myself, I was not quite so proud of my voucher. Though he is no idolater of fame, in some way or other, Mr. Erskine will always do himself honour. Methinks, however, in following the precedents of these toasts, he seemed to do more credit to his diligence, as a special pleader, than to his invention as an orator. To those who did not know the abundance of his resources, both of genius and erudition, there was something in it that indicated the want of a good assortment, with regard to richness and variety, in the magazine of topicks and common-places which I suppose he keeps by him, in imitation of Cicero and other renowned declaimers of antiquity. Mr. Erskine supplied something, I allow, from the stores of his imagination, in metamorphosing the jovial toasts of clubs into solemn special arguments at the bar. So far the thing shewed talent : however I must still prefer the bar of the tavern to the other bar. The toasts at the first hand were better than the arguments at the second. Even when the toasts began to grow old as sarcasms, they were washed down with still older pricked election port; then the acid of the wine made some amends for the want of any thing piquant in the wit. But when his Grace gave them a second transformation, and brought out the vapid stuff, which had varied the clubs and disgusted the courts; the drug made up of the bottoms of rejected bottles, all smelling so wofully of the cork and of the cask, and of every thing except the honest old lamp, and when that sad draught had been farther infected with the gaol pollution of the Old Bailey, and was dashed and brewed, and ineffectually stummed again into a senatorial exordium in the house of lords, I found all the high flavour and mantling of my honours, tasteless, flat, and stale. Unluckily, the new tax on wine is felt even in the greatest fortunes, and his Grace submits to take up with the heel-taps of Mr. Erskine. me. His Grace, like an able orator, as he is, begins with giving me a great deal of praise for talents which I do not possess. He does this to intitle himself, on the credit of this gratuitous kindness, to exaggerate my abuse of the parts which his bounty, and not that of nature, has bestowed upon In this, too, he has condescended to copy Mr. Erskine. These priests (I hope they will excuse me; I mean priests of the rights of man) begin by crowning me with their flowers and their fillets, and bedewing me with their odours, as a preface to the knocking me on the head with their consecrated axes. I have injured, say they, the constitution; and I have abandoned the Whig party and the Whig principles that I professed. I do not mean, my dear sir, to defend myself against his Grace. I have not much interest in what the 66 I have had the ill or good fortune to provoke two great men of this age to the publication of their opinions; I mean, citizen Thomas Paine, and his Grace the **** of *******. I am not so great a leveller as to put these two great men on a par, either in the state, or the republick of letters: but, "the field of glory is a field for all." It is a large one indeed, and we all may run, God knows where, in chase of glory, over the bound-world shall think or say of me; as little has the less expanse of that wild heath, whose horizon world an interest in what I shall think or say of always flies before us. I assure his Grace (if he any one in it; and I wish that his Grace had sufwill yet give me leave to call him so) whatever fered an unhappy man to enjoy, in his retreat, the may be said on the authority of the clubs, or of melancholy privileges of obscurity and sorrow. At the bar, that citizen Paine (who, they will have any rate, I have spoken, and I have written, on the it, hunts with me in couples, and who only moves subject. If I have written or spoken so poorly as as I drag him along) has a sufficient activity in to be quite forgot, a fresh apology will not make his own native benevolence to dispose and enable a more lasting impression. I must let the tree lie him to take the lead for himself. He is ready to" as it falls." Perhaps I must take some shame to blaspheme his God, to insult his king, and to libel myself. I confess that I have acted on my own the constitution of his country, without any pro- principles of government, and not on those of his vocation from me, or any encouragement from his Grace, which are, I dare say, profound and wise; Grace. I assure him, that I shall not be guilty of but which I do not pretend to understand. As to the injustice of charging Mr. Paine's next work the party to which he alludes, and which has long against religion and human society, upon his taken its leave of me, I believe the principles Grace's excellent speech in the house of lords. I of the book which he condemns are very confarther assure this noble duke, that I neither formable to the opinions of many of the most encouraged nor provoked that worthy citizen to considerable and most grave in that description of seek for plenty, liberty, safety, justice, or lenity, in politicians. A few indeed, who, I admit, are equally the famine, in the prisons, in the decrees of con- respectable in all points, differ from me, and talk vention, in the revolutionary tribunal, and in the his Grace's language. I am too feeble to contend guillotine of Paris, rather than quietly to take up with them. They have the field to themselves. with what he could find in the glutted markets, There are others, very young and very ingenious the unbarricadoed streets, the drowsy Old Bailey persons, who form, probably, the largest part of judges, or, at worst, the airy, wholesome pillory what his Grace, I believe, is pleased to consider of Old England. The choice of country was his as that party. Some of them were not born into own taste. The writings were the effects of his the world, and all of them were children, when I own zeal. In spite of his friend Dr. Priestley, he entered into that connexion. I give due credit to was a free agent. I admit, indeed, that my praises the censorial brow, to the broad phylacteries, and of the British government, loaded with all its in- to the imposing gravity, of those magisterial rabcumbrances; clogged with its peers and its beef; bins and doctors in the cabala of political science. its parsons and its pudding; its commons and its I admit that" wisdom is as the grey hair to man, beer; and its dull slavish liberty of going about "and that learning is like honourable old age.' just as one pleases; had something to provoke a But, at a time when liberty is a good deal talked jockey of Norfolk, who was inspired with the of, perhaps I might be excused, if I caught someresolute ambition of becoming a citizen of France, thing of the general indocility. It might not be to do something which might render him worthy surprising, if I lengthened my chain a link or two, of naturalization in that grand asylum of persecut- and, in an age of relaxed discipline, gave a trifling ed merit; something which should intitle him to a indulgence to my own notions. If that could be place in the senate of the adoptive country of all allowed, perhaps I might sometimes (by accident, the gallant, generous, and humane. This, I say, and without an unpardonable crime) trust as much was possible. But the truth is, (with great defer- to my own very careful, and very laborious, ence to his Grace I say it,) citizen Paine acted with- though, perhaps, somewhat purblind disquisitions, out any provocation at all; he acted solely from as to their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authothe native impulses of his own excellent heart. rity. But the modern liberty is a precious thing. |